1st Harvard University Press paperback ed.
What ails democracy in America today, and what can be done about it? This work traces the political predicament to a defect in the public philosophy by which we live. The author identifies the dominant public philosophy of the 1990s and finds it flawed.
The public philosophy of contemporary liberalism
– Rights and the neutral state
– Religious liberty and freedom of speech
– Privacy rights and family law
– Economics and virtue in the early republic
– Free labor versus wage labor
– Community, self-government, and progressive reform
– Liberalism and Keynesian revolution
– The triumph and travail of the procedual republic
– Conclusion : In search of a public policy.
