The discussion here draws largely upon the debates over liberal citizenship in the United States, where the individualist and state-limiting aspects of liberalism have been most fully reified and the consequences of these aspects most severely criticized (Hartz, 1955; Smith, 1997). The word ‘liberalism,’ to be sure, has acquired a malodorous quality among politicians and many political commentators in the USA since the 1960s. Nonetheless, the fact remains that almost all mainstream political discourse in the USA, regardless of the speaker’s party, proceeds as if the traditional liberal values of individual freedom, autonomy, consent, and limited state power were universally embraced, with the only differences being the means for achieving them. Indeed, disputants who advance non-liberal visions such as communitarianism and state-expanding ideals of social justice often redefine them in order to make them compatible with liberal discourse.