The Triumph Of The Procedural Republic Analysis

The American people’s desire to feel that they are in command of their own lives plays a major role in the framework of respecting individual rights while the government remain neutral in respect to particular conceptions of the “good life.” Sandel asserts, “Self-mastery consists in viewing every aim and attachment, every feeling and though, as the product of choice” (292). Therefore, it is the hope that the government be able to reconstruct itself in a way that it reflects the voluntarist conception of freedom and make it “‘possible for men to follow their chosen pursuits with maximum freedom’” (284). Sandel continues to emphasize democracy’s discontent; specifically in “The Triumph and Travail of the Procedural Republic” he addresses the “the loss for self-government and the erosion of community” (294). …show more content…
Johnson attempts to promote an ideal national community through which one could counter the eroding sense of community by making “the nation more of a nation.” In Sandel’s earlier chapters he highlights the important role that civic virtue played in constitutional law and its development, in that the government needed to be framed in a way which formed those unfit for self-government to be fit. For Sandel, the civic virtues that are essential to democracy’s survival require constant and continuous discussion in the public sphere. However, in the second half of the twentieth century we see a shift in one’s intentions. Sandel claims, “Liberty depended no on cultivating virtue, but rather on placing certain rights beyond the reach of majorities”