Look beyond liberty

We certainly need to maintain the free exchange of ideas (“America’s forgotten foundation: individual liberty,” Tanner Rowe, July 6), but individual liberty is not the defining characteristic of a just society. Rather, concern for the common good must be the underlying value.

Common good includes protection of the natural environment from individuals using their freedom to undermine it for personal gain, indirectly harming us all. It involves taking collective responsibility for the physical and mental health of our community members. And it involves treating all men, including women, indigenous people, immigrants, refugees, criminals, the LGBTQ, the religious, the non-religious, the disadvantaged and the poor as truly equal, and not just tolerated as those who are different or those with whom we disagree. Rugged individualism is what sets the U.S. apart from the rest of the world, and it is largely why we are more prone to violence.

The roots of our current divisions go much deeper than so-called political correctness or the hackneyed sound bites between Republicans and Democrats. Our world is now far more complex than it was when we so confidently broke from tradition in 1776, and our political philosophy has lagged behind. There is nowhere else to run, and we are stuck with an overpopulated planet that is rapidly being destroyed by the liberty of greed, environmental destruction in the name of profit, and our infantile efforts to resolve conflict. If we persist in our inability to look beyond individual liberty, we will continue to ignore the common good to our collective peril.

Cris M. Currie

Mead