Honestly, I was kind of disappointed by the first freeandequal debate. Stein and Anderson agreed on literally everything, the questions asked were such that Johnson agreed too, and Virgil was kind of borderline insane, but at least he was sincere. It was more a contest of who could yell "I AM BETTER THAN OBAMNEY" the loudest than an actual debate.

Hopefully the second one can be more of a debate between the candidates present, and as such will hopefully focus on issues where Stein and Johnson disagree.

When this election season is over, I'll have to go back to caring about domestic British politics, and that's no fun at all

It is a waste of a vote though.  Is a vote for a 3rd part going to change who gets elected? No, it wont.  You are essentially not voting by voting 3rd party, at which point, how is it different from staying home?  

Also, the US is a republic, not a democracy.

Do you see how odd that sounds? People should NOT speak up with criticism of America, but it's fine to do so in places that America doesn't like, and you don't seem to understand that many capitalist democracies are democracies in name only. The idea of allowing money as speech just gives the wealthy a LOT more speech in this so called "democracy". So what do you do? You can go to your representative, if he will listen to you...you could go to the media, except most of them pander to Washington's request. Protest comes when a group believes there IS no other choice, that their opinion is being supressed and not getting ANY form of recognition or debate. This can still happen in a democracy, and if you cannot see that, then there is no helping you.

Every society in history follows the same rule: a leadership is only as strong as the order they can maintain. This can be through force, propaganda, or other means of persuasion. Yes, even America falls into this, but it's more of a greed stance. "Sure you could overthrow us, but look at all the stuff you're willing to sacrifice for it". It's just a matter of people weighing up what they're willing to lose as opposed to what they have to gain, and believe me, it's slowly coming to America, too. 

i feel like i'm getting trolled here reading this.  

When you have continent of 50 nations of course there are going to be those that are more conservative than others (nations with catholic church usually....). Nations that actually are near the top in pretty much every international ranking are usually the most liberal though...(Nordic countries, Germany, Netherlands, UK etc)

I'd look at the article, a lot of stuff in it applies directly to the countries you've mentioned.

I'm not sure there is a more fiscally conservative country then Germany for example... due to the huge influence of the Freiberg school of economics.  Hell, Germany has no minium wage.

Gergroy, you become part of the political money machine when you say it's a waste of a vote.  The republicans and democrats own all of the election commisions and make up their own electorial rules/laws in order to keep their opposition invisible.  To protest that is to vote against them.  But it's more than just voting against them in the end, it's voting for the one person you think would make things better than anyone else.  That's the reason to vote, and it's something that people forget about.  The public is brainwashed into thinking that there can be only one of two people elected.  And if you believe it, then I'm sorry but you're just another pawn that the Republicrats control.  You've been purchased.  You need to wake up, and realize that there are far more than two choices.  And those two choices will keep things the same as they ever were, and you should vote for Obamney.  That's your right.  But don't tell me what my vote is worth when you don't know any better.

I don't know about you, but at least I finally got to hear candidates talking about things that I both care about and agree with (aside from Mr. Goode).  The debate functioned more as an introduction of the candidates to the public.  It was a very short period of time to say as much as they could, and I think they realized that by quibbling over things that time might be wasted.  I hope, as well, that on Tuesday the FreeAndEqual debate #2 has them going at each other in order to showcase their respective differences.  And I'll put it this way - The Obamney debates bored me to death after 5 minutes, while FreeAndEqual kept me watching the whole way.  One set of candidates was speaking to me, the other set was not.  I'm just glad that these 3rd party debates are happening at all.  These sorts of opportunities are new, and it shows that public interest in these parties has come a long way.

Well yeah maybe I should have seperated fiscal and social conservativism but even in fiscal sense germany has universal healthcare and completely free education system up to tertiary education so it seems like they use their own mixed conservative/ liberal policies when in comes to economy. Socially Germany is highly liberal though.

One of us doesnt know any better, that is for sure.  We will have to agree to disagree on who that is.

im certainly not oposed to voting third party, but they first need to put up a credible candidate and then they need to gain enough support to be relevant.  None of the third parties this year has done that.

gary johnson is just a reublican candidate that wasnt good enough to cut it in the major party.  Rocky anderson was my mayor and one of the worst politicians i know of. Jill stein isnt bad, but she has no experience which basically eliminates her from being a credible candidate. None of them are polling anywhere near relevant status.

there is no relevant 3rd party candidate this year and the only impact they will have on this election is people complaining that thèy played a spoiler role for one of the two major candidates.

like i said before, i respect your right to vote 3rd party.  Go for it, but dont delude yourself into thinking these 3rd parties have a chance to win.