Is America More Like a Business or a Family?

Debates over the nature and purpose of the state are never out of season. From Aristotle to Hobbes and beyond, the same critical questions arise anew in each age. Today, with new contests over nationalism versus globalism, the size and scope of government, and the very meaning of our political order, the issue remains as important as ever.

Beyond the world of policy, political philosophers debate the nature of the common good of the polity. Specifically, they ask whether the political common good is intrinsically good or only instrumentally good. Although it may seem abstract, the answer to this question has serious implications for both public policy and private life. Our answer provides the foundation for our views about, for example, the state’s role in organizing communities (should I see membership in my political community as valuable for its own sake?) and about the state’s role in regulating morality (should the state regulate virtue and vice, per se, or only for getting at other ends?).

Read the rest over at Public Discourse.