Having been to a few of those myself, I generally agree with your points. My (charitable) read is that the thing that gave AA the willies was not so much the presence of True Believers as the fact that (as you note in point 4) there were no such TBs from the progressive left (or, likely, even the middle).

Then again, I continually wonder why anyone cares about what any of these folks (AA, Goldberg, Bailey, etc.) think of each other, or anything else for that matter...

(BTW, Dan: Attempting to comment on your blog using Safari consistently returns an error. Just FYI.)

The overwhelmingly predominant personality type in attendance at these functions are Contrarians.

No, it isn't.

Wasn't it the doctrine of state action that the Court employed to gut the first Civil Rights Act? And weren't Althouse's dinner companions embracing the same doctrine?

If that doesn't make them racists,mightn't it still create a presumption that they are? Or at least, as Althouse insists, put on their shoulders a burden to show that they are sensitive to the moral wrong inherent in the supposedly private actions they would protect from legal sanction?

AA raises valid questions about the connection between Meyer's theory and his concrete policy proposals. Unfortunately, AA raised the point simply as a cheap rhetorical trick. She implies modern conservatives are forever tainted because previous generations made a huge blunder. It's a good rhetorical trick because it baits conservatives into pointless historical debate because you can never make the past go away. It's too bad that Goldberg didn't point out that liberals, and any other movement, have made equally huge blunders.

It's also too bad that AA ignored the more important point - the relation between prior mistakes and principles. If prior policy was the enactment of principle, then Meyer's horrid policy prescriptions are evidence against federalist principles.

You could also say that Meyer was hypocritical, or just plain wrong, and that opposing desegregation was truly consistent with Meyer's political principles. For example, the idea of political liberty is not nullified because Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. It only means that Jefferson was a revolting human being. From this view, Frank Meyer's atrocious political judgment is probably a historical issue, and not one of basic political theory.

AA's and Goldberg's failure to address this point - that good principles can have weak links to practice - says more about intellectual laziness than the merits of any political theory or policy prescription.

AA raises valid questions about the connection between Meyer's theory and his concrete policy proposals. Unfortunately, AA raised the point simply as a cheap rhetorical trick. She implies modern conservatives are forever tainted because previous generations made a huge blunder. It's a good rhetorical trick because it baits conservatives into pointless historical debate because you can never make the past go away. It's too bad that Goldberg didn't point out that liberals, and any other movement, have made equally huge blunders.

It's also too bad that AA ignored the more important point - the relation between prior mistakes and principles. If prior policy was the enactment of principle, then Meyer's horrid policy prescriptions are evidence against federalist principles.

You could also say that Meyer was hypocritical, or just plain wrong, and that opposing desegregation was truly consistent with Meyer's political principles. For example, the idea of political liberty is not nullified because Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. It only means that Jefferson was a revolting human being. From this view, Frank Meyer's atrocious political judgment is probably a historical issue, and not one of basic political theory.

AA's and Goldberg's failure to address this point - that good principles can have weak links to practice - says more about intellectual laziness than the merits of any political theory or policy prescription.

AA raises valid questions about the connection between Meyer's theory and his concrete policy proposals. Unfortunately, AA raised the point simply as a cheap rhetorical trick. She implies modern conservatives are forever tainted because previous generations made a huge blunder. It's a good rhetorical trick because it baits conservatives into pointless historical debate because you can never make the past go away. It's too bad that Goldberg didn't point out that liberals, and any other movement, have made equally huge blunders.

It's also too bad that AA ignored the more important point - the relation between prior mistakes and principles. If prior policy was the enactment of principle, then Meyer's horrid policy prescriptions are evidence against federalist principles.

You could also say that Meyer was hypocritical, or just plain wrong, and that opposing desegregation was truly consistent with Meyer's political principles. For example, the idea of political liberty is not nullified because Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. It only means that Jefferson was a revolting human being. From this view, Frank Meyer's atrocious political judgment is probably a historical issue, and not one of basic political theory.

