In the 1968 musical “The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band,” there is a number in which two groups of cast members lyrically debate the merits of their respective presidential candidates in the election of 1888, Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. One side highlights an accomplishment of their favorite, to which the other side responds dismissively, “That’s politics!” Then the first group retorts grandiosely, “No, that’s statesmanship!”
The humorous back-and-forth captures a timeless truth of electoral politics: Partisans find it nearly impossible to judge the merits of their political leaders objectively. Depending on whose team he’s on, a politician’s verbal miscues will be either an endearing reminder of his humanity or decisive proof of his idiocy. Her moral failings will be run-of-the-mill mistakes that everyone makes—or unforgivable crimes indicative of an essentially malicious character.
To some extent, this kind of human bias is inevitable and even desirable. The value of loyalty attaches us to a family, tribe, or other group and provides the emotional impetus needed to defend those to whom we are most closely knit. It also encourages us to avoid the sins of perfidy and treachery. But there is also a danger. Blind loyalty to one side—or its obverse, blind enmity toward the other—can lead us into the sins of injustice and calumny.
All of this points to the need for an overarching virtue that preserves us from falling off the tightrope into one of these extremes. That virtue is charity.
It’s no accident that the Christian New Testament elevates charity above all other virtues. In the classic definition, it is “to desire the good of the other.” Applied universally, it means that we desire the good of each and every human person.
Charity is necessary to keep competition in check. Competition among individuals and groups is an ineradicable part of human experience and can be a means to encourage excellence and spur human achievement. With charity, competing sports teams and businesses never lose sight of the fact that their rivals are human beings who possess the same intrinsic dignity as those who are on “our side.” Without charity, competition degenerates into destructive conflict.
All of this applies to politics. Do we genuinely desire the good for those whose public policy views differ from ours? If not, we may need to revisit the purpose of politics.
The preamble to the United States Constitution captures succinctly the intentions of those who erected our nation’s governance structure. The charter of government was established “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
That summary of the purpose of government might very well be seen as a statement of the elements of what we now call “the common good.” The common good denotes those characteristics of society that furnish a climate within which individuals and groups can flourish in the pursuit of their rightful ends. “A more perfect Union” (peace and unity among the states), “domestic Tranquility” (basic civil order), and “the common defense” (protection from foreign aggression) are all conditions that are necessary for critical activities within society to take place. Recent unrest in our cities, for example, has made evident how difficult it is for businesses—sources of sustenance for employers and employees alike—to operate successfully when law and order are absent.
“Establish justice” points to the central justification for the state. As St. Augustine famously said, without justice, government is nothing but a band of robbers. Justice, according to ancient usage that was adopted by Christianity and that continues to undergird our legal system, is the resolution to give to each what each is due. Justice does not play favorites.
It’s important to remember that both the adjective and the noun are important in the phrase “promote the general welfare.” Government has a responsibility to enact and enforce laws that will lead to people’s betterment rather than detract from it, and that obligation is to be met in a way that applies generally—that is, not to special interests only.
The overarching purpose of all of these elements, and that of government more generally, is to “secure the blessings of liberty.” As the founders well recognized, human beings have rights that are prior to government. The Constitution did not grant those rights; it recognized and honored them. Here it builds on the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed that the “Creator” had “endowed” us with rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
With this set of the fundamental ends of government in view, it should be clear that partisan politics must always be subservient to these goals—for these are the goals that manifest charity in public life. Civil peace, national defense, systematic justice, and the protection of basic liberties constitute the common goods that enable individual goods. If we have charity, desiring the good for all, we will work toward these common goods. Policy details will always be matters of controversy, but if we cannot agree to cooperate in the essential purposes of government, political dysfunction and civilizational decline will be the result.
Current controversy about the limits of government authority may revolve around masks, shutdowns, and quarantines, but the central issue—the legitimacy and advisability of government mandates—is a perennial one and lies at the heart of all theories of government and society. Crises of civil order, of economic panic, or of public health may necessitate an expansion of government coercion and restriction of individual liberty, but—even when such exigencies can be justified—we should not minimize their hazards. Handing over our individual judgment to civil authority puts at risk traits that are central to being human.
When Pope John Paul II dissected the pathology of socialism in his 1991 encyclical, Centesimus Annus, he cited a number of problems that seemed endemic to the unbridled expansion of government. But the “fundamental error socialism,” he contended, “is anthropological in nature.” Socialism, John Paul continued, “considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism.” Finally, socialism “maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil.”
The consequences of this debasement are dire: “Man is thus reduced to a series of social relationships, and the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decision disappears, the very subject whose decisions build the social order.” And “this makes it much more difficult for him to recognize his dignity as a person, and hinders progress towards the building up of an authentic human community.”
In other words, it is moral action—acting based on deliberate choices for good or evil—that makes of the person a subject, a center of activity that is self-directed. This self-direction is indispensable for maintaining human dignity. Without it, the person is infantilized and denigrated.
It should be obvious that this process can occur within societies that are not explicitly or entirely socialist in their politico-economic organization. When large swathes of life are severely restricted by legal regulation “without reference to … free choice,” human dignity is at risk. When people feel that they can no longer freely make important decisions concerning work, worship, education, communication, or consumption, “the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decision” is at risk.
None of this is intended to endorse a radically libertarian view of the autonomous self. To be sure, John Paul II held no such position. Minor and unintrusive restrictions are necessary for the healthy functioning of social order. It is both morally and socially necessary that individuals recognize and be committed to common goods that extend beyond the narrow self-interest of the individual.
