Contemporary American Usage
As regards contemporary American politics, the language of the common good (sometimes referred to as "public wealth") is increasingly being adopted by political actors of the progressive left to describe their values. Jonathan Dolhenty argues that one should distinguish between the common good, which may "be shared wholly by each individual in the family without its becoming a private good for any individual family member", and the collective good, which, "though possessed by all as a group, is not really participated in by the members of a group. It is actually divided up into several private goods when apportioned to the different individual members." First described by Michael Tomasky in The American Prospect magazine and John Halpin at the Center for American Progress, the political understanding of the common good has grown. The Take Back America Conference, the liberal magazine The Nation, and the Rockridge Institute have identified the common good as a salient political message for progressive candidates. More recently, the common good rhetoric is being used by political actors in an explicitly religious context, such as Kansans for Faithful Citizenship. In addition, non-partisan advocacy groups like Common Good are also championing reform efforts to support the common good.
Read more about this topic: Common Good
Famous quotes containing the words contemporary american, contemporary, american and/or usage:
“... black progress and progress for women are inextricably linked in contemporary American politics, and ... each group suffers when it fails to grasp the dimensions of the other’s struggle.”
—Margaret A. Burnham (b. 1944)
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“There can be no more ancient and traditional American value than ignorance. English-only speakers brought it with them to this country three centuries ago, and they quickly imposed it on the Africans—who were not allowed to learn to read and write—and on the Native Americans, who were simply not allowed.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I am using it [the word ‘perceive’] here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word.”
—A.J. (Alfred Jules)