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Relativism, Social Justice, and our Declining Freedoms in America
by James
R. Birrell, Ed.D.
Associate Professor of Teacher Education, BYU
"You guys have been discriminating for years. Now it's our turn!"
Justice Thurgood Marshall to Justice William Douglas
.
Introduction
Over the past several weeks, I have been writing
about relativism- the belief that man must determine the meaning
of all things; he/she alone is the author of truth. Individual
meaning and truth are highly relevant; your truth is relevant, making-
perhaps, someone else’s truth irrelevant- especially someone you
disagree with.
To provide people with a greater sense of
relevance, identity and community, Americans increasingly separate
themselves into groups that support ideologies and activities that
affirm their preferred worldviews. Such groups or factions, driven
by self-interest in support of causes they advocate, compete nonstop
today for governmental influence and funding; they can also work
equally hard to reduce influence and funding for others they might
find disagreeable. Accordingly, factions expand the sphere of government
influence imperceptibly in all directions, as Alexis de Tocqueville,
author of Democracy in America, warned us about long ago.
Factions and special interests turn to government
to divide the baby in the name of fairness and equality, as in King
Solomon’s day, thinking that they- or others are somehow entitled
to half- or more, of what we earn.
Social
justice- the focus of this article- is evidence of this. Social
justice arguments, as put forth by numerous factions of the
civil rights industry, including an array of multiculturalist-minded
lawyers, advocates, politicians, reformers, teachers, and citizens
call for an end of poverty and ignorance. Who could be against that?
They seek improved learning opportunities and outcomes for America’s
poorest school children. Who could be against that? They seek
greater educational resources for poor communities. Who could be
against that? They want the poorest of school children to graduate
from modern high schools as prepared for college as the most privileged
of White children. Who could be against that? On these vital issues
the most radical of leftist and relativist reformers can stand shoulder-to-shoulder
with the most conservative Christian teacher and American citizen.
And they do!
And I stand with them also, at least in aims-
but not in means or methodologies. Where I break ranks with my
multiculturalist friends and civil rights colleagues is in their
methods for obtaining equality of opportunity and outcome. Whereas
the American pledge states “with liberty and justice for
all,” social justice advocates call for “equality
of opportunity and outcomes for all.” Democracy can ensure better
than any other form of government the idea of liberty and justice
for all, regardless of what some say. America is second to
none in addressing the issue of liberty and justice for all. Only
socialistic thinking would construct a promise of equality of
opportunity and outcome for all. John Adams knew that men were
not truly equal, except to enjoy their equal rights and privileges
under the law (McCullough, 2001). He struggled to see how the language
of equality could adequately reflect the reality of humanity.
Men and women are not inherently equal- except
before the law, and of worth to God. Hence, social justice,
the core of today’s civil rights and multicultural education agendas
is a call for more than democracy can provide. Given that fact,
it is a call for a new form of government and economy in America-
socialism. It does this by advocating the death of capitalism;
after all, a government big enough to provide the least with all
that they want, must also be big enough to take from the wealthiest
all that they have. This is Marxism. And Alexis de Tocqueville,
a contemporary of Karl Marx, and author of Democracy in America,
must have seen this coming when he warned future Americans that
the eventual struggle between liberty and equality- as we increasingly
see in social justice claims, would ultimately result in
a loss of freedoms- at least for some.
Social
justice is- among other things, the promotion of the politics
of racial preference and privilege, including the likes of affirmative
action and hate crimes legislation that further divide our nation
into factions and spawn ever increasing governmental regulation.
And it is the reversal of fortunes, mandated by law- to take from
the so-called “haves” (economically and politically) in order to
give to the designated “have-nots” (poor or powerless) in the name
of fairness. Viewed in a different light, if social justice
were about our ability to ultimately produce children- rather than
income, power, and status, advocates would be arguing for government
to redistribute our children to those more in need of them, an act
that some would see as fair. The more children you produced, the
more you would be required to give away; what, then, would happen
to your incentive to produce (this analogy partially explains the
failure of socialism to build and sustain a superpower nation)?
The Struggle between Equality and Liberty
As I indicated, one of Tocqueville’s most
prophetic concerns after his examination of American democracy dealt
with the struggle between equality and liberty. He feared that
the drive toward equality would ultimately erode the liberty of
Americans. According to Charlotte Twight, author of Dependent
on D.C. (2002), what Tocqueville feared was that:
A
democratic majority, motivated by human envy reinforced by belief
in the essential equality of free Americans, would empower government
to enforce equality in ways destructive of individual liberty.
This would happen because:
Preoccupied
with their own material affairs and gratifications, people would
reduce their participation in public life, entrusting to government
unrestrained powers of a sort they would never entrust to a fellow
citizen (p. 10).
