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The Public Policy
A Political Glossary: Part III
Making a distinction between cosmic justice and social justice is more than just a semantic fine point.
If there were a Hall of Fame for political rhetoric, the phrase “social justice” would deserve a prominent place there. It has the prime virtue of political catchwords: It means many different things to many different people.
In other words, if you are a politician, you can get lots of people, with different concrete ideas, to agree with you when you come out boldly for the vague generality of “social justice.”
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catchword can stop thought for 50 years. The phrase “social justice” has stopped many people from thinking, for at least a century — and counting.
If someone told you that Country A had more “social justice” than Country B, and you had all the statistics in the world available to you, how would you go about determining whether Country A or Country B had more “social justice”? In short, what does the phrase mean in practice — if it has any concrete meaning?
In political and ideological discussions, the issue is usually whether there is some social injustice. Even if we can agree that there is some injustice, what makes it social?
Surely most of us are repelled by the thought that some people are born into dire poverty, while others are born into extravagant luxury — each through no fault of their own and no virtue of their own. If this is an injustice, does that make it social?
The baby born into dire poverty might belong to a family in Bangladesh, and the one born to extravagant luxury might belong to a family in America. Whose fault is this disparity or injustice? Is there some specific society that caused this? Or is it just one of those things in the world that we wish was very different?
If it is an injustice, it is unjust from some cosmic perspective, an unjust fate, rather than necessarily an unjust policy, institution or society.
Making a distinction between cosmic justice and social justice is more than just a semantic fine point. Once we recognize that there are innumerable causes of innumerable disparities, we can no longer blithely assume that either the cause or the cure can be found in the government of a particular society.
Anyone who studies geography in any depth can see that different peoples and nations never had the same exposure to the progress of the rest of the human race. People living in isolated mountain valleys have for centuries lagged behind the progress of people living in busy ports, where both new products and new ideas constantly arrive from around the world.
If you study history in addition to geography, you are almost forced to acknowledge that there was never any realistic chance for all peoples to have the same achievements — even if they were all born with the same potential and even if there were no social injustices.
Once I asked a class of black college students what they thought would happen if a black baby were born, in the middle of a ghetto, and entered the world with brain cells the same as those with which Albert Einstein was born.
There were many different opinions — but no one in that room thought that such a baby, in such a place, would grow up to become another Einstein. Some blamed discrimination but others saw the social setting as too much to overcome.
If discrimination is the main reason that such a baby has little or no chance for great intellectual achievements, then that is something caused by society — a social injustice. But if the main reason is that the surrounding cultural environment provides little incentive to develop great intellectual potential, and many distractions from that goal, that is a cosmic injustice.
Many years ago, a study of black adults with high IQs found that they described their childhoods as “extremely unhappy” more often than other black adults did. There is little that politicians can do about that — except stop pretending that all problems in black communities originate in other communities.
Similar principles apply around the world. Every group trails the long shadow of its cultural heritage — and no politician or society can change the past. But they can stop leading people into the blind alley of resentments of other people. A better future often requires internal changes that pay off better than mysticism about one’s own group or about “social justice.”
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM
About the Author
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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Appleby| 6.28.12 @ 7:08AM
The big problem in the Black "communities" (meaning slums, as there are mainly-Black communities that are not this way) is the overwhelming pressure to not "act White" -- i.e. speak the Queen's English, dress neatly and unobtrusively, comb your hair (and not wear a backwards-hat unless you are a catcher), and study hard in school, acts against them. A fellow member of Mensa once got into extremely hot water at a meeting in Britain for incautiously suggesting that the current crop of Black 'role models' in such communities were the big, mean brutes who had the survival genes required back in the days of slavery. Until that pattern changes, "social justice" means paying the Danegeld to keep the lid on the brutes.
Brooksifier | 6.28.12 @ 1:35PM
Michael Jordan (mentioned by Sowell the other day) received help from the govt. So did Sowell himself, he was a Serviceman who got and still does get much benefit from the state-- Sowell is a statist hiding behind a veneer of libertarianism.
Sowell said he considers himself more libertarian than conservative.
But he is a nominal libertarian.
JD| 6.28.12 @ 6:24PM
Your argument sounds like that of the liberal who says that conservatives who accept Social Security benefits are hypocrites. Such arguments are ludicrous.
If you want to buy house A and your wife wants to buy house B, then after you buy house B (see what I did there?), will you refuse to live in it even though you're paying for it? Of course not. You're paying for it. It wasn't what you wanted, but you still take what you're paying for. And if it continues to trouble you, you work to change it.
Democrats constantly try to set conservatives up for false charges of hypocrisy by instituting programs that take our money away, then redistribute (less of) it back to us, and calling us hypocrites if we accept any redistribute. But so long as they force the taking of our money away, we can't afford to do any different! It's a game of "stop hitting yourself", played by bullies.
Von Mises Jr| 6.28.12 @ 8:16AM
Hayek wrote several essays about "Our Poisoned Language." He cited words such as "Liberal" where Mises and he wrote books about Classical Liberalism that today is the opposite of what uneducated and contemporary people call liberalism.
"Justice" was also perverted from justice under the law or equal opportunity to justice defined as equality of outcome.
"Freedom" is perhaps the most egregious bastardization of a word. Pascal taught that whenever one embarks upon a dialog or logical argument, the words must have clear, unambiguous and unequivocal meaning. To a conservative/libertarian, freedom means to utilize and dispose of private property as you wish, and to be free to life, liberty and other basic natural rights. But to a socialist, freedom means to be relieved of the worry of housing, clothing, food and entertainment since someone else must provide them to you free.
This is why socialist cannot be reasoned with, and they must be defeated.
Petronius| 6.28.12 @ 11:26AM
"Social Justice" to the aggrieved means satisfaction at the expense of those they despise. What it is supposed to mean is, all judged guilty of the same crime get the same penalty. All pay the same rate of tax and get the same response from government agencies and emergency services.
A great exposition of that premise can be seen in John Patrick's play, Teahouse of the August Moon. Sakini is too much the philosopher and bearer of truth which is unwelcome to the peasant women in the village where they have been told by Captain Fisby that "Plan B" prescribes equality just before Lotus Blossom gets dumped on him and all hell breaks loose with demands for those things the geisha girl has which they don't. What is stated is seldom heard and understood in context on the receiving end.
Our problem is, all the spoiled brats are too superannuated to spank and send to bed without supper. They voted to plunder Our earnings to the extent that has forced us to do the only thing we can; quit working and earning so they can't take it anymore. Because, we can't either.
TrueBlue | 6.28.12 @ 6:43PM
To put it in even simpler terms, it's payback for daddy not buying them that pony or hotrod.
Louis Jenkins| 6.28.12 @ 2:59PM
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/.....ve-america
Log into the above site for some special meanings.
Butch| 6.28.12 @ 3:39PM
Ironic that the third of this trilogy about political semantics comes out the same day the Supreme Court themselves used semantics to uphold Obamacare. You cannot compel behavior into interstate commerce, but you can tax the resultant inactivity.
"Give me your wallet or I will shoot you." I guess armed robbery is constitutional now, too.
JD| 6.28.12 @ 6:34PM
Maybe instead of speeding tickets they will just issues speeding taxes?
Tom Kyba| 6.28.12 @ 6:47PM
Brooksifier, I'm sure you think that you are just exposing Sowell as a phony, but your repeated attempts to slag him make you sound more like the guys who say "Just because I think the Jews run the world for their own benefit and want all our money and are stinking mud people doesn't mean I'm an anti-semite. I really don't like accusing people of this but I'm sorry that you find Sowell too uppity for your liking.