Early this week, as I began thinking about what I might write on for my Friday post, I found myself gravitating to something on 'the common good.' My Twitter/X feed has been a bloodbath for weeks, as various figures on the right spew venom at each other, with some arguing Republicans should follow Vice President JD Vance and the so-called post-liberals in championing the common good, while other, more Reaganite conservatives angrily reject this option as a concession to collectivism and 'statism.' Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, meanwhile, has been promoting a book (Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America) that makes a left-leaning case for ideas parallel to Vance's'which has inspired at least one spirited liberal to proclaim, 'No, Senator Murphy, I Don't Want to Join Your Cult.' But the very next day my editor at The New York Times reached out to see if I'd be interested in having a conversation about the topic in the form of a Q&A. Why...
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