Many of those who call themselves “common good conservatives” seem less interested in the any good for the good shared by all American, and more interested in their collective group ruling over the other collective group in a dichotomic system, where by elevating some above others is the only way to benefit the overall American collective, and thus the only way for the ruled to benefit. This is much the same as with their view of what makes America what it is: An American has value because their membership in the collective grants them value and the ruled can only have value by virtue of being ruled, that rule over them being the purported prerequisite for overall collective greatness.
This is a quintessentially Left-wing world view, and fits in nicely with social corporatism.
“Shortly after he was confirmed as President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary, Sean Duffy circulated a memo that instructed his department to prioritize families by, among other things, giving preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average when awarding grants.”
With the increased desire to see America not as some icky “idea”, but as a historic people and land, they see it as their duty to provide more domestic blut for the boden. People who contribute to the collective good by doing what the government dictates is good will be rewarded directly for their obedience, while those who don’t will be denied, having to rely on their rewards as the ruled portion of the overall collective. That people who would benefit were already doing this does not detract from the corporatist character of the proposal.
In contrast, a policy that works towards a common good would be indiscriminate in who it targets. People would be free to benefit from it or not. While conducive towards beneficial or beneficent ends, it neither requires nor directly rewards; vice versa while those policies might be dissuasive, they neither prohibit nor directly punish.
While some may see this as a disticntion without a difference, the difference is manifest. Rather than the government using the carrot and stick to mould society in the manner of an intelligent designer, it provides a uniform Rule of Law that serves as the fertile ground where both carrots and wood can grow with the choice of what to grow, and the natural consequences thereof, up to our individual liberty, restrained not by the government, but by societal consequences.
The individual ought to—must—be above the collective, and the common that we as individual Americans share is the lens through which we all benefit.
