If the minimalist citizenship of modus vivendi liberalism can be burdensome to many, then even more difficult is practice of the full cultural citizenship that alone insures the success of liberal democratic political institutions. The fact that monocultural societies generally avoid problems focusing on questions of the meaning and purpose of life makes it easy to understand why among citizens of liberal democracies there is never a shortage of communitarian nostalgia for the monocultural way of life. Civic freedom requires that persons make the Socratic distinction between the good by itself and any particular conception of the good to which they might adhere at one time or another. Development of a capacity for civic freedom can become, if badly managed and understood, an open invitation to despair. . Answering the question about the intrinsic value of citizenship is no easy task.
Citizenship is in many ways a difficult and peculiar way of life.
Such people often find intolerable the experience of being surrounded by people of alien belief and behavior, even when the political arrangements producing that experience otherwise hold important advantages. If such minimalist citizenship can be burdensome to many, then even more difficult is practice of the full cultural citizenship that alone insures the success of liberal democratic political institutions. To answer the question of the intrinsic value of citizenship, we must understand anew how the inherent benefits of full cultural citizenship outweigh the burdens that come with it. The abstract question of the nature of the civic good can thus be reduced effectively to the question of what sort of case can be made for the desirability of full cultural citizenship in the light of the unsettling and even dangerous process involved in its attainment. Before attempting to lay out such a case, let us make sure we understand clearly the sort of burdens and dangers that attend the pursuit of civic moral ideals.