“But let’s not confuse ‘forcing beliefs on others’ with ‘sharing beliefs with others.’

I do appreciate much of what was written in this essay, but at the end there’s a bit of bait-and-switch. Up to that point, the essay was about “forcing,” not “sharing.” A person can only share one’s beliefs with someone who wants to partake of them — like a sandwich; offering to share one’s beliefs is as far as a person can go without being, as David Smith said, “RUDE.”

One the other hand, it is the case that beliefs inform all people’s participation in the political process. So the outcomes of that process are always a matter of some beliefs being imposed on the community as a whole. That, however, is an inescapable part of a democratic political process — which is the only just political process there is.

Of course, heretofore democracy itself has been based on a belief in equality. That’s why it is important that democracy is compatible with ‘real justice’, which contains an ethic (mutual respect) that follows from observation within material existence, and does not involve even one belief. (Mutual respect is implied by a belief in equality, which explains the compatibility of democracy with both real justice and equality.)