Letter to the Editor: Social Justice for Moderates editorial

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If you wish to change the course of our country from radical swings back and forth from left to right, moderates need an animating principle. That principle should be Social Justice.

David Brooks says the big idea that counteracts our core problems is “love your neighbor.” He ends An Agenda for Moderates with “When you listen to your neighbor, you see that deep down we’re the same and you hunger to deepen that connection.” But it should be just the beginning. When you deepen that connection, you take action to improve your lives together. You join your voice to theirs. You step beyond moderation. Our times do not afford us to be a moderate in love.

“Was not Jesus an extremist in love?” Martin Luther King, Jr. asked in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. “The question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be… Will we be extremists for the cause of justice?… Injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent, and determined action.”

David Brooks used to understand this. Seven years ago in What Moderation Means he said, “Being moderate does not mean being tepid… The best moderates can smash partisan categories and be hard-charging in two directions simultaneously… It is not just finding the midpoint between two opposing poles.”

But in last week’s An Agenda for Moderates he betrays himself. Brooks offers a false equivalency where moderates must avoid the left that offers ideas of Social Justice and tells stories of oppression as much as the Trumpian right that offers Tribe and builds walls. Brooks says we must avoid the left story of class, racial and gender oppression and its mission to rise up and destroy the systems of oppression.

Brooks risks becoming what MLK described in grave disappointment as “the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action.’”

Social Justice must be the agenda of moderates and it should not be pursued in moderation. Listening is not enough. Finding the midpoint is not enough. When only 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women; when African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites; when the left’s stories of class, racial and gender oppression are in fact reality; then communal action must be taken to destroy systems of oppression. Social Justice is the policy of “love your neighbor” in action.

Humbly yours,

Orion Breen
Durham, Maine

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23 Comments

  1. A well-deserved “Bravo” to this letter-writer! I hope he or she trumpets this idea to anyone who will listen.
    And write letters to newspapers, your local boards, the state and federal representatives; respond to injustice with resistance and insistence that oppression must be eradicated.

  2. Social Justice is the fair process of law to all citizens. The Obama Administration did not believe in the above statement. Conservatives were not allowed to speak on the campus of Berkeley. The Black community is only 14 percent of our national citizens yet they commit a vast amount of crime over whites. Bending the meaning of ‘Social Justice’ to make those who get up and go to work every day feel sorry or ashamed because of the color of their skin is a load of crap and I for one am tired of hearing the Socialist Left promote this load every night on the three major networks.

    Minorities who work hard to better their lives and contribute to the American Ideals and Constitution should be praised and welcomed without regard to their skin color or anything else. Why isn’t anyone asking when either of the two Senators from Maine have they been to the Southern Border ? Are they promoting Social Justice when they make decisions concerning Minorities and they have not been into the trenches of our border law enforcement? Social Justice starts at the top with those we elect to office.

  3. Ah, “Social Justice” a widely used expression. The Nobel Prize winning economist and philosopher Frederick Hayek said he’d spent a good part of his life trying to figure out what the expression means. He never could. I agree. It is a vague slogan word without denotation but heavy in connotation.

  4. Well Bill,
    If anyone can’t understand what social justice means then they are surely blinded by their “Priveledge”.
    There could be No Other Reason.
    At least that’s what was SCREAMED at me when I dared to say, I don’t understand…

    So that leaves me with very little choice,, but to stop trying to talk with them…
    What’ll I do now??

  5. There should be no social justice. Society does not dictate the rights and actions of another person, and thinking it does just makes one a Nazi, Communist or a fascist. Social justice has no place in a free society. If a person’s Halloween or Christmas decorations offend you, vent to your therapist if you must, because you don’t get to choose what another person does. If a restaurant owner doesn’t want non English speakers in their establishment, that is their right, and people have the right not to eat there, the loss in sales is all on the owner. The government should just stay out of all things social as well, we have 27 well defined amendments that list our rights, you have the same rights as the guy down the street, if you can’t accept that, that is on you, they don’t have to change just because you or the people you run with think they should. The right knows this, why is it so hard for the left to comprehend?

  6. @william reid:

    the o.e.d. defines “social justice” as

    justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.

    if your pal fred needs any help parsing out the component words of this definition he may need to retake phi 101. for those interested, a quick google search should yield many witty quotes by others–economists, philosophers, and nobel prize-winners among them–who aren’t nearly as mystified by the expression.

