I generally tend to avoid the "language war" threads for 3 reasons: 1. No one is really right or wrong. 2. Not much gets accomplished. and 3. It really doesn't make that much difference anyway.
Debates about favorite colors, on the other hand, should be strongly encouraged. Blue is definitely the best one.
Your point that not much is accomplished by such discussions is definitely what usually happens. But it isn't what must happen. There are rational ways of discussing these subjects which can lead to knowledge creation and agreement.
The reason I'm posting is basically that I think people are a little too quick to give up, and if they tried to discuss seriously a bit more, they might find it sometimes works. Especially if they are careful to ignore the bad replies they get and only reply to the other people who are also taking the discussion seriously.
Well, yes and no. There's only a truth to the matter if you can get people to agree on a premise. Two libertarians who adopt the same premises can have a meaningful debate with each other. They'll agree that there can only be one consistent position -- so if they disagree on what it is then one of them must be mistaken -- and set about trying to figure out which of them holds the fallacy. But if you pit a libertarian with the premise of self-ownership against a communist with the premise of "property is theft", nobody is going to accomplish anything because neither will view the other's argument as relevant.
This is the myth of the framework. See Popper's book by that name:
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Framework-Defence-Science-Rationa...
Besides the issue of whether productive debate is possible across frameworks, there is also your (possibly accidental) assertion that what premises people believe affects what statements about reality are true (beyond statements about who believes what). That's solipsism.