While the majority of Americans are daily
distracted with earning a living- made more difficult today by high
taxes and a poor economy, the civil rights industry, aided by a
host of leftists, multiculturalists, relativists, governmental and
educational elites- and many others who simply care about children
and are unaware of the political aims of the promoters of social
justice, have been busy marketing and legislating the ideals
of social justice. Social justice is the belief that
equalizing opportunity for the disadvantaged can equalize results
across America- particularly in public schooling. Advocates of
social justice believe that government sponsored, redistribution
of our income would alleviate key effects of poverty in America.
Specifically, they believe that taking even more and ever more income
from the so-called privileged to purchase buildings, teachers,
programs and materials for the less privileged would guarantee
equal educational outcomes across economic classes; this tax could
be viewed as a form of legalized race reparations and a variation
on Affirmative Action. Advocates of social justice argue
that children in poverty both require and deserve even
more resources than do children of privilege; and so, they seek
to increase our tax burdens until all children from all backgrounds
and circumstances graduate from school equally prepared to succeed
in life.
Logically, one would expect that placing poor
children in well-equipped public schools with well-prepared teachers
would tend to equalize learning outcomes; this contention argues
for school choice and vouchers, and is addressed in the much maligned
No Child Left Behind Act. According to this view, the great disparity
in educational outcomes between poor and so-called privileged children
would be primarily the result of unequal funding. If it were only
that simple! The loss of the nuclear family, record high illegitimate
birthrates, increased crime statistics, and persistent school failure
have occurred at the same time social spending by all levels of
government, measured in constant 1990 dollars, rose from $143 billion
in 1960 to $787 billion in the mid 1990’s; welfare spending increased
sevenfold, and yet the poverty rate is far below what it was in
1960 (Bennett, 2001). According to Garrett and Penny (1998), school
spending in America rose from $831 billion in 1960 to $3 trillion
in 1995 (measured in constant 1992-93 dollars). What do we have
to show for these expenditures, save an endless litany of critical
research studies and governmental reforms lamenting the failures
of public schooling and teacher education, and ever increasing calls
for more money and tighter accountability? How is it that our investment
in the poor has improved, in many ways, their standard of living,
but not their school achievement? Today’s poor have a higher standard
of living than middle class Americans of previous generations, and
they possess more wealth than many people living in Third World
countries (see D’Souza, 2002), and yet too many still fall behind
in school.
The reasons for this persistent failure are
numerous, and not always related to funding. George F. Will noted
that the Educational Testing Services in 1991 estimated that about
90 percent of the performance differences among schools can be explained
by five variables: number of days pupils are absent, number of hours
pupils spend watching television, number of pages pupils read for
homework, quantity and quality of reading matter in pupil’s homes,
and- the most important variable, the number of parents in the home.
Government programs cannot address or reverse all these factors.
In my decade as director of the BYU-District
of Columbia Public School Partnership, and in my research in Los
Angeles, South Phoenix, North Las Vegas, and elsewhere, I have become
well acquainted with the problems of inner city schooling. I have
seen inner city schools thrive, and I have seen abysmal failures-
all in the same district, all in the same community. The contrast
leads me to reject the idea the more money will assure greater success
in school; the problems run much deeper. Schools need money, but
they also need to find better ways to use the money they already
have. Why is it that L. A. Unified can outspend local Catholic
schools $13,400.00 to $2,800.00 per pupil, but not out perform them
(Warder, 2001)? How is it that D.C. Public Schools can outspend
Utah schools 2-1 but not outperform them? And why do schools like
The Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem, New York, enjoy a 98 percent
graduation rate with a Regent’s diploma, and watch 95 percent of
graduates go on to college? Douglass Academy is but one of many
successful inner city schools that dispel the myth that more money
translates to more learning (see Williams, 2003).
Asking me to pay ever more increasing taxes,
to promote social justice constructs, is like asking a student
with a 4.0 to give a student with a 2.0 one full grade so that they
both have a 3.0. It may appear fair on paper, but it will never
be equal in any meaningful way. Money alone cannot buy equality
in the human arena of educating children from diverse backgrounds-
especially if you consider the decline in black education since
such entitlement programs as Affirmative Action (Sowell, 1997);
striving for parity can only breed mediocrity. Parity has a leveling
effect. If promoting equality for the one with less means placing
restrictions on the one with more, then social justice is
just another form of injustice to the wealthier majority- it’s a
form of payback. This is what Tocqueville warned us about- legislating
equality ultimately results in new forms of inequality. There are
other solutions. Larry Elder, in his book Showdown (2002),
argued that public schools in poor communities will not improve
until the poor- who pay no taxes, begin paying for the privilege
of educating their children; that which we pay for we demand more
from. My years in inner city schools attest to the truth of this
observation.
