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James Ball, For the Express-News

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No, governor, the common good is not socialism

Gov. Greg Abbotts recent claim that tree ordinances of municipalities amount to socialism understandably made headlines across Texas. But even more curious than the claim itself is the reason he gave for this claim.

The reason bears repeating, so far afield it is from mainstream notions of American civic responsibility and traditional religion, not the least of which is Abbotts own Catholicism.

As reported in the San Antonio Express-News, the governor addressed the cities defense of their ordinances and his opposition to them: Trees add to the greater good of the city. They also improve the environment. Municipalities are saying they have a right to impose a fee on you for removing a tree because if you remove a tree, youre diminishing the greater good of the city, and the greater good of the environment. They have articulated the per se definition of collectivism, socialism.

Abbotts political philosophy is that there is no such thing as the greater good. All we have is the individual pursuing his or her private aims and rights that protect this freedom, chief among them being the right to private property. Anything else is collectivism, which he equates with socialism.

A quick look at the Constitution belies this view of society. In the preamble, We the People declare that establish(ing) justice and promot(ing) the general Welfare are, along with Liberty, constitutive of our national purpose. In other words, the social good or the public good was never reducible to what private individuals or property owners chose to do or not do.

The course of American history and many Supreme Court decisions testify to the role of the government as an instrument of the people in pursuing this justice and this public welfare. Thats not collectivism. Thats America!

Abbotts abhorrence of the greater good is also coming from a place outside of the way mainstream religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam, for example have long conceived of society and social responsibility.

For instance, in Catholic political thought, the common good is the good or well-being of the community in which one participates, to which one contributes, from which one benefits, and through which one becomes more human. The common good includes an ensemble of public goods such as decent education, affordable housing, clean air and, now, says Pope Francis, the climate itself. We all have a stake in these.

The common good is not an odious threat to personal autonomy, but it does mean that the needs of the community can sometimes take precedence over the interests of the individual or corporation, and that the role of law is to promote the common good. Unlike communist totalitarianism, in Catholic social teaching, property rights are real, but they are not absolute or unrestricted.

Pope Francis writes, The principle of the subordination of private property to the universal destination of goods, and thus the right of everyone to their use, is a golden rule of social conduct and the first principle of the whole ethical and social order. Thats not collectivism. Thats Catholicism, with parallels in other religions.

Gov. Abbott might be ill-informed about Catholic social and political theory, or he might be consciously rejecting it. Either way, his virtue is that he is honest. His justification for his crusade against tree ordinances in Texas is rooted not simply in idolizing free market economics about which Catholicism has its own reservations but in an often-unacknowledged libertarianism that has overtaken the leadership of much of the Republican Party in Texas and therefore our state government.

We can and should disagree in good faith on particular issues of public policy, but we are in real trouble if we throw out the venerable idea of the common good, even as we invoke another venerable idea, freedom, in doing so.

Justice William O. Douglas once wrote, The right to be left alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom. If that is true, it is equally true that the fruition of freedom is the capacity to contribute to and defend the common good.

James Ball is an associate professor of theology at St. Marys University.

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No, governor, the common good is not socialism - mySanAntonio.com