Cracks Appearing in the Psychological Trojan Horse of 'Social Justice'. . . . FINALLY!

Social Justice in plain and simple English means Collectivism.

For Collectivism to work society must have Governments multiple times the size and number of the governed. That equation never breeds anything but corruption and repression. 

If history teaches us anything about Collectivism, it is the unrelenting truth that special rights for anyone come at the cost of the deprivation of everyone else's Rights, which becomes the round robin of ever increasing calls for More of the Social Justice Rot which caused it in the 1st place.



"Governments are instinctively, automatically, and inevitably, Tyrannies. There's no question about it."

Social Justice requires more, and ever more, Government to rip more Special Rights out of their Vote Whoring butts to snooker the electorate into 'Feeling Better', about what they've been Promised.

madinamerica

Zenobia Morrill

September 24, 2018

In a new article, published in the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, scholars Erin Thrift and Jeff Sugarman present a thoughtful analysis of the term social justice and its use in the field of psychology. They outline the term’s multifaceted and complex history, illustrating that its usage today by psychologists may be reductive and problematic.

“History should give pause to psychologists who claim social justice as their mission,” Thrift and Sugarman write. “Social justice has become a ‘cultural keyword’ and, consequently, whether psychologists realize it or not, invoking the term thrusts them and the discipline into a broader debate about human freedom, individual and collective responsibility, and the role of the state.”

The meaning of the term “social justice,” in Western, democratic states, has shifted throughout history.  It has transformed alongside cultural developments and milestones and has garnered increased attention in recent years. Thrift and Sugarman point out that the definition of social justice lacks specificity, clarity, and consensus. Nevertheless, the field of psychology has aligned itself with a social justice mission, leaving some to wonder what exactly that mission means and entails.

“Although many psychologists proclaim social justice as central to their disciplinary and professional mission, it is not at all clear what psychologists mean by ‘social justice’ and how they contribute to its aims,” Thrift and Sugarman write. “Without clarity as to the meaning of social justice, we are no further ahead.”

The authors begin by outlining the multifaceted history of the term “social justice” in English speaking Western democratic countries and follow this with an analysis of its meaning within the field of psychology. They trace back the usage of the term to debates concerning the fair economic distribution of material goods and power and the reduction of the risks inherent in the capitalist political system. The term social justice was not originally used in reference to movements for gender or racial equality, as those injustices were said to have “remained invisible” until around the 1970s. The meaning of social justice shifted around this time, and it began to be applied to inequalities in nonmaterial goods, such as the recognition of difference and identity issues.
Thrift and Sugarman argue that the term has been misappropriated with the rise of neoliberal economics in the 70s and 80s. In this context, its meaning has been employed to refer to social justice as an individual virtue rather than a collective endeavor, a usage antithetical to the term’s original purpose. This shift in meaning transforms social injustices into conflicts reconcilable by private charity practices and self-care rather than movements for accountability and the reformation of systems and corporations. Discussing the neoliberal usage of the term social justice, Thrift and Sugarman write:

“Concepts can be reinterpreted over time. However, in this case, such a severe break with historical meaning is more likely opportunistic coopting of the term than a shift legitimately warranted by judicious conceptual analysis.”

Despite its origin, the differing views and conceptualizations of social justice now represent “the nexus of a struggle among different political factions,” they write. Not all views and conceptualizations sufficiently address the term in its complexity, however. Thrift and Sugarman argue that for the term social justice to be consistent with this complex history, its utilization must acknowledge (1) its historical development and meaning, and (2) the contemporary challenges that surround its usage.

“The history of social justice points to the necessity of understanding its complex and multifaceted nature,” they write. “Therefore, any accounts of social justice that are overly narrow (e.g., attending only to the redistribution of material goods or to identity politics) cannot adequately represent the concept.”

According to the authors, psychology, as a field, has aligned itself more closely with some conceptualizations of social justice than others. Psychologists have been criticized for adopting a more “identity politics” approach to social justice in which they reductively attend to issues of identity and recognition while overlooking the intersection of identity with economic inequalities and broader structural concerns. It is not just that the privileging of identity-focused views of social justice obscures economic inequities associated with capitalism, but, as Thrift and Sugarman emphasize, it takes a complicit stance that allows for the perpetuation of these injustices. In this sense, psychologists have predominantly aligned with a reductive approach to social justice and in doing so have undermined their stated mission.
Claiming expertise in defining and treating psychological problems, the field of psychology has considerable influence on the use and understanding of social justice. As a result, “confusion over the meaning of social justice has implications for psychologists interested in pursuing this aim, but also has broader political, social, and economic consequences,” Thrift and Sugarman argue. When psychologists promote the idea that psychological suffering is a state resolvable exclusively through individual interventions, such as psychotherapy, behavior changes, or drug treatments, structural issues can be ignored and perpetuated.

“Psychological explanations often have diverted attention from social, political, and cultural injustices and, in so doing, at least deflected, if not prevented, individuals from political participation, “they write.

The authors go on to outline how specific psychological explanations have deflected individuals from political participation and prevented systemic reforms. For instance, the suffering and subjugation of women was explained by hysteria, racial discrimination was justified by the inferior intelligence of people of color, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder in the DSM, non-Western families are described as “enmeshed,” and the negative impact of poverty on childhood academic achievement has been recast as a lack of self-discipline or as deficits in other internal characteristics.

