Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion is safe. ~Edmund Burke
We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice ~Friedrich August von Hayek
I beg you, look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social and economic justice, they are code words.” ~Glenn Beck
At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. ~Aristotle.
America, since its founding has been all about political justice. To this end the Founding Fathers established the democratic foundations of this country. Since FDR, however, there has been a fundamental shift in the nature of justice. Liberals are pushing hard for economic justice, and they are willing to sacrifice the pillars of our democracy to pursue it. In essence political justice is now being sacrificed for “economic justice.”
By economic justice, liberals mean redistribution of income and wealth. For them it’s not right that some should have more material wealth than others. They are uninterested in who creates wealth and of the nature of economic growth; they are solely interested in the distribution of wealth. For liberals this is economic justice. It’s not justice that people get what they contribute to the economy through meeting the needs of others—which is the notion of economic justice created by our Founding Fathers and which is embedded in our market-oriented economy. For liberals it’s OK if someone doesn’t want to work and is a drain on the community. This person should still be rewarded.
In talking about the redistribution of income to help the poor, it’s important to understand who we mean by “the poor.” In talking about the poor we are not talking about people worried about their survival. They have food, shelter, and health care. Almost all have television sets and other modern conveniences. What we are talking about then is not survival, but rather seeing to it that most everyone has the same level of wealth and material well-being. We are talking about relative, not absolute wealth and well-being. Where does this stop? Should everyone have a Mercedes? A mink coat? A house? It was an attempt to provide housing to those who could not afford it that caused the mortgage and financial crisis in 2008.
For liberals the government is the primary tool for delivering economic justice. Through taxation, public spending, and regulatory action, government can affect the distribution of income and wealth throughout a society. The historical record shows that government has affected both vertical and horizontal equity; that is, it has redistributed income away from higher income earners to lower income earners, and has shifted income and benefits between people of equal economic status. Regarding the latter, government intervention has favored public sector employees over private sector employees, and those who willingly do not work and act
responsibly over those who do. These problems of inequity between people of roughly the same economic status should cause liberals to wince, but one doesn’t hear concern from this quarter.
Liberals are only concerned about vertical equity; you never hear them complaining about horizontal equity. Thus, you have public sector employees deliberately underperforming on the job and overusing sick leave, because they know they can’t be fired. You have people deliberately dropping out of the labor force to collect unemployment insurance. You have people in the underground economy receiving their income in cash and evading taxes, while at the same time collecting benefits and financial assistance from the government. Liberals don’t complain about this, perhaps because they don’t want to draw attention to the shortcomings of government and because they don’t want to risk offending some of their constituents, the parasites on society who selfishly game the system. Moreover, to the extent that this kind of inequity helps grow the government, this is to the liking of liberals who are bent on growing the power of the State and the ruling class.
The idea of a “just” price goes back to the medieval period. The price was supposed to be fair; it shouldn’t be greater than the worth of the good. During this period price was not understood. It was thought that price was related to the basic and inherent worth of a good. It was not until more recent times, with the development of market economies, that we now understand price to be determined by supply and demand. Apparently liberals want to return us to the medieval perspective of a just price, and ignore the forces of supply and demand. The price of a worker’s labor is equal to the amount that he contributes to the firm employing him. It’s determined by supply and demand. For the government to impose “economic justice,” taking money away from someone who earned it and giving it to someone who did not, violates this basic principle.
Some liberals have argued that utilitarians would support the idea of income distribution. According to this argument, taking money away from a rich man to give it to someone in poverty would enhance overall societal utility or happiness. This would be so because the happiness lost by the rich man would be less than that gained by the poor man. A hundred dollars lost by the rich man would represent only a small portion of his wealth, so he would be less affected than the poor man, for whom a hundred dollars could be a big deal.
This argument, however, is myopic because it only looks at a snapshot in time. It doesn’t take into account the dynamics. The impact of so-called economic justice, transferring money from those who earned it to those who did not, would be to pervert incentives. Over time it would penalize productive members of society and reward those who are a drain on it. This would reduce the vitality of the economy and reduce its growth rate. The size of the economic pie to be shared would shrink. It would reduce economic and political freedom because the government would be interceding in the affairs of individuals.
