Social Justice
I'm very happy to see E.J. Graff joining the expert team here...
Unfortunately, I feel a DLC moment coming on here: Bruce Reed and Marshall Whitman are about to invade my brain...
Re: "My longtime preoccupation is social justice"...
"Social justice"... Could it be that in America today framing one's issues in terms of "social justice" loses more votes than it wins in important political backgrounds?... That we are much better off talking about "social insurance" and "safety nets" and "equal opportunity" and "personal liberty" than "social justice"? Could it be that there are many more people in America who have a knee-jerk approval of equal opportunity and personal liberty--including the personal liberty to walk down the street without having rocks thrown at you--than have a knee-jerk approval of social justice?
Whew. It's over. I'm back to my real self again. It won't happen again--at least not for another month or so.
Yours in struggle and solidarity,
Brad DeLong
Yeah, better get rid of the word "social" entirely. 'Cause it's liable to get an "ism" tacked on its ass. And "justice" -- that's a matter for the courts, isn't it?
January 14, 2006 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
People go crazy when the Republicans talk about Freedom.
But would those words work if the true Republican meaning was out there? That is where the corporate media is letting down most of the people.
Freedom to the Bush Administration has a totally different meaning than it has for the average person.
Freedom to the Bushites means the freedom to do what they want, when they want to the rest of us and other countries.
January 14, 2006 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
My gut response: Must there be a "one best way" for all situations? Or might the rhetorical strategies one employs depend upon who one is attempting to communicate with and toward what aim?
For example, if your focus is cultivating swing voters in purple states, then Brad's thinking sounds promising to me.
There is a useful (albeit sometimes painful) side effect of thinking more carefully about how one's labels are interpreted by those who aren't lefty "true believers": We might better recognize when we succumb to such vices as arrogance and narcissism?
I don't think one must be an apologist for the DLC to recognize that a movement which represents a solid electoral majority is going to have to be more inclusive than one content to play an also-ran role. That's Coalition Building 101.
When centrists and leftists discuss the above issues, the process often devolves into flame wars dominated by simplistic, either-or sound bites. That's intellectually lazy and politically unproductive. The longer we fail dig below superficial polarities, the less likely we will take full advantage of the Republican K Street corruption scandal.
January 14, 2006 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is it possible that President Bush (43) just needs to head to the lights seen by his father?
When I moonlighted as an independent producer of programs on hunger and homelessness, I frequently ran across the names of George H. W and Barbara Bush. Doing good, helping the needy.
Defineately not DLC.
Forget the media mispeaks. What about the
thousand points of light speech where Bush (41) speaks of government working with citizens to help those in need?
This does not look sound like the compassionate conservatism of his Bush (43).
Dumping the needy at the steps of the church.
I voted for Bush (43) for President because I believed he was like his parents. Was I wrong?
Is it possible that the apple did not really fall far from the tree? That President Bush is just repressing his true genetic inheritance.
January 14, 2006 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps "social justice" is not the best term. Could be that the word "social" should be stricken from the language because it does not resonate. Whatever.
OT, and moving on, the Medicare drug bill - along with many other programs that the Bush administration has put in place - is a miserable failure. Couldn't Democrats demand a fix for it?
Here's my story which which I shared in the comments at Atrios:
[The Medicare drug bill is a] fiery wreck for sure. A few days ago, I was in my local pharmacy and I asked the two pharmacists how the new Medicare drug plan was going. One of them nearly shouted at me, "Don't even ask!"
The are having to turn people away because whatever agency they apply with does not give them proper documentation, or because their drugs are not part of the plan. The pharmacists hate doing this because they know that stopping medications can be life-threatening for some of their customers.
Some folks turn themselves away because they cannot afford the deductables or the co-pays. This plan is a miserable failure, and unfortunately some willl pay with their lives.
Absolutely, emergency legislation is necessary right now. Dems, please, please get on this. Why do we have to beg?
January 14, 2006 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
must admit that I cringe at any politicians that talk "social justice." I dunno, call me nuts, but there's just this thing that won't get out of my mind: justice is for judges and the judiciary to figure out, not the electorate. Majority rule "justice" has made for a lot of exciting history books.
You want to change culture, and make it more "just"? Get thee to "Hollywood," that's where they attempt that kind of stuff and have a modicum of results.
Legislating justice doesn't work.
January 14, 2006 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
not just history books, either, now that I think of it...it's a common theme in science fiction where we go back to Roman circuses in the order of everyone gets to vote on whether this or that person should be executed, after being suitably fired up to outrage levels about what book the nasty perp has been publishing or some such.