Not only are structural problems obscured in these explanations, but they are replaced with interpretations that exclusively place responsibility on individuals or individual characteristics. The authors write:

“A widespread error in psychology is that failing to recognize the constitutive force of our sociopolitical and economic institutions has led to fixing features of persons to human nature rather than to the institutions within which they become persons.”

Further, they illustrate that this approach is antithetical to social justice, as it was initially conceived, and contributes to neoliberal economics and the injustices that arise from current economic and political systems.

“Psychologists’ endorsement of social justice may not only disguise the social and political sources of many mental health problems,” they write, “but also further bolster the neoliberal ideal of individuals as self-responsible, competitive, enterprising, risk-seeking, adaptable individuals, who bear sole responsibility for their circumstances, who do not require or even eschew government support, and whose freedom is manifested by their capacity for choice.”

Thrift and Sugarman point out that psychologists benefit from an individualized promotion of social justice. Psychology as a field is “embedded in the market economy,” they write, so framing problems as arising from the individual may increase demand for psychological services. “Consequently, there may be little professional or economic incentive for psychologists to conceptualize personal difficulties other than in terms of the individual.”

“Thus, psychologists aspiring to work for social justice should be judicious in their use of the term and cognizant of the political consequences they are promoting (even inadvertently).”

The authors observe this pattern in contemporary psychology practice. For example, lowered diagnostic thresholds and loosened criteria support claims that 46.6% of the U.S. population will experience a mental illness in their lifetime.  As demand increases, so does the value of psychological services. Thus, psychology profits from promoting a reductive form of social justice that is contrary to its perceived aims.
One way to address the issue of harmful practices in the name of social justice is to develop greater clarity and consensus around the term. The authors argue that there is currently no coherent framework for evaluating and implementing social justice claims. In response, they propose adopting a structure promoted by Fraser (2009), which addresses three fundamental questions:

1. “What is the good of social justice?” (principle of participational parity)
2. “Who is owed social justice?” (all-affected principle)
3. “How are we to make decisions related to all aspects of social justice?” (all-subjected principle)

Fraser argues for a “principle of participatory parity,” meaning that all injustices should be considered as violations of social justice. Social justice and violations of social justice are evaluated in this framework “in terms of their effect on a person’s ability to participate socially and politically on equal grounds with their peers.” To address contemporary issues that surround social justice claims, the authors argue that globalization of social justice pursuits must be framed beyond the interest of a nation-state and must be able to recognize global injustices committed by transnational corporations.
For the field of psychology to apply social justice in terms of the principle of participational parity, Thrift and Sugarman suggest reflection on the following question:

“How does psychological theorizing, research, or interventions help create social, cultural, political, and economic arrangements that permit individuals to participate on an equal level with their peers?”

They argue that the response from the field must go beyond simply promoting and increasing access to psychological services. Social justice calls for a large-scale reshaping of psychological services to address rather than undermine sociopolitical and economic issues.

“If psychologists are to serve the interests of social justice, they cannot take their responsibility simply as helping individuals manage their anxiety in an unjust economic order,” Thrift and Sugarman write. “Psychological services that merely help individuals adjust to circumstances of poverty and inequality, without doing anything to change these conditions, is a disservice to social justice. It perpetuates the role of psychologists as ‘architects of adjustment’ who preserve and protect the status quo, rather than as advocates for sociopolitical reform.”

****

Thrift, E., & Sugarman, J. (2018, September 13). What Is Social Justice? Implications for Psychology. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. Advance online publication. (Link)


Thank You Zenobia Morrill and MIA.

Ben Shapiro: The Leftists Are Failing And PC Is Over!

Not So Honorable: Docs Show Mueller's FBI Denied Justice To Four Innocent Men

The flip side of  'Social Justice'. 

dailycaller
4:18 AM 06/05/2018 Howie Carr | Host, 'The Howie Carr Show'

As FBI director in 2002, Special Counsel Robert Mueller directed his agents to oppose the pardons of four wrongfully imprisoned men because exculpatory evidence was merely “fodder for cross-examination,” newly revealed FBI documents show.

Four years later, the four men, or their estates, were awarded $102 million by a federal judge in Boston for their wrongful decades-long imprisonment due to FBI misconduct.

Mueller ordered the Boston FBI office to answer a request to him from the Massachusetts Advisory Board of Pardons for an “official version” of the imprisonment of the four men for a gangland murder in Chelsea MA in March 1965.

The four men – Louie Greco, Henry Tameleo, Peter Limone and Joe Salvati – were convicted in state court in Boston of murdering Edward “Teddy” Deegan, a small-time hoodlum, in an alley during a bank burglary.
 
Teddy Deegan’s murder scene (courtesy of Howie Carr)

Within days of the murder, Boston FBI agents knew the identities of the actual murderers, and reported the information to J. Edgar Hoover in Washington. But they allowed a Mob hitman they had flipped, Joseph Barboza, to settle some old scores by falsely testifying that the four men had taken part in the gangland murder he had helped arrange with others.

In 2002, lawyers for one of the innocent men, Louie Greco, were seeking a posthumous pardon for him from the state of Massachusetts. Greco, a decorated World War II veteran, had been living in Florida at the time of the murder, but was nevertheless convicted on Barboza’s perjured testimony. 

Lou Greco in uniform (courtesy of Howie Carr)

Greco died in 1995 after serving 28 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Another Boston gangster later testified to a Congressional committee that after the 1967 trial, one of the FBI agents bragged about framing Greco and said, “How does Louie Greco like going from Miami to Death Row? He wasn’t even there!”

