Vanity: I need insight into Social Justice

8/13/13 | me

[spacejunkie2001]

I need help/ammo. My kids go to a small Seventh Day Adventist school in Orlando. There's a new humanities teacher and the information that's in the pamphlet about him says the 'big subject' for 8th grade is "social justice".

I know what we conservatives consider SJ, and I agree with it but there are varying definitions on line. When I meet with this guy and the head of curriculum I want to be armed with as much accurate information as possible.

I'm trying not to be really pissed off that this is going on. I am arming my daughter with as much as possible but she's only 13.

[abb]

Social Justice = application of law based a predetermined aggrieved citizen class

[Zathras]

The “Social Justice” movement began in Oakland, CA over 20 years ago to force Unionization onto high tech companies in Silicon Valley.

It morphed into SEIU.

[P.O.E.]

It’s a moving target designed to create work for for lawyers, activists, and politicians, all at taxpayer’s expense.

[cripplecreek]

Social justice is the teaching that people are wealthy because they somehow took the wealth from others and made them poor.

[nathanbedford]

"Social justice" is an oxymoron.

Justice implies adherence to the rule law rather than the rule of man. Adherence to the rule of law denies the subjective social values which those who advocate the social justice rely upon.

Social justice is an attempt to equalize outcomes, an attempt to redistribute wealth to the satisfaction of the author. As such it is essentially the rule of man rather than the rule law. The two concepts should never be attached to one another.

Your child should be told that the most efficient way to attain wealth for the most people is through capitalism. Your child should be told that the most democratic way to distribute goods and services is through the free market in which every consumer has 100% control of his vote every time he chooses to buy or not buy. A system of "social justice" is the least democratic means of distributing goods and services because it is not done by free agents operating in a free-market but by imposition of rules made not even by elected representatives but by unelected bureaucrats who are not responsible to the people they control.

Social justice is a social evil.

[mason-dixon]

Recommend reading Thomas Sowell’s book, Cosmic Justice.

My inadequate summary — Liberal “Social Justice” is a blasphemous mimic of God’s justice — implemented through class grievance.

[Walrus]

Social justice is something individuals can and should work toward.

It is not, nor should it ever be, an objective of government.

[ConstantSkeptic]

I’d start by going to the Seventh Day Adventist site and checking out their definition - http://www.adventist.org/beliefs/statements/main-stat52.html.

[SatinDoll]

Per Wikipedia’s introduction on Social Justice:

“Social justice is justice exercised within a society, particularly as it is applied to and among the various social classes of a society.”

“A socially just society is one based upon the principles of equality and solidarity; which pedagogy also maintains that a socially just society both understands and values human rights, as well as recognizing the dignity of every human being.[1][2] The Constitution of the International Labour Organization affirms that “universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice.”[3] Furthermore, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action treats social justice as a purpose of the human rights education.[4]”

“The term and modern concept of “social justice” was coined by Jesuit priest Luigi Taparelli in 1840 based on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas and given further exposure in 1848 by Antonio Rosmini-Serbati.[1][2][5][6][7] The phrase has taken on a very controverted and variable meaning, depending on who is using it. The idea was elaborated by the moral theologian John A. Ryan, who initiated the concept of a living wage. Father Coughlin also used the term in his publications in the 1930s and the 1940s. It is a part of Catholic social teaching, the Protestants’ Social Gospel, and is one of the Four Pillars of the Green Party upheld by green parties worldwide. Social justice as a secular concept, distinct from religious teachings, emerged mainly in the late twentieth century, influenced primarily by philosopher John Rawls.[8]”

Notice something peculiar?

They never mention Communism, which is the single most important driver of this crap.

Social justice is modified by the word ‘Social’. Real, pure, unadulterated justice doesn’t need to be dressed up - it is what it is and should be - blind to any and all descriptive adjectives.

[MissMagnolia]

A person I know is a big lib and really into “social justice” via the Unitarian Universalist church. They just did a social justice mission trip .... whatever that is!

Here’s a link to the UUA website ... the “justice” part that might help you out. http://www.uua.org/justice/

Here’s the ‘headline’ quote they use for their page: “The prophetic liberal church is the church in which all members share the common responsibility to foresee the consequences of human behavior (both individual and institutional), with the intention of making history in place of being merely pushed around by it”. —James Luther Adams, “Taking Time Seriously,” in The Prophethood of All Believers.

