Just a reminder
Please Don't Forget
To Donate To FR
By Clicking Here
Posted on 01/24/2011 7:10:40 PM PST by callisto
Speaking at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina former Green Czar Van Jones defined “social justice” as opposed to legal justice.
“Here’s how you know if you live in a society where there’s social justice: Would you be willing to take your life . . . write it on a card, throw it in a big pot with everybody else . . . reach in at random and pull out another life with total confidence that it would be a good life?
“Well, then you got some work to do.
“In other words, not to say that you would wind up exactly where you were before, but that you’d be able to have a good life . . . that you would be able to put it together . . . figure it out. If you don’t have that confidence then you don’t live in a country where there’s social justice. Because in a socially just, as opposed to a legally just . . . in a socially just world, since we’re all pretty much born equally ignorant we should have roughly equal chances to have good lives.
“You didn’t do anything particularly spectacular at the point of birth, such that you deserve all this. [He] That’s a high standard. What it means in a country like ours is we will constantly be striving. We won’t ever arrive there in all likelyhood. We’ll have a more perfect union, we won’t have a perfect union, but it can be more perfect and every generation has to figure out a way to move us closer to the reality of liberty and justice for all and not just the rhetoric.”
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_-vgtYkJdA
A strong family is the left’s enemy.
Slick attempt to push equality of outcomes. Of course the example is not reality because everyone will never start out with everything equal. Or have equal talents, or ambition, or desires, or strengths and weaknesses.
The humanist mind is limited to try and force everything to fit what they believe is fair.
Who are they to say how everyone else must live (their way)? Who made THEM God?
Basically that is how you have to attack every single humanist argument. If there are no absolutes, and everything is just relative, where was the vote that put THEM in charge and why should anyone be forced to have to live the way THEY SAY we have to live?
Ultimately if they say ‘societal norms’ then bring up slavery. Slavery was a societal norm too, if they lived back then they would be arguing to keep slavery. Women didn’t vote until 1920, if they lived back then they’d be arguing the societal norm to keep women from voting.
Who the hell elected them society’s conscience? If everything is relative, who the hell are they to tell ANYONE ELSE how to live, in the end it makes NO DIFFERENCE.
Just start blowing their minds. Just keep on them about where they get their authority from to impose their morality onto the rest of us.
Ultimately they will et angry and say something like because most people are stupid and need to be coerced to do the ‘right things’. WHo are they to determine what’s “right”? That’s just their OPINION, it isn’t an ABSOLUTE, because they said there are no absolutes.
Also hit them with the fact then that that’s pretty enlightened of them to FORCE PEOPLE to live THEIR WAY. Ultimately they are backed into admitting THEIR MORALS all boil down to “MIGHT MAKES RIGHT”. That’s their ultimate justification for forcing people to live the way they want them to.
And just exactly who made them our overlords? When did that actually take place?
You can see how this will go.
GC was built under the auspices of the Quakers, and has long been regarded as the peacenik campus...this is exactly the kind of environment that Van Jones feels there is fertile ground was his kind of ideology...and it is right up his alley..
I should also add that when you discuss societal norms with them as this is where many will say they derive where they get their beliefs validated,
when you bring up slavery and women’s votes, they will say that sometimes societal norms are bad or wrong. One, who are they to say that, since there are no absolutes, some societal norms may just be better than others, but if there is no absolutes who are they to condemn ANY societies’ norms and customs? It may just SEEM bad to them because they may just not be the norms and customs they grew up in. They have no absolute moral belief that they can point to and say their views are superior to anyone elses.
Van Jones lives in the marxist world that George Orwell wrote about in “Animal Farm”.
The pigs’ creed: “All pigs are created equal, only some pigs are more equal than others.”
Hail Comrade Pig Van Jones!
Hey Comrade Jones: Did you know that cute pink pigs become BACON?, HAM?, PORK and Beans?
