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.