"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
Rescuing Justice and Equality
"The title of G.A. Cohen's remarkable book suggests an obvious question. Cohen wishes to rescue justice and equality; but from whom or what are these in danger? Cohen's target will strike many readers as surprising: it is the false views of John Rawls that he wishes to combat. Rawls's famous difference principle (more exactly, the first part of it), as Rawls thinks it will apply, allows inequalities that justice properly excludes. Further, Rawls holds wrong positions in metaethics as well: he wrongly makes moral principles depend on matters of fact and he confuses the nature of justice, a question about the essence of a concept, with "rules of regulation," properly a matter for decision."
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