In a political campaign among contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, it is striking that one central Christian religious theme seems absent: the theme of the common good. Gingrich, Romney, and Santorum, have each invoked some religious ideas from their respective traditions. Gingrich, who has multiple traditions from which to draw (he was originally a Lutheran, later an evangelical Southern Baptist, and more recently a Roman Catholic), Romney, from Mormonism, and Santorum from a kind of hybrid evangelical Roman Catholicism. Gingrich has played the "personal confession of transgressions leads to forgiveness" card rather effectively so far. Santorum has played to conservative evangelicals who want a more public display of their religious beliefs. But Romney is a bit of mystery: he does not in any way disown his Mormon heritage but he seems to want to run away from the theme of the common good which goes all the way back to Joseph Smith.
For all of these candidates the legacy of the notion of the common good seems somewhat embarrassing. Why? Because it is a notion that trumps the current rhetoric of radical individualism and minimal government. It is an uncomfortable notion that does not sit easily with the call to free people from the burdens of having to care for others especially when such care may well entail a tax on one's resources. As numerous commentators have noted this upcoming presidential election may well turn out to be a referendum on two competing visions of American society or community. In the one vision, represented by the conservative wing of the Republican party, government's role in helping meet the needs of the most disadvantaged should be minimal if not entirely non-existent. Individuals are expected to make it on their own and they should not be subject to any limitations on their right to be free from any socially imposed obligations to help those who haven't made it. At its most extreme this view can be found in Ron Paul's embrace of Ayn Rand's philosophy. Personal charity, it is argued, is the only remedy for dealing with the casualties of a free market, and charity comes from the heart, not from coercively imposed taxes or mandated social policies). In the other vision, not nearly as well articulated by politicians as the conservative one, society is a community of persons who do have moral obligations to care for the good of the whole, not just the economic advancement of individual persons with the means to become wealthy and successful.
The irony in the ideas of the Republican candidates is that the traditional teachings of Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, and even evangelical Protestantism give a moral priority to the common good over the private good. In the Roman Catholic tradition, the good of the whole was always morally superior to individual good since the good of the individual could only be realized in community. The early Christian church practiced a community (some would say a communism) of goods. The Roman Catholic bishops in the United States in their 1985 "Economic Justice for All" called for the preferential option for the poor in economic policy. One hears little of that in the speeches of Gingrich and Santorum. The first Protestant settlers in New England also understood that the needs of the community took priority over the wants of the individual. As John Winthrop said in his "Model of Christian Charity", we are a community knit together in such bonds of love, affection and justice that we must be willing to give up what we possess if our neighbor's need demands it. And this must be, he insists, a matter of public policy, not private charity. "The care of the publique must oversway all private interests, for it is a true rule that perticuler estates cannot subsist in the ruinue of the publique." {sic} It's very difficult to hear the arguments against taxing the inordinately wealthy as reflecting anything of that evangelical sentiment and social imperative.
Mitt Romney might have an even more difficult time squaring his Mormon heritage with his platform of freeing the business world to pursue its interests without any kind of social regulations or restraints. Joseph Smith's original "Law of Consecration and Stewardship," drawing on the communism of the earliest Christian churches, required all members of the community to consecrate or deed all personal property to the bishop of the church for distribution to "the poor and needy." And the Republicans call Obama a socialist? The Mormon community was not, having reached Utah, a withdrawn separatist body eschewing all political or governmental connections. Romney's tax returns are clear evidence that he actually acknowledges the imperative to give of one's wealth (at least 10 percent) to help the poor and needy in the Mormon community. Why would he acknowledge the moral imperative of communal obligation within his church but refuse to acknowledge it within the nation he wants to lead as President? Perhaps this refusal is of a piece with his support of an individual mandate to purchase health insurance in Massachusetts and his rejection of the same mandate for the nation as a whole.
Why is it that ostensibly Christian candidates want to run away from one of the most enduring and categorical moral imperatives of the Christian faith? There is nothing in the Christian faith that weds it necessarily to a free-market quasi-libertarian economic and political philosophy. Christian moral teaching has always expected Christians in political and economic power to use their power to address the needs of those who have fallen by the wayside. Christian theology insists that God gave, by grace, his only Son in order to meet the needs of a sinful people who couldn't earn their way to salvation. Christianity has no notion that the only way for people to get what they need for a humane and fulfilling life is by earning it on their own. Christianity knows that persons are made for community and that just as their advantages come from their inheritance of common wealth, so they are obligated to contribute to that common wealth.
Mark Rosenman: Charitable Inequality
Ponderings on a Faith Journey: Seeking the Common Good in the ...
However, this beneficial natural balance is disturbed when government steps and in starts favoring one party over another. Then the chosen few, because of coercion of the government against its competitors, reap monopoly profts for the few to the harm of the many. This is "crony capitalism". This is true of companies that seek favors and privileges from the government and labor unions that seek favors and privileges from the government. That is why federal employee wages are about 50% than wages for comparable jobs in the private sector. Similarly, state labor unions have much higher wages than similarly skilled workers in the private sector. Labor unions try to achieve high wages for their members at the expense of the rest of society, rather than seeking the balance that would result from free markets in labor, goods, serices and capital. I believe the common good is better served with lesser government intervention.