Yet, when the parameters of individual judgment are severely constrained by excessive government mandate, invocations of “the common good” ring hollow. The normative way to achieve the common good is by the voluntary participation of society’s members. Again, in a fallen world some coercion is always necessary (voluntary taxation is demonstrably impractical), but the landscape of human experience must always remain predominantly open and unimpeded.
In the United States, the federal code alone accounts for some 4,500 ways of law-breaking. That number is based on a 2008 estimate; it is likely higher today. But finding a reliable count is difficult because the code is so long and complex. Even lawyers, political scientists, and other experts aren’t sure about exactly what the law is or how many crimes it contains. State and local codes add even more density to the impassable thicket of regulation. In this climate, it is impossible for the average citizen even to know what his responsibilities under the law are, let alone honor them conscientiously.
The possibility that a zealous health official, safety inspector, or environmental regulator may identify some obscure transgression puts a damper on productive activity of every kind—and stymies, as John Paul put it, “the very subject whose decisions build the social order.” Freedom is the environment within which individuals and institutions serve the common good. Proliferating government mandates and regulation depress this activity and therefore, ironically, end up undermining the common good that is their justification.
For most people, social justice refers to the distribution of benefits in society. The original meaning of social justice, however, had nothing to do with the distribution of anything. The popular understanding of social justice is captured by the American Sociological Review:
As I see it, social justice requires resource equity, fairness, and respect for diversity, as well as the eradication of existing forms of social oppression. Social justice entails a “redistribution” of resources from those who have “unjustly” gained them to those who justly deserve them, and it also means creating and “ensuring” the processes of truly democratic participation in decision-making…. It seems clear that only a “decisive” redistribution of resources and decision-making power can “ensure” social justice and authentic democracy.[1]
Arithmetical uniformity is at the heart of this new definition. It is full of indictments with an “us against them” flavor. More importantly, it requires an agent in charge of enforcing the said rearrangement of benefits. That entity is no other than the state. This definition of social justice is statist by providing to central bodies the power to confiscate and of determining what is just. This is really a dreadful change in the meaning of social justice, because to accomplish it you must give an enormous amount of power to the equalizer—the state.
The concept of re-distribution implies that benefits are not earned in the first place so the success of some is uncalled for and in need of redress. That concept is also collectivist, as redress is owed to groups. Certain characteristics provide members of groups the right to receive benefits and certain characteristics demand that members of other groups rescind something. Who is supposed to balance things? The state. Alongside the notion of collective redress is the notion of collective victimization and collective guilt. The implications of such an understanding of how society works are severe for the prospect of social cohesion. At the end of that path is not justice but mutual resentment, because victimization is insatiable and guilt becomes a stigma.
More importantly, the modern mind has become so ingrained with the alluring music of social justice that the mere mention of it weakens the resolve to resist what otherwise might be seen as nonsense. As Friedrich Hayek surmised in his Law, Legislation, and Liberty,
The appeal to ‘social justice’ has nevertheless by now become the most widely used and most effective argument in political discussion. Almost every claim for government action on behalf of particular groups is advanced by its name, and if it can be made to appear that a certain measure is required by ‘social justice,’ opposition to it will rapidly weaken.[2]
Another word associated with social justice is “the common good.” A wonderful term in itself, its meaning in practice often hinges on a key question, namely, who decides what is the common good. In contemporary times that responsibility gradually shifted to the bureaucratic state. The beautiful notion of the common good thereby got ensnared in red tape and in battles for power. The common good has become an excuse for state control, the passing of laws, the expansion of the bureaucratic state, and government decision-making—so much so that most people think immediately of the government and “what are they going to do” every time there is a crisis. As the state has become the agent of social justice, people can eschew personal responsibility and fix their gaze on impersonal structures. Structures now have become a living being, a system that can be blamed or praised according to a collectivist ideology. Interestingly, the common good has often been the excuse on which totalitarianism has been built. You can achieve the common good better if there is a total authority, one that limits the desires and actions of individuals. Individual aims are seen as problematic and divisive and any system purporting to defend individual rights such as the right to property or even the right to have your own opinion must be challenged. Political correctness, statism, and collectivism are all engendered by a false notion of social justice.
Another word associated with social justice is compassion. In modern times, an extraordinary number of bad things have been done in the name of compassion for the poor. Modern revolutions are almost all fought in the name of the poor and the oppressed. More sins have been committed in the name of compassion in the last 150 years than by any other force in history. We must not allow that beautiful term to blind us. The word is so powerful that people forget what instrument is being used to affect a result. “By all means necessary” seems about right as long as the claim is that we are being compassionate. In a strict sense, compassion means to be there with the one who suffers—it is an individual call to action and solidarity that may or may not alleviate the problem but is always faithfully present and involved in the act of suffering. But again, if social justice is about group entitlement and centralized action, individual responsibility to suffer with the other is madness!
Bertrand de Jouvenel is correct in stating that “[i]t is a loose modern habit to call ‘just’ whatever is thought emotionally desirable.”[3] The dictatorship of appetite can camouflage as social justice. It is easy to feel that whatever we see as in need of change necessitates an intervention. The proportional distribution of resources according to need is just around the corner of an emotional appeal to fix things. Just as it feels improper that some lack what they need, it feels wrong that in our estimation some have more than they need. Who is to restore the proper balance? The state. Upon a society rebelling against its capacity to raise the standard of living to unimaginable highs soon falls a low of guilt that triggers the eager hands of the statists. All of this shuffling of earned resources to unearning hands has been called social justice.
