The Tyrannical Fiction of the Common Good
British statesman and Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, once stated in a speech in the House of Commons in 1783 that “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
House of Commons, 1783, William Pitt the Younger
Mr. Pitt’s observation is an apt platform from which to analyze the world we live in today. No matter where on the planet you live, you have been through some combination of nearly three years of lockdowns, church and business closures, mass surveillance, threatened or forced Covid inoculation with an ineffective and dangerous drug therapeutic, and technocratic censorship by social media platforms of anyone who questions the wisdom or beneficence of any of it. There is evidence of substantial state involvement in this censorship. 1, 2
In Orwellian China, 280 million people were recently locked in their apartments and homes for months, unable to do basic tasks like grocery shopping or banking, and suffering intimidation by armed state police. 3
Millions of Chinese recently took to the streets to protest lockdowns and China’s “zero Covid” policy, despite a violent government crackdown against protesting. 4
In diverse places, officials have used supposed Covid “non-compliance” as a pretense to arrest dissenters and foment social division and snitching.
Without exception, it was claimed by the powerful that each of the foregoing violations of the God-given liberties of humanity was “necessary” for the sake of the common good.
On the horizon in 2023, there are new “common good” initiatives pending: “climate lockdowns”, more “green passes”, and central bank digital currencies. In Oxford, England, a plan has been approved to build gates at city entrance points to limit vehicle travel in order to battle climate change.
7https://www.oxford.gov.uk/news/article/2250/proposals_to_trial_six_new_traffic_filters_in_oxford_announced, 8
The plan will restrict residents to 100 exits per year, absent special authorization. These pending measures are increasingly linked to centralized control over buying and selling and a looming forced “climate Sunday” initiative.9, 10, 11, 12, 13
Of course, we are told Sunday laws are for the common good, also. 14, 15, 16, 17
So let us return to Mr. Pitt’s statement. The first and second part can be characterized as observations about the nature of tyranny and tyrants generally. At a basic level, Mr. Pitt states, tyrants always attempt to justify cruelty and despotism with the excuse that it is “necessary”. This, Pitt states, is the “argument of tyrants”.
The last part of Pitt’s statement refers to the response of human beings to tyrants. There will be tyrants in this wicked world until Jesus returns, which raises the question of how one should respond to tyrants in their various forms, be they tyrants of the church or tyrants of the state. So, what does it mean that necessity “is the creed of slaves”?
It means this: when the individual, or society, accepts the lie from tyrants that their mistreatment and loss of human freedoms is “necessary”, their acceptance is an act of self-enslavement. Or, put another way, it is the essence of slavery to believe the lie that tyranny is justified under any circumstances.
There is no more fallacious theory extant than that which is embodied in the common idea that natural rights must be limited by law in order to promote the “common good.” Natural rights are the rights given to man by the Creator. They are neither more nor less than what the Creator made them. To say that they need to be clipped and pruned down … is to reflect upon the wisdom of the Creator.
Rights were given to the individual for his good. Among man’s “inalienable rights” the Declaration of Independence enumerates “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The more of these things an individual has, the better off he is, and the more of prosperity does he enjoy. And the more individuals there are of this kind in the community, the more prosperity and happiness is there in the community.
What, on the other hand, is the “common good”? It is a very indefinite term. Each person defines it to suit himself. Government define it to suit themselves. Over in Russia it is declared to be for the “common good” that the little children of heretical parents should be taken from their homes and sent away to be brought up in the orthodox “faith.” In Peru, until recently, it was considered to be for the common good that no Protestant marriage ceremonies should be recognized as valid by the state. In Spain it was for the common good that Protestants should not be allowed to worship in church buildings. The list of instances in which personal rights have been invaded under the plea of the “common good,” might be extended indefinitely. How are these things decided to be for the common good? Oh, it is by the decision of the majority, at least of those in power. And this is the way the question is always decided; this is the way it is proposed to decide the question to day, and the only way in which civil government can consider it, in this country at least. A natural right, therefore, as limited by the “common good,” is simply such a privilege as the majority may see fit to grant. And this would take the matter out of the hands of the Creator entirely. It would leave no force to the term “natural” right at all. For what a person is allowed to have by the majority, cannot be his by nature—by birth. [emphasis added]
American Sentinel April 21, 1898, page 243
Jones sets the matter out faithfully and clearly. The gift of inalienable rights is to ensure that those rights bestowed by the Creator cannot be alienated (removed) from His children by tyrants. Even, and especially, by tyrants who claim to justify their oppression by claiming the false necessity of the common good.