We
already have the most expensive government in existence. Social
justice tax increases will only add to that burden; it is just
another tax on the privileged majority by the “race” and “rights”
industries. Consider that Democrats, the political party of social
justice through Big Government- and increasingly Republicans,
have raised taxes to the point where our government is the most
expensive in the world, according to economist Steve Moore. In
a February 2002 study entitled The Most Expensive Government
in World History, Moore argued that our government spends more
money in one year than it spent combined from 1781-1900 (in Hannity,
2002). The1999 total taxes paid per household burden was, according
to Moore, $30,000.00, and it’s getting worse. Some estimates I
have read put the overall tax burden of Americans at $.51 for every
$1.00 spent.
In
making these arguments, I am not unconcerned for the poor; I just
don’t want to become one- socialism is no utopia. Add tithes and
offerings to the taxes I pay and no one can accuse me of not doing
my part; and I have dedicated my adult career to preparing teachers
for inner city schools. Trouble is, government keeps placing demands
upon my income, as citizens place more demands upon government.
During the Clinton-Gore years, the federal tax burden alone grew
by 45 percent, from an average of $4,625 per person to about $6,690
(see Hannity, 2002). Given that the objects of entitlement usually
pay little or no taxes- as do some middle class and rich
(the top 25% of earners pay 84% of the taxes paid in America), my
burden as a tax paying, middle class American steadily increases.
The struggle for equality, coupled with expanding government programs,
is limiting my freedoms by reducing my income- my choices.
Please
don’t misunderstand me. If I had my way, the united order would
be in full swing and we would all live in a “Zion” society, free
from economic poverty and emotional want. The united order is a
religious order; its counterfeit, socialism, is only an atheistic
form of it. It is not the antidote for poverty- true poverty, which
is poverty of internal assets more than external. I agree with
Ruby Payne (1998), a noted expert on poverty, that financial resources,
while extremely important, do not explain the differences in the
success with which individuals leave poverty nor the reasons they
may stay in poverty. In her book Understanding a Framework for
Poverty, Dr. Payne argues that the ability to leave poverty
is more dependent upon other resources than it is upon financial
resources, including the development of emotional, mental, spiritual,
and physical resources, along with a support system of successful
role models that can help the poor learn to navigate the rules of
higher economical classes; promoting well-being has always been
the role of the family. We don’t have to alter our national reality,
history, and economy to alter the thinking of the relatively small
percentage of the persistent poor among us. Here is where militant
advocates for social justice reveal their true intentions-
it is not poverty they seek to eliminate, but democracy. And there
are many of them out there these days- worldwide. To them and their
allies, American democracy is the last hurdle to their global socialist
agenda and a new order under the banner of the United Nations.
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld form their axis of evil.
Social Justice and the call
for Socialism
I leave you with these quotes from two multicultural
education textbooks to demonstrate how some race scholars are quite
vocal about their commitments to ending capitalism and promoting
socialism in America. Here is an example of what future teachers
might learn in universities today as part of their multicultural
education instruction. From Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic
Society (1994), a textbook for prospective teachers by Gollnick
and Chinn, we read:
Not all resources can be redistributed so
that every individual would have an equal amount, nor should all
individuals expect equal compensation for the work they do. However,
the underlying belief is that there need not be the huge disparities
in income, wealth, and power that currently exist (Ryan, 1981).
Deutsch (1985) defines equality as distributive justice that “centers
on the fairness of the distribution of the conditions and goods
that affect individual well-being” (p. 1). Further, he believes
that “we need economic policies that will foster full employment
and substantially increase the share of the total income that is
received by those in the bottom third of the income distribution”
(p.62).
They add:
Critics decry the proposed socialism as being
against the democratic foundations that undergird the nation. They
believe that equality of resources and societal benefits would undermine
the capitalist system that allows a few individuals to acquire the
great majority of the resources. They warn that equality of results
would limit freedom and liberty for individuals. Ryan (1981) counters
that “the only freedom threatened by economic equality is the freedom
of one individual to oppress and exploit another by virtue of his
or her specific talent for oppression or exploitation” (p. 92) (p.24).
Consider
also these sobering and similar words from Race, Class, and Gender,
edited by Anderson and Collins (1992):
Sexism and capitalism are so intertwined,
in fact, that we believe there is no way sexism can be thoroughly
uprooted from our society without the total remaking of our economic
system. Changing over to a popularly controlled or socialist economy
would be a great blow against sexism (p. 137).
