I have a few questions and not a lot of answers based on this reading. I would like to address Mike's post first, though. I think the "what has gone wrong" question is Sure, you are right that this book is based on some of the same basic premises that our government was founded on. Glendon was a description of how we've strayed. This is an explanation of how we can go back.

I have two questions based on the reading that I'm genuinely confused about. First, is it just me or does Dagger seem sort of flippant towards the diversity problem? He is thorough in his response to Young, though I don't think he was very generous (from my limited familiarity with her work). Can anybody more familiar with her work respond? I know her work is sort of extreme in terms of "solutions," but it seems like the discussion could go deeper.

Moreover,it seems like he is setting up a straw man by spending so much time on her argument. I don't see him attending to any of the interesting questions involved in pluralism from my perspective (things I've brought up in other posts). All he says is that pluralism shares some values with republican liberalism. How does it deal with the more interesting questions of diversity? Admittedly, this could be an issue of him using more abstract language and not really delving into particular examples. I'd just like to go over his arguments tomorrow.

Second, can someone explain to me the importance of the second question? I guess I don't see the question (particularly involving Rawls) as contentious. Where Dagger's argument is more belabored, I find it more intuitive. I guess I'd like to go over this more too.