July 30, 2010
Editor's Note: A longer version of this article first appeared in American Thinker.
Historically, social justice has meant different things to different people, and equally so today, where the term remains as frustratingly elusive as ever. Like the very progressives that champion the term, the definition seems to evolve based on progressives' ever-evolving purposes.
Most exasperating is that many who speak the language of social justice really mean "economic justice." Unlike traditional practitioners of social justice, whose occasional noble interests ranged from prison reform to child-labor laws, many modern practitioners seek wealth redistribution, "living wages," progressive income taxes, and an eternally-widening net of federal government power and central planning; they are inclined to class interests rather than human rights. And, by their estimate, achieving economic justice requires collectivism. They invoke social justice not to try to resolve conventional social differences as much as class/income differences.
This is why, in many modern eyes, including those of the much-maligned Glenn Beck, mention of "social justice" seems a red flag for socialism.
In truth, many of those who mouth the language of "social justice" have long meant "economic justice." As a matter of plain, undeniable historical fact, American communists have cynically employed this tactic for decades, since at least the launching of Communist Party USA in the 1920s. They have talked "social justice" because they know it appeals to the naïve, particularly to trusting, gullible liberal Christians. It's a quite excellent duping mechanism to hoodwink non-communist/non-socialist liberals.
Of course, every now and then, some of those on the far left slip up and blurt out the words "economic justice." And it's indeed a "slip up," especially for a politician. By and large, you can't think that way—or, more accurately, talk that way—and get elected in America. Politicians who privately view the world according to contours of economic justice must publicly avoid such Marxist-socialistic rhetoric while running for office—running, that is, as mainstream Democrats.
That's a somewhat long way of getting to a dramatic case in point: the current president of the United States of America, the man in charge of the most prosperous free-market system in history.
Speaking in January 2001, when he couldn't conceive that the typical American would elect to the presidency someone with views as far to the left as his own, Barack Obama gave an interview to the Chicago Public Radio station, WBEZ, 91.5 FM. There, only a few years before he pursued a successful bid to lead the greatest free-market powerhouse in human history, Obama used the words "economic justice" and "redistributive change." (Click here to listen and here for transcript.)
It was a remarkably revealing interview for a would-be president. Speaking of the super-liberal Warren Court, infamous for its unparalleled judicial activism, Obama lamented: "[A]s radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn't that radical." No, in Obama's view, the Warren Court had not been radical enough. Why? Because, averred Obama, it hadn't "ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice."