Bertrand Russell, the socialist philosopher mentioned earlier, supports income and wealth redistribution. He said the following:
“Material goods are more a matter of possession than goods that are mental. A man who eats a piece of food prevents everyone else from eating it, but a man who writes or enjoys a poem does not prevent another man from writing or enjoying one just as good or better. That is why, in regard to material goods, justice is important, but in regard to mental goods the thing that is needed is opportunity and an environment that makes hope of achievement rational.”[158] Notice that he stresses opportunity, environment, and hope of achievement when talking about the production of mental goods, but ignores these with material goods. The market provides opportunity and environment regarding the production of material goods, but he wants to degrade the market and circumvent it with government interference. It’s noteworthy that he speaks of production and consumption with mental goods (writing and enjoying poetry), but ignores production with material goods, focusing only on the consumption aspect. Clearly this is a serious mental gaffe. If producers are denied profit or incentive to produce material goods, there will be less available for consumption. Opportunity and environment are critically important here, just as they are for mental goods. The market for material goods is not a zero-sum game as he seeks to characterize it.
Bertrand Russell is one of the great minds of the twentieth century. He is a renowned logician and mathematician. The fact that his mind short-circuited here is symptomatic of liberals. Even those with great analytic capacities are able to turn a blind eye and short-circuit those capacities when trying to justify income redistribution. It can’t be justified rationally, so they twist logic to get the conclusion they want and even convince themselves that it makes sense. As an intellectual, he clearly favors mental output (his work) over material output, displaying the ever-present liberal bias and elitist condescension.
Differences in intellectual endowment are largely a gift of nature, although here too hard work plays an important role. Why is the liberal only concerned with inequality when it pertains to material well-being? Liberals, like Bertrand Russell, don’t realize that the expansion of State power usually brings about a curtailment of intellectual freedom and artistic expression. It’s critical to acknowledge this link, but liberals blithely ignore it.
Nozick, a conservative philosopher, equates taxation for the purpose of income distribution to a theft of a person’s labor. In paying taxes most of us are working several months out of the year for the government. This is a form of oppression and a muted form of slavery, although in this form at least we are allowed to do the work we like.
For libertarians, income redistribution is wrong even if it would increase societal happiness, which we have indicated it doesn’t. For them income redistribution is wrong because it infringes on individual liberty. People shouldn’t be told what to do with money they have earned. Freedom to control one’s life and to make choices for oneself is of paramount importance to the libertarian.
Does the State own me or do I own myself? Do I have a right to the output of my own labor or does the State? Libertarians would answer that we own ourselves and likewise are entitled to the product of our labor. If the State can’t take one of my kidneys or one of my eyes to help someone who needs them more than I do, why can it take the product of my labor to give to someone else?
It is bizarre that liberals are interested in the creation of an organic state that supersedes the individual, but espouse policies that reward people who sap the strength of the collective polity and the State. However, what liberals really want is to hurt individuals who are succeeding because they are an obstacle to the accumulation of state power.
Although they profess otherwise, liberals don’t appear to believe that we all have an obligation to enhance the welfare of the community. Those that don’t contribute out of volition—the indolent and the lazy—are nevertheless singled out for support by the liberal establishment. It is, of course, appropriate to help those who are weak and lack the capacity to help themselves, but liberals go well beyond this. In fact liberals don’t appear to believe that we even have an obligation to ourselves, much less than to the community. Thus, liberalism creates an environment where slackers and cheaters thrive. Parasitic, self-seeking behavior is rewarded and encouraged, while behavior that is responsible and conscientious is penalized and discouraged. Is this justice?
Is it economic justice that liberal welfare policies have hurt the poor rather than helped them? Is it justice for workers that liberal support for unions hurts other workers, the consumer, and the taxpayer? Is it justice that liberal support for trial lawyers adds to the cost of medical care for the public? Is there justice in the false promises which liberals continually make to the disadvantaged? Does it make sense for the government to have $53 trillion in unfunded mandates for social programs and pensions? Is there justice in making promises to people and not making the necessary provisions to see that the promise will be fulfilled?
Where is the morality in false promises, promises broken? Liberal programs and politicians continually make promises that they fail to meet. Their poverty programs, as discussed, have clearly failed. They have made promises in the form of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and now ObamaCare—but all are vastly underfunded. The lock box on Social Security trust funds has been removed, and the funds used for other purposes.
