Although there is little doubt that

Although there is little doubt that the Rawlsian principle of public reason expresses a governing limit upon the coercive power and public accountability of the major institutions of a liberal-democratic society, consider also what is missing from it. All contestatory, rhetorical, affective, impassioned elements of public discourse, With all their excesses and virtues, are absent from this view. Public reason is not freely wielded public reasoning, with all die infuriating ideological and rhetorical mess that this may involve. To this conception of contestatory public speech or shared reasoning, the liberal theorist will respond that lofty and ennobling as its vision may be, this view of the political leaves the floodgates open for the whim of majoritarian decisions. What if less than noble majorities challenge the principles of political liberalism and the lines between the right and the good in such ways as to lead to religious fanaticism, persecution of unpopular minorities, intrusion of the state into the domain of private life, or even die political surveillance by children of parents, by spouses of each other, all in the name of some shared good?