The Common Good
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Two years in the armed services or in some other service to the nation would help instill in all young people a sense of their obligations to society, regardless of their family’s wealth or status. It would allow young Americans to connect with other Americans who differ from them by race, social class, and politics. Not incidentally, it might also remind many upper-income Americans of the personal costs and risks of American foreign policy.
Public service could take many forms in addition to military service. The Peace Corps could be revived and expanded. Projects like Teach For America could be enlarged and extended to other service professions, like Social Work for America. Nonprofits could offer a range of public service work. All such recruits would be paid a modest stipend, at least living expenses plus interest payments on any student loans. That would be less than the current pay of “all-volunteer” army recruits.
Whenever the idea of national service comes up, some object that no one should be forced to serve their country. In 2003, when George W. Bush proposed expanding AmeriCorps, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal grumbled that “the entire concept of paid volunteerism is an oxymoron.” Dick Armey, then House majority leader, opined, “We give least well when we give at the direction and supervision of the government. The idea that government can teach charity to America rings very hollow with me.”
Rubbish. Young people were forced to serve their country when we had a draft. We require children to attend school for sixteen years in order to learn the basics. Why shouldn’t they be required to put in two years of public service, to help learn the basics of citizenship? Besides, national service has nothing whatever to do with government teaching “charity.” It is about teaching civic virtue. Universities could also devote the second semester of the junior year to public service. This wouldn’t be a break from a student’s education but an inherent part of it.
Once learned, civic virtue must be practiced. As I hope I’ve made clear, our obligations as citizens go beyond voting, paying taxes, obeying the law, and serving on juries. We owe to one another our time and energies to improve our communities and to protect and strengthen our democracy. This should not be thought of as “charity,” either. It is a commitment to pass on to future generations a society that comes closer to its ideals than it was when it was passed on to us.
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I’ve noted that a majority of today’s Americans worry that the nation is losing its national identity. If you examine our history, you’ll see that the core of that identity has not been the whiteness of our skin or the uniformity of our ethnicity. It has been the ideals we share, the good we have held in common. If we are losing our national identity, it is not because we come in more colors or speak more languages than before. It is because we are losing our sense of common good. This is what must be restored.
That common good, as I have emphasized, is a set of shared commitments—to the rule of law, and to the spirit as well as the letter of the law; to our democratic institutions of government; to truth; to tolerance of our differences; to equal political rights and equal opportunity; to participating in our civic life, and making necessary sacrifices for the ideals we hold in common. We must share these commitments if we are to have a functioning society. They inform our judgments about right and wrong because they constitute our common good. Without them, there is no “we.”
Whether that common good can be recovered will depend in part on establishing a new ethic of leadership based on trusteeship; an appropriate application of honor and shame; a renewed commitment to truth; and a dedication to the civic education of our children and ourselves, about the obligations we owe one another as citizens.
Some of you may feel such a quest to be hopeless. The era we are living in offers too many illustrations of greed, narcissism, and hatefulness. I, however, firmly believe it is not hopeless. Almost every day I witness or hear of the compassion and generosity of ordinary Americans. Their actions rarely make headlines, but they constitute much of our daily life together. The challenge is to turn all this into a new public spiritedness extending to the highest reaches in the land—a public morality that strengthens our democracy, makes our economy work for everyone, and revives trust in the major institutions of America.
The moral fiber of our society has been weakened, but it has not been destroyed. We can recover the rule of law and preserve our democratic institutions by taking a more active role in politics. We can protect the truth by using facts and logic to combat lies. We can fight against all forms of bigotry. We can strengthen the bonds that connect us to one another by reaching out, and help resurrect civility by acting more civilly toward those with whom we disagree.
We have never been a perfect union. Our finest moments have been when we sought to become more perfect than we had been. We can help restore the common good by striving for it and showing others it’s worth the effort. I worked for Robert F. Kennedy a half century ago when the common good was well understood. Resurrecting it may take another half century, or more. But as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history.”
Acknowledgments
This book is the product of many conversations over the years with friends and associates too numerous to mention, but I owe special thanks to Harley Shaiken, Sasha Leitman, Andrew Santana, Mark Lilla, Adam Reich, and Aarin Walker. I am particularly indebted to my friend and editor for over thirty-five years, Jonathan Segal, who urged me to write this book, and to my wife, Perian Flaherty, who gave me the courage to do so.
Recommended Reading
The following list comprises my nominees for a basic curriculum in civic education. They’re documents, books (both nonfiction and fiction), speeches, a few poems, and even one film, all of which I believe to be particularly helpful in understanding the common good in America, and what it requires of us.