The loss of the traditional understanding of social justice has resulted in confusion and abandonment of the term by many. The concept of justice pertains to what is owed to a person. It is primarily a virtue of individuals. I must develop the sense that I must give to others what they deserve. A person is just when that person develops the habit of giving to others (either other individuals or a community) what is owed to them. Social justice directs the acts of individuals toward the common good. In the end, I agree with Michael Novak when he said that social justice is a virtue of individuals or it is a fraud.[4]
Alexis de Tocqueville said the most fascinating and insightful thing about America that relates to the authentic sphere of social justice. In America, people get together and form associations. They hold bake sales to send missionaries to the Antipodes, to build colleges. They invent hundreds of devices to raise money among themselves. That’s what a free people do. The Americans of Tocqueville’s time took personal responsibility for the common good as each saw an individual duty to give something to their community. That is social justice: not what the community owed to groups by way of state power but what individuals and free associations of individuals owe to each other and to their society.
And that’s what, in a word, social justice is—a virtue, a habit that people internalize and learn, a capacity. It’s a capacity that has two sides: first, a capacity to organize with others to accomplish particular ends and, second, ends that are extra-familial. They’re for the good of the neighborhood, or the village, or the town, or the state, or the country, or the world. Finally, it’s important to note that this correct notion of social justice is ideologically neutral. It’s as common to people on the Left to organize and form associations, to cooperate in many social projects, as it is to people on the Right. This is not a loaded political definition, but it does avoid the pitfall (on the Left) of thinking that social justice means redistribution, égalité, the common good only as determined by state authority, and so forth. It also avoids the pitfall (on the Right) of thinking of the individual as unencumbered, closed-up, self-contained, self-sufficient and interested only in personal.
Admonitions on how to bring about peace in the world are not new. As early as 385AD, the Roman military expert Vegetius in his influential military treatise wrote, “Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum” (“Therefore let him who desires peace prepare for war”).[1] To this day we are preoccupied with justice and peace and how they interrelate. This is why we must ask if the slogan “No Justice, No Peace” is reasonable. The origin of the slogan is unclear, but various versions place it in the context of racial antagonism and protests in the mid-1980s.
The slogan can be understood either as a conditional or a conjunctive statement. The conditional renders the proposition as an “if-then” statement, meaning that in the absence of justice peace is not possible. Essentially, a condition of injustice leads to a condition of absence of peace even if war is not present. Injustice triggers alienation, and alienation can lead to disintegration because the right relations between men are disturbed. One can ascertain that it is reasonable to believe that if injustice exists, there is no real peace, and the conditions exist to bring about violence.
In the context of racial politics, however, it becomes more than a statement of fact and reasonable expectation, meaning that if there is no justice, we might not get peace. Instead, it is an invitation to the use of force, as peaceful protest is useless in acquiring justice. As a proposition, it invites people to see a problem within the dialectical understanding that only the use of force will move the “oppressor” to rescind his privileges. It tells people that the existing structures of society cannot possibly attend their quest, as the structures are inherently racist and thus unjust—so the theory of systemic racism explains. It is difficult to see how the conclusion that the social system of America is ultimately and inexorably destined for dissolution can fail to lead us to despair. The conditional renders the use of peaceful protest illusory and ineffective and calls for the framing of the struggle for justice in the right instrumental fashion. It is a call to arms, or better, a call to accept a very specific ideological system as a prerequisite to eventuate justice and peace.
By contrast, the slogan understood in the conjunctive form, states that neither peace nor justice can exist without the other. The conjunctive provides a conclusion: the absence of justice has resulted in a lack of peace. Al Sharpton, for example, has written as much, “‘No justice, no peace’ […] is a way to expose inequality that would otherwise be ignored.”[2]
In other words, the phrase asserts a very specific understanding of an existing structural condition. One must understand that society is unjust and that the violence we see is the necessary result of injustice. As such, one may or may not agree with the assertion that the violence we see is the result of injustice. After all, violence can serve other purposes. Ideologies use violence, and people with personal or group gain in mind use violence.
For example, Dr. Martin Luther King understood the substance of the slogan in the conjunctive. The reality of structural racism, still alive and well during his time, motivated him and others to protest peacefully. However, they were met with violence; there was no peace. Notice that he did not accept the slogan in the conditional, at least not in the conditional as presented within a dialectical framework. He believed that peaceful protest had both instrumental and moral value, and violence, even in the presence of actual injustice, was not necessary. Powerfully, Dr. King connected justice to love. He had an optimism about America despite the obvious struggles and difficulties that could easily lead him to pessimism—a pessimism that at times we find in him later on during the movement. Dr. King was also a realist: Racism was real, oppression was real, and it demanded a response. Love was not enough without justice and its pursuits demanded that blacks have the courage to stand for their rights. He saw the plight for justice as righteous and based both in his theology and in his adherence to the principles of justice in the constitution:
“We are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are wrong, then the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer and never came down to earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie.”[3]
Photo Credit: Howard Sochurek/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Dr. King saw the need to make a case for the reality of structural injustice that necessitated a response that need not be violent but could be violent. In effect, the Black Power movement responded to the same structural reality with a conditional response that saw in the use of force the only effective response to injustice.