For 35 years, the FBI refused to release the evidence exonerating the wrongfully imprisoned men on the grounds of “national security.” It was finally released in 2000 as part of an investigation into corruption in the Boston office of the FBI.

After the state pardons board asked Mueller for the Bureau’s version of its actions, a Boston FBI agent, Charles Prouty, wrote back on May 9, 2002 that “FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. has directed the office to respond.”

Mueller directs response to Greco’s posthumous pardon

While conceding that the damning FBI reports contained “impeachment material,” Mueller’s FBI still contended that the innocent men might in fact be guilty, despite the FBI’s own reports to the contrary.

“This does not necessarily mean, however, that Limone or any of the other defendants is innocent – it merely means that they are entitled to a new trial.”

Deegan was murdered on March 12, and the FBI office sent memos to Bureau headquarters in Washington on March 15 and March 19 identifying the real killers – and with no mention of the four men who later won the $102 million judgment.

Mueller, however, tried to convince the Massachusetts authorities that his own Bureau’s documents did not mean that the four men had been railroaded.

“Much of the FBI confidential source information relates to the individuals who were involved in the Deegan murder as principals,” Mueller’s deputy said, underlining the word. “This information is not necessarily inconsistent with the crimes for which the defendants were convicted.”

Prouty did not mention the fact that Greco had moved from Boston to Florida before the murder. Mueller’s agent also did not point out that the siblings of victim Deegan, who had grown up in Boston’s West End with Limone, had earlier written the state parole board in support of Limone’s release. The Deegan siblings told the Parole Board that Limone had warned his childhood friend Deegan to be careful because of the murder contract out on him.

Michael Albano, a former member of the MA parole board and one-time mayor of Springfield, worked for years to free the innocent men.

“Even after the facts of the FBI cover up were revealed,” he said last week on “The Howie Carr Show” after reading the letter, “the FBI continued the cover up with the approval and authorization of Director Robert Mueller III.”

This newly rediscovered letter is the latest indication of Mueller’s role in what may have been the FBI’s greatest scandal ever, at least until the current Spygate controversy which has led to Mueller’s ongoing “investigation” of President Trump.

John Cavicchi, the Greco attorney who found Mueller’s FBI letter in his case files last week, said it had “outraged” him all over again.

“After all those years,” Cavicchi said Sunday, “the feds still couldn’t admit that they had engineered this gross miscarriage of justice. Why couldn’t Mueller, who was in Boston while this frame up was going on, admit the Bureau’s culpability, then apologize and just settle the civil suit?”

In Boston, the four men were always widely known to be innocent. As early as 1973, a Mafia turncoat wrote in a local best-selling book how they were framed by the FBI and its star Mob informant, hitman Joe “the Animal” Barboza, one of the actual killers of Deegan. 

Joe “The Animal” Barbazo through the years (Massachusetts State Prison)

Barboza had turned against the local Mafia, and decided to put several of their members and associates into the Deegan murder plot, while protecting a friend of his, another serial killer named Jimmy “the Bear” Flemmi.

One of the men Barboza fingered, Joe Salvati, had drawn the wrath of the Animal by refusing to contribute $300 to his bail fund. So Barboza testified that Salvati was in the front seat of the car the killers used on the hit.

The problem was, witnesses had seen the man in the front seat – he was bald, like Jimmy Flemmi. So Barboza said that Salvati had been wearing a “bald wig” that night.

Mueller was an assistant US attorney in Boston in the 1980’s as the imprisoned men futilely tried to get their convictions overturned. Greco passed a lie detector test on live national TV.

But the FBI was adamant that they should remain behind bars. Mueller served briefly as US attorney in Boston in 1986-87. Both his predecessor and his successor as US attorney wrote letters to state authorities demanding that the innocent men not be released.

Albano, the former parole board member, has said that he has seen a similar letter written by Mueller during his brief stint as US attorney. But that letter, if it ever existed, appears to have disappeared from state files.

Still, Alan Dershowitz, the retired Harvard Law School professor, recently described Mueller as “the guy who kept four innocent people in prison for many years… right at the center of it.” (RELATED: Dershowitz Dukes It Out On MSNBC Over Mueller)

Nancy Gertner, the now-retired federal judge who presided over the civil case for damages that ended with the $102 million award, then wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times accusing Dershowitz and Fox News host Sean Hannity, among others, of “smearing” Mueller.

Gertner, who was appointed to the bench by her Yale Law School classmate Bill Clinton, claimed Mueller “had no involvement in that case.”

However, in December 2006, during the civil trial, Judge Gertner wrote a show-cause order accusing Mueller of stonewalling production of exculpatory evidence – “a serious problem,” she wrote.

Gertner Mueller Order to FBI show cause

“This is a case about, inter alia, informant abuse, about the failure to disclose exculpatory evidence bearing on the innocence of the four plaintiffs, about FBI agents allegedly ‘hiding the ball,’ not disclosing critical information that would have exonerated the plaintiff… and not doing so for nearly 40 years.”

She continued, “Given those accusations, the position the FBI is taking is chilling… This Court is not remotely satisfied.”

Gertner said she had been asked by the innocent men to hold the FBI in contempt of court and that she had taken their motion “under advisement.”

“In order to make that decision,” she wrote, “the Court ORDERS that this matter be brought to the personal attention of the Director of the FBI.”

In other words, Robert Mueller III.

Six days later, attorneys for the Justice Department filed a notice of compliance, saying, “This matter has been brought to the personal attention of the Director of the FBI; counsel for the United States have been provided with unredacted copies of the FBI documents on plaintiffs’ trial exhibit list….”

