If discussion is held in good faith (not the kind of faith he was in favour of), rational and evidence-based then I think that consensus on most things can be reached. It is extremists who are the danger to this because their aim is to try to prevent such reasonable public discourse.
I believe far more unites people than divides us and that currently there are numerous bad actors deliberately trying to polarise public opinion in democratic countries for their own purposes which will be immensely negative for the huge majority of people.
The problem with anybody trying to “debate” Kirk when he was alive was that it was very transparent that he was not engaging in any real debate at all. This was a performative act and actually an attempt to ridicule and shut down anybody who opposed him with carefully stage managed questions and responses. It was not a genuine “debate” or respectful discussion, it was deliberately divisive and hostile with no intention to actually consider other opinions or wish to have a rational discussion, reach consensus, discuss outcomes or evidence-based policy, hence his repeated attempts to resort to “well it’s what the Bible says!’ whenever it became clear that he had no logical defence for his position and it was self-contradictory.
He deliberately created a hostile and adversarial style of so-called “debate” which was designed to do the precise opposite of objectively examining issues and finding solutions that would be acceptable to all involved. The hallmark of somebody reasonable and objective is being prepared to change their views on things in light of new evidence: the precise opposite of the stance of an extremist religious fanatic who by definition is impervious to data, empirical evidence or logic and - as he declared - in his personal case also any capacity for empathy.
So while I think that in a genuine debate with him, privately, if he’d ever had any inclination to engage in one with me (unlikely) we’d have been able to find common ground, I think that would have been impossible for anybody reasonable to do during his publicly staged pseudo-debates which were designed to serve completely the opposite purpose and in which he expressed extremist, outrageous and appalling views deliberately to cause social division. His disingenuousness in pretending he wanted a conversation/ debate about his views was quite shocking in its brazenness given how obviously false this was.
I think what we need to do is reestablish genuine public debate between people who disagree but are actually reasonable, rational, decent human beings, debate aimed at reaching compromises, establishing a reasonable and sensible consensus that is acceptable to the vast majority of people (while accepting that it won’t perfectly fit anyone’s world view, as the prevailing system never will if you live in a democracy - that’s the price of freedom). I think the vast majority of people are decent people who don’t wish the kinds of harms on society that Mr Kirk did, but feel very insecure at the moment and this manifests as polarisation and extremism and draws them to people like him who are the opposite of the solution.
I think civilised society will disintegrate completely unless this happens and I find it very depressing that there seems to be no sign of this happening. But yes, fundamentally I believe that the interests of the vast majority of society are aligned in most respects and that common ground could be found with a little less anger and a little more listening and willingness to have a rational discussion focused on practical solutions and compromises that would be acceptable to all based on evidence rather than people’s personal anecdotes, refusal to concede on any preference and determination to “other” people and reduce their rights in the hope it will improve their own circumstances: it won’t.
It’s much easier to have such discussions in individual conversations with (reasonable) people than on a societal level, unfortunately, so I hold out little hope that democracy will survive the storm of the second industrial revolution which is headed its way at a much faster pace than many are anticipating, which will manifest in more and more of this extreme rhetoric and more people being sucked in by it even though ultimately its results will make their lives far worse than they would otherwise have been, and accelerate and magnify the problems. But sadly there’s no reasoning with many, as the thread shows.
^^