Posted on 03/16/2011 7:07:40 PM PDT by sickoflibs
Every once in a while, something comes along that perfectly encapsulates the idea of so-called "social justice" in action. For all the wonderful critiques that have been written about this wretched concept by its many detractors,[1] none quite match the elegant simplicity of a recent work by some of its advocates. I am referring here to a recent video made for the World Day of Social Justice[2] in which students and teachers complete this sentence:
Everyone has the right to _____.
The video is a colorful montage of possible completions to this sentence, set to some pleasant easy-listening music. It shows students and teachers completing the above sentence, showing their answers written on their hands, arms, and feet. The people in the video give answers consisting of all manner of desirable things, from knowledge, justice, love, compassion, and truth to healthcare, education, food, clean water, nutrition, shoes, dancing, rock-and-roll, and even lollipops and ice cream.
World Day of Social Justice GlobeMed at Rhodes College's photo project for the World Day of Social Justice (You can also watch this video here.)A few of these things could be construed as genuine rights, if interpreted charitably, but most are more fanciful, such as the alleged rights to ice cream and rock-and-roll. Moreover, the weight of desirable goods of this latter kind makes the core message of the video clear: anything that is desirable is a right. You want more food? Then it's a right. Want better healthcare? Also a right. You want knowledge and compassion? Then they're rights too. Want love, dancing, prenatal care, and lollipops? Rights, rights, rights, rights.
Though succinct and simple, the video perfectly demonstrates the attitude towards rights that pervades modern political discussions, particularly among the advocates of "social justice." For such people, the notion of "rights" is a mere term of entitlement, indicative of a claim for any possible desirable good, no matter how important or trivial, abstract or tangible, recent or ancient. It is merely an assertion of desire, and a declaration of intention to use the language of rights to acquire said desire.
In fact, since the program of social justice inevitably involves claims for government provision of goods, paid for through the efforts of others, the term actually refers to an intention to use force to acquire one's desires. Not to earn desirable goods by rational thought and action, production and voluntary exchange, but to go in there and forcibly take goods from those who can supply them!
"For advocates of 'social justice,' the notion of 'rights' is a mere term of entitlement."This is a hopelessly flawed view of rights. An actual right is a moral prerogative derived from the application of moral philosophy to the nature of man. The term is a term of philosophy designating an actual moral principle, a principle that should be derived objectively by an examination of the nature of morality and the nature of man. Rights are not mere subjective constructs, as they are so often treated. Rather, they are objective principles validated by moral philosophy (in particular, by political philosophy, which is the sub-branch of moral philosophy that deals with the morality of the use of force).
A person has a right to some particular thing — as opposed merely to a desire for that thing — if he has an actual moral prerogative allowing him to do or have that thing. This must necessarily be accompanied by others having some corresponding moral injunction against preventing the right holder from doing or having that thing. The right cannot exist in a vacuum, hermetically sealed off from others. Thus, to say that a person has property rights (a conspicuous omission from the video) is not a mere assertion of a desire for some useful thing. It is an assertion that it is morally right for a person to control his own property, and morally wrong for others to interfere with this control. Rights refer to what is actually right — i.e., what is morally right.
Genuine rights exist as eternal truths of moral philosophy. They are principles that hold true regardless of time or place and regardless of the state of present inventions. Hence, there can be no such thing as a right to shoes, ice cream, or rock-and-roll, things that were once absent entirely from human invention. To hold the contrary view is to reduce rights to a shopping list of the latest gadgets and knickknacks.
As the critics of social justice are compelled to point out ad nauseam, to assert a right to some tangible good or service like clean water, healthcare, education, prenatal care, or ice cream, requires that someone else must supply that good. It asserts the moral prerogative to have others supply you with your desires, at the expense of their effort. When coupled with an appeal to government provision (as is always the intention), it asserts the moral prerogative to use force to attain one's desires — to force others to give you their ice cream, their clean water, their medical skills, and so on. It is the principle of the thief, the rapist, the criminal, who sees his whims and desires as reason to impose himself forcibly on others.