And so Mueller avoided being cited for contempt for court.

During the 1980’s, in addition to the annual letters from the US attorney in Boston, local FBI agents lobbied state authorities to keep the innocent men behind bars. According to Albano and others, two local G-men would go directly to the State House to lobby members of the Governor’s Council, which considered commutations and pardons.

Another former member of the Governor’s Council recalled how the two agents liked to speak directly to the politicians, rather than leave behind a paper trail.

The two FBI agents were John Morris and John “Zip” Connolly. Morris has since admitted taking $7,000 in payoffs from gangster Whitey Bulger and his partner Stevie Flemmi, the younger brother of “the Bear,” who actually murdered Deegan in 1965.

Both Flemmi and Bulger, whose brother was the Democrat president of the Massachusetts state Senate, were longtime “top-echelon” informants of the FBI. Flemmi has testified to the Drug Enforcement Administration that he and Bulger at one time had six Boston G-men on their underworld payroll. Both Flemmi and Bulger are serving life sentences in federal prison; Bulger was convicted of 11 murders and Flemmi of five.

At Bulger’s 2013 trial, Morris admitted telling Connolly about a gangster who was about to flip and testify against Bulger in 1981. Connolly, despite being a mid-life student at Harvard at the time, got the message to Bulger, and the gangland chieftain gunned down the informant and another man in South Boston.

Connolly, the Harvard man, is currently serving a 40-year sentence in a Florida prison after being convicted of orchestrating a different gangland hit in Miami, to cover up still another organized-crime murder, at a golf course in Tulsa OK.

That Oklahoma murder was set up by a third corrupt Boston FBI agent, H. Paul Rico, who was one of the two agents who engineered the frame up of the four innocent men back in 1965. Rico died in a prison hospital in Tulsa in 2003 after being arrested in Florida and brought back to the Sooner state to stand trial on murder charges.

Asked for a statement about the 2002 letter Mueller authorized to be sent to the Advisory Board of Pardons, Mueller’s office on Friday declined comment.

In the Greco family’s 2002 plea for a posthumous pardon, their lawyer wrote:

“Louie Greco died an innocent man, despite numerous unheeded pleas of innocence. His innocence was known prior to trial, yet he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Now, the truth is being revealed and those responsible are facing a Congressional and Justice Department investigation. It is time for Massachusetts to officially acknowledge the wrong done to Mr. Greco and his family and remove this blot from his name.”

But after receiving the letter from Mueller, the Board rejected the family’s petition in July 2003.

Finally, in the waning days of his administration in December 2014, Gov. Deval Patrick issued a proclamation laying out the facts of the corrupt frame up by the FBI and Greco’s innocence.

“Any stigma and disgrace,” the governor wrote, “is hereby removed.”

Globe-Walker-Proclamation

Greco had been dead 19 years. He spent the last 28 years of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit – a fact Robert Mueller knew but adamantly refused to acknowledge even after Greco’s death behind bars.

“Even the dead,” Michael Albano said, “can’t rest in peace with this FBI memo.” 

Tags : fbi howie carr robert mueller

Thank You Mr Carr and the DC. 

Mark Dice: Not Mother's Day Too!

Re-Educate Yourself Comrade! The 'Greater Good' Demands It!

Vengerov: The Bach Chaconne; In Memoriam At Auschwitz

History can be and is being rewritten on a daily basis by leftists enthralled with collectivism.

Since the history of NAZI Germany is too well documented to ignore, a common tactic employed by collectivists is to characterize it as a Far Right movement, which is a bald faced lie. Hitler was up to his eye teeth in squabbling bureaucrats. 

The term NAZI itself is an acronym for National Socialism, and how anyone can twist That into being a Right Wing political creed is one hell of a leap of, . . . .

Psychiatrists:

• The Men Behind Hitler
• Hitler's Unwanted Children

Next up is the coal yard at Dachau and American GIs after they liberated the camp.

The bodies and men with their hands above their heads at the wall are NAZI SS.

Was killing them, as prisoners of war, legal?

Not according to the 1929 Geneva Convention.

You don't have to imagine the horrors they witnessed first hand that drove them to it.

There are photographs all over the internet.

And even with that, you'll never convince a collectivist that what they're pushing ultimately delivers society to that same place.



Thank You Mr. Vengerov.

Socialist Venezuela Has Only $10 Billion In Reserve To Fund The Government

 "Making the rich pay their fair share"

weaselzippers

They are in deep trouble…

Via Fox 40:

Amid all of Venezuela’s problems, the country is running out of time and money.

Venezuela only has $10 billion in reserves — the cash that’s intended to keep an economy stable and weather tough times.

What’s worse: most of those reserves aren’t in hard cash. About $7 billion is in gold bars, which doesn’t make it easy to make payments.

And Venezuela has a lot of bills to pay soon. It owes $6 billion in debt payments for the rest of this year. There’s also no sign that the country’s lone source of revenue — oil exports — will be able to pay down those debts.

At the end of the day, Venezuela is running the risk of defaulting on its debt this year, meaning it wouldn’t be able to get more loans to pay for basics like food and medicine, which are in scarce supply.

In 2011, Venezuela had $30 billion in the bank. As recently as 2015, it had $20 billion.

The worsening financial picture underscores Venezuela’s problems. Violent, anti-government protests killed three people Wednesday, and more protests are scheduled for the weekend. Armed forces met protesters with tear gas and shots.

