America’s debate over the common good has shifted from a founding principle to a partisan battleground.
Founders’ View of the Common Good
James Madison argued that government’s first duty is to protect the differing faculties of individuals, a principle set out in Federalist No. 10.
The Constitution’s preamble secures liberty as the paramount “Blessings of Liberty,” while limiting congressional power to those enumerated in Article I, Section 8, a point reinforced by Madison in Federalist No. 41.
Madison never called for the state to equalize economic outcomes, insisting that such interference would erode liberty.
Progressive Era’s Challenge to Constitutional Limits
Woodrow Wilson and progressive reformers claimed the Constitution hindered purposeful governance, prompting the creation of an administrative state that operated beyond the separation of powers.
Michael Oakeshott described this shift as a move from a rules‑based civil association to a teleocratic enterprise association, where government seeks specific social outcomes rather than protecting individual rights.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Wickard v. Filburn exemplifies how property rights were curtailed in the name of social justice, a development postliberals attribute to progressive expansion of state power.
Postliberal Critiques and the Search for Flourishing
Vice President JD Vance argues that markets serve as means to broader ends such as family stability, while Patrick Deneen contends that liberalism undermines traditional moral restraints necessary for human flourishing.
Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl maintain that liberty and flourishing are compatible when government protects the freedom to pursue a self‑directed good life, a view rooted in Aristotelian virtue ethics.
They stress that rights establish metanorms allowing individuals to shape their own happiness, not that the state defines the good life.
Restoring the Common Good
Conservative scholars like Kenneth Minogue warn that a “servile mind” replaces moral agency with conformity to prevailing opinions, eroding the virtues of prudence, thrift and self‑control that the Founders deemed essential for political liberty.
Progressivism, not classical liberalism, is responsible for weakening the institutions—rule of law, property rights, free markets and constitutional checks—that sustain the common good.
Recovering the founding conception of the common good means reinstating the constitutional framework that safeguards liberty while allowing diverse communities to pursue happiness according to their own values.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
