common good

The CivicMinded Companion
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common good (11/08/07) - community-wide benefits and ideals that outweigh any single individual's or group's needs or desires; the goals for which individuals are willing to make contributions and sacrifices for the benefit of the entire community or society. Also, GREATER GOOD, PUBLIC GOOD.

Journal entry ~

To find an example of the common good, I needed to look no further than the headlines November 8, 2007.

The House and Senate passed the Water Resources Development Act over President Bush's veto and authorized $23 billion for water projects that will benefit the nation as a whole. The bill included everything from restoring the Florida Everglades and the Gulf Coast areas hit by Hurricane Katrina to sewage plants, dams, and other critical infrastructure. President Bush exercised his veto power saying the bill promised "hundreds of earmarks."

In contrast, forty-five years ago, upon approval of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project in Pueblo, Colorado, President John F. Kennedy said, “A rising tide lifts all the boats.” Progress in Colorado is progress for the nation. “We are not 50 countries—we are one country of 50 States and one people. And I believe that those programs which make life better for some of our people will make life better for all of our people.”

He then called on Congress to write “a conservation record second to none,” to add three national seashore areas to the National Park System (Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Point Reyes in California, and Padre Island off the Texas coast) and enact “an open space program for our cities; a significant wilderness bill; and youth employment opportunities which would authorize a youth conservation corps.”

President Kennedy recognized that truly beneficial programs have "significance" beyond their specific location, their immediate constituencies, and their moment in time. For him, the common good was a very expansive concept. I'm still working on how to capture that feeling in a definition.

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Quotes and notes ~

President John F. Kennedy: "A rising tide lifts all the boats."
Remarks upon approval of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, August 17, 1962, Pueblo, Colorado.

"At the core of our national character is the belief that government should serve the common good and ensure the protection, prosperity and opportunity of all people. The federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina was profoundly disturbing and broke faith with that belief." Katrina and the Common Good, Center for American Progress, August 25, 2006

Preamble to the U.S. Constitution
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

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