In the conjunctive, there is an assertion about a situation that demands a justification. It is reasonable that a state of pervasive injustice will trigger a violent response if those suffering injustices cannot find a remedy—as we asserted to be the case concerning the conditional. The conjunctive is not proposing violence as the solution nor establishing that peaceful protest cannot be an instrumental cause for justice and in turn peace. It, however, warns about that possibility because one cannot exist without the other. Moreover, justice is not the only social good that brings about peace. As Pope John Paul II reminded us, “No one should be deceived into thinking that the simple absence of war, as desirable as it is, is equivalent to lasting peace. There is no true peace without fairness, truth, justice and solidarity.”[4] Special attention ought to be granted to truth. In effect, there can be a claim to justify force built on a false assertion about the presence of injustice.
The determinant question ought to be clear by now: Do the present circumstances merit the conclusion that we live in a systemically racist society that triggers the violence we are now observing? Again, injustice merits a response that needs not be violent and the life and efforts of Dr. King and his movement show it. Dr. King made a case for the presence of injustice and made a case for a courageous but nonviolent response. Are the present cadre of activists led by groups such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa making a case for the present violent response?
We can ascertain, in conclusion, that the slogan “No Justice, No Peace” is not useful without a context and without a justification for the use of violence. Those who use the slogan are at times part of the universe at hand and incapable of seeing that it is possible that their violent response might not be justified. They are involved in a Game Without End where they can run through all possible internal examinations without effecting real change in their consciousness. Only with a radical leap from the paradigm that justifies violence can one see that their response is unnecessary and that the system they deem irreformable can generate from within itself the conditions for its own second-order change.[5]As slogans are synecdoche, they are created for action, not for reflection. They are shouted, not proposed. They are there to mobilize or delude, separating believers from the hoi polloi. Beware of all slogans.
“The dirty little secret of expertise—and of the modern era—is that we expect expertise to rescue us from our disagreements about the good life. We hope that an expanding economic pie (made possible by economic analysis), lengthening lifetimes (promoted by medical science), and expanding liberties will make tradeoffs unnecessary, or at least less urgent.”
That’s one among many glittering insights in a marvelous recent article by the Pepperdine University economist Andrew Yuengert. Yuengert’s main topic is the current pandemic, but his points apply universally to our efforts to live a good life and make the world a better place. In an environment where politics is emotional release, where policymaking is virtue-signaling, and where human imperfection—injustice, disease, error—is increasingly intolerable, we are in desperate need of a figure who may be unexciting but is also indispensable: the prudent leader.
What Yuengert calls “practical wisdom” is what is known in the Christian tradition as the cardinal virtue of “prudence.” Prudence has nothing to do with prudishness, nor is it synonymous (as is sometimes thought) with caution. Indeed, prudent leadership often requires bold action and determination in the face of stiff opposition. Instead, as Yuengert summarizes the description of the prominent twentieth-century philosophy Josef Pieper, the prudent person “must be docile before reality.” Prudence avoids utopian dreaming and focuses on what is possible given the constraints of the real world.
This does not mean that there are no ideals to be sought after, only that such ideals must be pursued in ways that are realistic. Ideals are also to be distinguished from perfection. History is strewn with the casualties of experiments in pursuing the “perfect society.” Striving for justice is important, but seeking justice in the knowledge that absolute justice will not be achieved in this world tempers our drive in a way that makes it both more effective and more durable. Passionate pursuit of justice without prudence tends to leave disillusion and even greater injustice in its wake.
Prudence recognizes the necessity of trade-offs. There is no such thing as a policy that does no harm to anyone, and acting as though it is so only creates a discord between rhetoric and reality. When considering welfare policy, the relevant question is not whether the policy will eliminate poverty; it is whether, given current conditions, past experience, and due consideration of unintended effects, the policy will, on balance, improve the situation. When considering education policy, the relevant question is not whether a potential reform will result in all students everywhere receiving a first-rate education; it is whether the measure will help more than it will hurt.
Prudent leadership is the opposite of demagoguery. The American critic H. L. Mencken once cynically claimed that “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” It was an exaggeration but also an incisive observation. Populist politics thrives on fear and other powerful emotions, and demagogues know that emotion drives action (voting and donating) more effectively than cerebral analyses of the pros and cons of government policy. It is easier to whip up enthusiasm by promising panaceas for racism, disease, poverty, illegal immigration, crime, gun violence, and other hot-button issues, than by admitting that they are intractable problems that must be chipped away at, bit by bit, not really knowing but hoping that a well-considered policy will actually alleviate rather than aggravate the problem. “I’ll do my best to try to make education, the economy, and our culture a little better, but in truth the efficacy of government policy is limited” doesn’t make for a thrilling campaign slogan, but it is a more accurate characterization of what is possible than what most politicians’ say.
This brings us to an important conclusion. If we want more prudent leadership, we all need to exhibit more “docility before reality.” We should stop demanding an end to the world’s problems and see what we can do, personally, to better those situations over which we actually have control. This means practicing prudence in our own lives. Understand that every decision involves a tradeoff, and proceed in the humility that our judgment of that balance may in the end be proven wrong. Then adapt and proceed again. That’s a recipe for progress.
The American Creed, written by William Tyler Page, is an important statement that introduces many themes that Americans hold dear. America is known for its freedom, liberty, and justice that not only inspires people to come to the United States but also inspires people already living here. Many parts of American’s daily lives represent the American Creed for example saying the pledge of allegiance, the national anthem and the American Flag itself. Although these are things Americans may take for granted they represent what our founding fathers worked so hard to preserve.
