Individual ighRts are the common good.
This may be a false dichotomy. Unlike middle Europe, which fully integrates the ideas of Roman Law, a law written by the nobility to rule over the people, America used the ideas of Common Law. Its origins go back to the Germanic tribes opposed to Rome, and is based in the warrior-tribe sensibility of the equality of warriors.
The Germanic tribes innovated many ideas that we see today: equality before the law, jury trial by peers, with the most powerful warrior only judging based on arguments before him, not the social standing or wealth or friendship or animosity of those before him.
But our individual rights are based on two things: those rights imparted by God or nature, our inalienable rights, and those crafted by men, for better or worse, which are applied equally to all.
So such individual rights are seen as a given.
Collective rights were indeed the focus of the founding fathers based on the idea of the social contract between individuals in society. This was because a social contract, written by men and enforced by men, was much harder to explain.
On a deeper level, the founding fathers faced the problem, “Are people inherently good or bad?” They concluded “neither”, but that people are inherently *weak*. And for this reason, their constitution is laced with checks and balances of competing interests, to reduce the chances of this weakness coming to the fore.
Yet it doesn’t matter if someone is strong or weak, their inalienable, individual rights still exist.
There is no Constitution without free speech and the right to have a firearm.
Because we are all ultimately individuals?
Individual Rights - a wonderful Catholic thing:
Gimp