 Still, it must be conceded that 1980s communitarian theorists were less-than-successful at putting forward attractive visions of non-liberal societies. The communitarian case for pluralism for the need to respect and perhaps learn from non-liberal societies that may be as good as, if not better than, the liberal societies of the West may have been unintentionally undermined by their own use of (counter) examples. In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre defended the Aristotelian ideal of the intimate, reciprocating local community bound by shared ends, where people simply assume and fulfill socially given roles (MacIntyre 1984). But this pre-modern Gemeinschaft conception of an all-encompassing community that members unreflectively endorse seemed distinctly ill-suited for complex and conflict-ridden large-scale industrialized societies. In Spheres of Justice, Michael Walzer pointed to the Indian caste system, “where the social meanings are integrated and hierarchical” (Walzer 1983, 313) as an example of a non-liberal society that may be just according to its own standards. Not surprisingly, few readers were inspired by this example of non-liberal justice (not to mention the fact that many contemporary Indian thinkers view the caste system as an unfortunate legacy of the past that Indians should strive hard to overcome). In short, this use of ill-informed examples may have unintentionally reinforced the view that there are few if any justifiable alternatives to liberalism in modern societies. Communitarians could score some theoretical points by urging liberal thinkers to be cautious about developing universal arguments founded exclusively on the moral argumentation and political experience of Western liberal societies, but few thinkers would really contemplate the possibility of non-liberal practices appropriate for the modern world so long as the alternatives to liberalism consisted of Golden Ages, caste societies, fascism, or actually-existing communism. For the communitarian critique of liberal universalism to have any lasting credibility, thinkers need to provide compelling counter-examples to modern-day liberal-democratic regimes and 1980s communitarians came up short.