It’s concerning, the among of hoo-raw we see these days about “social justice.”
Bear in mind that, when you put any kind of modifier in front of the word “justice,” it utterly negates the actual meaning of the “justice.” “Racial justice” or “economic justice” or “climate justice” – all those terms, in effect, mean some animals will be more equal than others. Just take a look at the actual agendas of the people who are proponents of those terms:
“Racial justice:” Take money away from one “advantaged” group, while giving it to another “disadvantaged” group brd on nothing more than an immutable characteristic -- melanin content.
“Economic justice:” This one is simple: Take money away from people who have earned it and give it to those who have not.
“Climate justice:” Take money away from the productive and give it to legions of grifters, hucksters, and charlatans who and the stars, and then don’t deliver.
You cannot have any of these ideas implemented in policy while retaining the founding principles of individual rights, property, liberty, or -- especially -- of equal treatment under the law.
Even so, the idea of “social justice” may be the most egregious of all of these “X justice” terms. It is so nebulous, so ephemeral, that the term can be used to justify almost anything. Proponents of social justice are the ones who came up with ; the term has been used to justify , and even .
That’s the real problem. The extremes to which the cadres of X justice supporters are willing to go to seem to expand by the day; their latest effort seem to be , which places them firmly in the category of useless idiots. They use the term justice when they are in fact -- statism being defined as the “concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government often extending to government ownership of industry.”
In other words, tyranny.
Here’s why: The social justice cadres suffer under the delusion that all our social codes, all our strictures on what we can do to one another, are about protecting us from them: the strong from the weak. It doesn’t occur to them that it might just be about protecting them from us: the weak from the strong. Unremitting brutality isn’t some sort of exception or oddity in the course of human history. It’s historically been the utter norm.
That’s because, for some reason, they think that we are the weak ones, and that they are the strong ones, when nothing could be farther from the truth.
Does anyone think, for a moment, that the kind of men who settled continents, conquered the elements, and defeated any challenger who crossed their path, who established concepts like individual liberty, rule of law, or private property, did so to protect themselves from bands of marauding, purple-haired, Women’s Studies and Literary Criticism majors?
Or is it maybe a little more likely that we’ve chosen to bury our more vicious and murderous impulses under the rule of law, precisely to protect the weak from the strong? That the concepts of equal treatment under the law, liberty, and individual rights exist to protect not only the greatest but also the least among us?
Now the X justice warriors are insisting that this veneer of restraint is unfair. None of them, obviously, have thought for a second about what their own damnation of what they consider to be bourgeois standards and values implies about what they’ll be facing -- if those principles are torn down.
Proponents of social justice would do well to remember that they occupy the final level in the venerable, classic diagram of civilization; they are the weak people:
- Hard times make tough people.
- Tough people make good times.
- Good times make weak people.
- Weak people make hard times.
Makes you think, doesn't it?
The late 18th century saw, in Western Europe and the New World, the that led to one small group of people in North America proclaiming the blessings of liberty and the notion of individual rights. But it's true that you can see the endings in the beginnings; just as you can listen to Wagner and hear the roots of modern German death metal. And it's just as you can consider Mozart and Freddie Mercury and see uncanny similarities. In the same way, you can see a return to elitist brutality in the goals of modern X justice warriors – statists.
Those goals?
"Liberty? You'll have as much liberty as we allow you. Property? It's only yours after we take what we want to redistribute it to others who haven't earned it, after skimming off... well, a lot. Individual rights? You have the right to labor on other men's behalf; the right to submit to the rule of your 'betters' for your own damn good."
The proponents of social justice and all the other X justice agendas forget what kind of people set up the institutions of modern Western civilization, brd on liberty, rooted in Enlightenment values. They forget how many people and what kind of people still value them today.
Most of all, they forget to what lengths people who decide they have nothing left to lose will go.
The message to those who would tear down those institutions that define civilization --- liberty, property, individual rights, equal treatment under the law -- I can only offer the venerable, classic warning:
We're not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with us.