One further point, when you get them to admit their world view really boils down to MIGHT MAKES RIGHT, them forcing their beliefs onto others,
if all societal norms are relative, and we can’t judge them as right or wrong because there is no absolute standard to judge them by,
THESE PEOPLE are trying to use THEIR own personal beliefs and norms as ABSOLUTES and trying to force everyone else to conform to their moral worldview. They are trying to impose THEIR morals (which by their own admission are only relative goods and bads) on everyone else,
so we again are led back to the question, Who put them in charge, and Who says THEIR relative morality (based in their societal norms) is superior and absolute and everyone MUST be compelled one way or another to live the way they say everyone should have to?
MIGHT MAKES RIGHT is a real crappy way to get people on board. Ones eyes must be opened first to see that this is what those crying for social justice and ‘equality of outcome’ are after.
Very well stated. I must put your points into action and I have an ample supply of leftists on whom to use them.
It will be fun, they don’t like their own ideas being used against them. Just be ready for the name calling and you’re just trying to argue for argument’s sake, you don’t really get it, I thought you were smarter than this, etc.
Eventually they’ll degrade into name calling and you’re too stupid to understand. All I know is that it ain’t the right that coined the term “Re-education Camps”. And murdering off those who didn’t conform to the (relative) morals of whatever group of elites forcing their views on others via whatever their MIGHT MAKES RIGHT flavor happened to be (all were socialism in some form or another - communism, marxism, fascism, nazism - all had the state as god and you went with the program or they got rid of you).
Kind of an amped up version of John Rawls’s theory of justice.
How do the liberals reconcile this "social justice" idea with their support for abortion? Of course, those lives don't get counted in the lottery where the government assigns your right to a life, however short and devoid of meaning they choose to give you.
An alliance of losers. Like a band of Banditos out to pillage the countryside. Justification? It is not fair.
“If you don’t have that confidence then you don’t live in a country where there’s social justice. Because in a socially just, as opposed to a legally just . . . in a socially just world, since we’re all pretty much born equally ignorant we should have roughly equal chances to have good lives.”
The man is ignorant and his ignorance ignores that whether or not we are “born equally ignorant” we are not born with equal abilities to overcome our ignorance, even when we try our hardest; nor are we born with equal ability to acquire and use skills to help overcome our ignorance; nor are we born with equal ability to equally apply what we have gained overcoming our ignorance; nor will we equally develop the will to do so; and, as a result, then neither do we obtain equal where-with-all to maximize “the equal lawful opportunities we are born with”. We can only have equal opportunities with NO assurance, and no chance ever, that outcomes will be equal.
The man’s idea of “social justice” is a chimera, a phantom that those who believe in a benevolent Utopia, Marxists and otherwise, are always chasing and always telling us they are trying to create.
They always create a tyranny instead. Artificially lifting the outcomes of the so-called “socially” deprived and equalizing all outcomes, must take from the meritorious outcomes of others and inherently steals from the productive, the creative and the deserving, with the result of depleting the human ambition to be the productive, creative, deserving; incurring the devolution of society, materially and otherwise, not its development.
Well said. There are clearly exceptions, as there are clearly those who have had the ill fortune of bad health, terrible unexpected loss, or other misfortunes. We have a moral responsibility to help those who can't help themselves, be thankful for what we have, and to be charitable in our daily lives. That, however, is grossly different from what Jones is talking about.
"Hi, I'm Van, your server. You want tofu with that?"
“You want I should supersize that, you fat azz mushugganah?"
"Shutsho mouth, you Commie creep, or I'll give you an internal you'll never forget."
Here's how you know if you live in a society where there's social justice: Would you be willing to take your life . . . write it on a card, throw it in a big pot with everybody else . . . reach in at random and pull out another life with total confidence that it would be a good life?How about this -- would Van Jones be willing to reach into a pot, pull out a card with another country's name written on it, and exchange it for the US?
Excellent.
How about clarifying it for the students:
“For the cause of Social Justice what we’re going to do is take your diploma, put it in a big bag, and then randomly hand it out across the entire population. If you don’t get one, sorry.”
“Please re-elect Obama for Social Justice!”
-Van Jones (paraphrased)
Do you think the young college educated voters of America would understand this analogy of “social” justice?
Actually, Van Jones could put this into practice immediately. Grab a hundred random socialists and try it using real wealth. See how it works out, scientific method and all that.
Then report his findings in ten years or so.
Excellent!
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.