> Start with Jimmy Carter, a prfoundly _moral_ man, and his famous (or
> infamous) statement that "The World is not Fair." (In substance, this is
> the same, but less crudely put, than There is No Alternative.) The world
> is not fair, and the goal of the liberal is, _within the limits set by
> that fact_ to make the world "more fair."
What is specifically "liberal" about The World Is Not Fair? The Stalinists subscribed to the doctrine of The World Is Not Fair - i.e., "Purges and famines and such are unpleasant but if we want to build a socialist society this is what we must do." ...The Vietnamese Communists subscribed to The World Is Not Fair - i.e., "A bureaucratized party dictatorship is the only way we can consolidate a revolution; it's terrible to disappoint all those New Left hopes, but that's just the way the world is."....The Weathermen subscribed to "The World Is Not Fair" - I don't have to elaborate.
The only difference between a liberal and a communist that emerges from this formulation is that a liberal warns that the world is not fair *in advance*, while the communist waits until after the revo to spring the news.
SA