Commentary: Leftwing Social Justice Is, in Reality, a Social Injustice

Once a lofty concept, the term social justice has been hijacked and exploited by the political left to radically transform America and bully Americans into forfeiting many basic rights in deference to the left’s agenda. Intoning social justice has proven to be a sure-proof formula for silencing average Americans, thereby providing the left with endless societal victories. After all, who wants to be accused of standing in the way of social justice?

Most of what passes today for social justice is actually the Marxist/Marcuse/Gramsci leftist playbook wrapped in appealing religious phraseology and platitudes, a framework for never-ceasing revolution and rebellion. It sees its mission fulfilled through constant class warfare, be it economic, racial, gender or sexual warfare. It confers upon itself a mantle of moral high ground, but in fact, it is not a moral category at all, rather, a political category. Furthermore, it dangerously overturns classic morality by redefining morality downward and leftward.

The prophet Micah taught us “to seek justice and walk humbly with your God.” Today’s social justice zealots are not acting humbly. In opposition to Micah’s exhortation, they have tapped social justice as a way to aggrandize power to themselves and have themselves become the powerful trying to crush and bend to their will humble and regular Americans. Much, very much, of today’s leftwing social justice is, in reality, a social injustice. It is time for us to restore social justice to its original purpose and glory.

There is a split between these two things: opposing social injustice; chasing after social justice.

One can effectively oppose social injustice by seeking to remove and restrain police powers from the state whereby it might seek to harm any individual. The 14th Amendment’s “privileges or immunities” clause was as a matter of intent thus, not for “incorporation” (a deviant view that only came much later), but to enable Congress to enact in legislation federal civil rights that State Actors could not disparage ... which it to say that the purpose of the clause was to permit Congress to do something in order to restrain States from using their police and regulatory powers in ways harmful to citizens of the States.

No aspect of the Power so granted touches on private Persons or privately held entities that THEY may be required to respect federal civil rights NOR does is Power one that can lawfully be used to require the States to use their own powers as a proxy in place of direct federal jurisdiction over ordinary individuals and entities and the private regulations they may seek to impose.

Though a federal civil right may restrain a State Actor from any obligation to enforce a private regulation it should be noted that these are often not obligated to enforce private regulations anyway, though they may agree to as a matter of their laws (as in the case of posted speed limits on private roads or no trespassing signs) or even just amiability with land owners.

So the act of opposing social injustice when imposed or facilitated by the government is one that ultimately RESTRAINS government power.

This is NOT the case with chasing after social justice, by which I mean using the police and regulatory powers of the State to regulate how non-State Actors — private Persons or privately held entities — treat people. To chase after social justice ultimately requires the government to obtain and use endless Arbitrary power over the People.

Moreover, it will eventually facilitate the government to make judgments over which persons are to receive which benefits of extended protection from other persons based on their group, or abstraction of persons, that they are assigned to.

So where merely opposing social injustice lends itself to generally applicable laws that do not divide the people, that in addition to restraining overall powers of government, to chase after social justice ultimately leads not merely to increasing government powers it will trend to fracturing the people with spheres of special applicability.

All of this relates to a government either opposing social injustice or chasing after social justice.

When a private Person or private entity opposes social injustice they will seek to bring to bear not police powers but their own influence on their neighbors ... they may get preachy but they will not be equipped to be tyrants. Likewise their potential influence on the government will be one that restrains authorities from abuses of their power, often just specific abuses of their power.

Or when a private Person or private entity chases after social justice they are, to the extent that it is them doing so, using their own resources at their own descretion to do good for their fellow men, they are engaged in acts of charity and kindness that are voluntary, even if they were to band together with like minded individuals their efforts would be voluntary.

The end of Volunteerism is the point at which chasing after social justice departs from something good and wholesome and becomes tyranny.

Or, from the opposing view, I would suggest that claims that charity etc were “insufficient” long made by those who want government to be “charitable”, had nothing to do with if charity actually was or was not sufficient to meet all needs, for indeed welfare states are NEVER sufficient to meet all needs, BUT what the Left and so-called “Progressives” really meant is that Volunteerism is by their definition insufficient and it is only when “charity” is forced from all through their taxes that they (the Left etc) can be satisfied that they have the sort of government and society they think proper.

In short: when a government chases after social justice they not only acquire police powers with which they may lord it over private persons they also obtain justification (even obligation) for spending on whatever objects, and therefore taxing to support that spending, they deem correct.

Spending then becomes a moral proposition and people are reduced to the function of funding their government in the “good” it seeks to do.

By contrast opposition to social injustice does not create a vast array and depth of powers over the people, and restraining government (or using one level of government to restrain another) is also something that can be done, relatively speaking, on the cheap.

The road of government provided social justice is a road to vassalage and servitude.

The road of government opposing social injustice is one agreeable to Classical American Liberalism, that sort on which our nation was founded.

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