A friend of mine did the chorus of "I Will Follow" by U2 one time:
Si tu ambule, ambule,
Ambule, ambule,
Ego sequar!!
Or something like that.... Have a good weekend. And remember, "What happens in Chuck E. Cheese stays in Chuck E. Cheese."
Si tu ambule, ambule,
Ambule, ambule,
Ego sequar!!
"Yeah, uh, Sen. Schumer came into my office and me for my autograph," Gonzales said while moving boxes out of his office yesterday afternoon. "He said it was for his nephew in law school, and I was like, sure! So I signed on the little line he pointed to, and he walked out of my office cackling maniacally. That's how he normally laughs, so, like, I didn't think anything of it. Next thing I know, like, someone told me I'd been fired. I was like, 'No way! George is my friend!' But they were like, 'no, dude, you fired yourself,' and they started laughing at me. Why is everybody always laughing at me?"
When we speak of the idea of the common good, we need to also be open minded about the political and juridical institutions that are most likely to bring it about. The answer is not to be found in the "commonality of goods" but in the very institutions that the socialists worked so hard to discredit. Let me list them: private property in the means of production, stable money to serve as a means of exchange, the freedom of enterprise that allows people to start businesses to pursue their dream, the free association of workers that permits people to choose where they would like to work and under what conditions, the enforcement of contract that provides institutional support to the idea that people should keep their promises, and a vibrant trade within and among nations to permit the fullest possible flowering of the division of labor. These institutions must be supported by a cultural infrastructure that respects private property, regards the human person as possessing an inherent dignity, and confers first loyalties to transcendent authority over civil authority. This is the basis of what we call freedom and results in what we call the common good.
Let me close with a declaration that by the standards set forth in the first writings of the early socialists, we are all entitled to call ourselves socialist, if by the term we mean that we a devoted to the well being of all members of society. The means to achieve this ideal is the matter of dispute. It strikes me that the means to achieve this is not through the central planning by the state but through freedom itself. St. Thomas Aquinas had an axiom: bonum est diffusivum sui. The good pours itself out. The good of freedom has indeed poured itself out to the benefit of the whole of humanity.