The media often adopt the language of the left without even realizing it. In today’s Raleigh News & Observer there’s a story about Greensboro’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
a group formed to rehash the Klan-Communist Workers Party shootout of
1979. For what purpose no one really knows. However, the N&O
reporter says, and the headline writer repeated, that it’s aiming for
something called “restorative justice.” I read the story hoping for a
definition of “restorative justice” but there wasn’t one. Only this
from the reporter:
Two more hearings are scheduled, and in 2006 the commission
expects to issue a report that outlines findings and recommendations
for reconciliation and restorative justice.
That’s it. No explanation as to how restorative justice differs from
actual justice. This term was obviously mentioned to the reporter by
one of the left-wing organizers of this political theater and she
simply repeated it. There was a time when reporters saw it as their
sacred duty to expunge jargon from their reporting and to cut through
its smelly rind to get to the truth. No more. I Googled the term and found this.
Restorative Justice is an old idea with a new name. Its roots can be found in
Aboriginal healing traditions and the non-retaliatory responses to violence endorsed
by many faith communities.
Other Google references confirm the left-wing, touchy-feely, internationalist, peace movement non-judgmentalism (unless the object is Klan members, of course) of
the phenomenon. Any news story that requires the reader to use Google
to help explain the terms used in the story is not a well-written or
well-edited story.
p.s. I wonder if there’d be a
reconciliation commission today if the people who had died in that
shootout in 1979 had been Klan members instead of communists.