The foundations for Western democratic perspectives on justice and morality are found largely in the thinking of the Greeks and in the work of philosopher Emmanuel Kant. According to Aristotle, the State shouldn’t be neutral about what is right and wrong. People should be rewarded based on whether or not they deserve it. Those who are deserving are those who live lives based on virtues espoused by the State. Modern philosophers, such as Emmanuel Kant and Rawls, differ with the Aristotelian view. For them the State should be neutral on moral issues and on how to live life.
The utilitarians subscribe to a hedonistic moral philosophy where pleasure equals good and pain equals bad. The objective of a government in this view is to maximize happiness for the society. This school of philosophy sees man and his nature as hedonically driven.
According to Bentham, “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure…They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it in words a man may pretend to abjure their empire, but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while.”
John Stuart Mill, a subsequent utilitarian philosopher, attempted to amend this view to take into account that some pleasures and pains differ in their quality and can’t all be measured equally. The question is, who should decide which pleasures are of quality and which are not? Here Mill fell victim to the temptation of modern day liberalism. It is clear that he felt that intellectually superior people like himself should be put in the role of playing God, passing judgment on how others should lead their lives. He was not really subscribing to utilitarianism, but rather revealing his own superiority and elitism and contempt for ordinary folk. He was an egghead and effete snob and felt that others who did not lead similarly intellectual lives were living on a lower and less moral level. The Untermensch, he seemed to be saying, needed guidance. The ability to enjoy simple pleasures seemed alien to him.
One key danger of the philosophy of utilitarianism is its focus on maximizing the pleasure of the entire population. This organic orientation obviously could threaten the rights of an individual. In this regard, the example is often given of a Roman circus with certain citizens thrown in the ring to fight the lions. Perhaps the crowd might find great pleasure in seeing such a spectacle, but clearly those in the ring would have had a different view. It is thus interesting that utilitarianism—which underpins a lot of moral philosophy still today in Western democracies and underpins much contemporary economic theory and policy—has this fundamental germ of collectivism at its core.
Utilitarian theory is used to buttress free-market capitalism, because it’s the best system for maximizing welfare for the overall polity. Those who contribute the most to meeting the needs of others are rewarded the most. This is economic justice. It’s not justice to reward those who don’t contribute.
The philosopher Immanuel Kant disagrees with the utilitarians. He believes it’s wrong to base morality and considerations of justice on meeting our need for pleasure and happiness. For Kant we shouldn’t be captive to our appetites, but rather should be guided by reason. Man is more exalted than other creatures that are driven by appetite and should act accordingly. More specifically he said we should be guided by a categorical imperative to help human beings out of respect for one another. He says, “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person, or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”
It should be noted that Kant was unfair in his criticism of utilitarianism because he characterized it as narrowly focused on the satisfaction of basic appetites, whereas, even John Rawls in A Theory of Justice recognized that it could encompass “rational desires” as well.[159]
Kant was critical of utilitarianism because he felt that it accorded reason the role of satisfying the passions. In his view reason shouldn’t be instrumentalist, helping to achieve the desired ends of our appetites, but rather should guide us to a higher moral plane. Here he seems to be in some agreement with the anti-materialism that marks today’s liberalism.
The rejection of reason by today’s liberals, however, puts them at a far remove from Kant, who puts ultimate faith in reason. As discussed previously, liberals seem now to shun reason because its use calls into question their methods and agenda.
Like the utilitarians with whom he disagreed, Kant’s view of justice is not favorable to the liberal’s view of justice. Liberals treat individuals as a means, not an end. For Kant, a person is not an instrument to be used by the State or anyone else. Individuals and humanity are deserving of respect and autonomy. Liberal collectivism, however, diminishes humanity; it glorifies their submissiveness to the State.
For Kant, freedom is not just finding the best way to a given goal, but is the selection of the goal itself. The goal should be outside our immediate interest and be determined through reason. Liberals want to arrogate this freedom to select the goals for themselves, leaving individuals to find the best means to achieve these goals. Liberal ideology sees individual freedom as a small thing. It’s the State that is important, not the individual.
Kant believed in social contract theory as the basis of political economy, but a hypothetical one, not an actual contract. He did not flesh out, however, what such a social contract might look like, except to indicate that it should be based on the categorical imperative to shape our actions and behavior in such a way to respect one another.
