Liberal Neutrality and Language Policy

If there is one point that the critics of liberalism almost all agree upon, it is that liberal neutrality is an unappealing and perhaps incoherent doctrine. Many contemporary liberals do not endorse the idea of neutrality, and even liberals most identified with the idea, John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, have backed off it in certain respects. In thinking about the challenges posed by cultural and linguistic diversity, the idea of neutrality seems especially unpromising. Nobody has made this point as clearly or forcefully as Will Kymlicka. “The idea that government could be neutral with respect to ethnic and national groups,” he argues, “is patently false.” “In the areas of official languages, political boundaries,