Justice Justice
I demand justice justice.
No, I don’t have a stutter. What I want is justice for the word “justice” itself.
 |
Because, you see, “justice” has been hijacked by the American left and is now their exclusive weapon. It is no longer a politically neutral word; whenever you see the word “justice” — especially preceded by another noun — it invariably is meant to convey some far-left position.
A History of Crimes Against Justice
The degradation of “justice” started with the phrase “social justice,” a concept which was originally only a religious term but which was later adopted (and re-defined) by the American left to have political connotations. Use of the word “justice” as a leftist buzzword was given a big boost in 1971 with the publication of A Theory of Justice by philosopher John Rawls, which focused on “justice” as the axle around which liberal thought rotated.
Let a Hundred Justices Bloom
 |
In the mid-’70s, the end of the Vietnam War deprived the professional left of its main protest topic, so they cast around for something new to whine about. In the absence of any glaringly urgent crisis, such as a war, they settled on a scattershot array of issues which could be unified under the generalized label “social justice.” Any aspect of American society which was insufficiently leftist suddenly needed a good dose of “social justice” to rectify things.
This overall blanket term was OK for a while, but with the arrival of the new millennium there was a rapid expansion of the “justice” concept. With breathtaking speed, justice-related terms proliferated exponentially in the early 2000s, and within a decade it became nearly impossible to even keep track of all the different “justices” we were expected to achieve.
The trend started with the two justice titans: “economic justice,” and “racial justice.” And someone must have thought: Why stop there? Soon we started seeing demands for “environmental justice” and “reproductive justice.” And then the floodgates were opened. The global warming scare brought us “climate justice“; the drive for socialized medicine became “health care justice“; amnesty for illegals transmogrified into “immigrant justice“; and on and on it went. By now we have
 |
food justice
housing justice
gender justice
workplace justice
farmworker justice
urban justice
media justice
disability justice
transformative justice
birthing justice
prison justice
…to name just a few. Go to any protest or visit a left-wing Web site and you’ll find dozens more “justices” that need immediate resolution.
Want to give your hobby the veneer of righteousness? Just think of a noun, affix the word “justice” after it, and voilà: You’re part of the solution! Yes, it’s that easy.
Exactly! Justice is the purview of law. Society is how humans choose to band together to form institutions and conventions that are sustainable. Of course, it could be argued that when the left denigrates religion, moral principal and common sense, they must turn everything into a law.
“Social Justice” makes as much sense as “Green Physics.”
Uh oh. Did I just start a new one?
“Social Justice” often turns out to be neither and instead an arbitrary rule by an authoritative power without mandate.
Well, sure Zombie…you could be given justice justice, but then what would you want next?
Peace Peace? I mean, how in the world would we be able to have kinetic, non-hostilities bomb the crap out of Libya and the drones don’t count and bin Laden REALLY doesn’t count…activities, if we gave you peace peace?
Soon you would be asking for transparent transparency, right.
And a stimulus stimulus?
A border border?
You ask too much, Zombie. It’s the way things are…and that’s the truthiness.
Justice Justice? asked Zombie the critic
Leftist language is so parasitic
They can’t mean what they say
It gets in the way
Of controlling the body politic
Progressives must loathe the quote, “This is a court of law, not a court of justice.” Which is why they believe in a living Constitution.
like the old comedy legend, justice, justice, justice, after a while it means nothing.
Would you like Spam, Spam, bacon, Spam or would you prefer Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam?
So the solution to Weiner is wiener justice?
“Tzedek tzedek tirdof”: “Justice justice shall you pursue.”
—Deut. 16:20
You beat me to it! Well done!
Me, too!
“Justice for Palestine”, as per the illustration, really means the ability to exterminate the Jewish population, as was attempted in 1948 (with 10% success). Reminds me of LATMA’s parody, “the Schnakba”, where old Nazis are lamenting their inability to finish the job. “Coming soon to the the (Israeli) history channel, and maybe to your children’s curriculum” – referring attempts to incorporate the enemy’s version in Israeli curricula.
Meanwhile, Our local (Haifa) university law school graduation did not play the national anthem, so as not to “offend” Arab students.
Bravo, Zombie!
You and David Mamet speak with the same voice on this. His latest book, “The Secret Knowledge” speaks to the preversion and delusion of the Left’s abuse of the notion of “justice.”
The Left is slowly but surely digging its/socialism’s own grave with this dead-end chatter. As I remember, there is a saying something along the lines of, “do not interrupt if your opponent is busy committing suicide.”
