Tapsearch Com EditorExcavating the Common Good
March 7th 2009 19:55
By Ray Tapajna, editor and artist at Tapart News and Art that Talks - and note other pages here at The Rationale Quest about our pursuit of the common good.
I'm back at my dig again excavating the common good ( and the common law ) which have been in place for many centuries. Unfortunately each new generation thinks they got something better or a faster pragmatic way to do things. " It's my choice" , rules the game in our times. So, we have to uncover the common good again.
Excavating the Common Good
Kevin Obrien, top journalist and assistant editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, tried his hand at excavating individual freedom relating to who should control the irregularities in the corporate business world. He asks who should regulate the flow of commerce. He doubts if big government can do it. The title to his article is [ B] Hot recovery tip: Buy morality [/B] . We will bring him into our discussion during our next posts but first we need to make some very important distinctions. Society is not just a collection of individual freedoms. Kevin is openly a strong Conservative but as we are finding out today, once the investment and financial communities were bailed out by big government, we are now all practicing Capitalist Socialists. Conservatives must meet this challenge by becoming Populists to advert this terrible substraction from the common good.
Liberals try to live their lives thinking they have found something new and special to upgrade society. I think even most of them know deep down that they have not found anything that great and most of the things they try are old hat. As we see in our society, we have individual freedoms banging against each other. The end result is a constant division of good intentions multiplying into chaos. ( I can not see how any liberal can claim an achievment in civil rights when reportedly 40 percent of all young blacks in the inner city are unemployed and our prison population is breaking all records with blacks being the major proportion of this population. )
On the corporate business level, we have experienced economic chaos because of individual freedoms have created all kinds of funny money games. Our economies based on making money on money instead of making things at reasonable markup in balance with localized geopolitical settings has hit a wall. The direct cause of our global economic crisis is Free Trade and Globalization. Local value added economies have been shredded into pieces and scattered around the world in a random fashion. Even people of good will promote this dysfunctional process with many declaring their individual freedom rights to worship at the altar of greed. This keeps reminding me of all the times I was told in the business world that my moral outlook on things were all well and good, but I had to live in the real world.
Obviously, too many find it impossible to forward their worship services from one day a week to function in the other six days of the week.
Many others including those in the educational communities and news channels act as plantation owners thinking they know what is best for those in the lower classes. They come from the top down instead of the other way. President Obama now is on the top of the mountain of big government acting as a plantation owner.
What is difference between a President Ronald Reagan who pushed his trickle down theories of the capitalist world and a President Barack Obama who tries the same thing from the mountain top of big government. President Obama trickle down economic recovery stimulus plan will run out of energy half way down to the mountain and I doubt it will get that far. The multitude will still be unnetted and segregated from the good life.
The free enterprise system should be pulling the cart. President Obama puts the cart before the horse. See View Obama in his cart before the horse and overview of our cart before the horse economy The free enterprise system has been thrashed by both major political parties.
President Reagan pushed the payroll tax up to 15 percent. It represents a flat tax and acts as a tariff on work and labor. ( See - Workers Dignity Crushed The payroll tax knocks the U.S. out of competition in the global economic arena. President Obama ignores this heavy tariff on work with 70 percent of all workers paying more in payroll tax than they do in income tax. President Obama talks against protectionism ( really a mirage in free traders minds) while tariffs are put on work and labor instead of goods.
This makes President Obama's tax credits a laugh. The tax credits only go to the upper classes who are making money already and not to those who are in great need.
( Sorry - I got caught up with the political side of things again too deeply. I wanted to explore the common good first - so let me get back to my original intent for this post. )
Members of a society are not only individuals but persons too. As a person, each is subject to an order of things that transcends individual freedoms. The goal of every effort is to satisfy the common good and not particular seeemingly goods based on lesser values. A person is a human being as distinguished from an animal or thing. Personality represents a complex of characteristics that distinguishes an individual from the group. A person has rationale reasoning to distinquish what the ultimate truths are and the search for perfect love that is common to all. A person must seek truth among a multitude of individual selections.
The common law evolved through a selection process and represent a way to attaining the common good in societies. It is vividly on the books but hidden from view by liberals and globalist free traders. Any regulation process is already has a resource in the common law. However, when individualism rules the game, the concept of all values, rights, and duties originate from the individual rather than the common good in a rational manner. Individualism usually is not consistent with the rational conclusion relating to the common good. The end of the state is the common good and it is not a collection of advantages and utilities as pragmatic devices. The object of the state must begin and end with good as good and not as a means to an end even if that end is the common good. ( In this frame of reference, the state could be considered a religion too. In our times we see liberals trying to subsitute the state for other religions - actually to the surprise of believers, the state does have the power to save the world since the state is actually the representation of all the people and should have as its ultimate end , the common good and the common law)
The common good must begin and end with good. It must be a good in itself. The common good is ethically good at all stages in any process. The human person is an unfortunate material individual borned in a depraved state - full of needs. Only the rational person posesses the power to rise to a higher state. Each person must not only surpass themselves but also must surpass other individuals and the community seeking the whole good. In many of our education systems, the theme of naturalism still plays where it is believed that persons are born naturally good and it is society and culture that degrades them. This concept governs many of our tendency towards individualism that contract the common good. In our next post, we will try to align this with our economic world and what Kevin Obrien is saying. The object of the common good has to be something entirely good in itself. Choosing the lesser of two evils is always a step backwards in any effort. Substituting something that is a pragmatic solution subtracts from the common good and does not add to it. Our current economic crisis is a result of too many subtractions from the common good.