The pledge of allegiance represents a promise between American and its citizens. We are promising to stay loyal in return the government will listen to the people who their power is derived from. The phrase “liberty and justice for all” is a phrase that illustrates what our country stands for. It represents idea of how all people in America are treated equally and how everyone idealistically has a fair chance to make their dreams come true. The word justice is also found in the American Creed alongside the word equality. These words are interwoven into American society and almost all Americans would use these words when asked to describe the ideas America was built on. Although these words represent our nation and what it stands for some people do not feel like they are being treated the same as other people in America. Because of this they find the phrase “liberty and justice for all” to be untrue. In order to fix this people have started peaceful protests one of the most notable being NFL players kneeling for the national anthem.
Standing during the national anthem is an important ritual that has been present in America since the early 1890’s. Recently many NFL players have been sitting for the National Anthem in an attempt to raise awareness for the rights they feel are being infringed by both the United States and its citizens. These protesters however still follow the American Creed by respecting the American flag and kneeling as opposed to ignoring the National Anthem all together. They also represent the American Creed because they are trying to make America better and fair for everyone. This protest, although it seems like it would be something that all together would cause more problems for our nation, has brought teams together as they unite in support of their teammates who are protesting. The National Anthem is a sign of patriotism and pride in our country which is also strongly expressed in the American creed. “[It] is my duty to my Country to love it; to support its Constitution; and to obey its laws.” This quote from the American Creed demonstrates how much patriotism Page has for our nation. Patriotism like this is also found in the National Anthem through phrases like, “What so proudly we hailed,” referring to the flag. Our patriotism also defines us as a nation. So many people have given their lives to keep us safe because of their love for America and what it represents. Patriotism can also be found through the image of the American flag.
The American Flag represents valor, purity, vigilance and justice. These are all very important themes that are furthered by the American Creed. The American Flag is can be found in every public school classroom, in front of many houses, and in many gyms and sports arenas. Because of this it is hard to go a day without seeing an American Flag somewhere. This demonstrates how proud people are of their nation much like Page demonstrates in the American Creed. The flag is the epitome of what America represents combining both the ideas of freedom, equality and the patriotism that so many Americans have. The first American Flag was created and used to help declare freedom from Great Britain who we believed was not giving us the rights we deserved as British citizens. The flag is now seen as a symbol of freedom and equality across the world.
The American Creed can be seen almost every day in American life through symbols like the flag and rituals like the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem. These symbols remind people how strong peoples love for America is but also how much more we have to work to make sure our nation’s ideals protect every American citizen.
In a recent essay at Law & Liberty, Harvard historian James Hankins proposes a different kind of reparations for African-Americans: reallocating federal higher education funds to vouchers for K-12 schools. This, he argues, will do far more to help African-Americans succeed than cash payments in restitution for historic slavery and discrimination. Although the proposal may not be politically feasible, Hankins is at least on the right track. Any attempt to redress wrongs ought at least to avoid making problems worse. It must be aimed at actual reparation—repairing the damage.
Hankins rightly points out the insurmountable practical difficulties with reparations schemes—“by whom? to whom? and how much?”—a point I’ve made previously. But he also recognizes that government payments—as many welfare programs are—have not done much to improve the economic status of African-Americans. Despite massive government spending in our nation’s largest cities, black neighborhoods remain disproportionately troubled by crime, poverty, and family dysfunction. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that all of this is the effect of white turpitude: first slavery, then legal oppression, then informal discrimination. Will simple cash reparations actually repair the damage? The track record is not good.
Hankins searches for a better approach. These same troubled places, he writes, “hold the largest untapped reservoir of talent in America: badly educated African Americans. If we could find a way to improve how these young men and women are educated, we could reduce the poverty gap quickly and dramatically improve social relations in America.” Other than being budget-neutral by using funds currently directed to subsidizing college loans and other “middle class entitlements,” the details of the plan remain vague. Will the voucher program be offered to black families only, or more broadly to all of those in need? Will vouchers be unencumbered, free to be used at private schools or home schools as well as public and charter schools?
Whether the voucher proposal stands up to scrutiny or not, it at least sends the conversation down the right path by asking a critical question: What will actually help black Americans, as opposed to simply making everyone feel better by defusing black anger and assuaging white guilt? It’s understandable that many African-Americans view the federal government as the guarantor of their rights and a key factor in economic success. From Emancipation to Reconstruction through the Civil Rights era, local and state governments have often stood in the way of racial equity while the federal government promoted it. But it’s important to recognize the ways in which this historical juxtaposition has been turned upside down. The Great Society welfare programs inaugurated by Lyndon Johnson have not been a boon to black economic advance; arguably, they have stunted it by incentivizing dependency and family breakdown. Heavy government taxation and regulation impede innovation and the resulting economic progress, a failing that affects African-Americans as it does all Americans.
There is much damage to repair from the legacy of racism and discrimination in our history. Government policy can help by securing property rights and equal treatment under the law. When it goes beyond that, the efficacy of its efforts is doubtful.
When examining issues surrounding the Black Lives Movement (BLM), there are three areas of interest if we are to understand and respond to it. These are the proposition, the organization, and the movement itself.
One must strain to find anything objectionable with the proposition. It ought to be obvious that the lives of blacks matter because blacks are human beings made in the image and likeness of God. They matter because they are human, just as the members of every other human racial group. In effect, race itself is a social construct that uses certain biological differences but cannot create a break in nature. Humans remain humans regardless of these divisions created in the course of history. Blacks are among the natural sons and daughters of God, with an ineradicable intrinsic dignity. The intrinsic dignity of blacks is a truth based on the general idea of human worth, and emphasizing a subset of humanity might simply assist us in addressing practical realities that need attention. If you are drowning, I’m coming to rescue you, not the entire human race.
