I hope not.
Posted on 07/17/2010 4:57:51 PM PDT by Pride_of_the_Bluegrass
As I made my way on an April morning from Harvard Square to a Tea Party Express rally on the Boston Commons, a quotation and a question wound together in my mind. The quotation is a familiar one from William F. Buckley, that he would rather be governed by the first two thousand people listed in the Boston phone directory than the two thousand who comprise the faculty at Harvard University. Buckley was not condemning intelligence or intellectual achievement. He was expressing trust in the moral intuitions and pragmatic sensibilities of ordinary Americans, and indulging in a playful bit of sacred cow tipping.
The liberal aristocracy are apt to swoon not over intelligence -- which is found just as much in nurses, mechanics, and executives as it is in the halls of academe -- but over the appearance of intelligence, advanced degrees and faculty appointments, the trappings of an elite education. As Buckley understood, a graduate degree is all too often an elaborate exercise in the avoidance of common sense. Impressionable minds are encouraged to reject the conventions of broader society and conform to the trends and fashions of the illuminati instead, and to cultivate the superior disdain of the learned herd for the unlearned horde.
(Excerpt) Read more at patheos.com ...
I maybe wrong, but by my reckoning it’s a Constitution Restoration Movement (CRM)! IMHO
Orrrrrrr...the attempt to establish a FREE REPUBLIC?
In the context employed by the progressives, thankfully, the Tea Party Movement is NOT a Social Justice Movement.
The Tea party movement is not a social justice movement, it is an equal justice movement. Liberals aren’t interested in equal justice, just in manipulating and controlling people and their access to justice...and that not equally nor fairly.
Why be so exclusive. I’m for social justice. Also for restoring the Constitition. I see the Constitution as a blueprint for social justice. We, the People, formed this union to do certain things. We, the People, have modified that list to include those things for more of our people, as we recognized that they WERE, in fact, OUR people.
Ben Franklin was afraid of the German minority taking over, and taking our country places where he didn’t think we should go. When I was a kid, my grandma used to tell me that I was Scotch, Irish, English, Dutch, French, Russian, German, Austrian, Lithuanian, and Spanish. I think there were a couple more there that I’ve forgotten, too. ;)
Looks to me like the Germans were a real threat. Oh, maybe they were, as my surname is German. ;)
OS
Maybe I’m wrong but I really do think some people are over analyzing the Tea Party movement. Maybe it’s not all these other things at all. Maybe it’s just what it is, a majority of people who are fed up with what they see going on in government and are trying to do something about it.
Which by definition makes them...
America.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2552683/posts
The Tea Party is not even remotely about ‘social justice.’
It is about America and the opportunities promised to us.
It’s not a Social Justice movement, but should call itself one, just to garner the publicity as liberal heads explode.
A prime example of this is the whole liberal's notion of "wealth redistribution." What a crock. They may think they're helping the disadvantaged and downtrodden, but what they are really doing is taking away freedoms, liberties, property, etc. from others. In that regard so-called liberals are as bad as any of the worst despots and dictators you could think of from history. If they thought about it rationally, liberals would realize this, and then they wouldn't be "liberals" any more.
First Things
Defining Social Justice
Michael Novak
Copyright (c) 2000 First Things 108 (December 2000): 11-13.
snip preamble)
The trouble with “social justice” begins with the very meaning of the term. Hayek points out that whole books and treatises have been written about social justice without ever offering a definition of it. It is allowed to float in the air as if everyone will recognize an instance of it when it appears. This vagueness seems indispensable. The minute one begins to define social justice, one runs into embarrassing intellectual difficulties. It becomes, most often, a term of art whose operational meaning is, “We need a law against that.” In other words, it becomes an instrument of ideological intimidation, for the purpose of gaining the power of legal coercion.
Hayek points out another defect of twentieth–century theories of social justice. Most authors assert that they use it to designate a virtue (a moral virtue, by their account). But most of the descriptions they attach to it appertain to impersonal states of affairs—“high unemployment” or “inequality of incomes” or “lack of a living wage” are cited as instances of “social injustice.” Hayek goes to the heart of the matter: social justice is either a virtue or it is not. If it is, it can properly be ascribed only to the reflective and deliberate acts of individual persons. Most who use the term, however, ascribe it not to individuals but to social systems. They use “social justice” to denote a regulative principle of order; again, their focus is not virtue but power.
(snip — history of term)
The birth of the concept of social justice coincided with two other shifts in human consciousness: the “death of God” and the rise of the ideal of the command economy. When God “died,” people began to trust a conceit of reason and its inflated ambition to do what even God had not deigned to do: construct a just social order. The divinization of reason found its extension in the command economy; reason (that is, science) would command and humankind would collectively follow. The death of God, the rise of science, and the command economy yielded “scientific socialism.” Where reason would rule, the intellectuals would rule. (Or so some thought. Actually, the lovers of power would rule.)
From this line of reasoning it follows that “social justice” would have its natural end in a command economy in which individuals are told what to do, so that it would always be possible to identify those in charge and to hold them responsible. This notion presupposes that people are guided by specific external directions rather than internalized, personal rules of just conduct. It further implies that no individual should be held responsible for his relative position. To assert that he is responsible would be “blaming the victim.” It is the function of “social justice” to blame somebody else, to blame the system, to blame those who (mythically) “control” it. As Leszek Kolakowski wrote in his magisterial history of communism, the fundamental paradigm of Communist ideology is guaranteed to have wide appeal: you suffer; your suffering is caused by powerful others; these oppressors must be destroyed. We need to hold someone accountable, Hayek notes, even when we recognize that such a protest is absurd.”
snip rest of lecture —
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft0012/opinion/novak.html
Hayek wrote The Mirage of Social Justice Part II of Law Legislation and Liberty.
Postmodernists long for a time when all of society's ills and abuses will be eliminated and social justice will prevail. Richard Rorty elaborates his vision for America:"Walt Whitman and John Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams-dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society-in the place of knowledge of God's Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, of the Facts of science...As long as we have a functioning political left, we still have a chance to achieve our country, to make it the country of Whitman's and Dewey's dreams.
I hope not.
In their attempts to silence WE the PEOPLE, opponents have tried to insult, libel, dissect and attribute their bias to the TEA Party. The fact that they have so utterly failed is evident in the completely unhinged their attacks are.
The TEA Party continues because of its ideals and is not diminished by the attacks. The attacks only draw attention and common sense Americans to the cause of liberty.
Nex ut Tyrannus
I sure as heck hope not!!!
“Is The Tea Party a Social Justice Movement?”
Nah. It’s just a racist movement, full of racists, seeking to establish white supremacy.
(Repeat five hundred times a day, every day, all day and the whole weekend and every weekend until doomsday and make herr Goebbles proud!)
/S/
IMHO
LOL! Not hardly. Social justice is just a whiny pc term for "I don't think I have as much _____ as the other guy"
The Tea Parties are more of a "Get the government OUT of our lives" movement.
Thank you very much for contributing that to the discussion, it is a very good article.
You’re very welcome. I appreciate very much when people share information they have. I have learned a lot from FR.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.