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Why The Discussions Matter

The Moody Blues fan in me cannot resist a blog called Eternity Road [1].

That aside, there’s some real content there.

Libertarians, for all their faults, are fascinated by logical structures such as these. If they sometimes attempt to over-apply them, this is a risk inherent in the nature of their orientation toward theory. It can be curbed by the appeal to experience and evidence. By providing conservatives with first principles — properly bounded within their domains of applicability — and logic that can be used to defend conservatives’ values, libertarians do the conservative movement a service it can get from no one else.

The conversation between libertarians and conservatives has been fruitful and immensely constructive for precisely this reason. Conservatives have gotten better at defending their positions than ever before, because they use libertarian principles, approaches to the discovery of principles, and human nature-based reasoning more often than ever before. Conversely, libertarians are (slowly) learning the requisite humility and willingness to admit to error as conservatives confront them on those subjects where libertarian principles have been erroneously applied

And there it is, Gang. There’s learning to be done on both sides of that fence.