  7. Start with enforcement of “civil rights”. Does anyone need an explanation of this term?

  8. The author is really searching for support. This letter, or a version very close to it, was published in the SunJournal on 3/8. It did not draw much attention except for this quote from one of the 2 comments.

    “Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, ‘social justice.'”
    ~ Thomas Sowell

  9. “Social Justice” means we are to ignore the astonishing black on white violent crime rate as well as the gruesome and ghastly black on black,black on Asian,black on Hispanic,black on Middle Eastern,and black on the elderly crime rate. To dare mention it makes one a “racist”. If this is a racist country, why don’t we see all the other groups rioting (er,protesting) and burning down our cities and slaughtering police,fire fighters.E.M.T.s who come only to help. I have exchanged roadside beatings with cops in my youth and nobody rioted (er,”protested”) on my behalf.

  10. Thomas Stowell “…writes from a libertarian conservative perspective, advocating supply-side economics.”
    He has had an obviously distinguished academic career in spite of coming from very humble beginnings. He’s almost 90 years old now, but I wonder if he’s likely to become less anti-affirmative action now that his Stanford University connection is involved in the cheating scandal that admitted non-qualified students through bribery by RICH WHITE PEOPLE. This is an OLD story, but some people may not have noticed until recently.

    “A Brief History of Social Justice
    Social Justice as a concept arose in the early 19th century during the Industrial Revolution and subsequent civil revolutions throughout Europe, which aimed to create more egalitarian societies and remedy capitalistic exploitation of human labor. Because of the stark stratifications between wealthy and the poor during this time, early social justice advocates focused primarily on capital, property, and the distribution of wealth.

    By the mid-20th century, social justice had expanded from being primarily concerned with economics to include other spheres of social life to include the environment, race, gender, and other causes and manifestations of inequality. Concurrently, the measure of social justice expanded from being measured and enacted only by the nation-state (or government) to include a universal human dimension. For example, governments (still today) measure income inequality among people who share citizenship in common. But social justice can also be considered at the level of humanity as a whole. As the United Nations states: “Slaves, exploited workers and oppressed women are above all victimized human beings whose location matters less than their circumstances.”

    Human rights should not be affected by “personally-held biases and prejudices”.
    https://www.pachamama.org/social-justice/social-justice-issues

  11. If there aren’t pervasive racist attitudes in the this country, why aren’t mass shootings/violence by WHITE perpetrators
    labeled as “terrorism” instead of hem-ing and haw-ing until the “motive’ is sliced and diced and analyzed and the “mental health” is assessed?

  12. My goodness Myopic, where did you study the theory of definition. The OED gives us a lexical definition. They did a poor job of giving us an essential one. How does the OED fail. It uses the definiendum in the definiens. The definition of “justice” in the definition itself. How does one know what “social JUSTICE” is when the definition uses the term JUSTICE In the definiens. Not even Plato did a good job of defining it in the REPUBLIC. You have made a big mistake. Myopic, you apparently don’t understand there are many KINDS of defintions. Quick get to a logic book and read up on it.

  13. Marie E, Because mass shootings in the sense you mean them, aren’t acts of terror. they are vengeance, spree or rampage killings. An act of terror would be somebody affiliated with a group of people deemed terrorists, like ISIS for example, going into Walmart and just killing a bunch of people for the sole purpose of causing terror. Besides, Black on Black crime accounted for 600 shooting deaths in Chicago in 2016, the total number of people killed in spree, vengeance or rampage killings, is 310 over the last 100 years. And in 2009 of the 296,000 incarcerated illegal aliens, there were 480,000 drug offenses, 70,000 sex crimes, 213,000 assaults, 125,000 arrests for thefts, and 25,000 homicides. In 2017 whites(63% of the pop.) committed 1561 homicides, Blacks(13% of the pop.) committed 2627 homicides, Hispanics(16% of the pop.) committed 1320 homicides. Clearly, whites are not the problem.

  14. It’s funny, the so called social justice warriors are the ones pushing race. I saw the college cheating scandal as a crime. Not by ” white” people but by bad people. The key word is “people” what the heck does color have to do with it???? I say pointing out color is racist/ biased. Lately those pushing this racist narrative are the only ones injecting race into the issue.
    I’m beginning to think lots of people don’t even know what racism is. It’s been minimized so much that I don’t even think people take it seriously. That’s sad because the real victims of racism aren’t taken seriously anymore.

