  A third worry, to contemporary eyes probably the most serious, is that the Mohists’ notion of a unified morality and their conception of social order (zhi) are disturbingly totalitarian. The Mohists are probably right to hold that social stability requires consensus on at least a minimal set of moral norms — one that rules out murder and theft, for instance — and that a strong government is needed to enforce such norms. The Mohist movement originated during an era of turmoil and violence, and it is possible that their conception of a unified morality is intended to comprise only the minimal moral standards needed to preserve social harmony. But the scope of the norms they envision seems much broader than this. Indeed, it seems to cover all value judgments whatsoever — all distinctions between “right” and “not” (shi and fei). To the Mohists, one suspects, even a moderate degree of diversity in how we draw such distinctions counts as social, moral, and even intellectual “disorder” (luan). The natural objection, for contemporary liberal readers, is that social order doesn’t require total consensus on values. It can be achieved through agreement on a limited, norms of justice, which leaves individuals free to determine other values for themselves. The Mohist system unduly restricts individual liberty, the objection would run, and in fact the Mohists’ own moral ideal of inclusive care and reciprocal benefit among everyone might best be satisfied by a political system that ensures extensive individual liberty.