the liberal worry does contain an insight that cannot be dismissed: republican politics is risky politics, a politics without guarantees. And the risks it entails inhere in the formative project. To accord the political community a stake in the character of its citizens is to concede the possibility that bad communities may form bad characters. Dispersed power and multiple sites of civic formation may reduce these dangers but cannot remove them. This is the truth in the liberal’s complaint about republican politics.