I'm back at my dig again excavating the common good ( and the common law ) which have been in place for many centuries. Unfortunately each new generation thinks they got something better or a faster pragmatic way to do things. " It's my choice" , rules the game in our times. So, we have to uncover the common good again.
Excavating the Common Good
Kevin Obrien, top journalist and assistant editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, tried his hand at excavating individual freedom relating to who should control the irregularities in the corporate business world. He asks who should regulate the flow of commerce. He doubts if big government can do it. The title to his article is [ B] Hot recovery tip: Buy morality [/B] . We will bring him into our discussion during our next posts but first we need to make some very important distinctions. Society is not just a collection of individual freedoms. Kevin is openly a strong Conservative but as we are finding out today, once the investment and financial communities were bailed out by big government, we are now all practicing Capitalist Socialists. Conservatives must meet this challenge by becoming Populists to advert this terrible substraction from the common good.
Liberals try to live their lives thinking they have found something new and special to upgrade society. I think even most of them know deep down that they have not found anything that great and most of the things they try are old hat. As we see in our society, we have individual freedoms banging against each other. The end result is a constant division of good intentions multiplying into chaos. ( I can not see how any liberal can claim an achievment in civil rights when reportedly 40 percent of all young blacks in the inner city are unemployed and our prison population is breaking all records with blacks being the major proportion of this population. )
On the corporate business level, we have experienced economic chaos because of individual freedoms have created all kinds of funny money games. Our economies based on making money on money instead of making things at reasonable markup in balance with localized geopolitical settings has hit a wall. The direct cause of our global economic crisis is Free Trade and Globalization. Local value added economies have been shredded into pieces and scattered around the world in a random fashion. Even people of good will promote this dysfunctional process with many declaring their individual freedom rights to worship at the altar of greed. This keeps reminding me of all the times I was told in the business world that my moral outlook on things were all well and good, but I had to live in the real world.
Obviously, too many find it impossible to forward their worship services from one day a week to function in the other six days of the week.
Many others including those in the educational communities and news channels act as plantation owners thinking they know what is best for those in the lower classes. They come from the top down instead of the other way. President Obama now is on the top of the mountain of big government acting as a plantation owner.
What is difference between a President Ronald Reagan who pushed his trickle down theories of the capitalist world and a President Barack Obama who tries the same thing from the mountain top of big government. President Obama trickle down economic recovery stimulus plan will run out of energy half way down to the mountain and I doubt it will get that far. The multitude will still be unnetted and segregated from the good life.
The free enterprise system should be pulling the cart. President Obama puts the cart before the horse. See View Obama in his cart before the horse and overview of our cart before the horse economy The free enterprise system has been thrashed by both major political parties.
President Reagan pushed the payroll tax up to 15 percent. It represents a flat tax and acts as a tariff on work and labor. ( See - Workers Dignity Crushed The payroll tax knocks the U.S. out of competition in the global economic arena. President Obama ignores this heavy tariff on work with 70 percent of all workers paying more in payroll tax than they do in income tax. President Obama talks against protectionism ( really a mirage in free traders minds) while tariffs are put on work and labor instead of goods.
This makes President Obama's tax credits a laugh. The tax credits only go to the upper classes who are making money already and not to those who are in great need.
( Sorry - I got caught up with the political side of things again too deeply. I wanted to explore the common good first - so let me get back to my original intent for this post. )
Members of a society are not only individuals but persons too. As a person, each is subject to an order of things that transcends individual freedoms. The goal of every effort is to satisfy the common good and not particular seeemingly goods based on lesser values. A person is a human being as distinguished from an animal or thing. Personality represents a complex of characteristics that distinguishes an individual from the group. A person has rationale reasoning to distinquish what the ultimate truths are and the search for perfect love that is common to all. A person must seek truth among a multitude of individual selections.
The common law evolved through a selection process and represent a way to attaining the common good in societies. It is vividly on the books but hidden from view by liberals and globalist free traders. Any regulation process is already has a resource in the common law. However, when individualism rules the game, the concept of all values, rights, and duties originate from the individual rather than the common good in a rational manner. Individualism usually is not consistent with the rational conclusion relating to the common good. The end of the state is the common good and it is not a collection of advantages and utilities as pragmatic devices. The object of the state must begin and end with good as good and not as a means to an end even if that end is the common good. ( In this frame of reference, the state could be considered a religion too. In our times we see liberals trying to subsitute the state for other religions - actually to the surprise of believers, the state does have the power to save the world since the state is actually the representation of all the people and should have as its ultimate end , the common good and the common law)
The common good must begin and end with good. It must be a good in itself. The common good is ethically good at all stages in any process. The human person is an unfortunate material individual borned in a depraved state - full of needs. Only the rational person posesses the power to rise to a higher state. Each person must not only surpass themselves but also must surpass other individuals and the community seeking the whole good. In many of our education systems, the theme of naturalism still plays where it is believed that persons are born naturally good and it is society and culture that degrades them. This concept governs many of our tendency towards individualism that contract the common good. In our next post, we will try to align this with our economic world and what Kevin Obrien is saying. The object of the common good has to be something entirely good in itself. Choosing the lesser of two evils is always a step backwards in any effort. Substituting something that is a pragmatic solution subtracts from the common good and does not add to it. Our current economic crisis is a result of too many subtractions from the common good.
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