The first law of God is Love. Love is sacrifice. Sacrifice is giving up something for others. In an civilized society all people give up something for the good of all. The first law of a civilized society as compared to uncivilized people is that the common good is more important than individual wants and lusts. Uncivilized people take whatsoever they want whenever they want it without consideration of others at all. They take a woman even if she does not want to be taken. They take food from others without asking. They kill without a second thought about it.

There are individual rights that help the common good, like the right of copyrights and patents, the right to ownership of property, the right to protect ones own family and property, the right to bear arms, but in the end love must prevail and love is sacrifice. Love is not taking but giving. Love is not liking or wanting, but giving without expecting anything in return except the satisfaction of giving and seeing the happiness it gives.

Pope John Paul II talks over and over again about solidarity and it was solidarity that took down communism in Poland. Solidarity means the common good.

In America today the individual right of homosexuals who have gotten aids is so protected that the common safety of the people is in jeopardy. When the common good was respected at the time of epidemics like Small Pox or Chicken Pox a nation was saved by quarantining these people even against their will. This protected the common good. This is a good example of a nation protecting the common good against the individual rights.

Another example would be someone who owns property that has the only water in an area, and that person wants to hoard this water for profit. With due respect for property rights the common good must always be considered. No one should have the right to dam up water to keep it from entering into another mans land.

In America peoples right to print pornography is above the common good of the nation. This must not be tolerated. Individual rights carried to extreme would allow someone to walk around without clothes and to hell with the rights of everyone else's right to not see this.

People who discriminate against others for race or sex or religion is sick but discriminating because of sin or stupidity or corruption of a community is a right of the common good of the city or town or community.