James, by comparison, responds to rationality with rudeness.

Start a new paragraph after repellant and change the next line to, “But this sceptism and reluctance that many libertarians display…” and add “… which explains the appeal of libertarianism among people frustrated with the seemingly limitless ambitions of modern politicians”

Crucially the measure of reasonableness is whether or not you’re willing to consider evidence that X conflicts with your principles enough to justify doing something you find repellant. This sceptism and reluctance is a sort of first defense, and something seemingly missing from mainstream politics.

Particularly the first sentence. If X conflicts with my principles, then I would oppose it. Why would this be repellant? I don’t see what you’re getting at.

The big difference between the foundationalist and the critical rationalist as I see it, is that if each has a seemingly good principle A that leads to a seemingly bad conclusion B, the foundationalist concludes that B must be good after all, and the critical rationalist concludes that there is room for improving A. The foundationalist therefore keeps finding himself having to do unpleasant things because they are right on principle. The critical rationalist on the other hand has better principles because they are tested – they are not held stubbornly indifferent to the consequences.

While I think there is use in these principles, they are really just that. What is needed is constitutional limits on the power of the state and protections for the liberties of individual – these principles form the basis of arguing for such things.

Crucially the measure of reasonableness is whether or not you’re willing to consider evidence that X conflicts with your principles enough to justify doing something you find repellant. This sceptism and reluctance is a sort of first defense, and something seemingly missing from mainstream politics.

Real people don’t talk about politics the way libertarians do but I can assure you from my own experience of talking to non-politics geeks that this stuff goes down really well. In fact, spookily so after years of meeting incredulity, anger and hostility trying to explain official lib dem policy.

There is method in my madness but I guess you’ll have to take my word for it

Rubbish. Libertarianism has developed in leaps and bounds since then. What you mean is it didn’t follow the statist (meant as descriptive term) path which mainstream liberalism and right-wing socialism followed.
Libertarianism has developed with the challenges set it, and with the changing world.

Personally I think much of the most interesting and important thought is coming from libertarians and their anarchist brethren.

the comments by Joe Otten and Richard Gadsden expose how easy it is to end up in some pretty daft places if you “consistently” apply libertarian principles

I didn’t notice them. Yeah, some of the usual straw men which weren’t well dealt with (mostly due to the short comings of the ideas of those debating there).

I suppose you’d say that anarchism is a silly place to end up, we’ll just have to disagree on that one though.

Please just remember that the libertarian blogosphere you reference is not representative of libertarian thought. Its not even representative of libertarian blogging.