One of the greatest American presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt built a coalition of labour, ethnic, urban, low-income and African American voters that underwrote the Democratic Party's national ascendancy from the 1930s to the 1980s. Over his four terms, he promoted the New Deal – the greatest reform programme in US history – to meet the challenges of the Great Depression, led the United States to the brink of victory in the Second World War, and established the modern presidency as the driving force of American politics and government.

Can someone be bound by a moral obligation and yet at the same time have a moral complaint about being so bound? That is, there is something that they ought, all things considered, to do, for moral reasons. And yet, we and they feel that they have a moral complaint about being the one who is bound to do it: it is unfair that they, and not others, should bear the burden of having to do or attend to whatever this obligation requires. This is what I shall call an “objectionable obligation.” Do such obligations exist? Is this idea even coherent? And if it is, what follows from this fact?