Social Justice Is the Progeny of Postmodern Theory; I Call Contemporary Social Justice “Practical Postmodernism” Or “Applied Postmodern Theory”

The derailment of academic institutions harms not only students but it also threatens the broader society, not only by undermining faith in knowledge claims but also by prejudicing the institutions supposed to cultivate the well-versed, thinking, and reasonable people required in a democratic society – people capable of open inquiry, debate, disagreement, and conflict resolution, without recourse to masks and knives.

How did this treacherous situation come to pass? How did the social justice creed gain dominance in academia? How and why was it made official policy in most colleges and universities in North America? Where did this social justice movement come from and how has it managed to permeate the broader culture and contend for domination?

To address these questions, we must look at the lineage of contemporary social justice. As I’ve said, social justice is the progeny of postmodern theory. Its beliefs, practices, values, and techniques bear the unmistakable birthmarks of postmodernism – although one must know what to look for. For this reason, and because social justice is having such a real-world impact, I call contemporary social justice “practical postmodernism,” or “applied postmodern theory.” These phrases should strike reasonable readers familiar with postmodernism as oxymoronic. How could such an obscure, anti- pragmatic, and nearly indescribable set of propositions as postmodern theory ever be applied or made practical?, they rightly ask. By being put into practice, I answer. Contemporary social justice is the very impractical “practical” application of postmodern theory to everyday life.

--Michael Rectenwald, preface to Springtime for Snowflakes: “Social Justice” and Its Postmodern Parentage (Nashville, TN: New English Review Press, 2018), xiii.

In the New Orthodoxy She Had Embraced, a Mythical “Patriarchy” Took Precedence over the Marxist Ruling Class as the Well-Spring of Social Evils

In graduate school, Bettina had begun for the first time in her life to open her mind to the work of leftwing writers who were not on the Party's list of approved authors. At the same time, she was careful to limit the range of her interest to the writings of authors who were politically correct by the standards of her New Left comrades: “radical feminists, authors who applied a Marxist paradigm to gender issues,” and those approved by the Women's Studies movement such as Shulamith Firestone and Juliet Mitchell, authors of The Dialectics of Sex and Women: The Longest Revolution. In the new orthodoxy she had embraced, a mythical “patriarchy” took precedence over the Marxist ruling class as the well-spring of social evils. In the radical vision she now adopted, women took their place beside the proletariat as a fundamental element in the axis of social “oppression” and thus in the revolutionary struggle for “social justice.”

--David Horowitz, Radicals: Portraits of a Destructive Passion (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2012), 86.

Until Its Steep Military Decline in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Islam Was the Arch-Enemy of European Civilization

It can fairly be said that, until its steep military decline in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Islam was the arch-enemy of European civilization. For virtually all of Europe’s history since the Dark Ages it had been a mortal threat. Between the seventh and ninth centuries, militarized Islam conquered half of the fragmented Roman Empire. “It very nearly destroyed us,” wrote Hilaire Belloc in 1938. At the time, Belloc thought it dangerous that Westerners

have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past…It has always seemed to me possible, and even probable, that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent.

--Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West (New York: Doubleday, 2009), Kindle e-book.

For These Texts Revealed a Romantic, Philosophical Marx, Still under Hegel’s Thrall, for Whom the Alienation of Human Essence — Man’s “Species Being” — Was the Central Issue

Herbert Marcuse was an unlikely candidate for the role of spiritual godfather of the New Left. Born in Berlin in 1898, Marcuse witnessed the German Revolution of 1918–19 first hand, and these events would leave an indelible mark on his subsequent political formation. He was drafted into the German army at the age of eighteen, and his early political sympathies lay with the moderate Social Democrats. In 1918 Marcuse was elected as a deputy to one of the revolutionary soldiers councils that emerged throughout the country during the war’s later stages. Like many leftists of his generation, his alienation from Social Democratic politics followed from the brutal murders of Spartacus League members Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in January 1919 at the hands of the ruling Social Democratic government.

Thereafter Marcuse embarked on a fascinating intellectual and political odyssey. In 1928 he moved to Freiburg where for four years he studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger. At the time he was
convinced that Heidegger’s existentialism offered a dimension of “concreteness” that was missing from the reigning scientific currents of Marxism. But soon he came to view the potentials of Heideggerian Marxism as illusory. In 1930 he submitted a habilitation study on Hegel that Heidegger rejected. In any event the political winds of Germany’s moribund Weimar Republic were rapidly shifting. Heidegger himself would soon go over to the Nazis. As a Marxist and a Jew, Marcuse realized his future as a German academic was hopeless. Through the mediation of Edmund Husserl, he established contact with the Frankfurt-based Institute for Social Research, whose new director, Max Horkheimer, was already anticipating the rigors of political exile. Marcuse’s association with the Frankfurt tradition of critical Marxism would prove a defining intellectual influence.

