The question is, we have a particular problem. How many religions are there in the United States? How are they going to get on together? One way, which has been the usual way historically, is to fight it out, as in France in the sixteenth century. That's a possibility.

You hear that liberalism lacks an idea of the common good, but I think that's a mistake.

There are various ways you might define the common good, but that would be one way you could do it.

Religious faith is an important aspect of American culture and a fact of American political life.

Citizens can have their own grounding in their comprehensive doctrines, whatever they happen to be.

An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.

Ideally citizens are to think of themselves as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes, supported by what reasons satisfying the criterion of reciprocity, they would think is most reasonable to enact.