The reality is that a common good must be common to all.

The reality is that a common good must be common to all.

Part 13 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics

So in this metaphysical whirlwind of a tour of how a respect for what is real and true can lead to well ordered and prudent thinking, we've also glimpsed how easily it can be undone. Those who do manage a sound philosophical framework, are better equipped to imagine living in a civil society, and begin conceiving of what would be required for such a society to sustain and maintain itself across time, without it at the same time becoming a powerful threat to them.

Man is a political animal. We naturally want to live in society with others, while at the same time we also want reasonable boundaries of separation between us and them; those who do care about what's real and true and about each other as well, are a people whose thoughts will bring them around to the idea of Individual Rights.

By focusing on the essentials, we can thumbnail how the reality of what is real and true, reveals and defines the concept of Individual Rights. Because it's rooted in the nature of being human (an expanded version of this here, and here), growing out of those actions which the reality of living as a human being requires a person to choose to perform. We must be able to engage in:

• thought,
• speech,
• association,
• action,
• the developing of convictions and abilities needed to identify what you value,
• the need to defend what you value against those adverse conditions and predators that may arise

, no one could be expected to live a fully human life without the ability to take such actions.

That is not only an undeniable truth, it's one that is true here, there, and everywhere there are human beings, and everywhen across time, and it is so because they are human beings first. It's true in the same way, for everyone, regardless of their environment or circumstances.

IOW: The need to take these actions is a central fact of Human Nature, that is expressed through an uncorrupted Common Sense.

What does vary by place and circumstance, is how well people recognize and respect these realities, , and whether we differentiate a sound we all hear as being only noise, or have developed the ability to identify that sound as C or C# Minor, both are done so with respect to what is real and true for all. Yet however that might be reflected in a society, the fact remains that human nature requires people to be able to take those actions that the nature of being human demands of them. To deny and/or deprive someone of the ability to do so, is at the very least, immoral, and it will foolishly deprive them of the 'Wealth of Nations'.

Shorter version: Individual Rights are what results from recognizing the logical consequences of creatures employing their Free Will in a rational respect for reality and the value of each person which was the gift of Judeo-Christian religion, truth and understanding will be recognized as the most vital tools of survival.

As that becomes understood, the reciprocal nature of individual rights becomes self-evident, and for that to be followed, we must apply it as a principle:

Individual Rights must be recognized and respected for every member of a society, or else no one can have a reasonable expectation of enjoying them.

Far from being the random whims of popular fancies or the privileges of a powerful few, each person has a responsibility to recognize that their own individual rights depend upon their respecting the same of everyone else in their society. Valuing the ability to live your own life, requires abiding by the principle of not treading upon another in exercising their rights, and also not advocating for or tolerating those of your fellows - friends or not - doing so to others you don't like. Unless those who constitute your community are committed to respecting and upholding the principle of individual rights for every individual in that community, then everyone will soon find themselves back to being only as free as their own muscles 'tooth & claw' can manage by force to keep the predators - animals or human - at bay - which is the norm that those who seek power, truly crave - across time.

That understanding is and must be a common understanding and highest value in a society - an actual Common Good - if that society is expected to be of value to its people.

To repudiate human nature, turns your own nature against yourself and humanity.

To effectively practice that principle requires two other features, because simply understanding that cannot provide the means of sustaining that sentiment in the face of the disagreements - honest and otherwise - that are sure to arise amongst people. Communities first need to establish a reasonable system for justly resolving the disputes and deliberate violations of those rights that may arise between individuals. Doing so requires a clear set of rules of engagement between people, that will be recognized and enforced by the people as a whole, and that is the basis of a Rule of Law, within a system for formulating and implementing them, which is the role of a Judicial System.

To go beyond an authoritarian sense of 'maintaining order', that system needs to have a deserved reputation for ensuring that all parties to a dispute will have the opportunity to make their best case, and have it honestly considered, according to written rules that are clear, reasonable, and applied equally to all without prejudice or preference, so that each party can agree that a judgement was fairly made, even when it goes against them.

While living in society naturally provides us with neighbors, it is only from orderly thinking that is centered around a respect for what is real and true, that the idea that 'good walls build good neighbors' will emerge, which is what the idea of the Rule of Law is meant to embody. The Law enables society's individuals to unite into one body politic, while upholding and defending the Individual Rights of all its members, provides the separation which preserves them as Individuals within that society, and as with 'Good walls make good neighbors', a healthy sense of individualism simultaneously recognizes the separation that individual rights affords them, and at the same time embraces the community which makes that possible.

