In my absence, Howie Rosenfeld and David Dehlendorf have expounded (and expounded ... and expounded) on their view of a liberal society. In a Rosendorf liberal society, a woman (or any citizen) would be allowed to join a union ... she would be allowed reproductive choice. Heaven forbid, though, if that same woman wanted a barn ... or if she wanted a large-ish multigenerational house on her own property to age in place ... or if she wanted to freely associate with some of her fellow community members while serving on the Planning Commission.
In the liberal society of Rosendorf, you can have only as much freedom as Rosendorf allows you ... but don't even think of having any more than that ... and don't dare disagree with Rosendorf. In a Rosendorf liberal society, consensus is the socially acceptable way of promoting intolerance. If there's a consensus, then dammit, Rosendorf doesn't want to hear any other opinions.
In a Rosendorf liberal society, people are urged to protect nesting habitat for birds, but ignore the fact that Rosenfeld governed during an era of unprecedented growth in local government spending that included major road construction and stormwater projects which unnecessarily removed hundreds of trees. In their brand of liberal society, Rosendorf express mock outrage (right around election filing time) about undue influence on the Planning Commission of today, while conveniently forgetting that a Friends' President was a Planning Commissioner during the guest house litigation.
In a Rosendorf liberal society, we only have a few problems ... local government isn't quite powerful enough yet ... our County budgets aren't quite big enough yet ... we don't have quite enough planners yet ... we aren't quite as protected as we should be yet ... we aren't listening to bureaucrats at Ecology enough yet ... we don't have quite enough grant money yet ... and we still don't have quite enough consensus yet.
And Rosendorf aren't quite preachy or hypocritical enough yet either.