  15. (2015) Dylann Roof’s shooting of 9 black people in their church wasn’t about ‘vengeance’, a ‘rampage’ or the like.
    https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/dylann-roof-radicalization-alt-right-and-ritualized-racial-violence

    Not unlike the killings in New Zealand, the killing of Sikh worshipers in their temple (2012), the murders at the Pittsburg synagogue (2018) were also carried out by sympathizers of white supremacists, neo-nazis or whatever contemptible name they call themselves. Sure sound like groups of terrorists to me, i.e., “somebody affiliated with a group of people deemed terrorists”.

  16. … and remedy capitalistic exploitation of human labor
    Right out of The Social Justice Warrior’s Handbook. Or is it Rules for Radicals?
    Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty just in the past century than all other -isms combined over all of human history. Egalitarianism puts people into poverty and keeps them there with ever larger helpings of government dependence masquerading as social justice.

    … social justice can also be considered at the level of humanity as a whole. As the United Nations states: “Slaves, exploited workers and oppressed women are above all victimized human beings whose location matters less than their circumstances.”

    Thanks to Marie for bringing all these concepts together, just in time for yet another astounding, global instance of affirmative action and hypocrisy:

    UN picks Iran & Nigeria to help judge women’s rights violations, helped by Irish Chair

    They join Saudi Arabia. Women can feel safe and un-oppressed under the watchful eye of this merry band of misogynists.

  17. Out-of-context cherry-picking by some people wish to compare social justice movements of the<strong> 18th century with capitalism in the 20th century. Don’t fall for that ploy.

    “Social justice issues can occur in relation to practically any aspect of society where inequality can arise as a result of unjust prejudices or policies.” Based on personally-held biases and prejudices, the following categories are often affected by unjust treatment:

    Race
    Gender
    Age
    Sexual Orientation
    Religion
    Nationality
    Education
    Mental or Physical Ability

    “Areas in which government policy often gives rise to social inequality and injustice include:

    Voting Laws (i.e. redistricting and voter ID)
    Policing Laws (i.e. traffic, search and seizure, and drug scheduling)
    Environmental Laws (i.e. clean water and air, industrial waste disposal)
    Health Care Laws (i.e. insurance mandates and coverage eligibility)
    Education Laws (i.e. public school segregation and integration)
    Labor Laws (i.e. worker’s rights, occupational health and safety)”

  18. @william reid

    i appreciate your attempt to belittle my intelligence but i had thought that i’d made clear by my “phi 101” comment that the greater meanings of these words are philosophical rather than lexical. i’m certain that your brilliant philosopher idol could have caught my drift. my point was that while hayek struggled to grasp the meaning of social justice, many others, more representative of our current state of progress, have not.

  19. Thanks,Hrtlss for educating Marie about the numbers. I’ll take it from here. Marie, when a white mass shooter is cornered he is not given the keys to the city. He is shot dead as should be ANYONE caught in the act of killing people. The difference is that we don’t incinerate American cities in his honor nor do we declare “National Free Shopping Day” and loot the businesses that Americans worked a lifetime to build. Also the cop doesn’t lose his career as he would If he shot a black murderer.
    Also I am tired of college students and other idiots describing Maine as “too white” (translation :too safe). If I were to describe Detroit as “too black” I would be hounded into an early grave. I wish I had the free time and typing skills (5-8 w.p.m.) to adress the “white privilege) lie. Whomever utters that silly phrase in my presence will wish mightily that they had been without vocal cords. Retroactively.

  20. david firsching: Wow!

    Marie: Apologies to Marshall Dodge …

    One gorgeous summer Sunday morning, old Harry Barlow was the only parishioner to show up for the service.

    Rev. Tibbets: OK, Harry, it’s just you and me. Do you want the sermon?
    Harry: Well, rev, if only one calf shows up at feeding time, I would feed it.

    Rev. Tibbets then launched into a 2 hour, fire and brimstone, sermon. Afterwards, he met Harry at the front door.

    Rev: So, Harry, how did you like it?
    Harry: Rev, when I said I would feed the one calf who showed up, I would not feed it the whole load.

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