Here are their “Partners & Justice Priorities” ....

Economic Justice
Environmental Justice
Immigration Justice
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Equality
Multiculturalism and Racial Justice, including Ending the New Jim Crow
Reproductive Justice

Not picking on UUA, but I’ll bet by the time you read their site, you’ll have a good idea of what “social justice” is.

[Las Vegas Ron]

Big bump!

[altsehastiin]

“Social justice” generally means socialism, or economic “justice” or redistributionist “justice”, or the notion that one’s individual christian duty to engage in charity to the less fortunate carries with it an obligation to change social structures (e.g., through the government), to address economic inequality.

I was educated in a catholic school, and social justice was taught as a junior level theology class. The philosophy came straight from religious left Catholic liberation theology, which holds that we have an individual moral duty to address inequality through government action.

I would teach my daughter that justice is just plain old justice, i.e., anglo-american law, which teaches that people should abide by their contracts, not initiate physical force against one another, and that people are equal under the law, but that equality of outcome is not guaranteed to anyone, nor should it be.

[FateAmenableToChange]

Aristotle identified two types of justice:

(1) Commutative justice.
(2) Distributive justice.

Commutative justice is about justice between individuals. How do you fix a harm to one person done by another person.

Distributive justice is about the proper apportionment of social benefits between individuals. It differs between different communities. In Athens, it meant that all citizens were entitled to vote and serve on juries and were obligated to render services to the state. In Sparta, it meant that there were two kings who got personal bodyguards and everyone had their own helot to hunt. It’s how a particular society divies up society’s pie. For Aristotle, there’s no right way to do this — it is just a descriptive term, and a given society can violate that society’s rules for pie cutting (for example, in Athens someone could try to deny citizens the right to be on a jury. That would violate Athens’s sense of distributive justice, but not Sparta’s since Sparta didn’t do juries).

Leftists try to confuse “social justice” with commutative justice. They also try to pretend that there is only one type of social justice. Their vision of social justice, however, is just a proposal for changing the rules of distributive justice within our community. They want to create a world in which certain groups “justly” deserve to have a bigger piece of the pie under new rules that they create.

[freedumb2003]

“Social Justice” is a fiction.

Challenge this libtard to show where in the US Constitution there are the words “Social Justice.”

For that matter, ask where it is codified into any law anywhere.

[MrB]

Read this and have her read it too:

[John Valentine]

All justice is social. What is the meaning of justice for a man on a desert island?

Since all justice is social, what of significance is added by using the modifier?

The answer is that “social justice” is not a type of “justice” at all. The term “social justice” has nothing to do with justice but is an entirely new thing that might more accurately be called “social engineering” in the cause of a socialist utopia. It is the concept that since the problems of the world are caused mostly and mainly by the shortcomings of others, those problems could be solved by really smart people if they could only regulate and control the behavior of others.

One of the ways this can be done is by appealing to the abstraction of “social justice,’ fooling the gullible into thinking that this is really justice that is being talked about. Let’s be clear, it is not, it is the control of individual behavior in the furtherance of a political agenda.

Normally it will be couched in an appeal to “fairness”. This fairness appeal will always be applied to one mascot group or another; racial, gender, sexual preference based, you name it; and the behavior to be changed to favor the group will always be individual behavior.

“Social justice” always involves an elevation of the group over the individual and the abstract over the real.

Sorry that these thoughts are not referenced, they are just my own - Highly influenced by Tom Sowell..

I must therefore direct you to Tom Sowell’s “The Quest for Cosmic Justice” for a really thorough discussion of the subject.

[MrB]

a blasphemous mimic of God’s justice - great way to put it.

Indeed, “liberalism” is simply Humanism in the political spectrum. It’s the belief that man is the sum of all existence and knowledge, and that “elite” humans are somehow capable of accomplishing what only God can.

[freerepublicchat]

“You got it. I want it.”

How’s that?

[spacejunkie2001]

I REALLY appreciate all the info. Hopefully it keeps rolling in. I’ll be back soon to continue reviewing but already I have good ammo.