Also on Wednesday, General Motors said Venezuelan authorities seized its assembly plant. Authorities later denied it was seized, saying it’s embargoed until a long-running court case is resolved, but that distinction didn’t matter to GM: it shut down operations due to the government intervention.

The IMF predicted on Tuesday that inflation in Venezuela would skyrocket 720% while unemployment would shoot up over 25%. This year will likely mark the fourth straight year of recession — entirely under socialist president Nicolas Maduro, who blames the U.S. and political opponents for the country’s problems.

Keep reading…



Thank You Fox and Zip. 


It can't be pointed out often enough that Corporate Tax Breaks are not an evil to be castigated.

Corporations, when hit with Government, across the boards mandates to pay up, don't Pay those Taxes.

They pass them through to the Little People who patronize those indispensable Corporations.

If Corporations paid those taxes out of their own own bottom lines instead of Raising the end price of whatever they're selling to cover them, the Investors would pull their money out and re-invest it in another sector which the Government hasn't declared a Tax War on, . . . yet.

It really is that simple.

It's the consumer who gets hit with those taxes, not the Corporation or the Investors.

This is a 1955 Ford Thunderbird.

In 1955 it retailed for $3,800.

You can thank the Tax-ocracy, not Ford, for what a new one costs today.

State On Rise As Family Dies

Big Government. By The Numbers. 

CNSnews
By Terence P. Jeffrey | March 29, 2017 | 4:33 AM EDT

In 1947, two years after the United States won World War II, 96.4 percent of the babies in this country were born to a married mother and father.

Not a single American was on Medicaid that year. The program did not exist. Nor did Obamacare.

Traditional families — mom, dad and kids — were the cultural norm.

Was America a great country in 1947? Or was it lacking in socialized health care programs?

In 1965, 20 years after World War II, President Lyndon Johnson signed the law creating Medicaid.

That year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of American babies born to married moms and dads was 92.3 percent.

The traditional family was still the norm.

But by 2008, the percentage of babies born to married moms and dads was down to 59.4 percent — with 40.6 percent born to unmarried mothers. In each of the seven years on record since then, at least 40 percent of American babies have been born out of wedlock.

The last time more than 70 percent were born to married moms was more than a quarter century ago — in 1991.

The percentage of babies born on Medicaid is now above 40 percent, too.

In 1964, of course, not one baby was born on this then-nonexistent welfare program.

But a CDC study that looked at births in 2010 in 33 states and the District of Columbia determined that 44.9 percent of babies born in those jurisdictions were born on Medicaid.

A study published by Women's Health Issues concluded that nationwide in 2010, 48 percent of babies were born on Medicaid.

In 2016, the Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed the Medicaid programs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. "On average," it determined, "states reported that Medicaid pays for just over 47 percent of all births."

"Eight states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina and West Virginia) reported that Medicaid pays for 60 percent or more of all births in their state," the survey said.

As America became a nation where a large percentage of babies were born out of wedlock and on Medicaid, it also became a nation where millions of babies were not allowed to be born at all.

In 1973, eight years after Johnson signed the Medicaid law, the Supreme Court declared it a "right" to abort an unborn child. Between then and 2014, according to the Guttmacher Institute, Americans aborted 55,541,800 babies.

That is more than the combined populations of California and Illinois.

The Republican leadership's weak and ill-fated plan to "repeal and replace" Obamacare included a provision that would have denied Planned Parenthood Medicaid (and other federal mandatory — but not discretionary — funding streams) for just one year. Calculating what it believed would be a diminution in the distribution of contraceptive services if Planned Parenthood lost this funding, the Congressional Budget Office drew the conclusion that "additional births" would cost the government money.

"The government would incur some costs for Medicaid beneficiaries currently served by affected entities because the costs of about 45 percent of all births are paid for by the Medicaid program," it said. "CBO estimates that the additional births stemming from the reduced access under the legislation would add to federal spending for Medicaid. In addition, some of those children would themselves qualify for Medicaid and possibly for other federal programs."

The government in a welfare state — with its materialistic view of life — sees the birth of a baby not as a net gain to the nation but as a net loss.

It does not recognize that all human beings — born and unborn — have a God-given right to life.

It does not see that mothers and fathers, in bringing a child into the world, may be inspired to work harder and achieve more not only for themselves but for their family.

Nor does it acknowledge that the wealth we have inherited as a people is the legacy of millions of babies born generations ago, when this nation still embraced the virtue of self-reliance and the sanctity of life.

Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor-in-chief of CNSnews.com.


Thank You Mr Jeffrey and CNS.

Social Justice Syndrome: Rising Tide of 'Personality Disorders Among Millenials'

weaselzippers

 
We told you liberalism was a disease…
Via PJ Media:

If you were to come across someone who cried in the streets, who saw the world in terms of black and white and made death threats against strangers, who cowered in a special room and made public displays of naked self-harm and blood letting, you might conclude that they were suffering from a personality disorder.

All these symptoms can be found in the High Conflict Personality Disorder category known as Axis II in DSMV, including Anti-Social PD, Histrionic PD, Paranoid PD, Narcissistic PD, and Borderline PD.

Alternatively, you might reason that these are the everyday behaviors of the modern Social Justice Warrior (SJW).
Of course, not every SJW has a personality condition, but sufferers from High Conflict disorders are often drawn to extreme beliefs and behaviors under the illusion that they are acting politically.
Keep reading…

Thank You PJ Media and Nick. 

