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But even if you can offer
some considerations that support your ideal, you
will never convince everyone to accept it.
Probably no one can do that. Rawls said in his
book Political
Liberalism that under conditions of
freedom there will always be fundamental
disagreements over metaphysical and moral
principles. In other words, there would always
be a clash of what he called "comprehensive
doctrines."
If you can't convince everyone to accept your
ideal, how can you justify using government to
enforce it and the institutions based on it? One
of those institutions would be a system of
property rights. I understand that. But why
should anyone see that system of property rights
as anything more than theft in the form of
government transfer payments if they reject your
social ideal? Why not see it the way
libertarians do; namely, as robbing Peter to
give to Paul?
The beauty of contractarianism for secular
people is that it posits a hypothetical
agreement. That's one way to justify moral
obligation. But how do YOU show that those who
reject your ideal are obliged to accept its
consequences?
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