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Who Gets to Define and Impose the “Common Good”?
George Will’s column, When American Conservatism Becomes Un-American, talks about Senator Marco Rubio’s offer of “common-good capitalism,” which is capitalism minus respect for individuals’ right to freely express their preferences and values in the marketplace, and about Harvard Law Professor Adrian Vermeule’s offer of “common-good constitutionalism,” which is the Constitution minus respect for “individuals’ diverse notions of the life worth living.”
Both the Senator and the professor want the power to define and impose a “common good” that doesn’t respect the common man’s freedom. Neither specifies how they will identify the common good, nor do they provide a plan for preventing the power they demand from being abused.
Both see very real problems in the American economy, and they place the blame on “unfettered capitalism,” ignoring Washington’s countless fetter factories, including:
- Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF)
- Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
- Consumer Product Safety Commission
- Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
- Employment and Training Administration (ETA)
- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
- Farm Credit Administration (FCA)
- Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
- Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
- Federal Deposit Insurance Commission (FDIC)
- Federal Election Commission (FEC)
- Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
- Federal Highway Administration (FHA)
- Federal Maritime Commission (FMC)
- Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)
- Federal Reserve Bank
- Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
- Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
- Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA)
- Office of Energy & Renewable Energy
- United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
- United States Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC)
Their solution? More fetters.
They see the inequities caused by crony capitalism, codified by government-created cartels in industries such as banking, consumer products, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and shipping. Their solution? More cartels – more special privileges for favored companies and organizations and even, in the case of Vermeule, favored religious institutions.
Before giving up more of our freedom and imposing the new government controls that Rubio and Vermeule want, let’s try eliminating existing government programs that coercively create and sustain poverty and inequality. For example, let’s stop:
- Penalizing companies for hiring low-skilled workers. Minimum wage laws make it more expensive to hire such workers and make it that much harder for the least employable (i.e., the least educated, the least experienced, and the most discriminated against) to get and retain jobs.
- Proliferating job licensing.
- Creating new regulatory hoops for would-be business owners to jump through.
- Restricting school choice. Parents should be able to get their children out of failing schools and into schools in which they can actually learn to read and write.
- Imposing rent controls, which create shortages of low-cost housing.
- Imposing zoning restrictions, which also create low-cost housing shortages.
We will never have capitalism as long as there is the Federal Reserve. A central bank that manipulates the most important prices in the economy – the price of debt via interest rates – means that we fundamentally have a centrally planned economy.
Wow. That was one helluva shot of wry whiskey.
The formula for Power of Irony is 1/2 (Wit + Truth). This got a One, to the nearest tenth of a Mencken.
Its amusing when we become our own strawmen.
Who gets to decide what the general welfare is or what it means to promote it?
Is there a generally used description of what ‘general welfare’ means?
Not as far as I know.
Back when the Constitution was written, the Framers were not all Christians, but they were speaking from the perspective of 1700 years of Christian civilization. That civilization produces a cultural perspective of what the “good life” is whether one is confessionally Christian or not. It’s unavoidable. It’s baked into you from the time you are born until the time you reach the age of reason and beyond. The result is that everyone had a vision of the “common good” that had common basic elements whether you were formally a Christian or a Deist or an atheist. That background vision was assumed and not made explicit in our founding. So there is no explicit establishment of monogamous marriage versus polygamy (although polygamy is common worldwide) because it never occurred to them that anyone would ever question monogamous marriage as part of the common good.
That shared vision of the good life was the framework within which there was considerable space for freedom – that’s the civil freedom the founders established. It worked for 200 years. But that shared vision is gone, the cultural momentum of 2000 years of Christian civilization spent. We no longer have a shared vision of the common good that is common enough to support a constitutional framework that assumes it – and so that constitutional framework is unraveling.
It is quite possible for both Rubio / Vermueule and George Will to be wrong on this (FWIW, I thought this was one of Will’s sloppiest columns in a long time. Will is capable of much better work, and this came off as a rant, especially when he veered off into weird fears of some looming theocracy). It is also equally possible that in the similar argument of French vs. Ahmari that both French and Ahmari are wrong, or at least that neither of them is correct because they’re both blind men grasping at different parts of an elephant.
