The Democrats Are in Trouble. This Man Can Save Them.

The election victory by Donald Trump and his Republican Party was a rebuke of a Democratic Party that has positioned itself as protector of a despised status quo, rendering it unable to connect with an electorate desperate for change. Defeating Mr. Trump in the future will require liberals, progressives and others on the left to articulate a positive vision that can capture the imagination of a broad majority of Americans.

But where can they find the inspiration for such a vision?

The answer lies in the work of the towering 20th century political philosopher John Rawls.

In his epoch-defining treatise “A Theory of Justice,” published in 1971, Rawls set out a humane and egalitarian vision of a liberal society, an alternative both to the toxic blend of neoliberal economics and identity politics that has dominated Democratic thinking in recent decades and the pessimistic anti-liberalism that holds sway among some more radical parts of the left. In this time of crisis for liberalism, it offers an unparalleled, and as yet largely untapped, resource for shaping a broad-based and genuinely transformational progressive politics — not just for Democrats but for center-left parties internationally.

The philosophy of Rawls, who died in 2002, is grounded not in self-interest and competition, but in reciprocity and cooperation. His most famous idea is a thought experiment: If you want to conceive of a fair society, put on a “veil of ignorance.” That is, consider a way to organize it if you didn’t know your position — your race, religion or economic status.

It’s an intuitive idea, similar to the classic scenario of how you might cut a cake more fairly if you didn’t know which slice you would end up getting. The idea resonates widely, since it is, in effect, a political version of the Golden Rule — “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” — that in some form is found across cultural and religious traditions.

Rawls argued that we should choose two guiding principles for how we design society’s core political and economic institutions, it’s “basic structure.” First, all citizens should be free to live according to their own beliefs and to participate in politics as genuine equals. Second, we should organize our economy to achieve equal opportunities and widely shared prosperity, only tolerating inequalities where they improve the life prospects of the least advantaged.