To understand the erosion of how Americans interact these days, just look to our recent story of vaccinations.
For years, parents routinely got children inoculated so they wouldn’t get dreaded diseases like crippling polio or measles or diphtheria. They understood vaccines would protect their kids and their communities. Then along came Covid-19. Some 1.2 million Americas died – but many millions more didn’t die because they got a vaccine.
Unfortunately, anti-vaccine skeptics started moaning and groaning about the vaccine, which led to Americans questioning other vaccines that had been working for years. America, in fact, virtually erased the scourge of measles through a community-saving vaccine. But despite evidence, these folks looked away.
This year in South Carolina, particularly in Spartanburg County, too many decided they didn’t want their children vaccinated. As a result, measles raged for the first time in years, sickening 997 people and causing a national panic.
In short, the story of vaccines shows the unhealthy pivot from an America strengthened by communities to a me-focused culture that, in one sense, puts America last. We’ve gone from a common good culture of shared prosperity to a country of personal belief systems that prioritizes selfishness. We’re more “me” than “we.”
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., outlines how this shift in the nation’s focus is dangerous in a new book: Crisis of the Common Good: The fight for meaning and connection in a broken America (Farrar, Strus and Giroux, $29.00).
He explores the disintegration of our communities and how the short-term focus on political and economic gain is threatening the strengths of the nation’s communities.
“Everything in America not nailed down has become a commodity – even middle school hockey,” Murphy writes. “Every minute of our lives is fodder for profit maximization. And when everything exists primarily for someone else’s gain – even your child’s Saturday-afternoon game – it breeds emptiness and resentment. That discontent doesn’t stay contained. It spills, inevitably, into our politics.”
The book outlines why many Americans feel empty and unsatisfied because they aren’t connected to neighbors as much as they were two generations ago.
“It is the story of how we came to worship a set of false idols, causing us to forget the bond between true happiness and a connected life full of shared purpose with people about whom you care deeply.”
Murphy, who will be in Charleston July 24 to politick and talk about his book, noted that the country has gotten wealthier and more just over the last 50 years in many ways.
“But we have also retreated from shared prosperity, social contracts and small communities, building altars instead to profit, efficiency, consumer culture, technology, elite credentialism and winner-takes-all politics that consecrates corruption.”
After several chapters about various cults – the unhealthy focus on profit, technology, consumption and more – that have infected the nation’s psyche, Murphy offers 30 political prescriptions to thwart this crisis of the common good. Four examples:
- Increase the minimum wage to a living wage. Three in four Americans, he writes, support a $20 per hour minimum wage.
- Create a social capital fund. It would “support organizations, projects and ‘third places’ in communities that serve to connect individuals to one another.”
- Protect our spiritual health from poisonous technology. He recommends restricting children’s use of social media and holding social media companies liable for harms they cause.
- Require six months of national service for young Americans. Such a policy would restore the value of citizenship.
Five years ago, this space showcased how the nation of common good is built into America’s DNA to shrug off an oppressive system and take control of our destiny.
“The underlying principle generally was that people, not a king, would decide how to do things, which would benefit the majority. In challenging times for the common good, people were to give a little to save a lot down the road. Give some in taxes to build a road to benefit all. Give a little to provide for the common defense, education, good working conditions and economic infrastructure.”
We need to get back to the business of bolstering the common good, not tearing down America from the inside.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
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