This task of fleshing out a social contract was taken on by John Rawls, a modern-day leading philosophical exponent of economic justice and liberalism. Rawls formulated a concept of justice based on a hypothetical thought experiment. In this experiment he assumes that we start with a situation that is not currently prevailing, but rather with an initial situation where no one would know what his position in society would be. Everyone would operate behind a veil of ignorance. None of us would know what class or ethnicity he would be. Nor would he know his religion or position in the economic and social strata. Under this set of assumptions, Rawls believes that we would all choose to have a society where everyone is equal, because no one would want to risk an unfavorable circumstance. Basically, Rawls presumes that we are all risk-averse. He assumes that we all want sameness, and that a nonhierarchical society would be both feasible and desirable. Essentially he presumes that fear of inferiority prevails over all other considerations.
Liberalism fails to meet even a Rawlsian concept of justice. In Rawls’ view, a policy is only just if it has a favorable effect on the most disadvantaged. Liberal welfare policies, as mentioned, have not succeeded in helping the poor. This is the case at both the national level as well as the international level. At the national level, LBJ’s war on poverty and its welfare policies have been largely discredited. At the international level, aid programs to help the poor have failed. The vast improvement for the poor in the international community has come about through the adoption of market-economy principles in China and East Asia. The movement away from Mao’s communist regime in China to a market-oriented economy has transformed the country and showcases the bankruptcy of egalitarian policies, while at the same time highlighting the strength of capitalism.
Rawls is only concerned with inequality in income and wealth, but man is not just driven by money; he is driven by sex and power and intellectual achievement too. Why should we allow inequality in sex, power, and intellectual achievement? Why not equalize everything. For example, why not limit sex partners, ensuring that everyone has the same number. Perhaps drugs could be given to suppress the sexual appetites and prowess of those who would otherwise have more sex than others. Pretty women could be banned from wearing make-up or forced to undergo cosmetic surgery to equalize the playing field with less attractive women. Similarly, those with superior intellectual faculties could be given a drug, or subjected to surgery, to level the playing field.
Only in certain communist countries, like Cuba, the USSR, and Mao’s China have the lives of the most disadvantaged been improved through higher education and an improved safety net. However, we are all aware of the horrors attending this. The damage to everyone else in these societies was extravagant. Liberty was annihilated and economic oppression enforced on everyone, not just the poor.
Rawls’ view of justice is extreme in that it exalts considerations of justice over everything else. Rawls ignores the implications of trying to achieve justice as he sees it for the political and economic system as well as for the psychological and social effects. To put in place his system of justice would require a massive expansion and intrusion of government into each aspect of our lives. A tyranny of bureaucrats and an elite ruling class would be inevitable. This is hardly the nonhierarchical world that Rawls seems to long for. The damage to human striving and achievement would be devastating.
In a Rawlsian world there is a fear of failure. There is an aversion to risk and choice. The overwhelming need is for safety and sameness. It is a uni-dimensional world focused only on material well-being.
Governments don’t arise out of contracts or agreement; they originate out of the interplay of a multitude of social, political, economic, and psychological forces and evolve out of the past. Governments and political economies are not the willy-nilly creations of armchair philosophers. In essence, contract theory is an unrealistic view of how societal arrangements actually evolve. This contrasts with utilitarianism, which is undergirded and actualized through the price system and the market. It’s much more realistic than the Rawlsian theory—and is more practical and constructive in policy implementation. Rawls maintains two basic principles:
“The first requires equality in the assignment of basic rights and duties, while the second holds that social and economic inequities, for example, inequalities of wealth and authority, are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged members of society. These principles rule out justifying institutions on the grounds that the hardships of some are offset by a greater good in the aggregate.”[160]
These are constraining principles. They limit the prospects for societies to develop and grow. Surely, it would be desirable if everyone could gain from the implementation of a certain set of policies, but this is unrealistic. If the net effect is significantly favorable and the favorable effects are reasonably distributed over the population, this should be sufficient to go ahead. Moreover, it’s likely that certain policies would favor certain groups, while other policies would favor other groups, so over time the favorable effects could be distributed fairly over the citizenry. This surely represents a more promising course for policy implementation.