These quotes demonstrate how arguments that
promote social justice have at their core calls for a socialist
economy, presided over by a new “nanny” government that has shifted
dramatically to the political far Left. Like Karl Marx, the political
Left attributes evil to capitalism- the mother of inequality and
oppression. They view the new egalitarian socialist democracy
as the utopia of fairness, whereas capitalism is the tool that drives
White privilege and oppression. Social justice is today’s class
wars.
Summary
As I see it, the existence of poverty in America
is NOT an indictment of capitalism. It could be an indictment of
some capitalists who place profit above principle. But like liberty,
capitalism is only a tool. In the hands of moral men and women,
it is a source of moral and profound goodness. In the hands of
immoral men and women, it becomes a tool of oppression and division.
It becomes an Enron and such. We don’t have to change our government
to be a better nation- we need only become better people. All this
leads me back to what John Adams wrote on June 21, 1776, and I have
been saying throughout these missives on relativism:
The
only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue, and if this
cannot be inspired into our people in greater measure than they
have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government,
but they will not obtain a lasting liberty (Federer, 2000, p. 8).
Perhaps a greater commitment to living simpler
lives, including wanting less, may result in us having more discretionary
time and means to reach out to those less fortunate and become the
difference between their present and future circumstances. But
first we must cultivate the will to- in a metaphorical way, teach
a man to fish; this takes involvement- friendship, and is much more
difficult- though no less important than writing out a fast offering
check to merely give a stranger a fish. Our giving money without
investing time in others makes us like the federal government- people
grow dependent on our money, but is anyone really changed in the
exchange? The frightening alternative, in my opinion, is a continued
shift toward a Marxist economy built to support the political aims
of social justice arguments.
References
Anderson, Margaret, & Collins, Patricia
(1992). Race, Class and Gender. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing
Company.
Bennett, William (2001). The Broken Hearth:
Reversing the moral collapse of the American family. Colorado Springs,
CO: Waterbrook Press.
D’Souza, Dinesh (2002). What’s so great about
America. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc.
Elder, Larry (2002). Showdown. New York: St.
Martin’s Press.
Federer, William (2000). America’s God and
Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations. St. Louis, MO: Amerisearch
Inc.
Flynn, Daniel J. (2002). Why the Left hates
America. Roseville, CA: Forum Publishers.
Garrett, Major, & Penny, Timothy (1998).
The 15 biggest lies in politics. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
Gollnick, Donna, & Chinn, Philip (1994).
Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society 4th
Ed., New York: Merrill Publishing Co.
Hannity, Sean (2002). Let freedom ring. New
York: Regan Books.
MuCullough, David. (2001). John Adams. New
York: Simon and Schuster.
Payne, Ruby K. (1998). A framework for understanding
poverty. Highlands, TX: RFT Publishing Co.
Sowell, Thomas (1997). From equal opportunity
to Affirmative Action. In F. J. Beckwith and T.E. Jones (Eds.),
Affirmative Action: Social Justice or Reverse Discrimination. New
York: Prometheus Books.
Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America,
vol. 2, trans. Henry Reeve as revised by Francis Bowen, corrected
and edited by Phillips Bradley. New York: Random House (1990).
Twight, Charlotte (2002). Dependent on D.C.:
The rise of federal control over the lives of ordinary Americans.
New York: St. Martins Press.
Warder, Michael (2001). Check out Urban Private
Schools. Los Angeles Times, August 25, p. B21.
Will, George F. (2003). Federal leverage
unlikely to improve schools. Deseret News, March 2, AA4.
Williams, Walter (2003). High Schools at root
of woes. Deseret News, Salt Lake City, February 5.
*Here is a provocative footnote on poverty
in America. Poverty does not belong to any one group; it is an
economic class with a constantly rotating membership. Daniel Flynn
(2002) reported hard statistics from studies by the Treasury Department
and the Urban Institute that yielded similar and compelling findings
about poverty in our nation. Tracking class movements from 1978
to 1988 and from 1977 and 1986 respectively, these studies revealed
that 86% of 1979’s poor no longer remained in the lowest quintile
in 1988. Those who remained in the bottom fifth of the economic
ladder saw their incomes climb 77% during that period of time.
A similar Census Bureau study of poor people in the mid-1990s found
that nearly one-quarter of impoverished citizens in the first year
of the study escaped poverty by the end of the next. America is
unequaled at taking people out of poverty. True religion is unequaled
at taking poverty out of people.
**Thurgood Marshall quote: Roberts, Paul C.,
& Stratton, Lawrence M. Jr. (March 20, 1995). “Color Code.”
National Review, p.48.
***Tax quote of 86% taken from Human Events
information pamphlet, March 2003, Washington, D.C.
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