Social justice, this ubiquitous euphemism for socialism, is everywhere you turn in Seattle today. You simply can’t get escape it. From the City’s insidious Race and Social Justice Initiative, to its many private social justice groups, to classrooms and from the pulpit, to even promoting volunteerism in our young people, watch out, if you’re not careful you’ll round a corner and step in a big, smelly pile of social justice.
Part of the problem is so many people don’t seem to know that social justice has been a significant socialist, statist, collectivist, communist, etc, ideal for over a century. The term sounds so disarmingly innocuous. But it’s said sometimes the devil comes disguised as an angel.
To paraphrase from Jonah Goldberg’s discussion in his book, Liberal Fascism: Any form of American totalitarianism will approach the people, rather than with sneers and jackboots, with a smiley face and bunny slippers—offering to do all manner of “good” things for them.
Social: It’s good to be social, right? Justice: Everyone believes in justice—of course, it’s good. But put the two words together and they form a phrase that works as the antithesis to libertarianism, because social justice is often used to replace equal justice.
Now, America has certainly been guilty of serving up less than equal justice. This is unfortunately still too often the case, and in reality always will be to some extent. However, libertarians understand America is not about being perfect, which it will never be, but about striving for a more perfect society not based upon social justice and collective liberty, but based upon equal justice and individual liberty.
For an example of Seattle’s social justice insidiousness, in her blog: The Business of Giving (Seattle Times/Northwest Source, Aug. 19, 2010) Kristi Heim writes about Team Up for Nonprofits (TUN), and its ostensibly laudable pursuit: Interesting young folks, 20s-30s, in philanthropy and volunteerism. Heim stated, “Beneficiaries include the arts, environment and social justice, and both large and small nonprofits.”
With no easy to find mention of social justice on the www.teamupfornonprofits.org, so I contacted Ms. Hiem. She emailed me: “Ryan Hodgson (TUN) told me that Team Up for Nonprofits will work to support nonprofits engaged in arts, environment and social justice causes.”
While the arts, environment, and the referenced large and small nonprofits, may indicate a possible choice of working with groups at either end of the political spectrum, or with a non-partisan organization; the same cannot be said of social justice, which is a strictly leftist political ideal.
Any cursory perusal of socialist and totalitarian history will confirm how important it is to those who advocate for large intrusive government to attract young people to their movement. It’s important that these young folks know what they’re getting themselves into. Unfortunately, they’re not likely to find out from their progressive mentors.
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