The Moral Core of Liberalism

I'm wondering about the traditional liberal political philosophy, which you don't talk about in the book. At least one perspective from that kind of tradition is to think about liberalism as a moral core to politics and it provides the moral basis for thinking about politics. I've always thought of Rawls, I guess he is often described as the classical liberal of the 20th century, but he was really a social democrat. The difference principle is not inherent in any version of liberalism. It is a redistributive, yeah, it is a socialist or social democratic principle.