Quote of the Day: Liberalism and Neutrality

Liberalism need not be defined by neutrality, nor by an unchanging list of individual rights which always and everywhere trump collective goals.... What keeps a society liberal is not that it retreats from any pronouncements on what constitutes the good life, but that, in pursuing its own conception of the good, it none the less respects those who disagree. 'A society with strong collective goals can be liberal, on this view, provided it is also capable of respecting diversity, especially when it concerns those who do not share its goals; and provided it can offer adequate safeguards for fundamental rights.'

Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Oxford UP 1995), pp. 133 (quoting Charles Taylor, "Shared and Divergent Values," in Ronald L. Watts & Douglas M Brown, eds., Options for a New Canada (Toronto UP, 1991), pp. 71).