The points weren't chosen for quality, they were chosen because they are commonly parroted. This was in order to encourage people to discuss things that are commonly spoken, but may not be ideologically sound. In other words, they were chosen specifically to be debateworthy. If a poster chose, as long as they were on topic, they could also completely ignore them or create a new thread. Often in order to discuss something, you must give an opinion first and not merely sit and critique what other people say.
The topics where I wrote out a bunch of stuff that was ripe for picking apart were the topics that were discussed the most heavily. If you don't feel like that's a discussion, then I'm not sure what you would feel like one was.
Nope. I'm in Canada and it happens here too.