The Rawlsian view differs fundamentally from the utilitarian viewpoint because the latter doesn’t take a stand on how it would like to see the distribution of utility relating to a particular policy. The utilitarians are merely concerned with maximizing welfare for society as a whole. It’s true that it would be desirable to take into account the impact on the most impoverished, but the Rawlsian approach is too extreme and would limit societal welfare in the end.
Rawls is even more extreme in that he wants social policy to offset other factors that contribute to differences in wealth and income, including natural abilities and talents. Below is a quote to this effect:
“While the liberal conception seems clearly preferable to the system of natural liberty, intuitively it still appears defective. For one thing, even if it works to perfection in eliminating the influence of social contingencies it still permits the distribution of wealth and income to be determined by the natural distribution of abilities and talents. Within the limits allowed by the background arrangements, distributive shares are decided by the outcome of the natural lottery; and this outcome is arbitrary from a moral perspective. There is no more reason to permit the distribution of income and wealth to be settled by the distribution of natural assets than by historical and social fortune. Furthermore the principle of fair opportunity can only be imperfectly carried out, at least as long as some form of family exists. The extent to which natural capacities develop and reach fruition is affected by all kinds of social conditions and class attitudes. Even the willingness to make an effort, to try, and so to be deserving in the ordinary sense is itself dependent upon happy family and social circumstances.”[161]
If we were to treat talent and even motivation as undeserving of reward because they are determined by factors outside of our control, this would totally undermine the basis of positive and negative incentive structures that have served our political economy so well. America is a meritocratic culture: hard work and talent are rewarded. Rawls finds unfairness in this and would like to turn it upside down. He is intent on replacing our meritocracy with a culture of mediocracy.
In trying to redress even differences in motivation, the implementation of Rawlsian justice would create a strange land indeed. Clearly it would be a heaven for the indolent and lazy. Those who are disinterested in helping either themselves or society would find a very congenial environment, but the rest of us would feel very much out of place.
The fear of failure is an important motivating force not only for humans, but for any creature on this earth. Liberals want to eliminate this fear and replace it with a soothing sense that it’s okay to fail. In fact it’s those who succeed who should feel uneasy, because they must are benefitted unfairly in some way.
Rawls is intent on imposing an equality of outcome on society. He doesn’t specifically address the fact that we live in a stochastic world. Fortuity and misfortune impose themselves on all of our lives. They are a fact of life. Presumably Rawls would like to banish these stochastic realities from our existence as well. Some of us die young or fall prey to sickness, while others are blessed with health and live long lives. Some of us might be struck by lightning, while others might win the lottery. Life is uncertain and unfair. To try to make life what it is not is folly.
Kant did not find the basis of liberty in the notion that we own ourselves or that it comes from God. For Kant liberty and freedom should derive from a respect for humanity itself. Humans should respect themselves and others.
Kant believes that morality and justice are concerned with intentionality and principles, not consequences. Liberals appear to fit this bill…but do they? Kant says it’s the intention that counts, but by this he surely means more than posturing. It should be genuine intention. We have seen that most liberals, certainly the politicians, don’t shape their own lives in line with their stated compassion for the poor, and they demonstrate no concern that their policies have failed time and time again.
The liberal principles of fairness, equality of outcome, and the priority of the collective over the individual were at the heart of communism—and brought about its demise. With the failure of communism, the West presumed that capitalism and democracy had triumphed. But the same liberal principles that brought about the demise of communism are now afflicting the West as well. It’s a disease that we are not immune to, and it is destroying us from with-in.
Morality and justice in liberalism are teleological. It’s focused on the ends, the goals. For Aristotle, morality and justice were also teleological in nature. To understand either morality or justice, it was necessary to understand the ends. But this conception is fraught with danger. Fundamentalism can have us pursuing the wrong goals. We can see this with the Islamic extremists. Killing is justified, indeed morally grounded, if it’s in the name of Allah and wreaks havoc on infidels.
Does it not make more sense to rely on process, means, and individual liberty? Does it not make more sense to seek answers through reason, truth, and simple precepts for behavior? Instincts across cultures are in accord with some basic patterns of behavior, such as the Golden Rule, compassion, not stealing or killing, and not lying. Is it not better to allow individuals the freedom to decide what is moral and just, rather than seeking a collective position which risks divorce from fundamental feelings for humanity?
