When in conflict, Idealism should be valued above Pragmatism

This is an excellent debate topic. I appreciate the challenge. I accept Pro's definitions. For the purposes of this debate I also accept Pro's first contention that liberty is the highest value. I'll note that liberty defined as "freedom from arbitrary government or control" leaves a lot of room to debate what is arbitrary and what is not. Pro implicitly assumes that one should have ideals, otherwise there is no point in debating the best way to advance one's ideals. I accept the notion of having ideals. However, I do no accept the notion that ideals ought to be immutable. Ideals, I contend, ought to be changeable in the details. thus liberty as a broad ideal ought to be maintained, but exactly what is arbitrary control and what is not arbitrary control is subject to experience, which is to say it is subject to pragmatism. Pro gives exactly two examples of pragmatism failing to achieve liberty. We are supposed to generalize that pragmatism always fails. His two examples are Spanish priests failing to give liberty to natives in South America, and the confinement of Japanese Americans in World War II. Pro's examples actually illustrate a tautology: if one fails to provide liberty, then liberty is not provided. That's true, but not helpful in assessing pragmatism as a strategy in achieving liberty as opposed to the single-minded pursuit of idealism. For example, about 500,000 soldiers from the Axis Powers were captured by the Allies in World War II. None were given trials in civilian courts, they were not each provided with an attorney to represent them, and in few case were they imprisoned based upon forensic evidence or sworn testimony of accusers. It would have been a physical impossibility to have done so. So should have idealism have prevailed and all the prisoners released to return to the battlefield? That is a conflict between idealism and pragmatism. Having sent 500,000 enemy soldiers back to fight would undoubtedly have cost many thousands of lives and prolonged, if not lost the war. Liberty would certainly have been enhanced for the prisoners, they would have been freed. However liberty would have been diminished for Allied soldiers, and perhaps for the citizens of allied countries. Having liberty as an ideal does not resolve the situation. The decision is a pragmatic one. Pro gives exactly two examples of idealism obtaining liberty: the American Revolution and the Civil Rights Movement. From this we are to generalize that idealism always is the best way to achieve liberty. In virtually every case of lost liberty, someone has pursued an idealistic approach to obtain it. Sometimes that approach succeeds, sometimes it fails. For example, what toppled the old Soviet Empire? It was idealism only in the sense of having ideals as goals, which I have stipulated as appropriate, but the method was clearly pragmatic. Economic pressure caused the empire to crumble, not idealists within Russia protesting or external idealistic pronouncements independent of pragmatic action. Examining realistic problems, we see the resolution is inherently flawed because "idealism" is too poorly defined to know how to apply the rule that the proposition asserts. Consider the common question in foreign policy as to whether to confront or engage a nation that suppresses liberty. Will the prospects for liberty be enhanced by confronting or engaging North Korea? Iran? Somali pirates? South Africa under apartheid? Having liberty as an ideal doesn't serve as a guide for action. One must make a pragmatic decision on a case-by-case basis as to the best way to achieve the goal of liberty. Turning to American politics, we may ask which is the best way to enhance liberty. Is it to support Ralph Nader or Ron Paul, depending upon one's idealistic concept of liberty? Minority candidates are unlikely to succeed, so it is not obvious that supporting a candidate of idealism best advances the ideals. It might be better to focus on single issues in a strategy of making incremental gains. Or it might be better to work within one of the major Parties to attempt to push them in direction desired. Asserting that idealism should be favored over pragmatism does nothing to resolve the choice. Does idealism always favor tilting at windmills? Or does idealism always favor taking the pragmatic route to an ideal? If liberty is the highest value, does that mean that all common criminals properly convicted crimes ought to be released? Clearly, that increases the liberty of the convicts. On the face of it, idealism is in favor of releasing the serial killers, while pragmatism argues not to do that. However, there is some countervailing loss of liberty in society as whole, so it is not so simple. The rule to place idealism above pragmatism is in fact not helpful in resolving the apparent conflict. The resolution fails because it does not provide a rule that can be followed. If one comes up with an interpretation that can be followed, the resolution then fails because the rule sometimes succeeds and other times fails. A much better rule is to do what we judge pragmatically to be the best route to achieving liberty. The resolution is negated.