I also do not know of any conservative who wants government to abandon the truly needy in society, those who do not have the capacity to earn their way in a competitive society and whose families are not able to care for them. My own estimation is that the numbers of such people are perhaps 5% of the population. We need a safety net for these people of sufficient depth and strength that such people may live in dignity.
Russ Frandsen
Generally, a 10% proift margin is about the highest long-term profit margin that can be sustained. if a company achieves a higher profit margin over the long-term, it is likely that government has interfered in the market place to confer a benefit on the company by limiting competition.
On the other side of the equation, a company that wants to make good products and good services to survive in the market place will want to hire skillful and reliable employees. Employees that show their value are often hired by competitors at higher wages so that the competitor can deliver better goods and services at a lower price. In a free market, high wages and lower profit margin eventually come into balance to the benefit of everyone. This is the great benefit of a free market in labor, goods and services. The profit motive in a free market will always result in the highest wages to employees and the lowest profit margin to the companies. Of course, if the profit margin is not high enough, then the company goes out of business, allowing the competitors to raise prices until an adequate profit margin is achieved. There is a beneficial natural balance. This is how true economic social justice is achieved.
How can you ignore the tremendous burden placed on the middle and lower middle classes, and young people by the tremendous transfer payments from the young and poor to the much wealthier and better-off retired class through medicare and social security? Most of the recipients of medicare and social security could otherwise provide for themselves without coercing tranfer payments from the young and less well off to the older and better off.
Conservatives believe (at least this conservative) that economic social justice will be achieved more readily through free markets and free competition. The result of free markets and free competition is higher wages for workers and lower prices for consumers. Free markets and free competition will always act as a very effective check on a wealthy and privileged class. Free markets and free competition will result in a few people obtaining wealth, obviously, but the number will be relatively few. The reason is that if a company is making a large profit, then competitors will always discover it and will then offer competing goods and services at a lower price in order to capture the above-market rate of profit. As a result, the goods and services are offered at a lower prices. Then the company that had been making an above-market rate of profit will have to lower prices to meet the competiton and perhaps sell lower than the new competition, thus lowering the profit margin.
Another ineluctable consequence of government coercion by the few to implement the common good is that the intended recipients often suffer more harm than good because government coercive acts always have unintended consequences. The conservative view (my conservative view) is that the common good and the plight of the poor are better served by less intrusive government. I do not understand why you and others who advocate government as the means of implementing government programs as the means of achieving economic social justice do not recognize the empirical results of perhaps well-intended but ultimately failed programs. How can you ignore the breakdown of the family and other social and cultural norms necessary to a healthy society among the welfare class - including the welfarce class in all ethnicities?
Yes, those who are old and disabled do get straight financial assistance from the Church, especially through the Fast Offering Fund that is replenished on the first Sunday of every month when Mormons fast from two meals and donate the food money saved to help feed the poor. But the thrust of Mormon aid to those in financial need is typified by the Perpetual Education Fund, that makes low interest loans to Mormons in developing countries where a small amount of money can make a big difference in their earning potential, and they repay it and help the next person in line.
This was specifically NOT a "welfare" program in the way we moderns think of it. Poor people were not given an allowance to get food and rent an apartment. They were given pieces of land and other resources so they could WORK it as their own stewardship and make it prosper and, hopefully, raise a surplus that could then be shared with other people who were starting out poor but expected, through their work, to become prosperous.
The irony is that the rest of us continue to believe that a professional politician is someho more qualified to write and understand complex economic and social legislation than others. The real irony is that no one really bothers to look for better solutions to age old problems until they are forced too.
The political stance of these people is, essentially, that competition always leads to the 'best' outcomes. The reality is that singly, without cooperation between us, competition alone neither ensures survival not any common good.
If it’s true that “Society is a community of persons who do have moral obligations to care for the good of the whole”, then we must remember that that includes every one of all religions and the faithless. To me it seems clear that we’ll never see “common good” from religious sects. It doesn’t promote their cause.
The problem is that the Mormon outlook, including the church welfare system, really does exist part-in-parcel with distrust of governmental power--perhaps its Mormon clannishness, perhaps the view that the federal government either failed to protect Mormon rights (in the 1830s & 40s) or actively persecuted the Church (during the "Mormon War" of the late 1850s, when they US army actually marched on Salt Lake, & during the anti-polygamy persecution of a couple of decades afterwards). The Mormon view is not anti-government, but it does view far reaching governmental power w/ distrust.
Also, keep in mind that the Church welfare system really does a good job of taking care of and assisting those who suffer financial hardship (both long & short term) in Mormon ranks. I can recall that it was a point of pride that the Church welfare system does a far more efficient job w/ far less overhead than the government version. The Mormon view is, frankly, that the problem of poverty would quietly pass away if all component segments of the society looked after their people in a similiarly efficient manner.
And when that happens, even the most couch-potatoe-y consumer of bread and circuses will have realized that it's not really making a lot of sense to tell voters that you want their vote in order to do what's best for them in a world in which it doesn't require anybody asking for votes so that what's best for them can be done....
Get it?
It's absurd.
The greeks found out about that. In 400 BC. It's called democracy.
And it means you vote for somebody because he knows a thing or two about THE COMMON GOOD.
The commons changes the conversation from "me" to "we" (aka, another way of saying the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent doesn't work).
http://wisdomvoices.com/on-the-commons-its-about-we-not-just-me/
:-)