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Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Most people are hardwired for some degree of cooperation with and compassion toward others. Human beings would not have survived on earth to this point were we entirely selfish.
THE COMMON GOOD consists of our shared values about what we owe one another as citizens who are bound together in the same society—the norms we voluntarily abide by, and the ideals we seek to achieve.
A concern for the common good—keeping the common good in mind—is a moral attitude. It recognizes that we’re all in it together. If there is no common good, there is no society.
it is our loyalties and attachments that define who we are.
IT IS IMPORTANT not to romanticize the past.
“Citizens who are bound to take part in public affairs must turn from their private interests and occasionally take a look at something other than themselves,” Tocqueville wrote.
Step by step, our system of government has been sacrificed to the goal of short-term political success.
When the only purpose of business is to make as much money as possible in the shortest time frame, regardless of how it’s done, the common good is easily sacrificed.
The values a president enunciates and demonstrates ricochet through society, strengthening or undermining the common good.
The purpose of leadership is not simply to win. It is to serve.
We must not normalize public lying. The common good requires vigilance against it, and the summoning of public shame when we find it.
Civic education must instill in young people a passion for truth. It should enable them to think critically, be skeptical (but not cynical) about what they hear and read, find reliable sources of information, apply basic logic and analysis, and know enough about history and the physical world to differentiate fact from fiction. They need to understand how important the truth is to democracy, and to our capacity to deliberate together about the common good.