The propaganda of "social justice" operates by cloaking desires in the language of rights, while making sure to avoid any uncomfortable mention of how these desires are to be supplied. Thus, we see on the video an asserted right to "free education." We do not see the far more honest assertion of the right to "forcibly take money from others to pay for one's own costly education." No, it is "free" education that is the asserted right. But what free education is this? Free for whom?
"Unfortunately, this is an entirely understandable error, given the nature of education and public debate today."In a rational society, with a proper understanding of the nature of rights, an assertion of a moral prerogative for free education, healthcare, or the supply of ice cream would be regarded as an embarrassing reductio ad absurdum. Presentations where young people assert rights willy-nilly, without any apparent regard for where their desired goods would come from, might be regarded as an amusing example of the naiveté and misconceived ideals of youth. But in today's mushy-headed culture, this is actually displayed by the advocates of "social justice" as an expression of their own ideals.
Some may object to my characterization of this view of rights, by pointing out that many of the asserted rights in the video are presumably meant to be tongue-in-cheek. No one means to seriously assert the right to rock-and-roll or ice cream — they're just being silly, having some fun! Lighten up!
But here is the problem with that view: it is actually no sillier to assert the right to rock-and-roll or ice cream than to assert the right to healthcare or education. Both are instances of demands for goods or services supplied by the efforts of others — and the raising of that desire to an assertion of rights. The former are a reductio ad absurdum of the latter precisely because both claims follow from the same philosophical approach to rights — they are differences in degree, not in kind.
Now, just to be clear, let me stress that I do not intend this as a condemnation of the young people in the video. Most of the things they identify as "rights" are indeed desirable goods, and it is heartening to know that they want to live in a world with more truth, more love, more justice, more health and education, more food and clean water, more dancing, and even more ice cream. Indeed, despite their errors, this attitude bodes well for the future, and is a heartening sign of a focus on human prosperity.
The error here is in their misconception that the things they rightly desire are rights. Unfortunately, this is an entirely understandable error, given the nature of education and public debate today. Most young people, at the age of undergraduate university students, have not been exposed to serious philosophical argument about the nature of rights, and so their main acquaintance with the concept comes from the demands of rent-seeking pressure groups in the political system and the demagoguery of politicians. Their assertion of the right to ice cream is ridiculous, but it is no less philosophically defensible than thousands of other assertions of rights made in nightly news broadcasts and the pulpits of the world's legislatures.
What is remarkable here is not the errors of the young people on the video, many of whom probably have no reason to know any better about the nature of rights. What is remarkable is that the obvious reductio ad absurdum that the video demonstrates is adopted by esteemed social-justice advocacy groups and proudly advertised as an endorsement of their philosophy. It is clear, under these circumstances, that these are intellectually bankrupt movements.
If you realize both parties in Washington think that our money is theirs and you trust them to do the wrong thing, this list is for you.
If you think there is a Santa Claus who is going to get elected in Washington and cut your taxes, spend a few trillion and that will jump-start the economy, this list is not for you.
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The Austrian School’s Commandments plus :From : link
1) You cannot spend your way out of a recession
2) You cannot regulate the economy into oblivion and expect it to function
3) You cannot tax people and businesses to the point of near slavery and expect them to keep producing
4) You cannot create an abundance of money out of thin air without making all that paper worthless
5) The government cannot make up for rising unemployment by just hiring all the out of work people to be bureaucrats or send them unemployment checks forever
6) You cannot live beyond your means indefinitely
7) The economy must actually produce something others are willing to buy
8) Every government bureaucrat should keep the following motto in mind when attempting to influence the economy: “First, do no harm!”
9) Central bank-supported fractional reserve banking is an economically distorting, ethically questionable activity. In particular, no government should ever do anything to save any bank from the full consequences of a bank run, no matter what the short-term consequences.
