LAUSR

briefly grant that democracy is a social ideal to be pursued, as well as a form of government, although he emphasizes that democracy is still a form of government and that, if a democratic society is overdoing its politics, it must therefore be “overdoing democracy” (pp. 23–24). But this would seem to be another instance of democracy being treated both as an ideal we are failing to achieve and as an already existing entity that has been taken too far. Talisse implies that if there is excessive political thinking, and behavior, present in what is commonly considered a “democratic society,” then it must be democracy that is being overdone. But it certainly could be the case (which Talisse’s analysis appears to recognize) that US society may not be adequately democratic, and so an overextension of that society’s politics may not necessarily equal an overextension of democracy.