Despite recurrent invocations of the phrase in some corners of the right, it’s not really that useful as a political theory.
I’ve written on several occasions about the imprecision and dubious legitimacy of the “common good” as a theory of interpreting the Constitution. Despite recurrent invocations of the phrase in some corners of the right, it’s not really a whole lot more useful as a political theory.
One of the problems with the common good as a standard is its vagueness. Does it mean that laws should have a moral basis? If so, that just restates reality: virtually all law is grounded in moral judgments about what is right, wrong, fair, unfair, just, unjust, etc. Does it mean that laws should aim to improve the morals of the people? That’s a very different question, and one that raises serious questions about the limits of the competence of government: government can do a lot to degrade the morals of the governed but has only limited power to improve them. That’s to say nothing of the difficulty of defining what kinds of morality are supported by a sufficient consensus to justify backing them with governmental force.
Does the common good mean what economists call “public goods” — in other words, those goods that can be delivered and enjoyed collectively rather than individually? National defense, public order, and a clean environment are public goods because you can’t really provide them to some people without providing them to everyone. Social Security and court enforcement of contracts are private goods. Some private goods have a public-good aspect: your right to free speech is a private good, but the availability to listeners of a broad supply of speech is a public good. Your health care is a private good, but prevention of epidemics is a public good.
Does the common good mean utilitarianism? In other words, does it mean we pursue the greatest good for the greatest number of people, even when that entails overriding the rights of individuals? That’s often what appeals to the common good imply, even if those who invoke them for religiously based reasons blanch at openly embracing the utilitarian spirit. But if you promote the common good as an alternative to rights and liberties, that’s inevitably the direction that beckons. And we’ve all seen the dark places that “for the greater good” can lead.
Does the common good mean, specifically, the Catholic moral tradition? That tradition is indeed rich in insights, but a strictly sectarian view of the common good is likely to make trouble once that is its admitted basis. And the Catholic tradition is much better at framing moral concepts than at defining particular policy choices.
If you spend any time listening to the people most fond of invoking the common good, you will swiftly notice that they don’t all use the same one of these definitions.
The Founding Fathers understood the difficulty of defining this sort of thing. That’s why they used general terms like “establish Justice” and “promote the general Welfare” when describing the goals of government in the Constitution’s preamble, but avoided those terms when actually defining the powers of government.
We all want something that looks or sounds like the common good. But, like common sense, it’s easier to invoke as an aspiration than to define as a standard. Which means that instead of helping us sharpen our thinking, it often conceals more than it elucidates.