January 14, 2006 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
<span class="Apple-style-span">"I dunno, call me nuts, but there's just this thing that won't get out of my mind: justice is for judges and the judiciary to figure out, not the electorate."</span><span class="Apple-style-span">
</span><span class="Apple-style-span">Jeez, when I said that, it was a joke! But now I remember -- it was judges and the judiciary that ended serfdom, slavery, absolute monarchy, etc.</span>
January 14, 2006 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, Angela, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the "compassionate conservative" to start acting compassionately. He'll be too busy bombing Iran.
By the way, I have a poster I found in Grand Central Station on 2/15/2003 on my way home from the anti-Iraq War rally. It says' A thousand points of light and one dim bulb."
January 14, 2006 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
... and too make a heck of a lot of money for themselves and their friends and cronies while doing it.
January 14, 2006 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
My quibble with social justice is the utter vagueness if the term. What counts as "social justice" and why? How does one justify not including "rights for the unborn," and is it worth having that argument rather than being more precise about what social justice issues do matter to you? After all, the religious left does see the end of abortion as a social justice and human rights issue.
Brad's not having a DLC moment or he'd be sawing planks out of the social justice platform. :)
January 14, 2006 4:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're cherry picking. Civil wars and revolutions and stuff like that don't always end up being what they're cracked up to be at the start, "social justice" wise. Hitler sought justice for the great German race humiliated by the "unjust" punishment for WWI. Pick one: Tsar or Stalin. They both thought they were "just." Oh yes, "street justice" can work, ask any gang member: you just have to win the rumble and don't get too greedy with the tribute money so that the trains still run on time.
January 14, 2006 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, I basically inhabit a space on the far left of the spectrum to which pro- and anti- DLC debates tend to devolve. I think the DLC is basically a fifth column inside the Democratic party which uses its greater access to corporate dollars to derail any meaningful assualt on Bushism.
And yet, I agree with deLong here. Yes, "Social Justice" is a spent term, and a bloodless code word that only a few elitist liberals undersand; it's become pablum. It's been a joke since "Hair" was a popular show. Remember the lyrics of "Easy to be Hard"?
It's the same kind of pablum that Dems got into in the Eighties when they thought that the "Fairness Issue" was the way to tackle Reaganism.
It ain't about tag lines. It's about BEING a movement that's fighting for the people it claims to represent, and welcoming their participation. It's not about "leaders" PROMISING to deliver justice (in ever-smaller doses) to that base.
January 15, 2006 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
On social justice, I cannot believe what I'm hearing. We're supposed to be aching for the moral values vote and social justice is a core teaching of the Catholic Church and most mainline Protestant faiths.
The trouble with the Democratic Party isn't that it's immoral, it has become amoral. It doesn't know the language of either left or right wing religious faith. Social justice is the message of "A Christmas Carol". Social justice is the message of "It's a Wonderful life". Social justice is the message that motivated the abolitionists, the fight for the vote for women, for child labor laws, labor unions, civil rights...
I guess I'm just growing old because for the life me I can't figure out what young Democrats believe they are fighting for? Reform? Reform without any philosophy motivating it is bleak indeed.
January 15, 2006 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
bluebell:
Talking about "Social Justice" is something that decent religious liberals like to talk about in meetings of fellow religious liberals. Nothing wrong with that - but it is not the way a suitably energized and mobile Democratic Party would advertise itself. Of course we don't have such a party today - but back when we did, it succeeded because in a world of "Us and Them", "we" knew which side our bread was buttered on. "Social Justice" wasn't a slogan, it was a deeply felt motivation of the majority of the people, who were not afraid to express it or to demand their fair share.
Now we have "liberals" who can't even get behind people when they do demand their fair share - like the New York Transit workers. Instead too many of us wonk it up, with conclusions that favor the corporatist elite.
The "Race to the Bottom" and how we get out of it is the unconfronted issue of our time, and it will not be solved by wonks or sincere religious liberals like yourself alone.
I'm all for the philosophy you express - but if it's only reduced to a stale slogan, it's useless.
January 15, 2006 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, and bluebell, I hope you realized from my reference to "Hair" that I'm not one of those "young Democrats" you're wondering about. It would be nice if one of them would engage this point.
January 15, 2006 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
January 15, 2006 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is a distinction or at least there should be between a "social justice" which means elite Democrats tell middle class people how they have to give up taxes to help people who don't work. That has been how Republicans have successfully painted Demcorats since Nixon.
