douthat, as always, is sharp. now, exactly: rigid adherence to principle does not really work in practical politics, and this is precisely what's gotten rand paul in trouble. this is exactly why the libertarian party has essentially gotten no traction in its whole history, despite the fact that it is the repository of fundamental principles of american government.

now on the other hand, you can't quite do without principles to the extent that we usually do, either. so the opposite of a rigid adherence to, say, government non-interference with individual autonomy, or to the equality of all human beings, would be a thoroughly "pragmatic" approach. just do what works! but just like any philosophy prof i'm a ask you what you mean by 'works': what are the standards by which you measure whether it worked: it might easily be a standard of freedom, or of equality, of prosperity, life expectancy, justice, happiness. right of course what is happiness etc? 

you can take a "pluralist" approach and seek a balance of multifarious ends, and so on, but you can't stop thinking about ends without renouncing anything we would recognize as politics. if you don't have some ordering of ends, then we might say the results are unintentional. the idea of "legislation" is nonsense without practical syllogisms.

so say you wanted an element of genuine inspiration in a leader; well i say it can't really configure around pragmatism. that's why there's an empty heart of obama: the most you get, really, is "change" or "hope." for what? to what? why? it's not that he would be silent at that point in the conversation, but it's going to blow hard: big words intended to to be taken in contradictory ways by different hearers; expressed with total simulated passion as the american dream, the more perfect union, but with no definite entailments: a restatement of the question.

now at a minimum, i say a sudden outbreak of libertarianism into the main line of political discourse would be most welcome because it challenges the other people to produce their principles. well that could lead to a nice conversation, anyway, - a useful conversation. it's useful for this reason if no other: i say each of the mainstream american left and the mainstream american right is incoherent. a contradiction entails all propositions; you have no idea what these people might do or why. well, they're muddling through. fair enough only stop once every five decades and ask muddling through to where?

but actually if i were advising rand paul i'd basically be telling him what douthat is telling him. but that is also how ron paul got traction: by saying: of course we have some pretty radical ideas. but look it's a question of what kind of congress we're working with, what people are ready for; this is a democracy; we're talking about a gradual adjustment to a somewhat smaller state. let's see how that goes. the pragmatic approach.