Bandy around a word too much, too carelessly, and next thing you know, it has no meaning.
We’ve got social justice, racial justice, environmental justice, gender justice–and now we’ve got a chain of “Justice” shops, specializing in girls’ wear. Lots of sequins and glitter.
Why would such a shop be named “Justice”? What does tween girls’ pajamas and sweaters have to do with justice? I was so curious, I went in and asked the clerk. “I don’t know,” she said. I asked the manager. “I have no idea,” she said. “I never thought to ask about it.”
I imagine the shops got their name from an awareness that, by the time they’re in their early teens, American children have been stuffed to the gills with assorted variations of “justice,” all held up as profoundly desirable. “OK, ‘justice’ is good. So if I call my shop ‘Justice,’ people will know that whatever it’s selling is good.” But I doubt one out of a hundred of those young teens can offer a coherent definition of the word. Go ahead, put it to the test. Ask any 13-year-old, “What is justice?” Just ask. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts the answer you get is a giggle, a grin, a shrug, and maybe a “You know!” or two.
Liberals and “teachers” have all but destroyed the word “justice,” applying it to every damned thing on their socio-political wish list. It approaches total meaninglessness.
But that’s what leftids do to language.
I always objected to the phrase “social justice,” even before it clearly became a code phrase for leftist politics. After all, justice involves doing what’s right in regard to another person or persons, i.e., fulfilling one’s obligations to another or others. So it’s always “social,” in that it must exist in a social structure of some sort, even if the structure involves only two people — or one human being and God. Justice is like love; it can’t exist in a vacuum.
If you think it’s fun asking a 13-year-old what “justice” is, try asking a 30-year-old to name a kind of justice that isn’t social.
True justice involves judging by a court of laws. Social justice bypasses all that and takes matters into their own hands, like a vigilante mob. They are judge and jury of who is guilty or innocent in their eyes. I’m sure they would love to be the executioner too.
They’re working on it.
It is close to mob mentality at its root.
Well, true justice can operate outside a court of laws — in fact, sometimes a court may enforce unjust laws.
“Racist” is another word that has been used, and misused, so often that it has lost a lot of its meaning. Simply disagreeing with someone of another race is racist to some.
Good point, Watchman. Maybe that’s why it’s been reduced to a game – playing the ‘race card’.
Once, as a caller on a radio talk show, I was asked what I thought of George W. Bush showing up at a NASCAR event. I said, “That’s how he plays the race card.” And the host groaned.
LOL!
In the Bible, justice & righteousness are interchangeable words. Doing what is right is doing justice. This all involves morality which is not PC because morality insinuates religion which every Progressive knows is for the uneducated and superstitious.
This didn’t turn out the way they had hoped –
https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2017/12/16/study-by-liberal-economists-finds-racial-differences-in-how-hard-americans-work/
Even when liberals **try** to tell the truth, they just can’t do it.