Sigh
Judging by what's developed so far, I think I'll maintain my batting average of zero when it comes to trying to organize teamwork-based thought problems/games.
I think I came closest to describing what I was hoping for when I wrote to Tom:
Whenever anybody tries to convince us that their ideology will produce a better world, then we certainly have a right to be given a detailed picture of what that better world would look like. What better, more scientific, way to do that than to start with known conditions, influenced by known external factors (global economy, Hitler, population growth, etc.), and show in a rigorously logical way how your stronger philosophy will produce a better outcome?
In other words, I wanted to see if a clear model of the fundamental goals of conservatives--the fruit of their philosophy--would emerge from an abstract "alternate universe" project, free of the partisan passions that these days make rational discourse damn near impossible. An alternate universe, if constructed with rigorous logic, would be a reasonably objective a way to judge competing philosophies without having to actually dedicate decades and millions of lives to testing it in the real world. (Note that I'm implicitly agreeing with the conservative complaint that liberalism's already been tested in America for more than half a century; now let's give conservativism a chance, at least in the laboratory.)
So, I would say that your paraphrase "This places the bulk of the question squarely in the present, in this world, with our current set of circumstances" is very much not what I had in mind. We're too mired in this world and these circumstances already, and it's ugly. I was hoping to take a vacation and exercize intellect instead of invective.
I'm not optimistic. But I have to try.