“Many of you are well enough off that … the tax cuts may have helped you,” Sen. Hillary Clinton said last week, according to the Associated Press. “We’re saying that for America to get back on track, we’re probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”
When I first read this quote by Sen. Clinton, I was ready to applaud her for at least being upfront about her party’s agenda. Is it, after all, so unreasonable to expect all of us to give a little to improve life for everyone?
Sen. Clinton’s use of the phrase – “the common good” – is an interesting one. We do have in America much that serves our common good. We have interstate highways, which all of us either use or can use. We have a military that protects our borders and hunts down those in other nations who seek our destruction. We have diplomatic and trade representatives who seek beneficial arrangements for America with other nations. We have a Coast Guard to protect our shores. We have air-traffic controllers who prevent chaos in the skies. Locally, our cities and towns have police and fire protection. We have compulsory education. And I’m sure there are many others.
All these “common goods” we do in fact share. But these are not the “common good” to which Sen. Clinton was referring. And therein lies a serious problem for all of us. The “common good” that Sen. Clinton, the Democratic Party – almost without exception, and an unseemly number of Republicans refer to these days – is not really the common good at all.
There are many “good things” in this world that all of us need or want. We want a nice house for our family to live in. We want enough money to put food on the table and pay our bills at the end of each month. We want a nice car and a vacation this year. We want a better-paying job. We want our children to grow up with the prospect of a better life than we had. We want those in need to be taken care of. We want world peace.
And while these needs and wants are indeed “common” in the sense that almost all of us desire them, we do not desire them for “the common good.” We desire them for ourselves.
There was a time when this nation spent its public money on the common good. We built interstate highways. We built schoolhouses. We built airports, seaports, city halls, courthouses and jails. We all traveled, we all needed education, we all wanted products transported from where they were made to where they were consumed. And we all needed order and safety in our communities.
Then the common good went badly wrong. Goodhearted, clever and deceitful politicians all began to notice there were many different groups of people who had banded together because they wanted things for their common good. Blacks wanted redress of prior grievances against current and future generations. Those without a job wanted an income. Those without a husband wanted a child. Those living in nearby nations wanted to live here.
Today individual members of various minorities have their test scores, college admission scores and employment applications fiddled to make them appear better qualified than they actually are. Discrimination against the most qualified is billed as “the common good.”
Today those without a marriage or an income nevertheless have numerous children, and for each one they are incrementally rewarded by the taxpayer. That is to say money is forcibly taken from families behaving responsibly and given to non-families behaving irresponsibly. Punishing the responsible and rewarding the irresponsible is billed as “the common good.”
Today the children of border criminals living and working here illegally are educated in our schools, cared for in our hospitals, and given favorable tuition at our state-supported colleges and universities. This fraud against the native-born and lawfully immigrated is billed as “the common good.”
Today, what is billed as “the common good” is nothing of the sort. It is whatever a group of agitators and an opportunistic politician can produce as their procreation during the moment of their common lust, which they subsequently loose on our society to its ultimate destruction.
Karl Marx built his “ism” by distorting the Bible’s admonition, “from those who have much, much is required,” when he translated it into “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The Bible’s admonition is directed at individuals, who, it teaches, are accountable to God. The Bible never deputized the taxman as Robin Hood, nor did it advocate sending the sheriff to take half of what you or I have and give it to self-serving politicians to “trickle-down” through the bureaucracy to the poor.
Charity is the responsibility of individuals, not government. Marxism and communism are state religions, vile and ignorant enough of their own history to believe they have replaced God. Those who support them are the enemies of God, the enemies of those they would help, and the enemies of America.
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Wayne Allyn Root