In recent weeks, there’s been a compare/contrast exercise among the Republican electorate, pitting Donald Trump against pretty much any of his opponents. It goes something like this: “Ted Cruz has the right ideas, but Donald Trump gets things done.” Or, “Rand Paul has great ideas, but Donald Trump has accomplishments.”

But here’s a reminder that ideas matter.

“China’s leaders have long behaved as if nothing could daunt them,” TheNew York Times reported last week. “But an 800-year-old document written in Latin on sheepskin may have them running scared. Magna Carta – the Great Charter – is on tour this year, celebrating eight centuries since it was issued in 1215 by King John of England. It is regarded as one of the world’s most important documents because of language guaranteeing individual rights and holding the ruler subject to the law.”

A centuries-old document has China’s ruling Communist Party nervous – because of ideas.

“It is not clear why the public showing was moved off the Renmin University campus,” the Times reported. “But Magna Carta is widely considered a cornerstone for constitutional government in Britain and the United States, and such a system is inimical to China’s leaders, who view ‘constitutionalism’ as a threat to Communist Party rule.”

As one Chinese pro-democracy dissident put it, “They fear that such ideology and historical material will penetrate deep into the students’ hearts.”

Because that’s what ideas do. Of course there’s a place for pragmatism in politics. It’s important to have the political skill to get bills passed.

But at the same time, a pragmatism unmoored to any philosophy is no good. And this is what we see in much of the poll-driven positioning in the Hillary Clinton camp. Indeed, her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is arguably the nation’s most pragmatic president in recent history.

To use the words of Richard M. Weaver, “ideas have consequences.” That’s the name of a book he published in 1948.

The overemphasis on pragmatism is a trend that has been coming for some time. As Weaver wrote, “Man created in the divine image, the protagonist of a great drama in which his soul was at stake, was replaced by man the wealth-seeking and – consuming animal.”

We are more than producers and consumers, though of course we are those things, too. We are also what we think.

“That it does not matter what a man believes is a statement heard on every side today,” Weaver wrote. “What he believes tells him what the world is for. How can men who disagree about what the world is for agree about any of the minutiae of daily conduct? The statement really means that it does not matter what a man believes so long as he does not take his beliefs seriously.”

Is this sounding familiar?

In recent years, Ronald Reagan has been the embodiment of the right combination of pragmatism and ideas. He could rail against the evils of the Soviet Union and work out compromises with its leaders.

So let’s not over-value pragmatism. Ideas matter, too.