The Declaration of Independence (1776)
The Constitution of the United States (1787)
The Bill of Rights (1791)
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1868)
· · ·
Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning” (1993)
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
Black Hawk, Surrender speech (1832)
Brown v. Board of Education, U.S. Supreme Court (1954)
Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970)
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
Edmund Burke, “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents” (1770)
Frank Capra, screenplay for It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962)
Censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy (1954)
Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (1909)
Dred Scott v. Sandford, U.S. Supreme Court (1857)
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” (1841)
Gideon v. Wainwright, U.S. Supreme Court (1963)
Woody Guthrie, “This Land Is Your Land” (1944)
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, The Federalist Papers (1787–88)
Václav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless” (1978)
Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)
Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again” (1935)
Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801)
John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address (1961)
Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream” speech (1963)
Martin Luther King, Jr., Speech at the Great March on Detroit (1963)
Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” (1883)
Abraham Lincoln, Springfie
ld Lyceum speech (1838)
Abraham Lincoln, “A House Divided” speech (1858)
Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (1861)
Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863)
Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
James Madison, Letter to Thomas Jefferson (February 4, 1790)
Marbury v. Madison, U.S. Supreme Court (1803)
McCulloch v. Maryland, U.S. Supreme Court (1819)
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748)
George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism” (1945)
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” (1946)
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (1791)
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness” (1985)
Franklin D. Roosevelt, State of the Union Address (“The Four Freedoms”) (1941)
Theodore Roosevelt, “The New Nationalism” (1910)
Seneca Falls Declaration (1848)
David Simon, The Wire, TV series (2002–08)
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
Henry David Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849)
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835, 1840)
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786)
George Washington, Farewell Address (1796)
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)
John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630)
A Discussion Guide for The Common Good
I hope this book will encourage you to get together with others to discuss the common good. The following questions might guide such a discussion.
PART I What Is the Common Good?
1. How do you define “the common good” in America? What do Americans have in common other than national symbols like the flag and the national anthem? What do these symbols mean to you?
2. Do Americans have obligations to the nation in addition to paying taxes, serving on juries, and voting? If so, what are they?
3. Some say Americans are selfish and self-centered. Others point to acts of kindness and courage—first responders to emergencies, everyday acts of altruism. How would you describe our national character?
4. Has America’s character changed over time—since your parents were children, for example? If so, how and why?
5. Do you trust government to do the right thing most of the time? Do you believe in our system of government—the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, federalism, and the rule of law?
6. What’s the difference between a concern for the common good and nationalism?
7. What role does a president play in setting the moral tone of the nation?
PART II What Happened to the Common Good?
8. Why has the public’s trust in all major American institutions—especially government, big businesses, banks, and the media—plunged over the past forty years? What events or trends have been most responsible for the decline?
9. Americans appear to have become far more partisan than we were forty years ago—liberals have moved to the “left” and conservatives to the “right,” Republicans and Democrats are less willing to compromise, and everyone seems to be angrier. Why has this happened?
10. Have widening inequalities of income and wealth played a part?
11. Has the flood of big money into our political system played a part?
12. Are the two related?
13. Why before the 1980s did big corporations have responsibilities toward their communities and their workers, in addition to their shareholders? Why after the 1980s did big corporations focus solely on maximizing profits and shareholder returns? Should corporations go back to their former ways?
14. A major theme in the 2016 presidential election, coming from both major parties, was that the economic system is “rigged” for the benefit of those at the top. Why did this theme appear so prominently in 2016 and not before? Do you agree with it?
PART III Can the Common Good Be Restored?
15. What are the attributes of good leadership? Do leaders of business, government, and the media have responsibilities to restore trust in their institutions? If so, how should they go about it?
16. What roles do honor and shame play in contemporary American society? Ideally, who should be honored and for what, and who should be shamed and for what? How should such honoring and shaming occur?
17. Who do you trust to inform you about public issues such as climate change, the economy, or dangers posed by foreign governments? What are the qualities or characteristics you look for in deciding whom to trust in conveying the truth?
18. Does a democracy depend on a shared reality, or can a democracy function with people believing fundamentally different facts?
19. Are Americans adequately educated about how government and the economy are supposed to work, as well as how they actually work? If not, what should that education consist of, and when should it begin?
20. Do Americans have sufficient understanding of the obligations of citizenship? If not, who should be responsible for providing this understanding? Parents? Teachers? Public officials?
21. Do we have an obligation to break out of our self-made “bubbles” of friends, neighbors, and Internet algorithms that confirm everything we believe? If so, how can we do it? If not, can we still be effective participants in our democracy?
22. How do you think the common good can best be restored?
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert B. Reich is currently Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He has served in three national administrations, including as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers Saving Capitalism, Aftershock, Supercapitalism, and The Work of Nations, which has been translated into twenty-two languages. He is co-creator of the 2017 Netflix original documentary Saving Capitalism and of the award-winning 2013 film Inequality for All. He is chairman of Common Cause, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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