Marcuse recognized the 1932 publication of Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 as “a crucial event in the history of Marxist studies.” For these texts revealed a romantic, philosophical Marx, still under Hegel’s thrall, for whom the alienation of human essence — man’s “species being” — was the central issue. At odds with the narrowly determinist, economic approach to Marx that had been decreed by the Second International, the Paris Manuscripts unveiled a humanist Marx for whom “communism” represented a solution to the fundamental existential dilemmas of mankind.

--Richard Wolin, “Critical Reflections on Marcuse's Theory of Revolution,” in The Frankfurt School Revisited and Other Essays on Politics and Society (New York: Routledge, 2006), 81-82.

The Glory of the Human Race Is the Uniqueness of Each Individual, the Fact that Every Person Possesses a Completely Individuated Personality of His Own

If men were like ants, there would be no interest in human freedom. If individual men, like ants, were uniform, interchangeable, devoid of specific personality traits of their own, then who would care whether they were free or not? Who, indeed, would care if they lived or died? The glory of the human race is the uniqueness of each individual, the fact that every person, though similar in many ways to others, possesses a completely individuated personality of his own. It is the fact of each person’s uniqueness—the fact that no two people can be wholly interchangeable—that makes each and every man irreplaceable and that makes us care whether he lives or dies, whether he is happy or oppressed. And, finally, it is the fact that these unique personalities need freedom for their full development that constitutes one of the major arguments for a free society.

--Murray N. Rothbard, "Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor," in Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, 2nd ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000), 247.

Equality in the Islamic Sense of the Word Means that the Man Must Divide His Sperm and His Wealth Equally among His Four Wives

Muhammad legalized for himself and his men the rape of the women captured in the course of their raids in a verse that tumbled down from the top of the mountain and fell into Muhammad’s lap. The Koranic verse says: “Marry women who seem good to you: two, three or four of them. But if you fear you cannot maintain equality among them, marry one only” (4:3). Women who seem good to you? Men viewed marriage as nothing more than a response to their desires, without reference to the woman’s feelings regarding the marriage. And men did not curb these desires, satisfying them with any woman he was able to acquire, just like so much chattel.

A man’s wealth alone limited the number of women he was able to marry. The Koran distinguishes between two classes of woman: the free woman and the slave. The slave woman has no rights to freedom. Islam limits the number of free women a man may marry to four, if he can treat them all equally, and, if he cannot—to one. A slave woman does not enjoy the same rights as a free woman, and so a man may marry them as he pleases, so long as he can afford to buy them. What does Islam mean by equally? Equality in this case, in the Islamic sense of the word, means that the man must divide his sperm and his wealth equally among his four wives. If he cannot do this, he must take only one wife. How equitable the ogre is in what he accords to men and their oh-so-fortunate wives!

--Wafa Sultan, A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009), e-book.

Mass Immigration from non-Western Countries Is an Essential Tool to Make America Multicultural; Leftists See Immigration Restrictions as Part of Institutionalized Racism and Elitism

For these lefties, immigration restrictions are just part and parcel of the institutionalized racism and elitism that has corrupted America since its founding. In their minds, the Declaration might as well have been written on cloth cut from a Klansman’s hood. Still, they can exploit Founding documents like the Declaration (for all its hypocrisy) in their fight for social justice.

Mass immigration from non-Western countries is an essential tool for such leftists in (to quote Barack Obama) “fundamentally transforming” America into a multicultural society where whites must atone for their ancestors’ sins by accepting indefinite unequal treatment via affirmative action that disfavors them and anti-discrimination laws that don’t protect them. American Exploiters would include Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack and Michelle Obama, and probably 99 percent of college professors in the humanities and social sciences.

Increasingly, leftists in America hold the view that we have inherited a basically wicked country that became great by displacing the Indians, enslaving Africans, exploiting the working class, and unjustly excluding immigrants. Uncle Sam is a degenerate.

--John Zmirak and Al Perrotta, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2018), e-book.

Segregation by Intentional Government Action Is Not De Facto; Rather, It Is What Courts Call De Jure: Segregation by Law and Public Policy

When, from 2014 to 2016, riots in places like Ferguson, Baltimore, Milwaukee, or Charlotte captured our attention, most of us thought we knew how these segregated neighborhoods, with their crime, violence, anger, and poverty came to be. We said they are “de facto segregated,” that they result from private practices, not from law or government policy.

