There are many great sub-reddits of course but it's not a place for politicial discussions (in fact I am still looking for a good place to have political discussions)
Edit: Why does my personal experience get downvoted?
I guess I would characterize it more as libertarianism strongly centered on the perspectives of middle class, white men.
Edit: I guess "I don't really buy that" was a poor choice of words. I don't think you're lying to me. But your experience was very different from my experience. I stopped using reddit because I felt like all the big subreddits were too socially conservative!
Pro-military? How? I haven't visited it in a while, but a common sentiment on AskReddit was a total disillusionment with the chauvinistic "support the troops" mentality and a belief that military service does not make one righteous in of itself.
As for the military, I guess that one is more debatable. I agree that the Bush-era "support the troops" jingoism isn't around much, but I used to see a lot posts where it's implicit. Things like hugely popular photos of special ops soldiers followed by adoring comments of how "badass" they are.
Enough kids who grew up playing Call of Duty has shifted reddit into being more pro-military and pro-weapons. There is also a steady stream of "coming home" photos and videos with kids and pets.
Its getting to the point where the only way to defend against such tactics is to play just as dirty.
I sometimes wonder if such a place can exist. Outside of friendships, I kind of don't think it can.
Unfortunately most people these days are more interested in their initial opinion being right than in having real discourse that everyone can learn and grow from.
I think if your theory involves mass-exclusion/banning you could possibly end up with a place like this. But the conversation would actually lose an important voice at that point. The angry people are (often) angry for a reason, they're just usually pretty bad at making their point civilly.
If you look at a political debate from a game-theoretical standpoint, a debate among friends is a multi-stage game. You don't want to go nuclear right off the bat, because when the dust clears, you'll still want to be friends with your opponent. There's a continuity to the relationship. There will be a second, third, fourth,...,500th "round" to the "game."
I'm not sure if this situation is any more likely to yield productive discussions. But on average, it yields more civil, less abrasive discussions. On the downside, it can often result in echo-chamber conversations that never really get interesting.
Conversely, the worst and least civil debates I've seen have occurred on long-standing message boards or communities, wherein the members are anonymous, but they're known for their handles. These members have "known" each other for years in some cases, but they don't really know each other, and they have few qualms about unleashing the flames. Especially when they feel their reputations or credibility within the community are at stake. These users have created identities for themselves, and paradoxically, they'll often defend those proxy identities more ferociously than they'll defend their real identities.
Tl;dr: when people assume group or tribal identities, you get worse flame wars and less substance. When people assume individual identities, you get fewer flame wars, and possibly more substance.
My favorite part of this article is the graph showing how "Do you think Twelve Years a Slave should win an Oscar" breaks down by party lines.
I use to hang around Reddit back then, but I don't clearly remember. My guess is that reddit found all the personal freedom stuff appealing, while mostly ignoring of the facts about closing the Fed, eliminating minimum wages, reducing intervention... But remember that during that time (2009-2011) most of the econ talk was surrounding the bank bailouts. Ron Paul's speech was actually aligned with that of Occupy WS, since most libertarians opposed the bailouts and oppose big corporations, given that they usually lead to crony capitalism. I also have the feeling that there was less nonsense on reddit back then, but this might just be my perception.