Liberal moral teleology is dangerous and destructive to humanity; it hurts those it purports to help. Unequal treatment under the law hurts the values of individual liberty that liberalism purports to support. Individual liberty is the real way to their goals, and still they squash it. Equality of outcome is not the answer; dignity and equality of opportunity represents a better way.
The ideas of social and economic justice and fairness are frequently thrown about by the Left and underpin the leftist agenda. Both words for the Left have everything to do with redistribution and nothing with justice. The word justice, at least for a conservative, means equal treatment; for the Left it means special dispensation. It means that the groups whom they favor should be exempted from the rules, principles, and laws that apply to everyone else.
According to Plato, “Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.” Liberalism, however, fans the flames of injustice in the hearts of men, as it sows the seeds of dissension, envy, and anger. Through its politics of division, liberalism is creating an environment antithetical to justice. In fact it’s sacrificing justice on the altar of its agenda for power.
The liberal notion of justice is nothing more than an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Justice implies equal treatment and fairness, but liberals use justice as a tool, not for advancing equal treatment and fairness, but for advancing their agenda. They are not interested in equal treatment or the evenhanded application of laws, but rather in preconceived outcomes.
This is vividly illustrated by the tragic Trayvon Martin case. Early in 2012, Trayvon Martin, a young black teenager, was killed in what is alleged to have been an altercation with George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer. Thousands of blacks are killed each year, most of them by other black men. Are liberals concerned about this? No, there is little attention paid to it. They look for a crime that can divide us, because that is the way they sustain themselves and advance their agenda of power. Before anything was known of the Trayvon Martin case, the liberal media and establishment put a spotlight on it. The Washington Post put it on their front page and called the alleged perpetrator, George Zimmerman, a “white Hispanic.” To satisfy their template of division, it simply didn’t fit if Zimmerman was Hispanic, so they called him a white Hispanic. They also made him out to be a racist even though he reportedly mentored black kids and, in 2010, actively protested against police corruption when the son of a policeman was not arrested for beating a black homeless man. No one knows what the facts are in this case. The criminal justice system is the forum for sorting this out.
Even if it were clear that Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin simply because he was black, would it serve the interest of society to blow it up and cause racial tension and anger if it was one out of thousands of killings? It’s always possible to look for things in society that will divide us. Is it not better to look for things that bring us together?
Liberals profess that they are against racism. They claim they want to diminish tensions between ethnic groups and work toward a society of unity. Yet their actions and methods of operation militate to fan divisions and work against unity. This is because the real goal of liberalism is power, and the politics of division are the means to achieving it.
Justice for liberals is subservient to their quest for power. They don’t mind sacrificing it if it advances their power. In fact, the rule of law—equal treatment under the law—is something they are uncomfortable with because it constrains the exercise of the power of the ruling elite. The ruling liberal elite prefer to exercise discretion rather than submit to principles or laws. Thus in the economic sphere they want to decide who gets what, so economic justice for them is not served by the rules of the marketplace. Likewise, in the legal sphere, the rule of law gets in their way, so they brush it aside.
They are not concerned with justice for George Zimmerman. The media fanned the flames of racism by trying to depict him as a racist, without any information to work on. It’s interesting that mob justice and vigilantism, the things that blacks were most terrified of early in this country’s history, seem now to have become their way of operating in this case.
Why not let the justice system handle the case? Why try to exert outside pressure without knowing the facts? In fact it’s even worse than that in that, by various accounts, the liberal media distorted the facts to make it appear that Zimmerman was racist. Liberals love to use the word justice, but in practice make a mockery of it. The liberal view of justice is not just an oxymoron; it’s the antithesis of justice. It’s not just non-justice, it’s antagonistic toward justice. It’s based on mob emotion arising out of anger and hatred. It’s, in short, a disease of mind and spirit. With the politics of division practiced by liberals, our society is divided. Like a disease in which part of the body fights other parts, liberalism is fostering the growth of a cancer of division that works to the harm of us all.
More fundamentally, however, liberalism errs by its single-minded obsession with a narrowly defined concept of “justice” and “fairness”; it ignores economic, social, institutional, historical, rational, empirical, and psychological realities. Justice can’t be fruitfully considered in isolation from these realities.
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Sophistopia 