I'm working for two kinds of good.

I'm an advocate of the common good. But people keep telling me that's wrong. That if I am to be a true and patriotic American, I have to work for the individual good. Rather than the common good. Didn't used to be that way. Or so it seems to me. I thought I was brought up being told that I should be working for the common good. First and foremost. That was the American way. We all pitched in. To benefit society. I thought, too, that was what my religion taught me. I was told that it was the Christian thing to do. To put the common good ahead of the individual good. But all that seems to have changed. Of course, I'm no longer a Christian. Because I think Christianity has been corrupted by the church. I'm a free-thinker who has cast aside organized religion. But still, my free-thinking principles dictate that I work for the common good. That it's the decent and right thing to do. But when I do that, I'm often accused of being a socialist. And even worse, a communist. Or being in cohoots with the devil. But still, I persist. I have a strong sense of right and wrong. And I instintively know that I'm supposed to be for the common good. That it's selfish to put the individual ahead of the commonweal. Anyway, maybe I'm playing it safe. By having allowed myself to become a romantic idealist, a free-thinker, a liberal and a lover. I especially enjoy my role as a lover. Seems that when I do that I'm working simultaneously for the common good and my own individual good. --Jim Broede