Russell Arben Fox wrote a long, thoughtful, informed, informative, and quite generous response to my post yesterday regarding Newman's Dissent article. While agreeing with some of my points on one level, he disagreed with others on another, more abstract level.
This is neither surprising nor unfair, because I was really responding to a different argument than he (and Newman) was making. I agree with his point that a pure Rawlsian would be compelled to reject, at least in the long term, alliances with people such as Riley. But I, at least, am not such a purist. In fact, I call myself a Rawlsian only because his philosophy broadly encapsulates my own beliefs, rather than believing what I do because I am a follower of Rawls. I therefore don't feel any need to avoid deviating from his principles or to come up with a justification when I do. If I were making a career as a political philosopher then I would feel a need to be more precise, but I'm just a regular guy with an interest in the world around me, so I don't. I suppose I am guilty of putting words into other Rawlsian's mouths in presuming to know what sort of arguments they would or wouldn't accept and I shouldn't have been so careless about that.
I remain convinced, however, that it was sloppy on Newman's part to drag Riley and his tax reform proposal into this as an example in the absence of any real evidence that Riley suffered from widespread lack of secular support. Russell points out that he suffered from more lukewarm support than he might have expected from secular liberal groups, but I think that pales in comparison to the widespread desertion that he suffered from his own fellow Christian travellers, who should have been much more receptive to the arguments he was making. It may be, as Russell puts it, that "the procedural Rawlsian claim which Newman and I disagree with isn't fully present in any actual real-world debates," but it hardly does their argument any favors if this is the best example they can come up with.
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