Commentary: The Common Good
Rather than make this a philosophical analysis and exploration of the concept, this piece is concerned with the United States and how the common good is understood and accepted in varying degrees among different populations and cultures in the country.
A recommended background book is the excellent "American Nations" by Colin Woodard , "a history of the eleven regional cultures of North America." In it, Woodard argues that the original European settlers in many parts of North America often arrived as groups with cultures steeped in histories of oppression, marginalization and exploitation by elites and governments in the lands from which they came, which made them natural frontier-dwellers and individualists. This applied especially to the White settlers in "Greater Appalachia" who became very important in creating a broader "national" culture from Appalachia into their territories of expansion, especially in the southern Midwest and in Texas. Their natural opponents, who had other adversaries for different reasons, were the Yankees, whose influence spread from the narrow-minded Massachusetts Bay theocracy far into the Mid-West, and eventually the Far (Coastal) West as well. Of the eleven Nations, only the Yankees and the Native Americans could be said to have a strongly-developed sense of their overarching societies and the paramount "Common Good" that dominated their ideas as to how they should order and govern their communities . The others were either individualistic to the point of anarchy, or had authoritarian and predatory elites at the tops of pyramids of exploitation of discriminated class- and/or racist- lower orders.
Tribalism has always dominated American society. The tribes may appear to be different from their originals, geographically dispersed and often hidden or unacknowledged, but they persist nonetheless. In his book Woodard makes two major, connected points, that to an extraordinary degree the original settlers in most areas left an indelible mark on the culture of that part of the US right up to the present day, and that this mark can still serve as a predictor of the political leanings of that area's population, even now. So much for the melting pot and supposed national identity. Some find that Woodard overstates his case, but it is powerfully persuasive.
From the viewpoint outlined above, then, it is not surprising that seventy million eligible Americans remain unvaccinated in October 2021, or that the Republicans have a firm "Base" of mostly poorly educated lower-income supporters who are eager to support a party run by rich white men who seek to serve their own selfish interests at the expense of everyone else. Trump is a member of that group, with an extra dimension of extraordinary populist genius. This large tribal group is so easily exploited, especially when manipulated by modern media so savvy in the ways of stirring up fear, hated and existing insecurity. The world according to Fox, many other channels and a huge section of the internet, once entered tends to be the entire source of information, the true, skewed, and the rank lies. Goebbels would weep with envy at the sweeping power and effectiveness of it.
For the tribes caught in this web, the "Common Good" smells of Big Government, the high-spending Democrats, taxation and attacks on "Freedom." They are constantly reminded that the same lot are out to "take our guns away" and allow "Our" women, and even those Gays and other deviants, to have license to kill our babies and generally act immorally. I wish I was exaggerating; alas, for about a fifth of the current electorate, I am not. I will need another time to explore possible ways out of this quagmire. I believe that there are ways, but worry about the timescale.
Richard