De facto segregation, we tell ourselves, has various causes. When African Americans moved into a neighborhood like Ferguson, a few racially prejudiced white families decided to leave, and then as the number of black families grew, the neighborhood deteriorated, and “white flight” followed. Real estate agents steered whites away from black neighborhoods, and blacks away from white ones. Banks discriminated with “redlining,” refusing to give mortgages to African Americans or extracting unusually severe terms from them with subprime loans. African Americans haven’t generally gotten the educations that would enable them to earn sufficient incomes to live in white suburbs, and, as a result, many remain concentrated in urban neighborhoods. Besides, black families prefer to live with one another.

All this has some truth, but it remains a small part of the truth, submerged by a far more important one: until the last quarter of the twentieth century, racially explicit policies of federal, state, and local governments defined where whites and African Americans should live. Today’s residential segregation in the North, South, Midwest, and West is not the unintended consequence of individual choices and of otherwise well-meaning law or regulation but of unhidden public policy that explicitly segregated every metropolitan area in the United States. The policy was so systematic and forceful that its effects endure to the present time. Without our government’s purposeful imposition of racial segregation, the other causes—private prejudice, white flight, real estate steering, bank redlining, income differences, and self-segregation—still would have existed but with far less opportunity for expression. Segregation by intentional government action is not de facto. Rather, it is what courts call de jure: segregation by law and public policy.

--Richard Rothstein, preface to The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017), e-book.

Campus Activists Believe They May Limit the Rights of Their Political Opponents If They Frame Their Intolerance in Terms of Protecting Others from Hate

When people talk about universities pursuing truth, what they usually have in mind, Williams notes, is “not a search for an ultimate truth for all time, but a contestable truth … [to] be countered and superseded when new and better knowledge” comes along. Campus activists, though, may believe they possess the full truth already. Unlike others they are aware, conscious, or in the know—or to use a more recent term, woke. Or they may see all truth claims as exercises of power. In any case, for them the university’s mission is social justice rather than truth. The university is not to be a place where people hash out ideas and where even error is tolerated because others are free to contest it. It is to be set apart from the larger society not as a haven of free expression, but instead as a safe space where students are protected from oppression. As they see it, those defending the permissibility of speech that causes harm are defending oppression. Some activists even mock free speech advocates as defenders of what they call freeze peach. 

Obviously censorship is not new, but the rationale for it now tends to arise from the ideals of victimhood culture. Political scientist April Kelly-Woessner finds that today’s young people are actually less politically tolerant than the previous generation, a reversal of a 60-year-old trend. And among the younger generation (those under 40), those who are most concerned about social justice are the most intolerant. That this is not the case for those who are older suggests that the idea of a conflict between social justice and free speech is new. One likely source of this idea, Kelly-Woessner says, is the New Left theorist Herbert Marcuse, who argued that a “liberating tolerance … would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.” Whatever the source, though, campus activists have come to believe they may “limit the rights of their political opponents, so long as they frame their intolerance in terms of protecting others from hate.”

--Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars (Cham, CH: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 223-224.

Many of the Black Slaveowners of South Carolina Were Former Slaves; the Attitudes and Actions of Colored Masters Appeared to be Similar to Those of the White Slaveowners

Because the history of black slaveholding has been almost ignored by scholars, the literature on the slaveholding of free blacks is lacking in quantity. Most of the studies examining black slaveowning are written in the form of articles, although numerous other works mention the existence of black masters. So far as the author is aware, the subject of black slaveholding has not been explored on a general or a statewide level in a monograph. Such studies are needed, and it is hoped that this book will, so far as South Carolina is concerned, supply this need.

Although South Carolina may not have been the typical Southern state where free blacks owned slaves, it provided the unique setting of being the bridge between the Upper and the Deep South, thus embracing elements of both societies. In the Palmetto State, there were blacks who owned scores of slaves and large tracts of land like the black slaveowners of Louisiana. Primarily, however, South Carolina's black masters were small slaveholders who owned one or two slaves, like the black slaveowners of Maryland and Virginia. Many of these small slaveholders owned family members who could not be emancipated because the state legislatures prohibited private manumission unless the freed slave left the state.

