Social justice, that sweetly deceptive term behind which socialist movements in Seattle and elsewhere hide. Leftists continue obfuscating the social justice definition, which refers to an ideology that seeks to exchange equal justice for arbitrary justice.
Venerable Seattle P.I. Dot Com, writer Joel Connelly, makes a rather brittle defense of social justice in his recent column, Glenn Beck: Theologian in Chief? (Seattlepi.com Sept. 5th, 2010). He disparages Beck as, the “Mount Vernon Mouth,” a juvenile epithet, although admittedly humorous. Beck would probably like it, but I think he'd prefer, libertarian.
Rather than challenging Beck, Connelly seems to attempt to justify social justice, which according to him, originated in the Middle East (the left seems to want to prop up Middle Eastern cultural contributions of late), and was supposedly promoted in the Bible, and by the Pope and Jesus.
None of these “sources” seems to specifically endorse the government treating people inequitably based on race and social factors. If anything, this shows a penchant for historical, not to mention religious, extrapolation.
He quotes Jesus speaking about helping the poor and oppressed and somehow wants us to believe Christ was advocating for social justice in the same sense the left does today, as if his father would bestow freewill, and then advocate for government taking it away.
And then he infers Beck would report Jesus to Caesar (Beck called for congregations to report their social justice-advocating clergy to their superiors), thus equating social justice with voluntary charity, and not with the government coercion it truly is.
He quotes from the Pope’s Encyclical Letter: Caritas in Veritate (Charity upon Truthfulness). Connelly cites a passage in which the Pope was drawing a dichotomy, which he feels doesn’t have to exist. The Pope, an internationalist by design, and a compassionate man by profession, seeks to explore a compromise between government welfare and commercial, wealth producing activities. Libertarians might disagree with this view in general, but Benedict’s comments must be taken within the context of the entire document and of his worldview.
The Pope’s, “espousing the social justice thing,” wasn’t a ringing endorsement of social justice the way today’s left defines it today; he was much more nuanced, and again seeks to balance general social responsibility with free market capitalism.
Libertarians abhor the forced wealth redistribution and unequal protection: Using fraud or force to take that which belongs to another is objectively, ethically, and morally wrong, as is treating people differently based on who they are, whether it’s done by the criminal on the street or by the government. It’s the action, which is wrong and not dependent on who commits the crime or who is the victim. When it is dependent on the latter, this is social justice.
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