As we are wont to remind ourselves, there are no perfect solutions, only trade-offs. And while it’s fun to rebut socialists when they whinge that “real socialism has never been tried”, we do ourselves no favors by mirroring “real capitalism has never been tried.” The truth of the matter may actually be that “real capitalism” is like the speed of light – you’re never going to attain it, no matter how many of those federal regulatory agencies you strip away. At some point, you end up with some different motley of regulatory agencies because all along the way you will find people who lie, cheat, and steal, and they need to be reined in, or you will find people with perfectly legitimate motives and actions at loggerheads over the commons (this is how the FCC and FAA started, after all). I don’t think we want to totally get rid of the EPA either, because everyone eventually needs clean water and air, and pollution externalities can cost people for generations to come. This doesn’t even touch on the need for a common understanding of ethics in order to do business, and then somebody to enforce the penalties when contracts are violated.
Vermuele and Rubio may be very off-base in what they see as the necessary “common good”, but they’re not wrong to see that in our polarized society, right now the center is breaking and some sort of common (as in “applied to all”) base needs to be created or restored.
I have thought ‘general welfare’ as used in the Constitution and applied at the federal level means something that accrues to the benefit of Americans as a whole, not just to some portion or some individuals. That would not include things that can be accomplished by individuals acting for themselves. I doubt this is as interpreted by the Judiciary.
And there needs to be room on the right to actually discuss what it means rather than running away because “Common Good” sounds like “Communism.”
To me, one of the biggest breakdowns was bringing in such a large amount of diversity and granting all the protection of the constitution and the voting franchise.
It can’t be that big of a surprise that mixing iron and clay results in an untenable concept of “common” anything, including “sense.”
Huh?
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As someone else said, I think Common Good at the time of the Founding was rather baked into the cake. It made room for things like official churches, uber strict (by modern standards) public decency laws, and even the downright arbitrary (things like no bathing on Wednesdays that coincide with a full moon, etc).
The answer to the quoted question is the same as it ever was: We The People define common good for ourselves and We The People are charged with preventing and correcting abuse (and defining what “abuse” even means). How are We The People to do that? Subsidiarity, federalism, defined charters, common law, free speech, armed citizenry, and ultimately the threat of armed resistance.
Of course there’s uncertainty and subjectivity. That’s the genius of the American system: we give room for all of that uncertainty and subjectivity to breathe and compete and check/balance each other. That’s why it remains a conservative goal to devolve power away from Washington DC.
Ooooh! I like “fetter factories.”
Yes and no. The Bill of Rights and other amendments to the Constitution limit what a majority of “We The People” can do. Unless the Constitution is amended again, for example, a majority or a well-organized minority can’t confiscate our weapons, deny us free speech, or end the freedom of the Press.
The President of the U.S., our Senators and Congressmen, and the members of the Supreme Court all swore to defend the Constitution. That used to mean something. There was a time when our representatives debated about whether a proposed bill was constitutional. There was a time when Presidents vetoed bills they deemed unconstitutional. There was a time when the Supreme Court struck down legislation that they believed to be unconstitutional. None of that happens much any more.
No, the Bill of Rights was originally about how the federal government imposed itself on the myriad experiments of local governance.
Forcing the limits of the federal government onto the states is one of these “feel good” actions with a bad hangover.
At the time of the founding the Bill of Rights was a limit on the federal government, not the state and local government. Yes, towns could limit your free speech (in modern terms), for example: pornography, blasphemy, obscenity. Crazy talk about evolution, non-binary genders, whatever. I’m not saying I favor all that nor am I saying I oppose all that. I favor people having a big say not just in their own lives but in how their community is to operate, and that involves differing ideas of good, just, harm, limit, etc.
Book of Daniel reference.
Diversity is not strength.
I’m not sure what it is I said that you’re disagreeing with. Are you saying that the voters of a state could confiscate weapons, deny free speech, or end the freedom of the Press? Are you saying that our elected leaders are adhering to their oaths to defend and protect the Constitution?
Was eliminating slavery in all states a “feel good” action? What is the bad hangover from giving women the right to vote?
