Liberal Principles - John Rawls

Wikipedia continues to amaze and enlighten.

I read the entry on Left-Right Politics - it's worth spending some time on to get an historical perspective. It's good to be reminded that our concepts of Left and Right have changed rather dramatically over time, as well as across geographies.

I hyperlinked to the entry on John Rawls after reading this sentence:

The contemporary left in the United States is usually understood as a category including New Deal liberals, Rawlsian liberals, social democrats, and civil libertarians, and is generally identified with the Democratic Party.

Rawls was an important developer of Liberal principles. His primary values appear to be fairness and justice - his principle of Justice as Fairness articulates principels that justify government intervention on behalf of the disadvantaged. 

First, each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with similar liberty for others. 

Second, "Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: (a) They are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and (b), they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society."  

The first of these two principles is known as the liberty principle, while the second half, reflecting the idea that inequality is only justified if it is to the advantage of those who are less well-off, is known as the difference principle.

I'll need to read the primary text before I can adequately respond to these. However, my initial reaction is that it highlights two value trade-offs: fairness versus individual liberty, and fairness versus effectiveness. The Wikipedia entry noted that Rawls was worried about moral hazard in applying these principles to nations versus individuals - that is, unproductive nations would expect to be bailed out by productive nations. The entry is silent on whether worried about moral hazard for individuals, which was a driving principle for the centrist welfare reform of the 1990s.