Senator Chris Murphy’s new book Crisis of the Common Good, released today, warns that six “cults” have poisoned American life: profit, globalism, technology, consumption, credentialism, and corruption. He calls for a revival of collectivism and the “common good” to restore meaning and connection. The message sounds noble until you notice how many of these cults Murphy and his party actively practice while telling the rest of us to reject them. That hypocrisy is not just rhetorical—it reveals why his brand of collectivism is dangerous.
Start with the cult of profit. Murphy condemns corporations for putting earnings above workers and communities. Yet as senator he has backed massive spending packages, green-energy subsidies, and regulatory regimes that deliver windfalls to connected corporations and unions while raising costs for small businesses and families. Connecticut’s own high taxes and business exodus under decades of Democratic governance show the results of this selective outrage. Murphy’s comfortable lifestyle, built on public salary and elite donor networks, hardly models sacrifice for the common good.
The cult of globalism fares worse. Murphy criticizes the flattening of local communities by international forces. In practice he has supported expansive immigration, climate accords that bind U.S. policy to global bureaucracies, and trade arrangements that accelerated manufacturing decline. His “common good” apparently includes open labor markets that depress wages in working-class towns—the very places he claims to champion. True localism would prioritize American workers and sovereignty, not abstract global citizenship.
On technology, Murphy correctly flags social media’s damage to young people. But his party long partnered with Big Tech for content moderation that suppressed dissenting views while amplifying progressive narratives. The same elites who decry “addiction” benefit from the platforms’ power when it serves their ends. Genuine reform would break monopolies through competition, not more Washington control that inevitably favors the connected. Let us not forget he’s all over Instagram, Facebook, and X right now hawking the book, attacking opponents, and building his brand. He uses the platforms daily to enrich his influence while calling for government to regulate their “predatory” side.
Credentialism is Murphy’s personal tell. A Williams College and UConn Law graduate, he rose through the very elite institutions that gatekeep opportunity and devalue trades and practical skills. His policy prescriptions—student-debt transfers and expanded federal higher-education spending—primarily aid those already on the credential ladder while ignoring the skilled trades that built middle-class America. The man who preaches against credential worship is its product.
Consumption and corruption close the circle. Murphy attacks materialism yet pushes entitlement expansions that substitute government checks for productive work and family responsibility. He demands money be removed from politics while thriving in a Democratic fundraising ecosystem fueled by tech, Hollywood, unions, and dark-money networks. His “common good” is curiously selective: centralized power is fine when it advances progressive priorities.
Murphy’s collectivism is not the organic cooperation of families, churches, and local associations. It is top-down state power that crowds out individual responsibility, weakens civil society, and concentrates authority in Washington bureaucracies. History is clear: such approaches erode the very communities they promise to save. The real path to meaning and connection runs through limited government, free enterprise tempered by virtue, strong families, and decentralized decision-making—not another layer of federal programs sold as moral renewal.
Hellbound and Down 