Pope Francis is a nice enough guy, described as a lovely and good man. He talks a lot about the poor, says compassionate things, and kisses little children. A significant theme for him is that building a future of freedom requires promoting the common good. While some of his ideas ring true, that one certainly doesn’t, at least not in the sense that he was proposing.

The common good occurs when, in reality, the masses of the people are, on net, better off than they were before. It is a symptom, it is the evidence that good choices were made by lots of individuals, who thus made progress in their own lives. Common good is not a target. It can’t be pursued as a goal, because that would mean that someone, likely a politician, would be in charge of determining what the common good looks like. Such politician, however, cannot possibly know what the common good is, because good results look very different for individual people. That politician would have to force his or her vision and goals onto everyone else, violating their rights to pursue their own goals and visions, thus destroying the foundation for common good itself.

America advanced from a few minor colonies to a world economic powerhouse over a short period of time, not because the people pursued some vague notion of the common good, but rather because they realized the true dignity of human freedom, the power of vigorous trade and commerce, and the inherent rights of individuals. The common good arose because individuals became prosperous. Individual prosperity is the only source of national prosperity.

The common good arises when a nation’s productivity advances to the point where even the poor are better off. That productivity results from incentives for individuals to take responsibility for their own lives, to take risks, and to become innovators, always trying to find a better way of doing things.

I suppose we could chalk it up to naivety, but Pope Francis declares that “legislative activity is always based on care for the people.” He likens politicians to Moses, the patriarch and lawgiver, keeping alive the people’s “sense of unity by means of just legislation.” The harsh reality of politics is that legislators are not holy and righteous. They are generally motivated by power, are as greedy as anyone else and are prone to abuse their positions. The harsh reality is that legislative activity is almost always based on the wishes of powerful, selfish interest groups at the expense of the people and the common good, often setting in motion injustice and conflict.

The common good is most effectively promoted by limitation of the power of legislators, bureaucrats and other politicians, to abuse the rights of people, something that the American Constitution was supposed to do. The unhappy reality throughout history is that common good is most often used as an excuse of tyrants to abuse the people who do not submit to their dictates or otherwise don’t fit into their definitions of good.

If the Pope truly wants to promote the common good, he would do well to actually embrace the principles of freedom to which he gives lip service, to lay off the gospel of progressivism and anti-capitalism, and to start promoting the only things that have ever worked to lift the masses out of poverty: protection of individual rights to life, liberty, and property and the limitation of the centralized power of politicians.

The Pope seems to be a good, sincere man. A lot of good, sincere people, however, while talking words of compassion, propose actions that do not give compassionate results in the long run.

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