10) Gold is God’s money.
Add mine:
1) Businesses don't hire workers just because of demand for products or services, they hire because it makes them money. Sorry to have to state the obvious.
2) Government spending without taxing is still redistribution
3) Taking one man's money and giving it to another is not a job.
4) Paul Krugman and Bernake have been wrong about everything, as well as the other best and brightest Keynesian's who have been fixing our economy for over a decade.
5) Republicans in the minority (esp out of the White House) act like Republicans, in the majority they act like Democrats .
I love when Jesse says "Social justice".
“3) Taking one man’s money and giving it to another is not a job.”
Oh, sure it is. It’s the job of a thief.
Ministry of Plenty Bookmark.
If everything is a right then nothing is. This is the scenario of oligarchs.
Social Justice is just another name for communism
Social Justice is an attempt to define right and wrong apart from God’s Laws. For proof we only have to notice how easily that doctrine demands the destruction of property rights, and how quickly it implies that people are free to live at the expense of others.
The foundation of social justice is to replace the Commandments that forbid theft and coveting with a government that must steal from one set of citizens in order to be fair to another set.
A society attempting to achieve social justice cannot find what it seeks, for justice can never come through violent coercion. Further:
Without property rights, there cannot be a free market in the exchange of goods and services.
Without a free market, without a willing buyer and a willing seller, it is IMPOSSIBLE to know the real price of anything.
Without the price, it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to make the necessary economic calculation, that is to know when the inputs to an activity (labor or raw materials) costs more or less than the output of an activity (the value of the thing produced or service performed).
Without the economic calculation, it is IMPOSSIBLE for an economic activity to make a profit and thus be sustainable. Conversely, it is IMPOSSIBLE for an unprofitable economic activity to be sustainable.
Without profit, it is IMPOSSIBLE to have resources from which to feed, clothe and house those who are involved in the activity.
Without profit, it is IMPOSSIBLE, to have excess resources to set aside in the form of savings.
Without savings, it is IMPOSSIBLE to have capital to invest in new economic activities.
Without the ability to have property rights to those savings, it is IMPOSSIBLE to evaluate all of the other possible economic activities to find the ones that carries the least risk when compared to their anticipated return, and to properly allocate savings to the most promising investments.
Without new economic activity and without the ability for others to invest as it suits the saver, the economy cannot have the opportunity nor the resources with which to adapt to changing circumstances, let alone to provide jobs and resources for the next generation.
Without honest money, government is free to destroy the very means of accounting for and exchanging wealth. Without the assurance that money will retain its value, people will not save but instead will either consume excess wealth or will store it in forms like fixed assets that preclude investment in new economic activity.
In other words, without property rights, a free market, price information that allows economic calculation of profit, the ability to save with the assurance those savings are free to be invested when and where the saver sees fit, and without honest money, a sustainable economy is IMPOSSIBLE.
Without a sustainable economy, it is IMPOSSIBLE for humans to exist. This is exactly the reason that North Koreans are reduced to foraging for bark and grass to fill their empty stomachs. Their government forbids property rights, forbids a free market, destroys price information, confiscates savings, forbids investment and has no economic growth.
Liberty, property, profit, investment, capital and honest money are the only means of creating a sustainable economy. All other ways have been tried and have failed utterly. Yet, somehow, property rights, profit, capital and honest money are still considered to be evil, particularly in the thinking of people still yearning for the perfect socialist Utopia. Socialism is in reality the economy of death, and Social Justice is the justice system of the Grim Reaper.
You said a lot, but it’s all on the nose. If I may, a corollary:
Without loss, it is IMPOSSIBLE to prevent the wasteful allocation and use of resources.
great presentation Buckwheat...
“Social Justice is just another name for communism.”
Indeed it is. I just finished reading Bill Ayers book, “Teaching For Social Justice” 1998, published by Teachers College Press.
