Opinion: Libertarian Lawrence Lessig instructs liberals how to learn a few things from conservatives

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Liberals might think twice about inviting self-described libertarian Lawrence Lessig to their next party.

At TEDx -- an offshoot of the renowned TED intellectual conferences -- the famed copyright pundit and Stanford law professor spoke about the values that the Democratic party should learn from conservatives.

The audibly skeptical crowd listened as Lessig, who confessed to being a former Young Republican, highlighted some fairly uncontroversial conservative values.

For example, conservatives love free markets -- except when discussing romance. Prostitution is not an industry they frequently promote.

‘They understand there are places for the market, and there are places where the market should not exist,’ Lessig told the audience.

Over a slide of President Obama’s campaign logo ‘change,’ Lessig, with purposeful irony, said, ‘Not a single example of reform has been produced yet. And we’re not going to see this change in the system any time soon.’

Lessig lists the following values as the conservative foundation: freedom, community, limited regulation and ‘respecting the creator.’

‘Now, if we can learn those values from some influencers on the right, if we can take them and incorporate them, maybe we can do a little trade,’ he said. ‘We learn those values on the left, and maybe they’ll do health care or global warming legislation.’

Perhaps it’s worth a shot. The feuding Democratic Congress seems unable to push it through any other way.

-- Mark Milian

Click here to receive Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item all day every day. Or follow us @latimestot. You can also go to our new Facebook FAN page here.