"If you look back at the origins of liberalism, it starts first with a certain settlement about religious difference," she said. "Catholics, Protestants - they're killing each other! Finally, Germany, England, all these places say, We're tired of these people killing each other, so we're going to make a peace settlement: religious toleration, live and let live."

She spread her hands wider. "Then something remarkable happens," she said. "People now have the freedom to have crosscutting identities in different domains. At church, I'm one thing. At work, I'm something else. I'm something else at home, or with my friends. The ability not to have an identity that one carries from sphere to sphere but, rather, to be able to slip in and adopt whatever values and norms are appropriate while retaining one's identities in other domains?"

She paused. "That is what it is to be free." - Elizabeth Anderson