The book is frightening and I can assure you that Glenn Beck is dead on about the goals of the ‘Social Justice’ movement.
ping
I have a right to free beer.
Social justice is envy, a sin.
“An actual right is a moral prerogative derived from the application of moral philosophy to the nature of man.”
At least the author gave a definition for right, which is more than I see in a lot of writing about rights. Whether or not I will agree to his definition will have to wait for a time when I’m not to tired to think about it.
“Hence, there can be no such thing as a right to shoes, ice cream...”
I have to disagree with that. I have shoes in my closet and ice cream in my freezer. They are mine. I paid for them. They are my property. I have a right to that particular property.
“Without a sustainable economy, it is IMPOSSIBLE for humans to exist.”
Please elaborate on that in regard to the humans who came across the Bering Strait to what became known as North America.
Well, not quite.
I prefer to think of it as a propagandist's euphemism for "people's justice" such as was dispensed by Bolshevik firing squads back in 1918.
If there were a realistic attempt to define it with words and concepts rather than 7.62x54mm bullets, it would be the dispensing of punishments and dispossession by the Communists of people they called "Enemies of the State" or "Enemies of the People" for purposes of seizing and buttressing Soviet power.
"Natural Rights are the set of concepts that define the moral space within which persons must be free to make their own choices and live their own lives if they are to pursue happiness while living in society with others."
Unless our Ninth Amendment/Natural Rights are asserted soon, it will be over. We let our government get away with so much for so long they will soon get away with everything. What aspect of our lives does not groan under the weight of regulation and taxation? What area of life does not require some form of permission or surveillance from government?
“Please elaborate on that in regard to the humans who came across the Bering Strait to what became known as North America.”
?? What kind of silly question is that?? You could ask the same thing of people who made long ocean voyages. The answer is that in all cases, there must have been sufficient provisions for the journey and when possible these were supplemented with whatever could be locally acquired.
If a party set off without sufficient provisions or skills, they would have all died and in many cases not a trace would have been left. So nobody would know today of the attempt.
But in all cases, marshaling provisions for such a journey is a form of “savings”.
I’m waiting for someone to say they have a right to be young, beautiful, and slender forever.
Actually, it was a request, not a question.
You could ask the same thing of people who made long ocean voyages.
You could. You could ask the same of people who make long ocean voyages today. But neither set of people are primitive enough for my intent, which is to delve into the statement: “Without a sustainable economy, it is IMPOSSIBLE for humans to exist.”
The answer is that in all cases, there must have been sufficient provisions for the journey and when possible these were supplemented with whatever could be locally acquired.
If a party set off without sufficient provisions or skills, they would have all died and in many cases not a trace would have been left.
Stipulating for the moment that having sufficient provisions for the journey depended on a sustainable economy, your answer does not provide a sufficient elaboration. It raises the question of whether or not those who crossed the Bering Strait somehow remained participants in the economy of East Asia or established a new economy, and if the latter, what was the nature of the economy, particularly for the first/new arrivals. Among other things, what did they have that would be of value to others that the others could not provide for themselves?
In regard to the stipulation above, what I stipulated is not really true. Having sufficient provisions for the journey would not have depended on a sustainable economy. The economy could have been unsustainable, the journeyers could have grabbed up what was available and then left. That being the case they would not remained participants in the economy of East Asia.
All in all, I think you'd have been better off trying to establish that primitive people establish some sort of micro economy or something within their own close knit group, that that economy has to be sustainable and that it may eventually join other such economies to make something larger. By "close knit group" I mean village/settlement, clan, tribe, nomadic group, the people they see and interact with daily.
And I doubt the accuracy of the statement: “Without a sustainable economy, it is IMPOSSIBLE for humans to exist.”
I think they could exist at the subsistence level at least.
In conclusion, I'm kind of running out of time an interest for this right now.
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