The liberalism with which I am concerned is a version of liberalism prominent in the moral and legal and political philosophy of the day: a liberalis… - Michael Sandel

But if political philosophy is unrealizable in one sense, it is unavoidable in another.

For the last several decades, the language of merit has dominated public discourse, with little recognition of the downside. Even in the face of deepening inequality, the rhetoric of rising has provided, for mainstream parties of the center-left and center-right, the primary language of moral progress and political improvement. “Those who work hard and play by the rules should be able to rise as far as their talents will take them.” Meritocratic elites had become so accustomed to intoning this mantra that they failed to notice it was losing its capacity to inspire. Tone-deaf to the mounting resentments of those who had not shared in the bounty of globalization, they missed the mood of discontent. The populist backlash caught them by surprise. They did not see the insult implicit in the meritocratic society they were offering.

The most potent rival to merit, to the notion that we are responsible for our lot and deserve what we get, is the notion that our fate exceeds our control, that we are indebted for our success, and also for our troubles—to the grace of God, or the vagaries of fortune, or the luck of the draw. The Puritans found, as we saw in chapter 2, that a thoroughgoing ethic of grace is almost impossible to sustain. Living by the belief that we have no hand in whether we will be saved in the next world or successful in this one is hard to reconcile with the idea of freedom and with the conviction that we get what we deserve. This is why merit tends to drive out grace; sooner or later, the successful assert, and come to believe, that their success is their own doing, and that those who lose out are less worthy than they.
But even in its triumph, the meritocratic faith does not deliver the self-mastery it promises. Nor does it provide a basis for solidarity. Ungenerous to the losers and oppressive to the winners, merit becomes a tyrant. And when it does, we can enlist its ancient rival to rein it in. This is what, in one small domain of life, the admissions lottery tries to do. It summons chance to chasten merit’s hubris.