An Unoriginal Position : Political Liberalism of John Rawls and Its Influence on Public Discourse in America

Janet Benestad asserts that inherent in the fundamental principles of Rawl’s political liberalism is the intention of separating citizens from their deeply held moral convictions. This means that political liberalism––in the distinctions given by Rawls to separate it from the liberal regimes of Mill and Kant––now necessarily demands secular political discourse. By Rawlsian design it is exclusionary and hostile to personal conscience and morality, and a threat to religious liberty. Benestad uses the 2012 campaign surrounding assisted suicide in Massachusetts to illustrate how this secular political liberalism is at play and its source in Rawls. The weakness of this kind of political liberalism, Benestad argues, is that it is only committed to attributing value to certain positions and concepts that advance the cause of a distinct set of theoretical rules that religion can reveal to be objectively false. Rawls narrows the conduct of politics, Benestad argues, and in doing so renders liberalism unfriendly to the flourishing of human beings under the democratic regime.