Dakota Beacon

Economist Benjamin A. Rogge referred to the statue Lady Justice: “The blindfolded Goddess of Justice has been encouraged to peek and she now says, ‘First tell me who you are and then I’ll tell you what your rights are.’” So it is with “social justice,” a contemporary oxymoron.

A generation gap denotes more than a mere age difference. It also represents a difference in non-shared values, especially values instilled beyond the home. For parents this means children schooled in ideas leading to behavior not embraced by the parents. For grandparents and grandchildren the disparity may be even greater.

Colleges and universities have been indoctrinating students with unconventional ideas for generations. What follows should bring a focused understanding of the generation gap between parents and grandparents on one side and the more current disparate thinking of young adults on the other. This understanding by no means implies the two age groups will agree. After all, the older generation is just not “woke” enough. (Lest the use of this unfamiliar term distract from the issue at hand a definition is appropriate. The term “woke” refers to being alert to injustice in society, especially racism. Example: “We need to stay angry, and stay woke.”)

The contemporary term – “social justice” – has a virtuous ring to it. Who could possibly be opposed to it? This term did not spring up autonomously. As a current addition to our lexicon, it has roots in something called “critical theory.” Critical theory is a broad area of knowledge that originated in the 1930s and has rapidly expanded and evolved within academia. It spawned entire disciplines such as Critical Race Theory, Critical Pedagogy, and Queer Theory and is highly influential within the social justice movement.

Contemporary critical theory views reality through the lens of power dynamics dividing people into oppressed groups and oppressor groups along various lines like race, class, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability, and age. As such, critical theory becomes an overarching world view. The fundamental duty of human beings is to seek the liberation of oppressed groups from the domination of oppressor groups. Since the 1960s, critical theory has come to dominate academic disciplines such as anthropology, Gender Studies, and more and is increasingly influential in the broader culture as well. Despite the air of intellectual superiority, critical theory from this skeptic’s viewpoint, could be categorized as a mixture of popular psychology, fashionable social theories, and guesswork.

In a short hand mode, social justice is a subset of critical theory and can be defined simplistically as the elimination of all forms of social oppression. Those who speak of social justice actually wish to set aside rules and standards that otherwise apply equally to all. Instead, “social justice warriors” would establish schemes of preferential treatment for one class or segment or group in society as opposed to all others. A third party, namely the government, must ensure “fairness” by controlling outcomes, over-riding rules, standards, and preferences of other people. Stated another way, all are not to be judged by the same rules within the legal process. Social justice focuses on one segment of the population and ignores the interests of others who are not the immediate focus.

A quick way to understand social justice is to compare it to traditional justice. Traditional justice is an evenhanded, honest, impartial process. The process would be executed under fair rules with an impartial judge and jury. If a trial were conducted in violation of the rules or if the judge or jury were partial, the trial would be considered unfair.

In the same way, Constitutional equality originally meant equal opportunity and not equal outcome. Social justice becomes the opposite -- a results-oriented or equal-outcome based system rather than an equal opportunity based system.

Many of the older generation fall victim in thinking that what traditionally is understood in the US Constitution is the same as the younger generation currently understands also. Not so. At least, not through the prism of critical theory and their understanding of social justice. In the young generation this inspires a rewriting of the Constitution.

As Friedrich A. Hayek understood social justice, it ultimately destroys the rule of law. It supersedes the rule of law when the object of social justice targets a set of results or outcomes for a select group secured by an ever-expanding government.

What happens when social justice prevails? In the practice of social justice, truth becomes a relative and marginalized commodity. If it weren’t for Rogge’s description of the statue of Lady Justice peeking, she too might become a candidate for destruction by woke social justice warriors.

AFTERWORD: The following books by Thomas Sowell offer excellent discussions of social justice: “The Quest for Cosmic Justice,” “Conflict of Visions,” and “The Vision of the Anointed.” See the website https://shenviapologetics.com/ See also Heather MacDonald’s “The Diversity Delusion.”

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).