1) the subject is politics. People have such strong feelings about it that HN policies about downvoting and name calling aren't followed as usual.
Compare to discussions about, say, web design issues, programming languages or copyright law. While articles on these topics tend to lead to heated debates, most people still follow the policies.
2) the majority of HN readers have liberal-leaning beliefs, and being judgemental about certain topics is frowned upon.
2) the majority of HN readers have liberal-leaning beliefs
Really?
What I tend to see around here is that people are liberal socially (homophobia, anti-drug sentiment, religious fundamentalism and bigotry seem to be mostly absent here), but rather conservative economically - most people are very free-market, in favor of lower taxes, and believe that almost all government meddling is bad. Classic libertarian stuff.
And they're doubly conservative when we get to personal finance, which is especially surprising to me - based on the investment advice most people around these parts give (which tends to be vastly more conservative than even the stuffiest investment adviser would suggest), you'd think this was a community of 75 year codgers, not risk-seeking young'ns shooting the moon with their crazy business schemes.
