Part I, Excluding Voices, a Necklace of Thoughts on the Ideology of Style, Chapter 2, Gilded Lilies and Liberal Guilt Summary and Analysis

Williams's work concerns the line between contract and communion or the division between the commercial and the community, between the legitimate and the illegitimate. She believes that parts of the social contract in the United States involve social control through an ahistorical American symbolism that understands freedom in an abstract way. Private contract rights illustrate this point. Freedom of contract is often seen as a simple, straightforward freedom, as an express of a "will" theory of rights where choice determines the rights we have. Williams is not wholeheartedly against the will theory but wants it to be expressed through community will as well.

William's interest...