AA's and Goldberg's failure to address this point - that good principles can have weak links to practice - says more about intellectual laziness than the merits of any political theory or policy prescription.

It's too bad that Goldberg didn't point out that liberals, and any other movement, have made equally huge blunders.

Jonah did raise this point, just not on the Bloggingheads video, but here (which Dan linked above). I think he was just surprised on Bloggingheads by how much like a nut Althouse was acting.

Liberty Fund conferences are excellent, and they have enriched my intellectual and scholarly life considerably. Obviously some are better than others, but overall they are a true oasis of learning.

Your observation about implicit theories really cuts to the heart of the issue. I usually find it difficult to argue constructively with self-described pragmatists (full stop-- as opposed to pragmatic liberals, pragmatic conservatives, and so on) because these tend to be people who are so completely invested in their own ideology that they're no longer capable of recognizing it as such. If we both realize that we're viewing the same data through the lenses of rival theories, we can talk; if one of us thinks she enjoys unmediated access to a self-interpreting Reality-- not so much.

Anyway, it was obliging of Prof. Althouse to spare the other attendees the trouble of peeling off her veneer... by coming unglued on her own.

Ron Bailey, a science reporter, and William Ruger, an international relations specialist, are the specific individuals who gave Ann Althouse the willies. They are not the kinds of doctrinaire libertarians we all know and tolerate, at Liberty Fund conferences and elsewhere. While interested in ideas, they are quite grounded in reality and empiricism. (I don't know Katherine Mangu-Ward, but her primary offense seems to be that she "smirked.") Also, there are many, many rational ways to criticize Meyer's views on federalism and civil rights without getting hysterical or calling people names. It might be useful to ask, for instance, whether Meyer properly interpreted the implications of federalism. If so, perhaps federalism is deeply flawed. If not, perhaps we could develop a better understanding of the principle. That would be the way an intellectual--say, a tenured professor--might be reasonably expected to address the issue. Apparently at Madison, they have other expectations. Also, I have to wonder why Althouse kept writing about this subject until she forced an embarrassing (to her) response from people who witnessed her bizarre emotional meltdown. I guess it's good for blog traffic (including mine). People always prefer gossip to intellectual discussion.

I'd like to add that Althouse's imposition of a "Theory vs. Reality" theme would be a bit more excusable if we were talking about a phenomenon (such as Communism) that historically was driven by high theory. But segregation was imposed and kept in place not by an ivory-tower libertarian cabal but by ordinary, pragmatic people! It's not hard to picture a Southern conservative of half a century ago telling one of the proto-libertarians of the day how abstract theories about businesses being allowed to deal with whomever they please are all very well, but if you'd only get your true-believer head out of the clouds you'd see how dangerous the mingling of races is here in Reality. Althouse would probably not recognize anything of herself in this person. But she should.

I think the point that Ann missed was that there are people who just love to talk about theories and where they lead, what follows from what, if you believe X then what about Y, etc., etc., sometimes until 2:00 in the morning, all for the sheer pleasure of thinking.

Applying these thoughts to the "real world" is a frequent, but by no means necessary, feature of these conversations. There is irony in that Ann thinks of herself as an artist, and as some one who can take aesthetic pleasure in things, but she cannot see the aesthetic pleasure that many people take in naked ideas.

OK, I'll admit I have no clue. What is the Liberty Fund, and how do they benefit by buying our DD and Ann Althouse drinks? If I'm inspired, I can write quite well, and I'm not committed to one side or the other on any issue of importance. I plan to continue to thrust this ambivalence into the academic world until someone gives me free drinks. (Libertarians: this is your chance to get in on the ground floor)
Absent such drinks, I will publish stinging satires: you have been warned.

Aaaaaargh! I wish people would stop using "true believer," as Althouse does, to describe people who strongly believe something. Poor Eric Hoffer, who is dead and cannot defend his idea! You can see my comments on this by clicking on my name, below.