Dittos to that.
Zombie, your photo essays are great journalism.
“Truth is very beautiful, more so than justice which easily puts on a false face. In my lifetime the world has overflowed with bloodshed and explosions whose dust has never had time to settle before others have erupted; all in purportedly just causes. The quest for justice continues and the weapons of hatred pile up; but truth was an early casualty. The lies on behalf of which our wars have been fought and our peace treaties concluded! The lies of revolution and counter- revolution! The lies of advertising, of news, of salesmanship, of politics! The lies of the priest in his pulpit, the professor at his podium, the journalist at his typewriter! It is truth that has died, not God”
Malcolm Muggeridge
(Chronicles of Wasted Time)
“We want justice, thus we must be the good guys!”
The very thought makes me shudder.
I have long explained that “social justice” is a contradiction in terms. Justice is an abstract standard; society simply is. Some societies are preferable to others, but not necessarily because they are more just (though that is a frequent side-effect).
The viciousness of the policies that attend leftist “justice” mock the term.
No food justice, no peas.
Now that’s hilarious. LMAO.
But I was just envisioning whirled peas! And now you’ve harshed my mellow!
Oh, the pain, the pain…
Sometimes the apples get the justice and the oranges just get juiced.
Think globally please… No food justice, No whirled peas.
“Well, it’s not like it was rape-rape.”
- Whoopie Goldberg
The reason liberals don’t mind Islamists is because both agree that the phrase “mind your own business” is completely irrelevant.
In some parts of the U.S., it’s against local law to smoke a cigarette in your own living room.
Brother, THAT’S Sharia.
“Social justice” – I’m against it. Do the complete opposite of the platform of the Democratic Party and you’d have a nice country again.
For the foreseeable future, that’s out. Good luck to us – we’re gonna need it cuz “social justice” is transporting the entirety of the Third World here and, generally speaking, they don’t like the status quo of a few decades ago, react against it, want no law for them but laws for those who disagree with them and are pretty much a bunch of taxi drivers with the ego of Napoleon.
The hijacked-by-the-left phrase that always lights up my radar is “People’s”
The People’s This, the People’s That … the People’s Whatever. Always makes me run in the other direction. I guess “justice” is the progressive replacement. Wonder what the next lefty-hijacked-word-du-jour will be? Any amusing guesses?
I always enjoy activist groups that put “NOW!” at the end of their names.
A century or two back one artist complained, “The People’s Theater! The People’s Theater! Call it The Aristocrats’ Theater, and the people will come!”
People’s Front of Judea, Judean People’s Front
For me, the word “community” makes me want to vomit.
Let us all hope we enjoy some conservative justice in 2012.
To leftists, words are nothing more than candy sprinkles. The only purpose of words is to decorate fascist doctrine. Word meaning, like everything else, is relative. Their “justice” in our “enslavement.”
“Social Justice” = “Got any change?”
In the absence of any glaringly urgent crisis, such as a war, they settled on a scattershot array of issues which could be unified under the generalized label “social justice.”
Bingo, Zombie. I was there. I remember asking the very question myself: So now what do we protest? I really needed to get laid at the time. That summer I toured the *Rainbow Warrior* docked in San Francisco. I decided that was the new Vietnam. I SO wanted to be relevant and cool. God, these are painful recollections.
No, you wanted to be cool, relevant and laid by the irrational hot chick over there. How much of this stupidity can we lay at the door of the 19th amendment?
Eric Holder seems to be doing his damnedest to clarify any confusion where “Justice” is confirmed. Whatever you thought the word meant – it doesn’t. Holder is more from the Humpty-Dumpty school of etymology.
I don’t know what you people have against leftards. Hippie chicks and free dope is how I survived the 70′s. I didn’t have to agree with the delusional twits, but they were useful.
To fix this you need to remember that progressives go for emotions and ignore hard facts. ‘Justice’, just like ‘fairness’, ‘greed’, and all their other common buzzwords have no solid definition. Those hazy, endlessly flexible definitions at first seem to give them the power the progressives desire, but it is also their Achilles heel.
Next time you are confronted by a progressive and the topic turns to justice, fairness, greed, ect… ask them to define it. Define greed. Define justice.
They might tell you “Greed is wanting more than X.” Perhaps X is more than you need to keep a roof over your head and food on the table. Perhaps X is a certain dollar amount. Once you can get them to state that greed>X then you have them.