Diversity of knowledge, ideas, skills, and talents is strength. Diversity as Progressives define it (all skin colors are good except white; all cultures are valid except Western Civilization) certainly isn’t.
Warren Harding? Bill Clinton?
If we get three tries, my last one is Prohibition, if it happened after female suffrage. (I was sick the day they covered that, or it might have been Senior Cut Day.)
Otherwise, I want to hang on to my pencil till time is up or I think of something.
100% YES.
But to get specific… I take you to be in agreement with French. If I’m wrong on that, I apologize. That brand of conservatism makes it impossible (and remain consistent) for conservatives to be in opposition to Drag Queen Story Hour. Drag Queens have the same Bill of Rights protections that I have, but it should be that communities can define what is appropriate for kids in their publicly funded libraries.
If my community says Drag Queen Story hour is not allowed, it isn’t NYC’s prerogative to sic the Supreme Court on me. It’s a matter between my FL community and the drag queens in our local court under our local bylaws. Not NYC’s bylaws under the 9th circuit court.
This does mean my community may not be a place where Drag Queens wish to be (I actually think they’d find rural OC a bit boring), but it also means another community can be as welcoming and open to them as they want to be. And as long as that free and open society is not dictating my community’s school curriculum, we are able to live peaceably as two distinctly different communities.
I don’t really understand this either (I’m clearly having a bad day).
Bad hangover is women voting for government to provide security and protection for them and others. Nanny state comes from women.
Interesting. Any other amendments with bad hangovers (other than Prohibition and Repeal, of course)?
I wasn’t aware that Drag Queen Story Hour was being forced on communities. Where is this happening? If it is, I oppose it. On the other hand, if the people of Venice, California want Drag Queen Story Hour, then go for it.
Or if California finds that plastic straws are a menace, or NYC thinks Big Gulps are oppressive, or if Deadwood requires that all cowboys check their firearms with the sheriff before entering town in order to cut down on gunslinging, or if Las Vegas wants to be a libertine playground, or if California finds cigarettes to contain carcinogens but North Carolona does not. Also, states and localities have their own charters and they can guarantee specific rights to eliminate room for interpretation.
Corporations are people too. Government entities in the US are all incorporated in various ways. That incorporation happens with the consent of the governed, and it is perpetuated and amended the same way. There is no getting around that, and over-restricting the political arm of We The People means that we eliminate one of the best ways to peacefully resolve disputes over things like justice, harm, good, limits, etc.
That doesn’t mean that I think everything is allowable or on the table.
The two things I read from Vermeule contained errors in assessment and errors in logic. However, I don’t think your critique here is correct either. Vermeule argues the opposite: the current jurisprudence does not allow for diverse notions of a life worth living and the ability of people (and People) to pursue those notions in real communities as opposed to tyrannical collectives or utopian individuals living next to one another as if they were on individual islands.
I don’t think this is correct. My recollection is that Rubio did describe what he means by common good and he did describe policy; I recall his descriptions being well in line with conservative thought and well within Constitutional limits. Vermeule, on the other hand, is more unclear, but I think it can vary depending on the community; my guess is that he would say that we shouldn’t be so concerned about abuse that we also restrict ourselves from the ultimate purpose of incorporating government anyway – the common good. What is abuse and what is common good are both determined by the people through self government – backed up by checks , balances, and armed revolution if necessary.
Rubio’s expressed philosophy is fundamentally opposed to that of liberalism, in particular, modern American conservatism. Conservatives see the questions of
primarily through the prism of the individual. They take the view of the Founders.
Rubio, like the Marx, sees history, morality, and political economics entirely through the prism of the collective, the community, the class.
He quotes Pope Leo XIII:
He means the working class produces value for the collective. No mention is made of the primary importance of individuals voluntarily creating value for themselves and for other individuals. Rather than being a mere description of the particular conditions of an individual as a result of his individual decisions (he decided to make a living in this way or that), as it is for us conservatives, class is regarded as an axiomatic category, and the individual possesses a class as an inherent property. The class has precedence over the individual.
The role of the State is likewise conceived of entirely in the context of class.
He goes on and on in the same class-based language of Marx and Engels. Please read it again.