Nor are these inalienable rights solely the property of Americans. No, they are the property of every child of the Creator. As Abraham Lincoln stated,
Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage, and you prepare your own limbs to wear them.
Abraham Lincoln, in a speech at Edwardsville, Ill, September 13, 1858
Today, the western world is preparing to wear these chains. A growing chorus of voices is calling for the subordination of the concept of individual rights and freedoms for the sake of what is falsely claimed to be the common good. On issues of climate, social justice, public health, economics and family cohesion, the argument is that centralized authority must control the lives of humanity despite the objections of individuals or minorities with their trifling quibbles of conscience and “rights”. Make no mistake, this is the argument of tyrants.
Let us consider recent examples of the use of this false justification.
Example 1. It was at equal parts urged and threatened that it was necessary for the good of all to compel humanity to submit to forced Covid vaccination. 18, 19, 20
It should surprise no one after this display of naked authoritarianism that the efficacy of the Covid shots was a lie. 21, 22, 23
The shots do not stop infection or transmission; they are neither safe nor effective.24, 25
State and industry leaders, including many religious entities, shamefully collaborated to compel Covid vaccine uptake against the conscientious objections of dissenters, and utilized the false argument of the common good to do so.26
Example 2. Pope Francis says that global problems, such as climate change and protecting family rest time, need a supranational authority to enforce rules for the common good. According to a 2022 article in the Times of Malta, the “common good … entails devolving authority upwards to international bodies to defend family and individual rights…Human rights cannot be advanced to support claims to individual demands that are morally inappropriate.”
“Supranational authority” is simply another term for a centralized global authority which exists beyond the democratic and constitutional safeguards which exist nationally to protect representative government, national sovereignty and individual rights. The papacy for centuries has opposed strong concepts of nationalism for this reason. The reader will note the Times of Malta’s circular reasoning regarding individual rights and centralized moral authority: 1. human rights cannot be asserted if it is determined that individual demands are “morally inappropriate”; 2. the same centralized international body which determines what is in the common good also has the power to determine whether objections to its initiatives are “morally inappropriate”. Such rationale neatly deprives individuals both of rights, and the ability to assert them, which is the essence of totalitarianism and a re-establishment of the absolute power of the papacy during the Middle Ages.
Example 3. In his commentary for World Youth Day on January 1, 2023, Pope Francis stated the following:
We can no longer think exclusively of carving out space for our personal or national interests; instead, we must think in terms of the common good, recognizing that we belong to a greater community, and opening our minds and hearts to universal human fraternity. We cannot continue to focus simply on preserving ourselves; rather, the time has come for all of us to endeavour to heal our society and our planet, to lay the foundations for a more just and peaceful world, and to commit ourselves seriously to pursuing a good that is truly common.”
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2022/12/16/221216a.html
Example 4. A number of “Catholic integralists” are openly urging U.S. courts to reject the originalism method of constitutional interpretation in favor of a new concept known as, unsurprisingly, “common good constitutionalism”. “Originalism” is that doctrine which requires courts to interpret the Constitution as it was originally intended, with, for example, its paramount protections for the individual rights of religion, speech, the press, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. “Common good constitutionalism”, on the other hand, is a cloak for the subordination of these individual rights in favor of papal social moralism.
Proponents of these ideas would give global moral authority to the papacy, just as the Pope has now been made the moral authority of many companies, including Visa and Mastercard, in the so-called Council for Inclusive Capitalism.
Conclusion
Obviously, if it is accepted that the common good necessitates and excuses authoritarianism, it follows that those deemed to be non-compliant should and will be punished because, it is argued, all non-conformists endanger the common good.
History warns that there is no regard for individual rights in such a system.
But this is not Christ’s way, and this is not Christ’s system of government, for “the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” – 2 Corinthians 3:17. Christ searches and calls for each one, but compels none. He says, “Come, let us reason together” – Isaiah 1:18, and, “Let him who is athirst com. And whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely” – Revelation 22:17. Christ provides the water of life for all, but He compels none to drink.
As Thomas Jefferson maintained in the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom:
Almighty God hath created the mind free; … all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in His almighty power to do.
Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, January 16, 1786
In contrast to the principles of the religion of Christ, Revelation 13’s end time scenario is built on the argument by civil and religious powers that it is necessary to prevent buying and selling for those who have refused the mark of the authority of the first beast. There is no doubt that this end time mandate will also be couched in the false argument of the common good, and that it will cruelly persecute dissenters. There will be no exceptions allowed.
And it will still be the argument of tyrants, and the creed of slaves.