Ask them who gets to set the X level. What group, person or authority will they trust to make that decision? How will they keep the process from becoming hopelessly corrupted? What gives them the right to decide no one can make more than X? If they have any intelligence and honesty at all you might begin to push back at their nebulous definitions. You might, just might get them starting to think logically about what they are angry over.
But we are talking about progressives. Emotions are easy and satisfying. There is no emotion quite so seductive as righteous indignation. When you get right down to it most progressive protests are just a public, group form of political masturbation. Your mom couldn’t get you to stop by telling you you were going to go blind. I doubt you can talk many people out of the political equivalent.
Haha! It’s like “American,” too.
African American
Arab American
Asian American
Gay American
I just typed “Mexican” and wondered whether to add “American.”
The Hebrew concept of Tzedek, translated as justice, was conceived as an individual obligation, not a societal one. The Hebrew word tzedaka (etymologically related to Tzedek) refers to an individual’s obligation to give to charity. Liberals translate it as “social justice”. Since conservatives typically give more to charity than liberals , I find it sad that liberals talk so much about social justice.
7. Buzzsawmonkey
Very clever!
Personally, I’d settle for War-War. As opposed to Kinetic-Operation-War.
Probably not even apropos, but I’m reminded of that Agnostic Front song:
There’s no justice, there’s just us
Blind justice screwed all of us
There’s no justice, there’s just us
We need justice for all of us
Justice once referred to the recognition of rights and the pursuit of redress against those who have violated them. Indeed, that meaning is embedded in the word’s etymology: Ius is the Latin word for rights, and the -tice suffix derives from the Latin word for to hold.
The debasement of language is fundamental to inducing a paralyzing confusion and sense of helplessness in one’s ideological targets — which is exactly why the Left has filled our political discourse with verbal offal.
Good piece.
Thomas Sowell somewhere pointed out that whereever you see the word “social” in front of something, the term usually ends up meaning the opposite of its original meaning.
For those interested in further reading on the destructiveness of “social justice”, there is Hayek’s Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol 2 The Mirage of Social Justice
Of course, this was part of the plan from the beginning: to use language as a weapon. Find a word that everybody likes, with a universally positive vibe, and then use it relentlessly and ungrammatically as a catch-all euphemism for socialist goals.
Exactly.
Michelle Obama, in the context of food justice (or lack thereof) spoke of individuals living in Chicago neighborhoods without a supermarket as “food refugees”.
Last week, she spoke of needing another 4 years to continue laying “the foundation”.
The original foundation laid for this country in the latter part of the 18th century is, apparently, in need of replacement, one dreamed up by an ideologically bent crowd of self-designated societal “fixers” that relies on constantly stirring up class warfare (see Obama’s press conference yesterday), fixers cheered on by a vast sea of carefully crafted brain dead adherents.
The original foundation designated that “justice” would be blind, not a function of what Michelle or Sonia or Ruth or Eric was thinking at any given moment.
Nonsense has taken root in the popular imagination and spread throughout the body politic.
The hi-jacking and subsequent corruption of language has long been a hallmark of the Left. I think that Jean-Francios Revel had the best take on this:
The perverision of language and the meaning attendant to it is essential for the imposition of a totalitarian regime. As Orwell pointed out in 1984, the elimination of the words used to frame the very concepts of freedom and individualism makes it almost impossible for the populace to even begin to contemplete the possibility of a revolt.
Like it or not, know it or not, the world that our pedestrian crusaders seek to create for this or that sort of ‘justice’ is a world of horror. This perversion of language and the ideas that underlie it pave the road to a nightmare world of slaughter and atrocity. The nudge, the gradual squeeze – and then the shove. This is the foundation and the prerequisite for a world in which neither love, nor mercy, nor hope survive. It is a world where all of your hopes, aspirations and dreams, all of your love of country and family not only count for naught, they – and you – will be extinguished as if you never had existed. Because you surely must be if these will-to-power driven monsters are to rule without fear of opposition.
JF Revel is one of my heroes, his essays rare evidence that being French and having common sense are not mutually exclusive.
You can see the Obama administration’s attempts to use language to render a thing what it is not, such as “man caused disaster” to replace terrorism.
Fortunately, the American population is still savvy enough that these kinds of efforts have largely drawn ridicule.
“Chicago neighborhoods without a supermarket as “food refugees”.”
Yeah, probably because those are the bad ‘hoods’ and most supermarket owners want to keep their merchandise from being raided/stolen…oh and keep their own lives.
