I think you make a good point, but I would argue that Go finds that balance. Sure, Go's design is more ideologically motivated than, say, C++, but it is not ideological to a fault. (And I think Rob hints at this in the article.)
I think Go hews to the minimal side, but I agree that it definitely aims to be practical and full-featured. The language itself is small, but not painfully tiny (unlike, say, Scheme), and the standard library is quite nice from what I've seen.