Social Justice: Code for Communism

Since the term Social Justice is so widely bandied about these days, especially on campus, it's best to pop the hood on the little stinker and see what's under it.

Here's Barry Loberfeld

(reposted from frontpagemag's Discover The Networks archives)

Social Justice: Code for Communism

The signature of modern leftist rhetoric is the deployment of terminology that simply cannot fail to command assent. As Orwell himself recognized, even slavery could be sold if labeled "freedom." In this vein, who could ever conscientiously oppose the pursuit of "social justice," -- i.e., a just society?

To understand "social justice," we must contrast it with the earlier view of justice against which it was conceived -- one that arose as a revolt against political absolutism. With a government (e.g., a monarchy) that is granted absolute power, it is impossible to speak of any injustice on its part. If it can do anything, it can't do anything "wrong." Justice as a political/legal term can begin only when limitations are placed upon the sovereign, i.e., when men define what is unjust for government to do. The historical realization traces from the Roman senate to Magna Carta to the U.S. Constitution to the 19th century. It was now a matter of "justice" that government not arrest citizens arbitrarily, sanction their bondage by others, persecute them for their religion or speech, seize their property, or prevent their travel.

This culmination of centuries of ideas and struggles became known as liberalism. And it was precisely in opposition to this liberalism -- not feudalism or theocracy or the ancien régime, much less 20th century fascism -- that Karl Marx formed and detailed the popular concept of "social justice," (which has become a kind of "new and improved" substitute for a storeful of other terms -- Marxism, socialism, collectivism -- that, in the wake of Communism's history and collapse, are now unsellable).

"The history of all existing society," he and Engels declared, "is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf ... oppressor and oppressed, stood in sharp opposition to each other." They were quite right to note the political castes and resulting clashes of the pre-liberal era. The expositors of liberalism (Spencer, Maine) saw their ethic, by establishing the political equality of all (e.g., the abolition of slavery, serfdom, and inequality of rights), as moving mankind from a "society of status" to a "society of contract." Alas, Marx the Prophet could not accept that the classless millenium had arrived before he did. Thus, he revealed to a benighted humanity that liberalism was in fact merely another stage of History's class struggle -- "capitalism" -- with its own combatants: the "proletariat" and the "bourgeoisie." The former were manual laborers, the latter professionals and business owners. Marx's "classes" were not political castes but occupations.

Today the terms have broadened to mean essentially income brackets. If Smith can make a nice living from his writing, he's a bourgeois; if Jones is reciting poetry for coins in a subway terminal, he's a proletarian. But the freedoms of speech and enterprise that they share equally are "nothing but lies and falsehoods so long as" their differences in affluence and influence persist (Luxemburg). The unbroken line from The Communist Manifesto to its contemporary adherents is that economic inequality is the monstrous injustice of the capitalist system, which must be replaced by an ideal of "social justice" -- a "classless" society created by the elimination of all differences in wealth and "power."

Give Marx his due: He was absolutely correct in identifying the political freedom of liberalism -- the right of each man to do as he wishes with his own resources -- as the origin of income disparity under capitalism. If Smith is now earning a fortune while Jones is still stuck in that subway, it's not because of the "class" into which each was born, to say nothing of royal patronage. They are where they are because of how the common man spends his money. That's why some writers sell books in the millions, some sell them in the thousands, and still others can't even get published. It is the choices of the masses ("the market") that create the inequalities of fortune and fame -- and the only way to correct those "injustices" is to control those choices.

Every policy item on the leftist agenda is merely a deduction from this fundamental premise. Private property and the free market of exchange are the most obvious hindrances to the implementation of that agenda, but hardly the only. Also verboten is the choice to emigrate, which removes one and one's wealth from the pool of resources to be redirected by the demands of "social justice" and its enforcers. And crucial to the justification of a "classless" society  is the undermining of any notion that individuals are responsible for their behavior and its consequences. To maintain the illusion that classes still exist under capitalism, it cannot be conceded that the "haves" are responsible for what they have or that the "have nots" are responsible for what they have not. Therefore, people are what they are because of where they were born into the social order -- as if this were early 17th century France.

Men of achievement are pointedly referred to as "the priviliged" -- as if they were given everything and earned nothing. Their seemimg accomplishments are, at best, really nothing more than the results of the sheer luck of a beneficial social environment (or even -- in the allowance of one egalitarian, John Rawls -- "natural endowment"). Consequently, the "haves" do not deserve what they have. The flip side of this is the insistence that the "have nots" are, in fact, "the underpriviliged," who have been denied their due by an unjust society. If some men wind up behind bars, they are (to borrow from Broadway) depraved only because they are "deprived." Environmental determinism, once an almost sacred doctrine of official Soviet academe, thrives as the "social constructionist" orthodoxy of today's anti-capitalist left. The theory of "behavioral scientists" and their boxed rats serviceably parallels the practice of a Central Planning Board and its closed society.

The imperative of economic equality also generates a striking opposition between "social justice" and its liberal rival. The equality of the latter, we've noted, is the equality of all individuals in the eyes of the law -- the protection of the political rights of each man, irrespective of "class" (or any assigned collective identity, hence the blindfold of Justice personified). However, this political equality, also noted, spawns the difference in "class" between Smith and Jones. All this echoes Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek's observation that if "we treat them equally [politically], the result must be inequality in their actual [i.e., economic] position." The irresistable conclusion is that "the only way to place them in an equal [economic] position would be to treat them differently [politically]" -- precisely the conclusion that the advocates of "social justice" themselves have always reached.