“…one dreamed up by an ideologically bent crowd of self-designated societal “fixers” that relies on constantly stirring up class warfare (see Obama’s press conference yesterday), fixers cheered on by a vast sea of carefully crafted brain dead adherents.”
Speaking of the abuse of “moral” authority,language, and irrational emotions, didn’t the glorious leaders of “progressive” folk (by any other name), back in the day, have a simple word to define such “state” educated, subsequently “re-educated” or otherwise unarmed folk?
Surely two can use language as a weapon, this is not the monopoly of the sinister.
We must fix this problem of definition! I propose our institutions of higher education immediately institute “Justice Studies”.
How would *that* be for a twofer?
Then we could maybe make it all the way to The Democratic People’s Republic of Justice.
The sad part is, you thought you were joking!
Alas, my friend, it is already here:
San Jose State University: Justice Studies Department
Google Search Results for Justice Studies departments across the country:
Arizona State University
Kent State
James Madison University
University of New Hampshire
Tufts
…and on and on
It is newspeak, and we are much farther along that the mutilation of the concept of justice. We have already internalized so much that our very thought processes are suspect. How much propaganda have you absorbed?
How many thoughts can you simply not think?
That is the goal. To limit one’s ability to understand to orthodox concepts.
My absolute fav (not) is climate justice.
Climate justice will be overseen by agenda driven organizations like “The UN” and will require so called rich countries to pay so called poor countries reparations for ruining the world’s climate.
At some conference last year (there are so many, they blur) Barack Obama committed some 1 billion in money we don’t have to such an end.
Some third world countries are positively agog at the prospect of receiving large grants and sums for, essentially, doing nothing.
Have you noticed in the past couple of weeks, crazed sex poodle and carbon credit schemer extraordinaire, Al Gore, has been yakking about educating those third worlders into having fewer babies ?
Certainly élites have been pushing eugenics for decades, if not centuries, and it looks like our fat energy-gorging philanderer is joining the circus.
I wonder if this is what Moshe Rabbeinu meant when he instructed us (in Hebrew) “Justice justice you shall pursue.” Debasing the term ‘justice’ makes it easier to hide true injustice.
Another real injustice? The high school in the Chicago School System called Social Justice High.
The social reforms are all different, the social reformers are all alike.
This is all from 1984. Change the language and control people’s thoughts.
But we oldthinkers unbellyfeel “social justice”.
What about ‘moron-justice’ for blithering idiots? Well, that would just about cover the entire Left under one giant, whining “justice” umbrella.
Post of the day, Delia.
It has already been said some time ago, ‘Justice modified is not justice’. So you probably need to search further for a solution since as you point out, the left has so screwed the word that it is pregnant with emanations and penumbras.
Justice Justice does not work because the left will define each word differently to suit their immediate purpose. Perhaps the old solution is best, Justice is the opposite of injustice, and any modification of justice is an injustice.
On second thought, Luke and his shitty little chaotic and criminal planet full of idiots who enslaved humans and self-aware machines alike should’ve been blown out of space.
Next time I see “Star Wars” I’m taking Vader’s side and I’ll cry at the end.
I blame weed.
No Justice Justice, No Peace!
Do you not mean “No Justice Justice, No Peace Peace!”?
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to Justice anywhere”
Martin Luther King jr.
The quote sounds good, until you think about it for a few seconds and realize how completely Utopian it is.
Everyone should read Thomas Sowell’s excellent book about the Left’s perversion of the traditional concept of justice: The Quest For Cosmic Justice
http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Cosmic-Justice-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0684864630/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309533196&sr=1-1
I do NOT want any kind of justice in any way.
I fear that some day justice may come.
All I want is mercy.
Great post! One question:
“it invariably is meant to convey some far-left position.”
Why do you say “far” left as oppose to just “left”? After all, you previously wrote that the word justice was “hijacked by the American left.”
The American left’s cry for economic, political and social justice echoes in the words of the Old Testament prophets, Christ and other ancient sources.
Memo to wingnuts: When you play the victim card, you always end up looking stupid. Always.
C-
No, on second thought, make that D+
I’ve been too lax on my grading recently.
And now my mallow has been harshed…
Is Justice, Justice anything like Whoopi’s Rape, Rape???
Inquiring minds want to know.
Zombie, I have followed your blog for awhile; glad to see you’re making your posts at PJM. Thank you for saying so well, what I just think.
So I just found out there is a girl’s store called “Justice.”
http://www.shopjustice.com/
Getting them early…
Here is Van Jones, on Social Justice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sKBq0dP8cY