The legislative power of the “state” in a democratic society is simply an institutional expression of the conflicts among the people in that state to build the kind of world they want. Those people cannot, nor should they, leave their substantive conceptions of the good at the door of the legislative chamber. Nor should they limit those conceptions of the good to the goods of “pluralism” and “diversity”. They can and should advance whatever premises appeal to them, and their opponents should fight back either by successfully refuting those premises, or failing that, by at least building a more powerful counter-coalition among those who disagree with the offending premise. These ideas about “public reason” and “neutrality” are silly and weak. We need more vigorous activism on the part of substantive conceptions of the human good in our political life, not less.

And we really need liberals to get out of the way of the left. You guys are killing us.

For those that are interested, I have good news: the audio recording of the commentators’ and the discussions session is now fully available and downloadable at this link: http://hdl.handle.net/1866/2324

Best,
Martin Blanchard
CREUM

And John Rawls, an elegant thinker, acknowledged the complications and contradictions in his every thought. Good man, Rawls. His epigones, not as much.

I’d submit, as I’ve discovered among my libertarian friends’ discussions, that if the world were made of only of adults, our considerations and equations would yield far more easily to the theoretical. Kids complicate stuff.

I’ll also submit that I was most attracted to the speakers you reported who acknowledged that pluralism is by no means synonymous with “neutrality,” whatever that is.

Answering What is good?, beyond a certain minimal baseline which we might call “fact” [everyone should have enough to eat, eh?], is unavoidably a value judgment, and values are often in conflict.

Pluralism respects that the competing factions each advance a notion of what is good, and that’s good in itself. Good vs. good. OK, I’m cool with that. Better? Best? Virtue? Well, it gets even cooler and more interesting.

“Idealism” suggests a “best,” an ideal. We should all be careful before we label ourselves “idealists,” then, unless we’re willing to stand up for one.

Neutrality represents a certain sterility. A Pontius Pilate Syndrome? I’m not cool with that. Human beings tend to spit lukewarm water out of their mouths. We’re wired that way.

Tip o’the brim, Mr. Mandle. I come around here seldom, but you made it well worth my while, and left me with much to mull over.

True for the set of all possible conceptions of the good. Not necessarily true for a finite set of different but not radically-incompatible goodnesses.

The Canadian government could promote literacy in both English and French without either mandating that everyone should be fluent in both or providing comparable numbers of subsidised Klingon lessons.

I see no possibility of government being neutral among conceptions of the good. (Because my #3 and #4 are indistinguishable in effect.) And I see “limiting liberties must be neutrally justified” as having the same problem; what counts as liberty can’t be usefully defined.

1. Military conscription
2. Conscription with a right to hire substitutes (as in, for example, the US Civil War)
3. A professional army funded by broad-based taxes

I suspect any activity of government could be parsed in the same way, leading either to anarchism or to the view that provision of services funded by taxation does not, in itself, limit liberties.

1) By law, schools must be single-sex.
2) By law, schools must be co-ed.
3) By law, co-ed schools are allowed, but sending children to them incurs a fine of $8000/child.
4) By law, co-ed schools are provided by government, and funded by broad-based taxes at a rate of $8000 in taxes.