Moreover, to recognize such distinctions is not in itself objectionable. To focus on a subset of humanity for emphasis is normative in the way we analyze situations in context. A good example is when we say that the unborn matter. That statement is not exclusivist, as if it implies that people who have already been born are not important. I question those who strongly object to the proposition that black lives matter, as this might convey a deficient anthropology that includes racial antagonism. There is no need to react to things simply because they offer an emphasis on blacks or any other group of people. At times, that might be necessary.
In 2013, three radical Black organizers — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi — created a Black-centered political will and movement building project called #BlackLivesMatter. It was in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman.
BLM Website
Still, we might ask if an otherwise unobjectionable proposition such as “Black Lives Matter” can be misused. One possibility is that one means to say that only blacks matter.[1] One can also attempt to prevent others from focusing on other subgroups by demanding that everyone focus only on one’s own agenda. For example, attacking those who say “Blue Lives Matter” as more police officers are killed in the line of duty or are attacked as a group, would seem to imply opposition to highlighting the problems of a different group. In a pluralistic society informed by civility and liberty, there will be multiple areas of concern and differences of approach in tackling issues. When a group wants to fill all of the air in the public square, we must be careful about the agenda that might lie behind the attempt. In short, the proposition in itself can be misused, but it is not only unobjectionable but true—Black Lives Matter.
When we look at the organization, however, things get more complicated. We move from the examination of a proposition as it is to the ideological context given to it by the group.[2] Historically, the proposition was created as a slogan within a very specific ideological context, which we know to be Marxism-Leninism.[3] The origin expressed this basic ideological framework through its focus on race, gender, and economic issues as understood by radical progressive politics. It was not human dignity, the natural law, special Christian revelation, Christian anthropology, or basic historic understandings of justice that gave rise to the slogan. It was the plight of blacks filtered through the prism of a detrimental secular ideology that motivated the creation of a social media campaign after certain racial incidents.
The movement gave rise to an organization from within a radical ideological understanding of oppression. In the hands of that group, the proposition, now a slogan, became instrumental to their ideological goals and a way of framing the question of black life in America—blacks are the perennial victims of America. Black life is enclosed within the construct of systemic racism, which is in essence a revolutionary system of thought, not a reformist one. The theory refers to the systemic nature of the society, not necessarily to the systematic or formal steps taken in a process. Blacks are said to be victims of a system that is fundamentally racist and that results in discrimination against minorities even if none of its policies or institutions are explicitly racist.[4] Blacks are said to be victims of an institutional arrangement whose inherent purpose is to perpetuate white supremacy and black exclusion. Aiming at eliminating overt systematic discriminatory practices, in this view, does not make a dent in a system that is by definition racist. There is no compromise with that system, even if, for tactical reasons, reform might serve a momentary purpose.
If one is not in alignment with that ideological understanding of black life in America and with the goals necessarily resulting from such understanding, it is reasonable to ask what the organization is doing with an otherwise fine proposition. After all, as stated, propositions converted into slogans can be misused, especially as they can reflect deeper ideological suppositions. A proposition can be correct but become instrumentally negative as a weapon for an ideology. How to know? Well, the founders of the movement are open about the origins, history, mission, vision, and goals of the Black Lives Matter organization. One is not injuring justice and defaming the group when one takes their assertions as accurate representations of their views. In doing so, we can offer an objective assessment of the organization, and those of us who reject Marxism and Leninism can confidently assess and reject the organization.
We finish with the movement itself. Movements tend to have a center and a periphery. The center is without a doubt the BLM organization and its aims. We know this because the organization created the slogan, generated the movement, benefits financially from it, conducts and channels activities for the movement, and perpetuates a narrative through the movement. What we know as BLM began with rage at what the organization calls “rampant and deliberate violence inflicted on us by the state.” BLM describes its origins this way: “In 2013, three radical Black organizers — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi — created a Black-centered political will and movement building project called #BlackLivesMatter. It was in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman.” The radical movement became an organization and then a “united front.”
Within the periphery of this movement, there are multitudes of people who are more concerned with the truth of the proposition and join. What is problematic, as stated, is that the proposition is not free-floating. It is not a theoretical examination of anthropological realities or a general affirmation of dignity seeking systematic (not systemic) reform. It is a proposition converted into an instrument. Those on the periphery are being influenced by and unwittingly cooperating with the center.
It is reasonable to expect that people who defend the proposition but do not accept the ideology of the main organization would try to detach the movement from its center. This, however, is an impossible task. The gravitational pull of ideological movements is quite powerful and everything that challenges the center is expelled. Those who openly reject the center are denounced and said to be against the general aim of justice. Once one is within the whirlwind of that hurricane, it is impossible to go outside on a picnic.
Many good people join movements out of concern for a cause or an event and motivated by the desire to “do something.” Once a movement starts, however, it is rather difficult to resist its luring enticements, especially when the system becomes a parasite living out of true historical wrongs. It camouflages its true colors by looking like another necessary step on the long American journey for racial justice. This camouflage works, despite the founders of the movement telling us what their ideology is, because people want it to be different and hope to isolate the center from its periphery. But the center sucks you in.
