zlacker

>start with reasoned first principles (the constitution is a good start) and continue to reason your way to a position on any given issue that is consistent with those first principles, sides be damned.

How do you come up with first principles? Consequentialism vs deontology has been around for centuries and it's obvious which one is the the correct one.

>>gruez+(OP)
that's a false dichotomy for the rhetoricians. it's both, and more, and more complicated than that.

we spend the first 18 years or so of our lives empirically deriving those first principles together, along with the derivations of our ancestors in the form of documents like the constitution. since none of us are intrinsically perfect, we have a whole running population who nonlinearly superpositions our perspectives to create a common, if dynamic and imperfect, consensus of what's reasonable in a social context, and what's not.