In the 2024 Presidential Election Platform, the Republican Party used the term “common sense.” [1]
On the substantive whole, it is elementary that we should all have and use “common sense.” But we need to be careful, because using the term “common sense,” as a political campaign term, can begin as a cause for the exposition of self-reflection, and then to transmute into a conflated term of manipulation to people who are insecure and not properly educated. And a lot of people—that is, a lot of voters—are insecure [1, 2, 3] and not properly educated. [4, 5]
Indeed, a mother saying to a child, “Use your common sense, child” has a form of a built-in insult. It imprints the child perhaps for a proper purpose in the moment, but then can be used later for an improper purpose, because the child learns to concede and to submit to the term as used by a presupposed “smarter” authority.
Therefore, to condemn someone for not using “common sense” is not necessarily “all good” or ” all bad,” but rather simply a term to trigger a critical thinking assessment, at least for those who have not been beaten down by the term or who have been educated with a proper forewarning.
The term “common sense” in a socio-legal context is nothing new. In fact, the great jurist (perhaps America’s greatest jurist), Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. [6], used the term himself as set forth in Hadley v. Baxendale [7], addressing one of the seminal cases in the United States for determining the extent of contract damages. Holmes expressed what he thought were “common sense” rules of contract damages:
The extent of liability . . . [depends upon what] is likely to be within [the defendant’s] contemplation and, whether it is or not, should be worked out on terms which it fairly may be presumed he would have assented to if they had been presented to his mind. . . . [A]nd that depends on what liability the defendant fairly may be supposed to have assumed consciously, or to have warranted the plaintiff reasonably to suppose that it assumed, when the contract was made. . . .
[*7] It should be noted that these “common sense” rules by the brilliant Holmes have been rejected by the legal industry in the United States, and replaced with a more contrived artificial socialized standard. [*7]
The Great Jurist Holmes, with some level of subtle insult to the legal industry, said it was “common sense” that contracts are functions of assent, and, therefore, it is “common sense” that the damages would be tacitly assented to as a matter of contract law. He was, of course, correct in saying so—at least, philosophically-jurisprudentially. [*7]
Now, let us consider this term, “common sense,” with rules reframing the Majestic Holmes into a more socially-horizonal and elemental framework; to wit:
Common sense depends upon what is likely to be within a person’s contemplation and, whether it is or not, should be worked out on terms which it fairly may be presumed the person would have contemplated if the situation had been presented to the person’s mind. And that depends on what the person fairly may be supposed to have assumed consciously, or to be reasonably supposed the person assumed at the time. . . .
In short, therefore, we might say that “common sense” is what an ordinary person should know in ordinary circumstances, or should come to learn for particular situations. But, such as it is, it is context-dependent.
For example, at least in Western culture, and religious teachings aside, common experience teaches that if we trip someone unprovoked: a) the person will fall; and b) the person will become angry; and c) there is a reasonable risk that a person of sufficient capability will retaliate. We know this by the commonality of life. The Native Americans knew it as much as William the Conqueror, and as much as Hammurabi, and as much as an old farmhand in Western America.
When the boy sticks a pin into his sister during the pastor’s teaching at Sunday service, it is “common sense” that his sister is going to scream. In fact, the boy probably hopes that this is true, and, thusly, his mother’s chide to use “common sense” while she apologizes to the congregation pulling the boy out of the sermon perhaps by his ear (at least in the old days…).
It is “common sense” that certain human beings have testes (XY parts) and certain human beings have ovaries (XX parts). With almost mathematical certainty, those two types of human beings are mutually exclusive sets with different resultant tendencies accordingly. [8]
If we started over on a desert island, the social “common sense” will adduce natural inclinations to procreation by human conjoinment. [*8] Not always, but commonly enough. When boys and girls are together, things just commonly happen that way. Not always, but commonly enough.
Now, so that we are not hypocrites with picking and choosing, it is not “common sense,” at least secularly temporally, that human beings are born of virgins, metaphysically impregnated by two or three or all-in-one ethereal deities, or that human beings can walk on water, or make wine from water, or raise people from the dead, or rise from the dead, or to exist for the purpose of cancelling the same “immoral sins” that the redeemer (as an ex post facto part of the same impregnating god or gods) had previously established. [*5]
Therefore, we need to apply our “common sense” carefully. At least, by secular temporal “common sense,” in a diverse, free and free-thinking culture, that professes equality with justice for all.
This subject of the term “common sense” became of renewed special interest with the flip-flopping of the Corporate Transparency Act/Beneficial Ownership Information report (“CTA“) filing as administered by Fincen.
