  Though this idea goes some way towards alleviating the worry that too much consensus is required by Rawls's theory, it does not go nearly far enough. There is one main way in which the overlapping consensus fails to provide the kind of consensus that Rawls requires. If a group of citizens agrees on a set of principles for regulating society and some of the citizens also think that some other principles apply, the overlapping consensus idea is that the citizens who hold the idiosyncratic views must take those particular demands off the table and must argue only on the basis of the shared principles. The idea is that everyone appeals only to those principles that lie in the overlap and not to those that do not lie in the overlap. A legitimate exercise of political power is one that is grounded only in those principles that lie in the overlap. This seems to diminish the amount of agreement necessary to make a society legitimate.