In the nations that had instituted this resolution throughout their legal systems, "different" political treatment came to subsume the extermination or imprisonment of millions because of their "class" origins. In our own American "mixed economy," which mixes differing systems of justice as much as economics, "social justice" finds expression in such policies and propositions as progressive taxation and income redistribution; affirmative action and even "reparations," its logical implication; and selective censorship in the name of "substantive equality," i.e., economic equality disingenuously reconfigured as a Fourteenth Amendment right and touted as the moral superior to "formal equality," the equality of political freedom actually guaranteed by the amendment. This last is the project of a growing number of leftist legal theorists that includes Cass Sunstein and Catherine MacKinnon, the latter opining that the "law of [substantive] equality and the law of freedom of expression [for all] are on a collision course in this country." 

Interestingly, Hayek had continued, "Equality before the law and material equality are, therefore, not only different, but in conflict with each other" -- a pronouncement that evidently draws no dissent.

Hayek emphasized another conflict between the two conceptions of justice, one we can begin examining simply by asking who the subject of liberal justice is. The answer: a person -- a flesh-and-blood person, who is held accountable for only those actions that constitute specifically defined crimes of violence (robbery, rape, murder) against other citizens. Conversely, who is the subject of "social justice" -- society? Indeed yes, but is society really a "who"? When we speak of "social psychology" (the standard example), no one believes that there is a "social psyche" whose thoughts can be analyzed. And yet the very notion of "social justice" presupposes a volitional Society whose actions can (and must) be held accountable. This jarring bit of Platonism traces all the way back to Marx himself, who, "despite all his anti-Idealistic and anti-Hegelian rhetoric, is really an Idealist and Hegelian ... asserting, at root, that [Society] precedes and determines the characteristics of those who are [its] members" (R.A. Childs, Jr.). Behold leftism's alternative to liberalism's "atomistic individualism": reifying collectivism, what Hayek called "anthropomorphism or personification."

Too obviously, it is not liberalism that atomizes an entity (a concrete), but "social justice" that reifies an aggregate (an abstraction). And exactly what injustice is Society responsible for? Of course: the economic inequality between Smith and Jones -- and Johnson and Brown and all others. But there is no personified Society who planned and perpetrated this alleged inequity, only a society of persons acting upon the many choices made by their individual minds. Eventually, though, everyone recognizes that this Ideal of Society doesn't exist in the real world -- leaving two options. One is to cease holding society accountable as a legal entity, a moral agent. The other is to conclude that the only practicable way to hold society accountable for "its" actions is to police the every action of every individual.

The apologists for applied "social justice" have always explained away its relationship to totalitarianism as nothing more than what we may call (after Orwell's Animal Farm) the "Napoleon scenario": the subversion of earnest revolutions by demented individuals (e.g., Stalin, Mao -- to name just two among too many). What can never be admitted is that authoritarian brutality is the not-merely-possible-but-inevitable realization of the nature of "social justice" itself.

What is "social justice"? The theory that implies and justifies the practice of socialism. And what is "socialism"? Domination by the State. What is "socialized" is state-controlled. So what is "totalitarian" socialism other than total socialism, i.e., state control of everything? And what is that but the absence of a free market in anything, be it goods or ideas? Those who contend that a socialist government need not be totalitarian, that it can allow a free market -- independent choice, the very source of "inequality"! -- in some things (ideas) and not in others (goods -- as if, say, books were one or the other), are saying only that the socialist ethic shouldn't be applied consistently.

This is nothing less than a confession of moral cowardice. It is the explanation for why, from Moscow to Managua, all the rivalries within the different socialist revolutions have been won by, not the "democratic" or "libertarian" socialists, but the totalitarians, i.e., those who don't qualify their socialism with antonyms. "Totalitarian socialism" is not a variation but a redundancy, which is why half-capitalist hypocrites will always lose out to those who have the courage of their socialist convictions. (Likewise, someone whose idea of "social justice" is a moderate welfare state is someone who's willing to tolerate far more "social injustice" than he's willing to eliminate.)

What is "social justice"? The abolition of privacy. Its repudiation of property rights, far from being a fundamental, is merely one derivation of this basic principle. Socialism, declared Marx, advocates "the positive abolition of private property [in order to effect] the return of man himself as a social, i.e., really human, being." It is the private status of property -- meaning: the privacy, not the property -- that stands in opposition to the social (i.e., "socialized," and thus "really human") nature of man. Observe that the premise holds even when we substitute x for property. If private anything denies man's social nature, then so does private everything. And it is the negation of anything and everything private -- from work to worship to even family life -- that has been the social affirmation of the socialist state.

What is "social justice"? The opposite of capitalism. And what is "capitalism"? It is Marx's coinage (minted by his materialist dispensation) for the Western liberalism that diminished state power from absolutism to limited government; that, from John Locke to the American Founders, held that each individual has an inviolable right to his own life, liberty, and property, which government exists solely to secure. Now what would the reverse of this be but a resurrection of Oriental despotism, the reactionary increase of state power from limited government to absolutism, i.e., "totalitarianism," the absolute control of absolutely everything? And what is the opposite -- the violation -- of securing the life, liberty, and property of all men other than mass murder, mass tyranny, and mass plunder? And what is that but the point at which theory ends and history begins?