This is complicated by what we know of the organization’s ideology and the Leninist concept of the united front. We can find the idea in Marx but the concept emerges in full with Lenin and his theory about imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism.[5] Once the Communist Party was made illegal in Russia and Lenin had to go into exile, the Bolsheviks chose to utilize broader movements and causes to advance revolution, abandoning the idea that such alignments polluted the cause. In his work Two Tactics, Lenin rejected the Menshevik call for extreme revolutionary opposition by the proletariat through its vanguard and proposed to “march side by side with liberal and monarchist bourgeoisie without merging with either.”[6] Lenin decried the refusal of Communists to participate in elections, to join larger causes to advance revolution, and to create movements around certain problems that could bring fellow travelers[7] alongside the proletarians. Lenin called ‘childish’ the Communist refusal to compromise with the bourgeois parties and movements as such tactical efforts were an essential part of the Communists’ ultimate victory.
The fact that BLM is an ideological movement whose origin was spread through a network of radical organizations defending multiple causes and later became a Marxist-inspired organization, gives us reason to believe that the wider movement that has emerged is a united front. History shows that fronts in the countries experiencing “colonialism” or “imperialist oppression” kept on widening to include more and more non-communist sectors. The Communists grew whenever they followed correct united front tactics with other movements. They gained mainstream status and acceptance and were looked upon as the most active unifiers of those fighting injustices.[8] The BLM movement has all the elements of a sophisticated united front.
Taking into consideration these three aspects, one who desires to proclaim the truth and do justice but does not want to become a tool of those who cunningly manipulate people must seriously pause before embracing the BLM movement. Affirm the truth of the proposition that black lives matter. As the living out of justice does not necessitate a movement, the best attitude is one of healthy skepticism toward the BLM movement and of committing to getting involved with non-ideologically motivated organizations doing positive things in the black community. It is important also that we understand the issues at hand and learn of the competing forces within the Civil Rights Movement that gave way to various understandings of black reality in America—one integrationist, personalist, and reformist; and the other separationist, dialectical, and revolutionary.
[1] In its statement of beliefs, the Black Lives Matter main organization—it is after all a network, not just one group—says: “We are unapologetically Black in our positioning. In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a prerequisite for wanting the same for others.” In other words, they do not claim that only blacks have dignity but that affirming black dignity is a prerequisite for affirming the dignity of others. See https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/
[2] On its website, the main BLM group states its ideological foundation, “Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.” See https://blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/.
[5] Tactics were one of the main debates among early communists. It was to counter the tendencies in the West and the East to simply copy the Soviet model that Lenin wrote his famous work ‘Leftwing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920). It is one of the most important and lasting works by Lenin on political tactics and on the concept of the united front that has been so successful until the present day.
[7] The concept “fellow traveler” (poputchik in Russian, meaning “one who travels the same path”) was coined by Trotsky to identify the intellectual supporters of the Bolshevik government who did not join the party. In the 1920s, they were given official sanction in Soviet Russia but were eventually opposed by the proponents of communist art. Especially during the Cold War in the 1950s, the term became associated with sympathizers of communism who were not card-carrying members of the party. One politically sympathetic to a cause but not necessarily formally or consciously Marxist, can be called a fellow traveler.
[8] See Rajimwale, Anil, “Lenin: Theoretician of United Front,” Mainstream, VOL LII, No 46, November 8, 2014. Retrieved from https://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article5296.html.
The traditional approach to solving poverty has failed. What can we do instead? As experts try to work out how to solve the problem of foreign aid inefficacy, local think tanks committed to removing institutional barriers to economic opportunity have become more effective in leading locally relevant change. Poverty & Freedom shares case studies from around the globe, drawing on multidisciplinary insights to make the case for redirecting philanthropic support to high-performing think tanks in the quest to end poverty for good.
Poverty & Freedom argues that local think tank knowledge is the key to a prosperous economy
Poverty & Freedom, a new book edited by Atlas Network president Matt Warner, demonstrates how making the world more prosperous starts with supporting locally-led initiatives that remove institutional barriers to freedom and give people greater choices over their own future.
Governments and well-meaning philanthropists continue to spend billions of dollars on foreign-led interventions that prop up the traditional model of international development. But real solutions to poverty are worked out by people with a vision of change that is rooted in a local understanding of sustainable growth. The freedom to grow and develop is enhanced by the crucial knowledge and leadership that only local people can provide—and this is the model that can create a lasting exodus from poverty. The thirteen case studies in Poverty & Freedom showcase the inspiring work of local think tanks that are committed to expanding freedom for vulnerable populations by fighting government abuse, making legal markets more inclusive, and removing other barriers to opportunity all over the world.
“In every country there are barriers—unfair laws, corrupt practices, unworkable bureaucracies—that disproportionately harm low-income people,” explains Warner. “Outsiders have a lot of ideas about how to fix those problems, but the more effective approach is to support local visionaries who better understand what needs to change, how to change it, and how to communicate the benefits of those changes to local stakeholders.”
Drawing on a diversity of thought leadership from academics and practitioners in the international aid community, Poverty & Freedom invites consensus on a new philanthropic approach to economic development, one that turns attention away from the traditional foreign aid model and instead emphasizes voluntary support for local change organizations focused on expanding economic opportunity for low-income populations.
It might be true that some people use crime in the black community as a way to deflect from the problem of police misconduct. However, that is not the case overall, and if we reason through the accusation, we can find a better explanation.
Many years ago, while I served as director of a Catholic ministry in the inner city, I met a lady who became a friend, member of our mission church, and volunteer. A black woman with a drug problem, she knew well the rough life and the subculture informing life in the projects. She was a fighter who tried her best to raise five children, conquer the demons of addiction, and provide a better life for her family. She was intelligent and kind.
