Here we are in the 21st century and the most glaring thing about it so far is that ordinary common sense has been utterly flipped upon its head and simple human dictums have lost all meaning.  Nowhere has this idiotic confusion become more rampant than in the usage of 2 little words, employed now as a battering ram to force socialist changes to our great American system of government.  Those 2 words:  COMMON GOOD.

Socialist progressives accuse conservatives at every juncture of mean-spirited selfishness and assert that only income redistribution by the state can possibly serve what they mistakenly call the “common good.”  They’ve managed to elect a president whose anti-American myopic vision of the common good is about as far removed from its uniquely Judeo/Christian meaning as anything could get without becoming an out-and-out lie.

My favorite word, “poppycock,” is too kind here.  I’ll go with the new Joe Wilson lingo and just call it a vicious lie.  Believing that the genuine meaning of the common good begins and ends with the state is not only a complete misconception and pure nonsense that will cripple a nation and its economy in very short order, it is a malignancy which robs the people of their unalienable rights, all the while wearing a smiley face and pretending to be noble.

Before the dawn of the Age of Confusion — a confusion intentionally sown throughout the latter half of the 20th Century through our schools and media — the purely American definition of the common good was ubiquitous.  It reigned supreme in nearly every family and every institutional setting.  It was the foundation of both Jewish and Christian homes nationwide.  And only the most radical few would dare to even suggest otherwise. The American understanding of the common good held forth across racial and cultural boundaries.  There was nothing more American than the individual work ethic.

Americans have always, since our founding, insisted that every single individual best serves the common good through self-sufficiency.  Only in being self-sufficient could one ensure that he would never become a burden to his neighbors.  The words lazy, shiftless, no-account were three of the most feared words in the American vocabulary.  The worst thing a child could be called by his own mother was “slacker.” The last thing a child ever wanted to hear from his own father were accusations of laziness.

Say whatever you will about the WASP and Jewish cultural bearings, but these folks gave Americans one of the greatest gifts ever bestowed upon a civilization:  an understanding of the inherent value of honest work for one’s own benefit.  The protestant work ethic is its most common name.  Whatever one chooses to call it really doesn’t matter.  The underlying brilliance was always that by being self-sufficient, one also served his fellow man.  And when one failed through his own fault to provide for himself, he was rightly considered an unnecessary burden to the common good.

Charity was for those who simply could not help their own misfortune and was given person-to-person and through voluntary organizations, mainly through the churches and synagogues with great care to preserve the recipients’ dignity.  Unless the beneficiary’s personal dignity was preserved, charity would not have been considered charity at all but would have been rightly seen as an action intended to ensure dependence.  No American virtue was seen in becoming dependent upon others and those who would encourage dependence were seen as downright evil.  Making others dependent, it was widely known, was merely a way to amass power over others.  A truly disgusting goal if ever there was one.

Today, evil political charlatans pose as benevolent providers of the common good.  Robbing from the productive class to give to the indolent class, all in the name of the common good is the moral equivalent a plantation owner who claimed to really love his slaves.

Politicians selling this malarkey and getting clean away with it in this so-called age of enlightenment is pure proof positive that human nature is every bit as prone to evil, as well as gullibility, as it always has been.   The thing that liberals don’t know and which conservatives seem to have all but forgotten as they allow themselves to be beaten with the common-good club is that the very foundation of the golden rule is self-love first.  As Jesus admonished his followers to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, it is inherent in serving others that one take care of himself FIRST.  Once he has ensured that he will not be a burden to others, then he is also free to lend a helping hand to those who genuinely need it.

And the kind of help one gives must not only be well-intentioned but must genuinely serve the best interests of the recipient.  If all the help does is rob a person of his dignity and ability to help himself, then it is worse than nothing.  It is evil.  Good is only served in charity if the person is helped to become self-sufficient and then is led to become a giver himself.

These are the foundations upon which America was founded and the sooner we get back to them, the more likely we’ll be to save our drowning Republic.

C. S. Lewis said it best:  “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

Socialist progressives yammering about the “common good” while picking the pockets of the productive class and forming a wholly dependent indolent class to keep them in power are definitely on the wrong road.  And all it takes to see that is a glance at the flailing, failing countries across the pond.  Calling socialism “progressive” is just putting lots of lipstick on a really ugly pig who loves to wallow in his own slop.  You don’t get much lower than that.