Right Is the New Left
Father Robert Sirico, a leader in "morality of capitalism" public arguments, recently spoke at my alma mater, Hillsdale College, on how to think about social justice.
Social justice is another of those squishy phrases that no sane person is against until they find out what it means. At this event, Sirico asked a crucial question: Should the government be the typical arbitrator of social interaction? In other words, when people get together to do things—start a business, hold a juggling club, drink milk—should the government referee essentially private activity? If a farmer freely chooses to sell his raw milk to people who freely choose and consciously decide to buy and drink it, should the government stop him?
The rest of his argument rests on one of his first statements: that conservatives believe in the stability of meaning. We are the original upholders of social justice, and we want our concept back.
"We're the new progressives. We're liberals," Sirico said, all the way at the end of the speech (at the 44:22 mark). "We believe in freedom and we believe in social justice. We believe in real equality and what that word has always meant, which is not outcome, but common dignity. We believe in the common good. We just need to keep using these words until they decide they're going to abandon them because they're going to get a bad reputation if they keep using them."
This is something I have thought before. As a conservative, I'm the new progressive. I'm someone who speaks truth to power, since power (government, media, education) is now overwhelmingly liberal, and liberal policies are often damaging to human souls. I don't favor conserving or preserving our welfare state. I favor rolling it back, to promote social justice and equality. I favor progress, human enlightenment and freedom.
You can hear the rest of Sirico's speech below.
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Corruption of language, albeit bad for the sake of intelligible use, is also a kind of spontaneous evolution that result from the interactions of hundreds of thousands individuals. A handful of intellectuals trying to cling to the original meaning of the concept, no matter how correct their argument is, will produce little effect on how the concept is used by most people.
Conservatives generally lose the branding battle. People who are talented in the areas of media, advertising, marketing, etc. are innovative thinkers and overwhelmingly liberal, so they end up with a more effective pitch.
I don't think we can co-opt phrases like "social justice" or "progressive" and just start applying them to ourselves. Like Rick suggested above, we're not going to make large enough waves to rock the boat—we just end up confusing people. But we certainly should take these concepts to task for what they really are, and help people see how our ideas are truly just and progressive. We should also be training more creative thinkers in our Christian colleges, offering strong programs in film, design, journalism and so on.
I'm not sure how this (or many of the assumptions made) can be true, considering that
Progressives are not a homogenous group and often have a harder time organizing than conservatives, who are increasingly a homogenous group.
Other countries besides the US have more government (or, in my opinion, just better government) than the US and yet have better outcomes (one way to measure opportunity is outcomes).
Giving people more opportunity inevitably means taking away some opportunities away from people with more, and I don't see conservatives arguing to take away GE's opportunities in order to give more opportunities for small businesses (seems a bit re-distributive: equality of opportunity seems to require at least some form of re-distribution).
More of the popular vote went to Democrats; however, Republicans hold a majority in the house. I'm not exactly sure how this is representative of a liberal hold over all of society.
However, I do think many conservatives are motivated by ideas of justice and equality as much or are often as liberals are. I would just say neither parties or authority figures seem to be interested in it (though some on both sides recognizably are. I've heard many people say they don't know who they would vote for in a Hillary/Christie 2016 election).
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