Conscrption as a Political Policy

institutional design can needlessly damageeven utterly

destroya promising liberal politics. Moreover, no single

blueprint can be expected to function in all social

settings; worse yet, we do not have powerful theories that

explain why some institutional frameworks work tolerably

well in one social setting and fail so abysmally in others

What this means is that, in the liberal state, the power structure has no moral entitlement. Rather, it incurs moral liability, moral responsibility. That is why Richard Nixon's declaration about the moral authority of the presidency where such issues as the war in Vietnam were concerned was so misguided, not to say absurd. By liberal lights, it were better he had spoken of the moral responsibility that the presidency entailed. "Checks and balances," says Ackerman, "are not valued for their own sake but rather as tools to force government officials to talk to the rest of us as moral equals rather than dominating overlords" (1980, p. 307). Elsewhere, he states the sentiment in terms of a political principle that defines the limits and benefits of the liberal state structure in terms of one another:

Liberal government, in the end, is an expression of hope

that citizens, by reasoning together, can domesticate the

power struggle that is an unavoidable part of their socia

. . .
s as the foundation for a valid theory of state is described by him as prepolitical in nature. On this view, the proper function of the state is to allow certain institutions that are not specifically political in original form to remain nonpolitical, and to let the alternatives to statism operate in a way that inheres in order and wealth. This argues for a programmatically noninterventionist state structure, even as the benefits of such structure may be provided for by those best suited to the task. Political philosophers from Hobbes to Nozick have sought to justify the statethe minimal, "nightwatchman" state, at leastas a solution to the problem of internal security. There is, to be sure, a difference between justification and explanation. One can justify the state by imagining its formation as the product of a social contract, or one can explain it as the actual product of such a contract. The former is the approach of Nozick, the latter that of Hobbes. But in either case the view of the state as the solution to the problem of internal security implies that there are no better solutions. . . . Custom, gift exchange, honor,
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
National Guard, Hence Walzer's, Specifically Walzer, Hobbes Nozick, Richard Nixon's, Indeed Posner's, Civil War, , Des Moines, Press Walzer, walzer 1983, public policy, wealth society, national service, social welfare, defensive war, reserve army, social contract, posner 1981, vietnam era, basic books inc, matter public policy, drafted lottery destined, quality assigned notion, solution internal security,
Approximate Word count = 3745
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)