This book is a study of black slaveholders who were diverse in background and character. Many of the black slaveowners of South Carolina were former slaves who rose from the shackles of bondage to the ranks of slave masters. Still others were one or two generations removed from slavery, and their parents and grandparents were slave masters who passed their human chattel from parent to child. Yet the ranks of the colored masters were not all from the elite class of black society. In the Palmetto State, free blacks who worked as draymen, stable keepers, and washerwomen acquired the money to purchase slaves. Within the community of slaveholders, there were free blacks who bought slaves for humanitarian reasons and broke the laws of South Carolina to maintain the freedom they granted their slaves. Yet black slaveholding in South Carolina was primarily a commercial venture, and the attitudes and actions of colored masters appeared to be similar to those of the white slaveowners. In essence, free black masters embraced many of the attitudes of the white community even while they remained on the fringe of the society.

--Larry Koger, Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 1985), e-book.

This Paper Directly Challenges the Common Belief that Slaveowning Was Based Strictly on Racial Distinctions (the Idea that Whites Owned Slaves and Blacks Were Slaves)

In fact, by 1830 this third caste of wealth[y] free African-Americans numbered just over 3,000 and owned over 12,000 slaves, along with hundreds of thousands of land acreage. In St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, three free black plantation owners held an average of forty-six slaves each; likewise, in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, eight planters had about thirty-seven slaves each. These numbers alone directly challenge the commonly held belief that slaveowning was based strictly on racial distinctions: the idea that whites owned slaves and blacks were slaves.

Thus, this study focuses on the general occurrence of affluence amongst free blacks and their shared role in the system of slavery; specifically how their experience differs from the predispositions of modern society’s belief of the notion. That is to suggest that the existence of  an affluent free black slaveholding caste challenges the belief that slavery was strictly based on racial distinctions—despite an unequal ratio of free blacks to slaves. Though there are many questions lacking scholarly attention, the research contained in this paper will specifically address four questions. What are the origins of black slave ownership and the historical development revolving around the third caste? What defined a free person of color, and how was such a status obtained? What was the rationale behind becoming a free black slaveholder? Finally, how significant was black slave ownership?

--Colton Adams, “A Peculiar Institution Within the Peculiar Institution: An Examination of Affluent Free Black Slave Owners in the Third Caste,” Journal of Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Research 8 (2016): 1-2.

Spencer Saw the NEW Liberalism As Paternalism; It Called for State Intervention in Voluntary Relationships on the Grounds that the State Has the Parental-Like Duty to Protect Individuals from Their Own Decisions

Old liberals – or what Spencer preferred to call “true” liberals – disliked the implication of the modifier “new,” which suggested something progressive, as if new liberals had improved on the theory of old liberalism while retaining what was worthwhile and discarding what had become obsolete. The term “liberal” carried favorable connotations; in addition to its association with “liberty” (“liberal” derives from liber, the Latin word for “free”), the adjectival form had long been used to mean magnanimous, open-minded, and tolerant. The label therefore suggested something more than a political doctrine; it suggested a humanistic outlook, a moral and social ideology in which the happiness of the individual is a key concern.

Given these implications, it is understandable why many social reformers who disliked the laissez- faire tendencies of traditional liberalism did not wish to jettison the label. They claimed that the new liberalism was based on a more sophisticated notion of freedom and therefore represented intellectual progress. As Spencer viewed the matter, though, the new liberalism was essentially old wine in a new bottle. The old wine in this case was paternalism, a doctrine that called for state intervention in voluntary relationships on the grounds that the state has the parental-like duty to protect individuals from the potentially harmful effects of their own uncoerced decisions and actions.

--George H. Smith, The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), e-book.

Affirmative Action Is Institutionalized Injustice, with a Direct Victim for Every Direct Beneficiary; Antidiscrimination Laws Interfere Arbitrarily in Normal Social Functioning and Create Entitlements

Inclusiveness creates losers no less than exclusion does. Affirmative action is institutionalized injustice, with a direct victim for every direct beneficiary. Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff in the famous lawsuit over a written fireman’s test in New Haven, is one of the few victims who successfully fought back, and he had to take his case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Nor is it just those displaced by the less qualified who lose. Institutionalized lying and favoritism hurt everyone, especially when driven to ideological extremes. Who wants a bumbling fireman? Who wants to ride on an airplane flown by an affirmative action pilot? And who can doubt that medical school admission preferences kill patients? We all do better in an intelligently run society, and inclusiveness makes it impossible to discuss human affairs realistically. It has made obvious and important features of social life unmentionable. . . .

Antidiscrimination laws interfere arbitrarily in normal social functioning and create entitlements based on a few characteristics, principally race. The result is to destroy normal patterns of cooperation and set people against each other. Those disadvantaged by the system resent it, while beneficiaries justify it by keeping real or imagined grievances alive.