Bobby Kennedy did challenge Americans to live up to our ideals. He pointed out that too many Americans were left out of benefits that most Americans enjoyed. However, he so helped establish the Bed-Stuy Redevelopment Corp. That should be the model for Democrats and a new model for social justice. Not about taking away from some to give to the poor. Not about an know-it-all elite dictating to others. Instead it should be about using government as a catalyst where useful. Getting it out of the way when not with the goal of helping all Americans realize their dreams.
January 15, 2006 3:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, you don't mind signing on with the chickenhawk elite who tell middle class people how they have to give up taxes so chickenhawks can feel "tough" watching war on their plasma TV.
Besides most of those people who "don't work" are poor children, the disabled, the mentally ill, the mentally incompetent and the elderly.
This was brutally obvious over the last few weeks when Medicare D got so screwed up that even our Republican governor was out there scrambling with an executive order to keep meds coming to the poor.
I believe the Democratic Party may not be able to bridge this divide between those who want money devoted to war and those who want money devoted to domestic needs at home. It's a very fundamental divide over priorities.
January 15, 2006 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
We don't need a Social Justice slogan. No slogan is going to do a thing for us if it's not sincere. We have to stop saying the phrase "social justice" and start fighting for real social justice, whatever it's called.
We have to think seriously about what it would mean to end the Race to the Bottom and how that might be accomplished. We have to fight for the little guy instead of voting for a GOP-friendly bankruptcy bill. We have to understand that supporting transit workers fighting to prevent their health care and pension benefits from being slashed should be supported on general principles, instead of pointing out that "other workers have had to give these up" - as several on this site and throughout the left blogosphere did. We have to cheer the new Maryland law forcing WalMart to supply decent health insurance to its employees and stop worrying about what the not-so-very-liberal media say about it.
We have to take on the hard fight for real social justice and stop thinking that any mere slogan is going to bring it.
January 15, 2006 5:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
>>There is a distinction or at least there should be between a "social justice" which means elite Democrats tell middle class people how they have to give up taxes to help people who don't work
A distinction between that and what?
.
January 15, 2006 5:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
A social justice that is about helping all Americans. A perfect example is Social Security or Medicare. These are programs that ask all Americans to pay into them and payout something to all Americans. The other model are local development corporations. They marry government help with local initiatives. This way people are not neither asked to sink or swim on their own nor do they just get handouts.
January 15, 2006 8:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
First we have a professional military. There job, which they chose are to go and fight and if necessary kill or die. No one made them join the military. Had France and Germany stayed united with the United States prior to the war perhaps the war could have been invaded, and goodness knows it could not have been conducted more ineptly if planned that way.
On the domestic front this country does not have a long history of happily enacting large scale programs that take money away from people to give to poorer people. The exception were those programs that were the result of the Depression when much of the country feared poverty. This allowed Roosevelt to weld together urban ethnics and Southern segregations into a winning Democratic Party.
Johnson saw himself as the heir of the New Deal and sought to continue those ideas but he also enacted civil rights legislation and lost the South. It was worth it but it had political consequences.
Since that time Democrats or at least Democratic activitists keep waiting for the country to agree with them and it is not clear that it ever will. Better to make look to make social insurance programs that spread the risks, and provide a wide spread benefit so everyone has a stake in the program.
January 15, 2006 8:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hard to disagree with this but - who are you arguing against? Seems to me that "social justice" of the kind you are in favor of (not to mention the other kind - which is completely off the radar) is under pretty severe attack these days, that attack being the point of Norquist's "drown it in a bathtub" remark.
Who is arguing for the other type of "social justice" these days? It has no friends anywhere near the levers of power. Why this dogged insistence that it must never rear its ugly head again? Why are you constantly on guard against this? Why not just fight the Bushies and discuss this fine distinction when and if it once again becomes relevant?
January 16, 2006 4:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
I expect we had different teachers of New Deal and WWII history. Mine taught me that there were two ways to contain the mob generated by massive unemployment and the fear, homelessness and despair that ensued: Social justice or Fascism. America chose the former.
I couldn't agree more that Americans trend to the right. All the more reason that it is essential to have a counterweight on the left. Toughness, war, militarism, scapegoating, aggression untempered lead to thugs beating the homeless to death as they do today. All they need is a man on a horse and they won't stop with the homeless.
You may not liberal philosophy and I may find I have no party I can in conscience vote for in 2008, but this country needs us whether it knows it or not. For now all we can do is keep the faith alive and hope that we'll find another moral leader like MLK who can speak with moral conviction about peace and social justice and not find he is only talking to himself.
January 16, 2006 10:01 AM | Reply | Permalink