Crisis of the Common Good (The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America)

A prominent senator assesses the destructive ideas that have seized the American spirit—and shows how the hidden alignments in our politics can free us from their hold.

Today, the United States is in a crisis—and it’s not just a political one: over fifty years, the pursuit of profit has undermined virtue and character, while too many of us have become convinced that happiness results from acting as good consumers, rather than as good citizens. New technologies threaten essential human capabilities, like friendship, thinking, and creation. And a winner-takes-all mentality has given the rich and well-connected nearly uncontested control of our politics and has corrupted our government. The result: Americans have lost the sense of daily purpose and connection that are vital to happiness, becoming anxious, angry, and adrift. In this vacuum, Donald Trump, feeding off the emptiness and resentment, has come to power.

In recent years, Senator Chris Murphy has stepped forward to challenge the Trump administration’s assaults on our democracy. But he also sees that these assaults are a symptom of a deeper crisis: the abandonment of the common good as our country’s organizing principle. In his unflinching new book, he draws on history and political philosophy to expose how six different cults have seized hold of American life and paved the way to our current troubles: a cult of profit that punishes workers, a cult of globalism that weakens communities, a cult of technology that turns us against one another and poisons our young, a cult of consumption that undermines citizenship, a cult of credentialism that devalues those without degrees, and a cult of corruption that threatens democracy.

Refusing despair, Murphy offers a new politics of the common good that is both deeply rooted in our past and a radical challenge to the status quo. It is also capable of drawing support across the political spectrum: as Murphy shows, a majority of Americans—including many Trump voters—favor policies that confront these destructive cults by curbing corporate power, controlling predatory technology, enhancing face-to-face connection, granting workers greater control of their lives, and removing big money from our politics. The common good, Murphy shows, is no object of nostalgia; it is a vital principle ready to be claimed today.