Rawls is taken to be an East Coast liberal by East Coast liberals, but his book can be read as a libertarian one, if you note that he places liberty prior to redistribution. Nevertheless, Rawls does come across as a man with a specific program. Too bad his underlying philosophy is Kantian. The contract is up to the contractors, and Buchanan's job as an economist, and therefore a specialist in trade and agreements, is to help clarify the issues as these putative contractors go about formulating a political constitution, upon which they are, ideally, to agree unanimously. Personally, he is close to being a libertarian, but he does favor public education and even stiff inheritance taxes.
Stability is a matter of degree.
Always try to replace a dichotomy with a continuum. But even if this raises the average man to the level of the average college professor, all of the shortcomings of human nature that H.L. Mencken so lovinginly described will continue. They will be as right then as they are now. The recognition business is Fukuyama's great contibution, and it shows why we have democracy as well as free markets. The theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.