The CTA was established to prevent non-transparent illegal activities by corporate entities acting in the United States of America. The law aimed to increase financial transparency by making it harder for criminals to use shell companies for illicit activities, such as money laundering and drug trafficking. [9]
All of a sudden, after years of preparation and implementation, with the political pressure of the New Trump Administration, the Treasury Department stopped enforcement, but stopped only for United States companies. [*9, 10, 11]
But, here’s the rub: President Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, all of a sudden supported President Trump’s stance, calling the decision to halt the CTA enforcement, “a victory for common sense.” [12]
Now let us critically think about that statement about “common sense” for a minute.
It is “common sense” to start a new law to reign in the artificial legal contrivance of a “corporation,” because that artificial entity can be a conduit for non-transparent illegal activity in the United States, and then “common sense” to stop it, but only for foreign corporations, because apparently only the human beings who control foreign corporations have human tendencies to do bad things in America. This is “nonsense,” not “common sense.”
In this context, use of the term “common sense” is political rhetoric confusing the clarity of “common sense” binary nature of testes and ovaries that everyone understands categorically, conflated with a complicated creation of the completely unnatural artificial man-made contrivance that exists only in thick books of laws and statutes. The rhetorical tactic is to cram-down concession onto the audience, trying to get ahead of contradictions, creating fear that arguing back would be to expose a lack of “common sense.” It thusly subtlety plays on insecurity.
Conflation is rhetoric. It is a mental shell game: to take a proper use of the terminology and use it for an improper use of the terminology. Political chanting bandwagon branding. Just because the terminology is true for one thing, it does not follow that it is necessarily true for everything.
But it takes some education and critical thinking to see it. [13]
Human body parts are overt and self-evidencing to a statistical point of clarity, but the “common sense” of the applicability of a complicated thick set of contrived artificial invented man-made statutes applied to another complicated thick set of contrived artificial invented man-made statutes, is not “common sense.“
Be aware and forewarned. The universal conflating politically rhetorical use of the term “common sense” is incorrect, unfair, and insulting to the American People.
A lot of corporate attorneys despised the CTA for good reasons, but I am not one of them. I do not love the CTA, but I understand it to be a required endurance for the greater good of the American socio-political eco-system.
I opined that the Biden Administration was correct for implementation of the CTA, against my own financial interest, because a piece of paper is not a human being. [*9, 14]
The “artificial thing”—that corporate body—created by the Doctor-of-Law must be controlled in accordance to the risk that it presents. [*9, *10, *11, *14] The corporation is not necessarily “evil,” but rather, the corporation is powerful. And powerful things are potentially dangerous. The corporate entity serves man, man does not serve the corporate entity. Founding Father, “Father of the US Constitution,” James Madison agrees. [15]
I don’t despise the thing I create, but I do understand it. The creature is now more socialist than capitalist. [*9, *10, *11, *14]
Just put a name and an address on a piece of paper to receive divisibility of interest, ease of transferability, non-transparency, perpetuity of life, and default socialized non-accountability for actor liability; to wit:
The corporate entities are now dysfunctional: like magic [*14], just a name and address, and behold: actors escape accountability, and, if the actors don’t escape by application of very complicated overrides, then there’s also the bankruptcy safety net. Not one, but two socialized escapes from the downside risk of self-responsibility and social accountability. [*14] Controlling something and eliminating something are not the same thing, often rhetorically conflated.
Indeed, actors in foreign countries doing business in the United States are no different in natural self-interested tendency than actors in the United States. This is “common sense.” So says the Political Genius Thomas Jefferson:
Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes.
[*15] Behold the socio-politico-jurisprudential “common sense.” People are People, on “every side of the Atlantic.”
What we have in these entities is not true capitalism, but rather socialism [*9, *10, *11, *14], and worse, under the feign of capitalism for the unwary. [16] At this point, it would be simpler to start with the rule that no one is liable for anything, unless electing into it. But, alas, attorneys would be out of business.
Irrespectively, the “corporation,” “limited liability company” and other such complicated legal man-made things, do not exist by nature, but exist only by big thick books of laws and statutory artificial contrivance on paper. It is certainly not “common sense.”
Thomas Jefferson agrees:
But it will not be a very long time. Mankind soon learn to make interested uses of every right and power which they possess, or may assume.
