ABSTRACT
John Rawls's rational actors insist on the priority of the right over the good. However, Sandel claims, the absence of a theory of the good leads us into a relativistic abyss. Without such a theory, liberals commonly argue that tolerance, freedom, and fairness are needed. This is good social-psychological theory and an apt criticism of Rawls and of libertarian versions of liberalism, but it will not do as a critique of liberalism tout court. The Constitution, in Wolin's view, was designed to break the power of the states and curb the participatory democratic politics established there. The goal was to create a new national economy supported by a strong national state. What in a less narrowly constrained tradition of political culture would appear as some form of socialism is exemplified in the United States by the line running from Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to populism, progressivism, the New Deal, and its numerous successors.