I had nothing but respect for her in spite of the difficulties she still struggled with and the periods when she disappeared into the shadows of the drug underworld. Once she told me, “Mr. Hernandez, if I need people to go and beat up someone, I get a truckload of people in a matter of minutes. But if I really need help with something else, no one responds.”
I never forgot her wisdom, borne out of searing experience and wounds that were hard to heal. It prompts me to reflect on the great difference between activity and activism. Activism is a double-edged sword. It can appeal to our sense of justice but also to the raw emotions and appetites of our base nature–desires for revenge, grievance, and payback. Dr. Martin Luther King’s activism was redemptive; it was in effect activity—mobilization based on a courageous sense of integrity and righteousness. It was not empty, ideologized, or nihilistic.
But there is another edge, one that risks tumbling into the abyss of empty existence. A common fallacy of empty activism is that if it challenges something bad, it must of necessity be good. Empty activism brings about no change at all in the overall patterns of human existence that needs change. It invites passivity in the areas where real change is needed but that passivity is hidden under a thin veneer of effervescent and angry energetic movement.
What can be observed in the quest for “systemic change” informing the Black Lives Matter movement is a deafness to the need of self-examination. If we are victims of forces outside of our control, blaming the victim is a distraction from the real quest for justice and liberation from the forces out there that prevent our emancipation—that is the reason for seeing crime in the community as detracting from the “real” issue, police brutality. In that universe, even police brutality is but an epiphenomenon of forces even less within our control, the dialectical forces of history. The group demanding systemic change cannot see the need for its own systemic reevaluation. Crime in the community is given faint recognition but, as the system cannot recognize an internal defect, it can run through every possible internal change without effecting second order change. It is thus trapped in what psychologists call a Game Without End.[1] The system is so self-enclosed and comprehensive that it cannot generate change from within itself because it is unable to produce the rules needed to escape. Reform of the system being challenged is meta to the challenging system because it implies that the system being challenge is an organism capable of self-correction and the possibility of internal problems within the challenging system—blaming the victim. Second-order change is needed in “them” not in “us.” Within our system there is only invariance, definitive answers, no need for a quantum leap or illumination.
A change to an altogether different state, a second-order change, occurs with activity. Activity places the person, unique and unrepeatable, at the center of the action, as a subject of moral self-realization capable of human action. Again, I remember my friend. Eventually, she managed to keep at bay the demons of drug addiction—but only through an ongoing struggle. It is as if from the depths of her very being she found a strength whose source had to come from on high to shout, “My life is precious and I will fight for it!” She no longer saw the demons as unsurmountable obstacles, although she did not ignore them. But she was the protagonist of her life story, not scenery in a drama controlled by meta forces in history, by whites behind every tree, or by the magnanimity of others.
Activity heals; it renews the mind and the eyes so people can see a space of subjectivity and possibility, ever so small initially, but ever so true. The activity opens a path toward authentic human action and has a miraculous capacity to produce further action and instantiate progress. It is after all an expression of human exceptionalism. Made in the very image and likeness of God, we all have the capacity to be creative, to know the truth, and do the good. Only activity can bring about radical change, transcendental change, meaningful existence, and human flourishing.
Yet, those who decry the mention of crime in black America sincerely believe that the discussion is a distraction because it challenges the very essence of their ideological viewpoint. Police brutality is seen as deserving an entire national and international movement because it is a reflection of a system. Crime indeed changes the discussion and challenges the ideology. So much so that defunding police is seen as an alternative not because of well-developed theories of community safety but because it indicts the forces out there and affirms solutions within the system—the system is safe from looking in the mirror. We remain innocent and they are guilty.
Extremism is the result of such outlook. If we have already found the ultimate explanation for our condition, we need to actualize it, not waste time pondering. The resulting behavior is the utopian syndrome.[2] This extremism is projective, moralizing, and revolutionary. Its premises are more real than reality itself, as is the case with all utopias. This missionary impetus becomes nihilistic, as change is needed now. The cancel culture we observe among radicals is a clear sign of the utopian syndrome. Ironically, what is seen as revolutionary alters nothing meaningful—it remains pedestrian. At the same time, the plight of the racial victim is presented as unique, the affronts against the victim unprecedented, and any evidence to the contrary part of a system of oppression. There is simply no escape from the all-encompassing syndrome of victimization.
We can now see how pointing out the devastating reality of crime in the black community is going to be seen as an attack by people whose intentions must be evil. If they cannot see the systemically racist nature of America as the culprit, their blindness must be due to their ignorance or their malice. The need is for reframing. To reframe is to offer an alternative explanation or conceptual setting that fits the facts better than the competing framework, and then invite a leap of faith. If we are successful in changing the meaning of a given situation, people might have a momentary opportunity for second-order change—that is, to abandon the constraints of a given ideological framework. If the meaning and value of a situation is altered—an attempt that is not for the fainthearted—we might succeed in reifying a new understanding that allows us to look within ourselves and our communities and dare to place blame there.
To place blame within is not a call to create yet another closed system where we victimize ourselves by self-flagellation that might eventuate in despair. It is instead the opening of space for a balanced approach that challenges the ideological constructs now imprisoning our minds.
[1] Waltzlawick, Paul, et. Al. An Anthology of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes (New York: W.W. Norton, 1967) pp. 232-236.
[2] Waltzlawick, Paul, et. Al, Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution (New York: W.W. Norton, 1967) pp. 48-50.