The public money and public liberty, intended to have been deposited with three branches of magistracy, but found inadvertently to be in the hands of one only, will soon be discovered to be sources of wealth and dominion to those who hold them; distinguished too by this tempting circumstance, that they are the instrument, as well as the object of acquisition.
With money we will get men, said Caesar, and with men we will get money.
Nor should our assembly be deluded by the integrity of their own purposes, and conclude that these unlimited powers will never be abused, because themselves are not disposed to abuse them.
They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price.
Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes. The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.
Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 13, 1784 [17, 18]
The CTA was a meted condition to check and balance a dangerous corporate power and the natural inclinations of the human beings that wield the constructs in selfish advantage, abetted by competing self-interested states. That simplistic Delaware formation document shown above evolved not by natural social merit, but rather by contrived money-interested state competition against the national unified interest. Checks and balances are necessary for human beings, and no less than for their invented contrivances of their governments, government branches, states, and corporations.
Vigilance to the inclination of the self-interest that contradicts the common weal.
The Trump Administration release from only domestic CTA compliance is a political pander to a monetary domestic constituency. It sounds protective of America, but only by superficial rhetorical feign.
Stopping enforcement of the CTA only for foreign actors is not “common sense,” but rather “nonsense.” People are people on every side of the Atlantic.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”— James Madison, Federalist No. 51 (1788)
[1] https://prod-static.gop.com/media/RNC2024-Platform.pdf
[2] The Insecure Human Being – The Business of Aesop™ No. 51 – A Fox Without a Tail [GRZ36X] [LinkedIn #GRZ_36]
[3] Misery Loves Company – No. 51. The Fox Without A Tail – The Essential Aesop™ – Back to Basics Abridgment Series [GRZ98_51] [LinkedIn #GRZ_98_5]
[4] Pro-Choice or Pro-Life? Chapter 3, The (Insecure) Reflective Contemplative Dwelling Mind [GRZ124] [LinkedIn #GRZ_124]
[5] Secretary of Education McMahon: A Beckon for McMahan to Be a Woman for All Seasons, at Least in Principle; But Is She Strong Enough to Be Our Man?[GRZ234] [LinkedIn #GRZ_234]
[6] Oliver Wendell Holmes and His Imbeciles – Stand for America® [GRZ71] [LinkedIn #GRZ_71]
[7] Hadley v. Baxendale Revisited: A Fundamental Analysis of Special Damages [1987] [GRZ226]
[8] Death, Sex and Selling: Or, the Science of the Beer Girl [GRZ90] [LinkedIn #GRZ_90]
[9] The Corporate Transparency Act; Or, The Master Stroke of Genius, or Horror, Depending… [GRZ191] [LinkedIn #GRZ_191]
[10] The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony—Chapter 7 Excerpt—Wall Street [GRZ181] [LinkedIn #GRZ_181]
[11] The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony—Chapter 6 Excerpt—Responsibility Framework Failure [GRZ180] [LinkedIn #GRZ_180]
[12] https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-corporate-transparency-act-boi-treasury-2038564
[13] The Rise of the American Hermaphrodite; Or, the Tending Shift of Cultural Narrative Since c.1950. [GRZ210] [LinkedIn #GRZ_210]
[14] Corporation Reform and Reboot, v.2.0; Or, It’s Only Capitalism, Until It’s Not, And It’s Not. [GRZ204] [LinkedIn #GRZ_204]
[15] The Rise of Corporate Social Intimidation (CSI); Or, Rollerball, Censorship, and Smokeless Book Burning [GRZ151] [LinkedIn #GRZ_151]
[16] VI. Simulation and Dissimulation; Or, The Art of the Lie. – Back to Basics Abridgement Series [GRZ190] [LinkedIn #GRZ_190]
[17] Greed is Good? – The Business of Aesop™ No. 9 – The Boy and the Filberts [GRZ33] [LinkedIn #GRZ_33]
[18] The Patience of Latent Evil – No. 46. The Wolf and the Shepherd – The Essential Aesop™ – Back to Basics Abridgment Series [GRZUID98_46] [LinkedIn #GRZ_98_46]
ChatGPT Review
Let’s work through this carefully. Your upload of Gregg Zegarelli’s article “The Nonsense of ‘Common Sense’; Or, the Rhetoric of Insecurity” is dense, philosophically constructed, and tightly tied to his broader Stand for America series and overarching teaching method. Here’s a structured breakdown of:
- Zegarelli’s Pedagogy in this Piece
- Fit within Zegarelli’s Broader Ethos
- Conclusions and Specific Points He Makes
- A Final Synthesis of “Zegarelli’s Point”
1. Zegarelli’s Pedagogy in this Post
Pedagogical Method:
- Critical Thinking Activation: Zegarelli is forcing the reader not to accept terms like “common sense” passively but to challenge, reframe, and contextualize them.
