Social Justice?

 

How to Pay for Charity

There are people in need of help. Charity is one of the nobler human motivations. The act of reaching into one’s own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else’s pocket is despicable and worthy of condemnation.

Walter E. Williams

"Science" and Racial Disparity

The federal government is shifting medical research funding from pure science to studies on racial disparities and social justice. Why? Not because of any assessment of scientific need, but simply because black researchers do more racism research and less pure science. The National Institutes of Health has broadened the criteria for receiving neurology grants to include things like childhood welfare receipt because considering scientific accomplishment alone results in a disparate impact.

Heather Mac Donald, Disparate Impact Thinking Is Destroying Our Civilization. Imprimis, February 2024.

Social Justice?

Let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you—and why?

Walter Williams

Envy

Diversity?

Social Justice

Race and Resentment

Many of our educators, our intelligentsia and our media—not to mention our politicians—promote an attitude that other people’s achievements are grievances, rather than examples. When black school children who are working hard in school and succeeding academically are attacked and beaten up by black classmates for “acting white,” why is it surprising that similar hostility is turned against Asian Americans, who are often achieving academically more so than whites?… 

The same phenomenon is found among lower-class whites in Britain, where academically achieving white students have been beaten up badly enough by their white classmates to require hospital treatment 

These are poisonous and self-destructive consequences of a steady drumbeat of ideological hype about differences that are translated into “disparities” and “inequities,” provoking envy and resentments under their more prettied-up name of “social justice.” 

Thomas Sowell, Race and Resentment

Social Justice?

[I]t is necessary to understand that every modern theory of social justice is ideological. No matter how reasonable or national it may be, every modern theory of social justice is the rationalization of the interests of a particular group or class.

William E. Murnion, “The Ideology of Social Justice in Economic Justice For All,” Journal of Business Ethics, 1989, p.848 

Taxation is Mostly Theft

 

Social Justice

"Social Justice" is Envy

The Magic of Words vs Education

In many cases, educators verbally transmute higher capabilities into “privilege.” Through the magic of words, and in the name of “social justice,” such educators oppose using the schools to facilitate the development of special individual abilities that can benefit society as a whole, because that can cause an expansion of educational disparities and the economical disparities that follow. Many of those with this social vision not only proceed as if society is a zero-sum process, in which benefits to one segment necessarily come at the expense of other segments, they also often ignore, dismiss or demonize other ways of looking at the situation.

Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities, Pg.191-192

Compassion is YOUR Job - Not the Government's

It’s amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people yourself is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness. People need to be fed, medicated, educated, clothed, and sheltered. If we’re compassionate, we’ll help them, but you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint.

Penn Jillette.

The Modern Stalinists

Most of the people who would have apologized for Stalin in his day have now found other causes — the cultural and sexual revolution, campaigns to tax the Western poor to provide money for Africa’s rich, and above all, the intolerant and puritan secular fundamentalism that gathers around the belief in man made global warming.  Others are devotees of the idea that the introduction of Western democracy into the Muslim world is possible.  These beliefs allow their supporters to feel superior to others and to pursue a heaven on earth whose righteousness reflects on them.  It is quite dangerous to challenge them, even though it is not dangerous at all to challenge Christianity or faith as a whole.  The danger is not usually melodramatic or fatal, though it sometimes is.  The climate change zealots (for example) issue no Fatwas, order no assassinations, and do not drag filmmakers from their bicycles and stab and behead them.  They simply seek to drive their opponents from public debate by scorn, misrepresentation, and smears.

Peter Hitchens, The Rage Against God, pg.169

Political Action and “Social Justice”

In brief, America’s experience to date demonstrates that pursuing social justice through political action generates at least six serious problems:

1. It tends to play into the hands of interest groups seeking beneficial legislation and the politicians who service them, thus becoming about self-interest rather than social good. (In other words, social justice becomes a fig leaf for self-interest!)

2. It tends to overlook the negative effects of high levels of government expenditure (including transfer payments) on the private sector. As a result, larger expenditures on programs that actually combat poverty deter private sector growth and thus become counter-productive at some point. The increase in the welfare of the poor as a result of the transfer of payments is more than offset by a decline in the number of jobs available to entry-level personnel, and so on. (Surely killing the goose that lays the golden eggs can’t be justice issue!)

3. It tends to involve the creation of very large government programs and bureaucracies, which in turn tend to generate bad unintended consequences.

4. It tends to reinforce self-righteousness and intolerance. (Anyone who opposes social justice is, by definition, unjust - a bad person!)

5. It tends to coercion. (Bad people who oppose social justice need to be coerced and it is a good thing to do so!)

6. Too much social justice leads to increasing levels of social discord, as supporters and opponents become much more polarized in their beliefs, and angry at those on the other side of the political debate.

Michael DeBow, “Social Justice: Reasons for Skepticism,” Areopagus Journal, Summer 2010, pg.21

Liberals' False Assumptions

Liberals seem to assume that, if you don’t believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help.

Thomas Sowell

The Coveting of the Poor

There is a constant tendency . . .  in the poor to covet a share in the plunder of the rich . . .; in the indolent and profligate to cast the whole burthens of society upon the industrious and virtuous; and there is a tendency in ambitious and wicked men to inflame these combustible materials.

New York Chancellor James Kent, 1821.  Cited by Clarence B. Carson, A Basic History of the United States, Vol. 3: The Sections and the Civil War 1825-1877, pg.5

Nature of Wealth

People who want to redistribute wealth often misunderstand the nature and causes of wealth. Tangible wealth can be confiscated, but you cannot confiscate the knowledge which produced that wealth. Countries that confiscated the wealth of some groups and expelled them, destitute, have often seen the economy collapse, while the expelled people became prosperous again elsewhere.

Thomas Sowell, “Random Thoughts: 2016 Elections”

The Anointed Don’t Believe In Personal Responsibility

The vision of the anointed is one in which such ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from “society,” rather than from individual choices and behavior.  To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by “society.”  Since no society has ever treated everyone fairly, there will always be real examples of what the anointed envision.  The fatal step is to make those examples universal explanations of social ills—and to remain oblivious to evidence to the contrary.

Thomas Sowell, "The Vision of the Anointed," pg.203