Think about the distribution of religious freedoms.
We, in the United States have something called the establishment and
free exercise clauses of the first amendment.
Which says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
we're not going to have an established church, no official religion or
prohibiting the free exercise of.
That's the free exercise clause.
Nobody is gonna be prevented from exercising any religion.
This is the separation of church and state,
put into the Bill of Rights by James Madison and it's an important
part of the First Amendment, the United States Constitution.
Now Rawls can't ask the question is this a good principle,
because he always thinks comparatively.
So you have to have it to compare it to something else.
So as I said, this is my example not his, but it's a very different principle.
So, it's good from the point of view of fixing our intuitions here.
Think about article four of the 1979 Iranian Constitution
that was put in after the Islamic revolution.
It says all civil, penal, financial, economic, administrative,
cultural, military, political and other laws and
regulations must be based on Islamic criteria.
This principle applies absolutely and generally to all articles of
the Constitution, as well as to all other laws and regulations and
the fuqaha of the Guardian Council are judges in this matter.
This is about as extreme a form of established religion as you can have.
So here, you have an established religion and you have no free exercise clause.
So everybody has to obey the Islamic religion and
it's got to be enforced by the state couldn't be a sharper contrast.
Now from a rolls in perspective, if you wanna look at these
two principles, the question you ask yourself is if I
turn out to not be a non-Muslim in an Iranian society or
a non-fundamentalist in an Iranian society, am I better or
worse off than a fundamentalist in the First Amendment, US type of arrangement.
That is to say, does the religious fundamentalist in the US system have
less or more religious freedom than the non-fundamentalist in the Iranian system.
So that's the comparison and so what's the answer?
>> The fundamentalist is going to be more free,
enjoying more religious freedoms in the American system.
>> In the American system?
>> Yeah.
>> Exactly right.
So if we might list the comparison,
we would say the American free exercise clause and
anti-establishment clause wins.
That isn't to say, it's the best principle.
Somebody might come along with something else, as I indicated, but
just as between these two, it would win.