Abstract: Canvasses some of the ineradicable obstacles to success in liberal democratic civic education. The persistence of unreasonable pluralism in any society is the most obvious obstacle; another is the permanent fact of reasonable pluralism; and finally, the tension between the ‘rational’ and the ‘reasonable’ in the lives of ordinary citizens would be an inevitable source of failure even if these other two could be surmounted.

Keywords: civic education, democracy, liberalism, political education, reasonable pluralism, unreasonable pluralism,