- Rhetorical Deconstruction: He teaches how political rhetoric weaponizes familiar terms (“common sense”) and how the manipulation plays on insecurity and lack of education.
- Concrete Examples and Comparison Anchors: He repeatedly grounds abstract ideas in tangible illustrations:
- Simple cause and effect (trip someone → they fall → they retaliate).
- Sexual biology as a “common sense” reality vs. metaphysical religious claims.
- Corporation laws being “thick-book contrivances” versus natural laws of human behavior.
- Sequential Intellectual Elevation:
- He starts at childhood (“Mother says: ‘Use common sense!’”),
- Moves into legal theory (Holmes’ contract damages),
- Escalates into socio-political law (Corporate Transparency Act),
- And ties it all to civilizational philosophy (Jefferson, Madison).
Pedagogical Purpose:
- Arm the reader against rhetorical manipulation.
- Show how education and critical thinking defend freedom.
- Frame law, government, and corporate power as man-made, not natural — and thus requiring vigilance.
2. Fit within Zegarelli’s Broader Ethos
Direct Connections to His Core Teachings:
- Insecurity Manipulation (see The Fox Without a Tail, The Insecure Human Being): He reiterates that insecurity leads to uncritical acceptance of authority terms like “common sense.”
- Human Nature Consistency (see Stand for America, Corporate Social Intimidation, The Wolf and the Shepherd): Humans are humans everywhere; power must always be balanced.
- Man-Made vs. Natural Structures (consistent with Corporation Reform and Reboot, Patience of Latent Evil): Corporations, states, and even religions are artificial constructs, needing checks.
- Skepticism Toward Rhetorical Ploys (see Simulation and Dissimulation): Words are used deceptively; rhetoric must be unpacked before trusting conclusions.
- Defense of Proper Secular Reasoning (see Secretary McMahon and Notes on the State of Virginia citations): He favors rational, critical-secular reason for governance—not blind faith or dogma.
Big Picture:
Zegarelli’s ethos is critical vigilance against power structures that manipulate natural human psychology through rhetorical shortcuts.
3. Conclusions and Specific Points He Makes
Here are the clear conclusions from the article:
| Theme | Conclusion |
|---|---|
| “Common Sense” as Political Rhetoric | Misused to manipulate insecure, poorly educated citizens |
| Holmes and Contract Law | Holmes was right to say contracts are based on “common sense” assent — but the legal industry now ignores that |
| Religious Claims vs. Natural Facts | Real common sense comes from observable nature, not metaphysical stories |
| CTA and Transparency | Stopping enforcement for domestic companies only is nonsense, not “common sense” — it’s pure political pander |
| Corporate Entities | They are powerful artificial constructs that must be controlled for the public good |
| General Human Nature | Humans everywhere act from similar self-interest; thus vigilance, not blind trust, is necessary |
| Political Rhetoric | Conflating real “common sense” with complex legal contrivances is a deliberate mental trick targeting insecurity |
4. Final Synthesis: Zegarelli’s Point
In One Sentence:
“Be wary of any authority that invokes ‘common sense’ without context — they are likely exploiting your insecurity to advance interests that run against your own best judgment.”
Expanded Summary:
- “Common sense” is a powerful rhetorical device.
- Properly used, it refers to obvious, observable natural truths.
- Improperly used, it smuggles complex, artificial, and self-interested constructs past critical scrutiny.
- The Trump Administration’s “victory for common sense” in CTA suspension was, in reality, a favor to domestic money interests, disguised as patriotism.
- Citizens must apply critical thinking to defend themselves — not trust superficial slogans.
- Critical education is the true armor against manipulation.
- Vigilance, not complacency, is the duty of free citizens.
Short Recap/Take-Aways
- Pedagogy: Deconstruction of rhetoric, critical thinking.
- Ethos Alignment: Man-made institutions are dangerous if unchecked; vigilance and rationality are moral duties.
- Point: “Common sense” can easily become a rhetorical trap for the insecure if critical thinking isn’t applied.
Here is the flowchart visualizing Zegarelli’s argument step-by-step. It tracks the evolution of his critique on the term “common sense,” beginning from its rhetorical use and ending in a call for critical vigilance.
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Copyright © 2025 by Gregg Zegarelli. All rights reserved.
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