Rights-oriented liberal theory faces a dilemma. In a well-ordered society, citizens must share virtues that are generated in nonpolitical groups, but the liberal state cannot prescribe a way of life without violating liberal principles. Communitarians who are committed to freedom offer little help in confronting this dilemma because they lack a theory of the state. Liberalism can overcome its dilemma by reformulating the idea of the common good and by distinguishing it from both the right and the good. As predispositions that help to attain the common good, nonpolitical virtues may receive government support, provided people may reject these virtues in their own life plans.
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Downing et al. (1993) studied this question.
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