Quote of the Day - common good

This quote comes from John Jay, author of several of the Federalist Papers and the first Chief Justice of the United States. It's a good example of what most people who advocate sacrificing individual good for the 'common good' forget.

John Jay was a founding
father and President of the
Continental Congress.

"[T]he government must be a weak one indeed, if it should forget that the good of the whole can only be promoted by advancing the good of each of the parts or members which compose the whole." ~ John Jay

Side note:  the title is Chief Justice of the United States, not Chief Justice of the Supreme Court....something that often trips up trivia contestants.

Quotes of the day - individualism vs. collectivism

"Republicans don't know how to defend morally an individual's right to achieve wealth and to keep it, and that is why they fail. ... It's part and parcel with their ambivalence over the individualist heritage of the nation. ... One of the things that people have to understand is that the American Revolution was truly an epic revolution in the way individuals were perceived in relation to the rest of the society. Throughout history individuals had always been cogs in some machine; they'd always been something to be sacrificed for the king, the tribe, the gang, the chieftain, the society around them, the race, whatever, and the real revolution, in America especially, was a moral revolution. It was a moral revolution in that ... suddenly, with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the individual, his life, his well-being, his property, his happiness became central to our values, and thatis what really made America unique. People came here from all over the world to try to escape the kind of oppression they had and experienced in the past. They came here for freedom; they came here for self-expression and self-realization, and America offered them that kind of a place." ~ Robert Bidinotto

"If it's true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the others here for?" ~ Robert Anton Wilson

"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." ~ Hillary Clinton

Quotes of the Day - individualism

"Paradoxical as it may seem, men and women who are free to pursue individualism and material wealth turn out to be the most compassionate of all." ~ Lawrence Lindsey

"Individualism is at once an ethical-psychological concept and an ethical-political one. As an ethical-psychological concept, individualism holds that a human being should think and judge independently, respecting nothing more than the sovereignty of his or her mind; thus, it is intimately connected with the concept of autonomy. As an ethical-political concept, individualism upholds the supremacy of individual rights ..." ~ Nathaniel Branden

"The fact that most people think that being selfish means harming one's fellow man, that pursuing one's own self-interest equates to behaving brutally or irrationally, is, as Ms. Rand noted, a "psychological confession" on their part. In fact it is against one's own long-term self-interest to behave irrationally or trample others. Such actions are the exact opposite of selfish -- they're self-destructive." ~ Wayne Dunn