further response to Locke--the nature of 'social justice'

First, I want to apologize to Locke for inferring that he might approve of the racist sentiments of the late and very much unlamented Strom Thurmond and George Wallace (in case you are curious, I dont miss Jerry Falwell a bit either). As he notes in his response to my last posting, I should have understood from the word 'con' that Locke disapproves of segregation as much as I do, but somehow his contention that those shmucks were a manifestation of any form of liberalism, including the classic 19th Century version, seems to me unwarranted.

In any case, getting to the post-'dalche' stuff, Locke and I have a fundamental difference of emphasis. When I use the term 'social justice', I think of all fighters for human rights and the rights of workers and the poor and blacks and women and Jews in this country; the liberators of the slaves in America and the serfs in Russia; the people who fought and sometimes to curb the power of the monopolies and big industrialists and get us a minumum wage and an eight hour workday--people like the Jewish Labor leader, Sidney Hillman of the Lower East Side, who fought for the rights of garment workers in the early 1900's and in whose name the the New York Immigration Coalition is holding a ceremony on May 22 to which I was just invited by my friend Vladimir Epshteyn (more of the present generation of Russian Jews need to learn about the likes of Hillman and other Russian-born Jews who fought for social justice 100 years ago, inproviing conditions in the hellish sweatshops where so many Jews were forced to work, and where many Russians had to go again in the 1970's and 1990's. When I think of social jusitce, I also think of the moral center of Judaism and the imperative at the heart of our heritage to tikkun olam, to making the world a more just and decent place.


Yet when Locke hears the term 'socal justice', he has a totally negative reaction and sees only sinister 'politically correct' nastiness such as "the ridiculous ADA law dedicated to bankrupting businesses that dont include braille at ATM's" (I've never noticed braille at ATMs myself, but hey, why shouldnt banks as institutions that serve the public, including handicapped people--be required to make themselves accesible to the blind anyway--why is that so terrible?) If Locke were blind and needed to go to the bank, he might have a different take on this. Then he goes on to attack rape shield laws (what about unscrupulous attorneys that savage rape victims a second time by making their former sex lives the issue instead of their having been raped?) Yes, occasional injustices happen like the Duke case, but many many more women in the pre rape shield era got ravaged twice; once by their rapist and once by the justice system.

Locke whines about Steve Solarz getting gerrymandered out of his district to create a Hispanic one, but I hear nothing from him about the GOP stealing the 2000 election, of the ongoing efforts of the Bushies to prevent as many minorities as possible from voting, or Tom DeLay's gerrymandering of about 10 Texas seats to soldify GOP control of the House after the 2004 election. What else? Locke complains about child abuse protection laws as though they are somehow worse than the horrors of child abuse they were created to prevent. Such laws may not be perfect, but better laws that try to even the playing field, to protect the poorest and weakest and most vulnerable in society against their exploiters than one with weak government that leaves us all to the tender mercies of the richest half of one percent.

Locke echoes generations of Republicans that government is the enemy; that Congress is worse than Big Oil and Big Pharm. I dont think so. Congress, at least in its present incarnation, is trying to pass laws to raise the minimum wage, to stop the ripoffs in the student loan business; to take steps to stop global warming before all the businesses in Brighton Beach, including Locke's, get swept away in the next warming-induced hurricane; to protect our civil liberties from the depredations of the Bush Administration--the most anti-democratic in our history. Yet Locke tells us that Congress is worse than Big Business, to which the main, and sometimes the only, priority is the profit motive. Question to Locke: How does Big Pharm and the Health Insurnace industry, which keeps raising my co-payments and the price of drugs so they can miltiply their profits, a better friend to me and tens of millions of other middle class and working class Americans than is Congress, which is at least taking feeble steps to try to correct the power imbalance after six years of the corporate elite running completely amok.

Question: Why is Locke more afraid of supposed 'politically correct' injustice than the wholesale screwing of all but the very rich in this country that has been going on since 2001? Why is he more afraid of social justice than Bush's refusal to control emissions, a 'Nero fiddling while Rome burns' madness that will likely make the lives of his children and mine a living hell? Its the corporate elite that has all of the power in America, not politically correct liberals, and it is the corporate elite, together with reactionary Republicans, who have sought to return us to a time before there was social justice; to a time when money decided everything. Like I said last time, we ain't going to let Bush and company turn the clock back 100 years. No pasaran. Tak nye budit.