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Destroying the Common Good [1]
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Date: 2025-01-05
Well, the apprentice gets a new chance at governance. Lacking his own vision for America, he has appointed or nominated countless people who will work to implement Project 2025 within 180 days. Speed and damage are high priorities. The goal isn’t to improve federal agencies. It is to weaken them beyond recognition so they are unable to discharge their duties, thus removing most, if not all, constraints on the free market. In his first term, Trump transformed governance by destroying all of the norms and guardrails. In like measure, Project 2025 will weaken federal agencies as to make them non-existent. While Project 2025 is grounded in some conservative values, it is primarily a libertarian power grab, which makes it the enemy of the Common Good. This has happened before, with horrific results.
In medieval Europe, much of the land, known as the commons, was a vital resource accessible to everyone for shared use. Peasants relied on the commons to graze livestock, collect firewood, forage for food such as nuts, berries, and medicinal herbs, gather water, and plant small crops on marginal or less fertile land. These shared resources were essential for sustaining their families and communities, providing a safety net in times of hardship.
However, the enclosure movement gradually transformed these common lands into private property, typically granted to wealthy landowners. Initially, landowners charged fees for the use of what had been free communal resources. Over time, they enclosed the land entirely, using it for their own purposes, such as grazing sheep for the lucrative wool trade or cultivating crops. This privatization deprived peasants of their traditional rights and means of survival, leaving them unable to sustain livestock or grow enough food independently.
As a result, many peasants were evicted from their homes and forced to leave rural areas. With few options, they migrated to cities, where they became wage laborers in the emerging industrial economy. There, they faced harsh working conditions, long hours, and meager pay that barely allowed for subsistence.
The enclosure movement, which began in the 12th century and continued into the late 19th century, profoundly reshaped the social and economic landscape. It concentrated wealth and power in the hands of a few landowners while deepening inequality and impoverishing the majority. Though it was often justified through decree or legislation, many historians argue that it was essentially a form of legalized theft, stripping the peasantry of rights that had sustained them for centuries.
Today, the federal government serves as a modern equivalent of the commons—a collective resource “owned” by all citizens equally. Through its programs and policies, the government protects the common good, ensuring that essential resources and services such as public healthcare, social service, environmental protection, labor rights, and infrastructure are available to everyone. It functions as a safeguard against market failures and economic disparities, providing a critical safety net for the most vulnerable members of society while supporting the overall well-being of the population.
However, Project 2025 aims to dismantle or drastically reduce these modern commons, shifting responsibilities from the public sector to the private market. Under the guise of reducing government overreach, the project proposes shrinking the federal government’s role in regulating industries, providing social services, and enforcing labor protections. This shift would allow the free market to privatize many public functions, charging individuals and families for services that were once collectively funded and accessible to all.
The consequences of such changes would likely be far-reaching. As essential services become increasingly privatized, they may become unaffordable for many, deepening economic inequality and leaving large portions of the population without access to basic needs. Just as the enclosure movement displaced peasants and forced them into exploitative urban labor markets, the shrinking of the federal government’s role could render millions of Americans more vulnerable to market forces, with fewer protections and higher costs for necessities like healthcare, education, and housing.
Ultimately, Project 2025 risks turning the federal government from a collective safeguard for the common good into a diminished entity, serving primarily those with the means to navigate an unfettered free market. By reducing the commons to private, profit-driven systems, the project could make the majority of Americans poorer and less free, deepening social divides and threatening the very principles of equity and shared prosperity that underpin a functioning democracy.
Our tools are limited: public pushback, legal challenges, political advocacy, and protests. The lawsuits will come, more than can even be imagined, to slow down the destruction. But some may meet the likes of Trump judges like Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas and Aileen Cannon in Florida, corrupted by ideology. But lawsuits will not be enough, and since Congress is impotent and Trump malevolent, we will need sustained protest in support of the common good.
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