Instead of responding to this criticism, Freeman obfuscates it by falsely accusing it of resting on a misquotation. These fine, if grammatically shaky, words, however, will inspire only those whose critical faculties have been lulled into acquiescence by the endlessly repeated egalitarian rhetoric. Freeman does not say. That people should get what they deserve and should not get what they do not deserve is surely one of our most fundamental moral convictions. But it is just that conviction that egalitarians must violate because what people deserve depends of their merits, and merits are unequal.
Most egalitarians simply ignore the question of what people deserve.
In this respect, as in others, Rawls is more forthright than the rest. It is a pity that Arneson and Freeman have not done so. It will perhaps have struck readers that my responses to Arneson and Freeman are largely quotations from the article on which they are commenting. The reason for this is that their attribution of confusions to me rests on missing the passages I quote. Arneson and Freeman are competent philosophers, so it cries out for an explanation how they could have missed these passages.