And yet even before that point -- before the 20th century, before publication of the Manifesto itself -- there were those who did indeed make the connection between what Marxism inherently meant on paper and what it would inevitably mean in practice. In 1844, Arnold Ruge presented the abstract: "a police and slave state." And in 1872, Michael Bakunin provided the specifics:

            [T]he People's State of Marx ... will not content itself with administering and governing the masses politically, as all governments do today. It will also administer the masses economically, concentrating in the hands of the State the production and division of wealth, the cultivation of land, the establishment and development of factories, the organization and direction of commerce, and finally the application of capital to production by the only banker -- the State. All that will demand an immense knowledge and many heads "overflowing with brains" in this government. It will be the reign of scientific intelligence, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant, and elitist of all regimes. There will be a new class, a new hierarchy of real and counterfeit scientists and scholars, and the world will be divided into a minority ruling in the name of knowledge, and an immense ignorant majority. And then, woe unto the mass of ignorant ones!

It is precisely this "new class" that reflects the defining contradiction of modern leftist reality: The goal of complete economic equality logically enjoins the means of complete state control, yet this means has never practically achieved that end. Yes, Smith and Jones, once "socialized," are equally poor and equally oppressed, but now above them looms an oligarchy of not-to-be-equalized equalizers. The inescapable rise of this "new class" -- privileged economically as well as politically, never quite ready to "wither away" -- forever destroys the possibility of a "classless" society. Here the lesson of socialism teaches what should have been learned from the lesson of pre-liberal despotism -- that state coercion is a means to no end but its own. Far from expanding equality from the political to the economic realm, the pursuit of "social justice" serves only to contract it within both. There will never be any kind of equality -- or real justice -- as long as a socialist elite stands behind the trigger while the rest of us kneel before the barrel.

Further Reading

The contemporary left remains possessed by the spirit of Marx, present even where he's not, and the best overview of his ideology remains Thomas Sowell's Marxism: Philosophy and Economics, which is complemented perfectly by the most accessible refutation of that ideology, David Conway's A Farewell to Marx. Hayek's majestic The Mirage of Social Justice is a challenging yet rewarding effort, while his The Road to Serfdom provides an unparalleled exposition of how freedom falls to tyranny. Moving from theory to practice, Communism: A History, Richard Pipes' slim survey, ably says all that is needed.

AG Loretta Lynch, Black Lives Matter Blame Intolerance, Not Islamic Terrorism For Orlando Attack

From the crowd who tossed $201 Billion of money we Don't have, down the rat hole to get you to buy in to their duplicity.

CNSNews
By Jeannette Richard | June 22, 2016



"Mere Tolerance is the Virtue of a man who no longer believes in anything."
G.K. Chesterton

(CNSNews.com) -- U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch made no mention of radical Islam in her remarks about the June 12 massacre at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida on Tuesday, instead blaming “hatred and intolerance” in American society for the nation's deadliest mass shooting.

In a 9-1-1 call to Orlando Police, shooter Omar Mateen - a 29-year-old Muslim who killed 49 people wounded 53 others -described himself as an “Islamic soldier” and said he had pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

But the transcripts of Mateen’s calls during the shooting spree, which Lynch released to the public on Monday morning, were missing his references to Islam, and the portion of the call where Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS was edited out.

However, after a public outcry, the full transcripts were released by the FBI late Monday afternoon.

Lynch made no specific mention of Mateen’s reference to the radical Islamic terrorist group and said investigators may never pinpoint a single motive for the bloody attack, although she did refer to the shooting as "clearly an act of terror and an act of hate."

She added that "our most effective response to terror and hatred is compassion, unity and love."

“The message of Orlando that I have seen today – and what the American people have seen in the wake of this horrific assault – is a message of determination to remove hatred and intolerance from our midst...,” Lynch said.

“I am deeply moved by the way that this community – and our national community – has stood together in support of one another, in defiance of terror and in defense of our most cherished ideals,” she continued.

“And let us be clear, those ideals include the understanding that our diversity makes us stronger – and that no matter who we are, what we look like, where we are from, or whom we love, this extraordinary nation belongs to us all.”

The activist group Black Lives Matter went even farther in shifting blame from radical Islam to America’s supposed intolerance of diversity, blaming “white-supremacy, patriarchy, and homophobia” for the Pulse attack.

“Despite the media’s framing of this as a terrorist attack, we are very clear that this terror is completely homegrown, born from the anti-Black white supremacy, patriarchy and homophobia of the conservative right and of those who would use religious extremism as a weapon to gain power for the few and take power from the rest,” the group said in a press release after the shooting.


“Those who seek to profit from our deaths hope we will forget who our real enemy is, and blame Muslim communities instead. But we will never forget.”

“Homegrown terror is the product of a long history of colonialism, including state and vigilante violence. It is the product of white supremacy and capitalism, which deforms the spirit and fuels interpersonal violence...

“We need a world that realizes that the word ‘terrorist’ is not synonymous with Muslim, any more than ‘criminal’ is synonymous with Black. The enemy is now and has always been the four threats of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and militarism. These forces and not Islam create terrorism. These forces, and not queerness, create homophobia.”


Thank You Ms Richard and CNS.

Seriously? AG Lynch Says We May Never Know The Orlando Killer's Motive.

Social Justice? Bill Whittle Demands Equal Equality With Social Justice Warriors 'Cultural Appropriation' Demands

Settle in for a good laugh. This is rich.

via frontpagemag



Thank You Mr Whittle and FPM.

"The suffering of the Offended Party"

No where in the Constitution is anyone guaranteed a Right to be protected from being 'Offended'.