It should be equally self-evident that for such a system to be practical, the people of the community must have the manners, morals, understanding, respect and reverence for what is real and true, that is necessary for sustaining it, which is what's behind John Adams comment that:

“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Our inalienable rights have and can only have real substance, by forming a community of people who have the manners, morals, and knowledge that equips them to understand their importance. Only in such a society that values each person, individually and in society together, can the concept of Liberty begin to arise, or long remain.

The 'lone wolf' image of liberty, is not only hogwash, it is a dialectical attack upon both Individuality and Liberty as such.

The third item required (in addition to law and morality), is one additional component - or rather recognizing its presence in the first two - that's needed in order to tie those abstractions of morality and law into the reality of day-to-day life, and that's the concept of Property, as understood in James Madison's brief essay on it.

The ability to respect another person's property - what they have property in - is what results from the people of a moral and lawful society recognizing and upholding the individual rights of its people. That tripartite awareness strengthens the bonds of trust between them, both protecting and encouraging their ability to make individual decisions within society, which enables them to enjoy living lives worth living.

Those are the blessing of liberty, and that is what enables happiness to become a normal aspiration in society, and a sound respect for law, morality, and property, are indispensable to that.

Liberty is a result of all of its working parts. That is the understanding that formed the bedrock of anglo-American law, which Lord Coke had expressed as :

"Everyman's home is his castle!"

, it's what enables it to have meaning, and it does so because the manners and morals of the people and their respect for the inseparability of individual rights/property rights, enables their laws to form the walls & battlements of each person's castle - but those battlements can only be as sound and sturdy as their understanding of the principles they rest upon.

It's at that level that those actions necessary for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are understood to be inalienable rights in our Declaration of Independence, and why our Bill of Rights forbid our government from making any laws - no matter their intent to aid or protect - that would infringe upon our individual ability to take those actions or to be secure in the property and relations that are the fruits of them (see the bullet points above... or James Madison's veto message).

For that reason I do not agree with a recently popular notion, especially popular amongst libertarians, that our Declaration of Independence would have been improved if Thomas Jefferson had used the phrase 'life, liberty, and property', instead of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'. Indeed, if our society, or any other, attempted to begin with (or revert us back to) the denuded notion of 'property' as an empirical factoid denoting physical possession alone (as utilitarians and 'classical liberals' like J.S. Mill would have it), rather than its being that crucial point which integrates the intersection of thought, action, and consequence, without which that society would be unlikely to lead to anything more than a crude and glittery form of barbarism which might blaze brightly, and briefly, but would surely burn itself out soon enough.

Liberty is not simply 'Individualism' (which in its narrow sense views human nature as being just as malleable as collectivism does, but on a smaller scale), and it's damn sure not 'Collectivism', it is what results from recognizing how individuals are able to live together in liberty, as a society which they all share in. Healthy individualism, simultaneously involves recognizing how people being able to act on their judgement, contributes to their community ('The Wealth of Nations'), and recognizes how the individual depends upon the community protecting their ability to do so - just as 'good walls make good neighbors', walls and neighbors give meaning and definition to each other - and in that sense, Liberty, is what results from a philosophical, societal, and religious union, of the proper relationship between individual and community - the one in the many.

The thoughtless savage - whether a Rousseauian savage, or J.S. Mill's savage 'individualist' - due to the paucity of their own conceptual development, never has and never will be able to engage in liberty, for as Edmund Burke said, 'their passions form their fetters'. They can know nothing more than the sparsest freedom of the moment, a moment that's always in peril, for if like Hume, they too cast their abstractions into the fire, then fire and strife becomes their sole destination.

That, all of that, is the basis for that real Good which a legitimate government should exist to uphold and preserve a judicial framework for. That sense of good is what is and should be common to all, and intentionally depriving some people of any part of it, diminishes the good - weakens the fortifications of everyone's castle - and cannot be 'for' a common good, or any 'good' at all.

Nothing can be said to be for the 'common good' or for the 'Greater Good', which begins by undermining, denying, ignoring or eliminating, the fundamental principles which make it possible for what is good, to become the common baseline which that society exists to preserve.

From that realization, should come a redoubled respect for what is real and true, and recognizing how central Truth must be to the enjoyment of liberty, comes additional reverence for it, which puts down sturdy roots for morality and conforming 'the pursuit of happiness' to them. There should also come a redoubled anger towards those who'd push the passive aggressive assault upon what is real and true that is relativism - 'your truth isn't my truth' - you should recognize the violent attack upon all you hold dear, which such sentiments as that undoubtedly are.

...notations from The Palmer Worm

That Common Sense view is not only the worldview that our Founders founded America upon, it is the worldview that enabled our Founders to found it. That worldview is what we need to fight to restore our understanding of, so that our society, laws, and governance, can endure - as Franklin said: 'A Republic, madam, if you can keep it!'.