In the event, it has proved impossible for the state to maintain neutrality. In the USA, for example, state action and inaction inevitably ignites political disputes reflecting the tension between the liberal commitments to individual liberty, autonomy, and constrained state power, on the one hand, and people’s equally ardent convictions about the social conditions necessary to maximize that liberty and autonomy, on the other. They often regard these conditions as the state’s responsibility to establish and maintain. The state, responding to political entrepreneurship, group pressures, ideological impulses, and genuine concerns about programmatic effectiveness, seeks to pursue its equalization project at wholesale rather than retail, using the group and not just the individual as the site of legal rights, subsidies, and other forms of advantage. And when the state confers advantages on groups, it is impelled to regulate them, if only to assure political accountability to the public for how the groups are using those advantages. This regulation inevitably entangles the state, groups, and individuals in ways that may threaten the autonomy and integrity of individuals and groups and hence endanger the liberal project itself.