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Opinion in Brief

Jonah Goldberg: “The philosopher John Rawls famously offered a thought experiment he called the ‘original position.’ Imagine you are in some kind of limbo waiting to be born into our world. Hidden behind what he called a ‘veil of ignorance,’ you have no idea what ‘kind’ of person you will be… If there’s a good chance you’re going to be born poor, you might see the point of having certain protections for the poor. If there’s a 50 percent chance you’ll be born a woman, you’ll probably reject the model of society found in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’ In short, the veil of ignorance allows us to see justice through the lens of self-interest. I don’t like or agree with everything Rawls and his fans have done with this thought experiment, but the original position is nonetheless a useful way of thinking about society. We live in a moment beset by tribalisms, from partisanship to myriad forms of identity politics. All of them work on the assumption that neutral rules are unfair or unjust because my tribe is somehow especially noble or your tribe is especially evil. The original position is not as original to Rawls as some believe. In fact, it’s embedded in the very idea of classical liberalism, because it presupposes that we should all be equal in the eyes of God and the government, and that therefore the rules of the society should be fair for everybody — and applied to everybody equally. It’s a simple principle, but everyone wants to make it complicated these days.”