What I'd hoped might come out in this thread would have been a discussion about whether there are particular factors about "liberals" which effect the way they fail, when they fail, which are different from the ones that effect "conservatives" when they fail. Because everybody "fails" from time to time, that goes without saying.

For example, if you are committed to looking at both sides of every question, that might be a disadvantage in some circumstances, compared to someone who has a purely one-sided view of everything. And, set against that, at times it might be quite helpful, if it helped you anticipate what your opponents were going to do.

Though if being committed to looking at both sides of every question is a bedrock liberal principle - and I think it is - it strikes me that an awful lot of people who get termed "liberal" are not. (In the same way that an awful lot of "conservatives" are nothing of the kind, because they have no regard for the bedrock conservative principle that unnecessary change is to be resisted.)