--James Kalb, Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime Is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It (Tacoma, WA: Angelico Press, 2013), e-book.

What Reply Can Marxian Socialism Make to those Who, Precisely on behalf of the Proletarians, Demand Private Ownership of the Means of Production, and Not Their Socialization?

Even if we were to assume that society is divided into classes with conflicting interests and if we were to agree that everyone is morally obliged to follow his class interests and nothing but his class interests, the question would still remain: What best serves class interests? This is the point where “scientific” socialism and the “sociology of knowledge” show their mysticism. They assume without hesitation that whatever is demanded by one’s class interests is always immediately evident and unequivocal. The comrade who is of a different opinion can only be a traitor to his class.

What reply can Marxian socialism make to those who, precisely on behalf of the proletarians, demand private ownership of the means of production, and not their socialization? If they are proletarians, this demand alone is sufficient to brand them as traitors to their class, or, if they are not proletarians, as class enemies. Or if, finally, the Marxists do choose to engage in a discussion of the problems, they thereby abandon their doctrine; for how can one argue with traitors to one’s class or with class enemies, whose moral inferiority or class situation makes it impossible for them to comprehend the ideology of the proletariat?

--Ludwig von Mises, Epistemological Problems of Economics, 3rd ed., trans. George Reisman (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2003), 201.

Foreigners Generally Suppose that the State Governments Are Subordinate to the Federal, But This Is Not the Case; States Are the Domestic and the Federal the Foreign Branch of the Same Government

With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. To the State governments are reserved all legislation and administration, in affairs which concern their own citizens only, and to the federal government is given whatever concerns foreigners, or the citizens of other States; these functions alone being made federal. The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government; neither having control over the other, but within its own department.

--Thomas Jefferson, The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (Charlottesville, VA: Thomas Jefferson Foundation, 1993), 210.

The Rule of Law Is the Idea that We Should Be Governed By Known Laws, Not the Arbitrary Decisions of Government Officials; John Adams Called It a Government of Laws, and Not of Men

Another principle that restrains power and creates greater security for the public is the rule of law. This is the idea that we should be governed by known laws, not the arbitrary decisions of government officials – what the American statesman John Adams (1785–1836) called ‘a government of laws, and not of men’.

Classical liberals insist that the law should apply equally to everyone, regardless of gender, race, religion, language, family or any other irrelevant characteristics. It should apply to government officers just as much as to ordinary people; nobody should be ‘above the law’.

To maintain the rule of law requires a system of justice, with independent courts that cannot be manipulated by individuals or governments. There need to be basic judicial principles such as habeas corpus, trial by jury and due process to prevent those in power using the law in their own interests.

The rule of law has another happy consequence – it makes life far more predictable, because it enables us to anticipate how people (including officials) will – and will not – behave. So we can make long-term plans without fear of having them shattered by the caprice of others.

--Eamonn Butler, Classical Liberalism: A Primer (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2015), 8-9.

Modern Liberals Are Welfare-State Liberals and Are Motivated by an Over-Arching Commitment to an Ideal of Equality Alien to and Incompatible with Classical Liberalism

Although by no means classical liberals, the overwhelming majority of present-day intellectuals in the Western democracies would consider themselves liberal on issues other than those connected with equality, such as personal morality and life-style. Indeed, the term 'liberal' has now come to stand in some of these countries, notably, the USA, for someone who supports egalitarian policies. The classical liberal view has come to be called 'conservative'. In order to keep clear the difference between the two outlooks, and not to award the term exclusively to either position, I have chosen to refer to the two positions by the expressions classical and modern liberalism. The purpose of this chapter is to decide between these two kinds of liberalism. Since they are largely agreed on matters connected with civil liberty, I shall focus on their major point of disagreement, namely, the equity and effectiveness of egalitarian public policy.

Modern liberals are welfare-state liberals. They also tend to be in favour of equal opportunities legislation in all its various forms. Some go further by favouring affirmative action and reverse discrimination in education and employment. These involve giving preferential treatment to members of previously disadvantaged minorities so as to improve their life-prospects. In all this, modern liberals are motivated by an over-arching commitment to an ideal of equality alien to and incompatible with classical liberalism. This is not to say that classical liberals have no place or regard for equality. This is far from so. But equality, for classical liberals, means primarily 'equality before the law'. By this term, classical liberals understand that the law recognize each member of society as enjoying an equal standing, and hence an equal right to life, to liberty and to acquire and enjoy secure possession of property.

--David Conway, Classical Liberalism: The Unvanquished Ideal (Houndmills, UK: Macmillan Press, 1995), 26.