Social justice

Social Justice is a concept that has fascinated philosophers ever since Plato rebuked the young Sophist, Thrasymachus, for asserting that justice was whatever the strongest decided it would be. In The Republic, Plato formalised the argument that an ideal state would rest on four virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice.

Observations

The concept of Social justice has been politicised and it is sometimes stated proactively as being the promotion of equality through comprehensive government action. In practice, such interventions have not often produced equitable results, resulting in favouritism towards classes of people, restrictions of personal liberty and excessive regulatory burdens. Many critics regard the guarantee of equal outcomes, which is implicit in many social justice movements, as antithetical to the notion of equal opportunity because it frequently requires special, favoured treatment to arbitrary classes of people. Actual justice, they argue, does not penalize success nor reward failure, but holds all persons to the same standards regardless of their race, ethnic origin, financial condition, religion or beliefs.

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Still others, more grassroots in orientation, regard social justice "activities" as a moral/ethical balance to less-than-effective government sponsored "legal justice". Many simply believe that a "Social Justice Action" must be initiated by the human individual on his or her own accord to be pure in its "Social Justice" intent. A case in point is a recent (2005) internet blog, End School Violence NOW...before it's too late, Cached Links of Site, which was created by a Creole single mother/parent of an Arkansas middle school student, her only daughter. In it she addresses what she perceives are violations of basic accepted social/moral beliefs, and documents her decision to implement her own perspective of "Social Justice" as it pertained to how the school district dealt with school violence and bullying that was, as she put it, "terrorizing" her child by means of physical injury and murderous threats.

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