In the latest dead-tree version of National Review, Loyola (Maryland) political science professor Diana Schaub reviews Kenneth Minogue?s book, The Servile Mind.
Among Schaub?s most interesting observations is her take on Minogue?s dissection of a particularly overused ? and misused ? word:
Minogue points also to the ubiquity of the adjective ?social,? as in ?social justice,? ?social capital,? and ?social responsibility.? In the case of ?social justice,? the qualifier upends justice, reversing its meaning. Justice involves respect for legal ownership (your right to the bread you earn by the sweat of your brow). Social justice, however, is radically redistributive; it operates by the formula ?You work, I?ll eat? ? a formula that Abraham Lincoln decried as the epitome of despotism, whether practiced by masters who live off the unrequited labor of slaves or by the many poor who expropriate the few rich through confiscatory taxation.
Regular readers in this forum know Minogue isn?t the only person who?s highlighted the problems associated with the notion of ?social justice.?
