THE COMMON GOOD

I've been doing lot of thinking lately about things political and the misuse of truth in the service of political gain.

Both sides of the political world, particularly the Progressive/Marxist side, are fond of screaming (quite literally) about the common good and social justice, usually for the purpose of personal or political gain. Below you'll find an explanation of common good from an article about Thomas Aquinas' moral, political and legal philosophy:

"“Common good” is very often a safer translation of bonum commune than “the common good”. For there is the common good of a team, but equally the common good of a university class, of a university, of a family, of a neighborhood, of a city, of a state, of a church and of human kind throughout the world. The difference in each case between the group's common good and an aggregate of the wellbeing of each of its members can be understood by considering how, in a real friendship, A wills B's wellbeing for B's sake, while B wills A's wellbeing for A's sake, and each therefore has reason to will his or her own wellbeing for the other's sake, with the result that neither envisages his or her own wellbeing as the source (the object) of the friendship's value, and each has in view a truly common good, not reducible to the good of either taken separately or merely summed. Inasmuch as there is possible and appropriate a kind of friendship between the members of each of the kinds of group listed (non-exhaustively) above, each such group has its own common good."
Stanford University

Take in the implications of the common good properly understood.

In our current political reality the common good is used by the Progressives as an excuse to redistribute wealth, to take from those that have and give to those that don't. And the Capitalists use it as a rallying cry to convince others that the common good is nothing more than an excuse to lighten their pockets. Both are acting from purely selfish motives.

But what if the common good was applied selflessly, in the manner described above. What if we concerned ourselves with the good of others exclusively? What if we all acted in a right manner because we acted out of love, not greed? What if the government, instead of forcing a false good on the people working to satisfy selfish goals instead worked in conjunction with faith communities to explain and promote real common good?

What if the churches and the government did their job and stopped playing games with the souls of the people and the future of our society?

I'm just saying.