What Is A Phantom Right? ~ by John Smith

[John Smith is a blogger resident of Sydney, Australia.  His blog can be found at http://www.objectivistblogger.com and I would highly recommend it.  His point here is very relevant to the recent direction of my own blog and since he has given permission for it to be reprinted I took the opportunity.

It offers up the specific subject of supposed healthcare rights as an example of what I would call the lie of the greater good and how such things lead unavoidably to tyranny.]

Phantom rights are those �rights� that do not exist in Objectivism, it is a phrase I made up, as a phantom can be thought of as a ghost: no matter how much you wish it to be true, it does not exist in this reality. This post builds upon what was written earlier, Man's Rights in Objectivism, and I recommend reading that post before proceeding to this one.

Man's rights are individualistic, no more, no less. You have a right of dissenting speech, a right to keep the profit of your labor. These rights do not affect or infringe upon the rights of anyone else. A phantom right then is that category of �rights� that many people today confuse, or purposely mix up, with the fundamental individual rights of a man.

A common phantom right being tossed around these days is the �right to healthcare.� Note, healthcare, as in the service and products a person consumes in order to maintain health. There is an individual right to maintain one's own health by one's own means, but not to healthcare. To see how this is not a right, think about the questions below:

* Is healthcare available without first being produced by others?

* Is healthcare free or does it cost money and resources?

* What about the doctors and nurses, are they to provide their services for free?

* How is healthcare going to be guaranteed to people, if it has to be produced?

The first question answers the others, healthcare is not something we possess individually, it must first be produced. Hospitals must be built, medicines assembled, doctors and nurses trained in the practice. So it does cost money and resources. How can doctor's provide their services for free if it costs resources? Are they to be forced to serve? As a product, healthcare is limited, and as such, how is it to be given to all?

Phantom rights run into many problems, including monetary. To quote Ayn Rand �Paid for by whom?� �Blank out.� The notion that a product is a right means some people must produce this object or service, and thus someone must be forced to provide this service with a gun in his back by the government.

Some people will say, �Oh, but someone will do it out of their own good will!� Making a product and giving it away at no cost to the consumer is a private choice, one that no person can demand from them. To make it a right is to condemn a person to slavery, to work in order to provide for others, no matter what cost it is to him.


Those who proclaim a right to a service or product are mistaken in thinking everyone can have such a thing for a right with no economic consequences. They advocate the use of force, the power of a gun, to enslave fellow men into providing for them. Man's rights are individualistic, as in they never demand from others or violate the rights of fellow men. Phantom rights simply do not exist.

The Needs Of The Many Spock?

I normally only post on the Tuesday of each week but my thoughts wandered into something I felt a need to post here.  It is relevant to this week's post.

We should all beware whenever we see someone advancing an argument along the lines of philosopher Jeremy Bentham's words, "It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong."  These seemingly reasonable words are morally bereft in a number of ways I wont touch all of here.  But most to the current point the good of the many does not outweigh and can never outweigh the good of the individual.  For we are all individuals and anything that treats one individual's good goals as rubbish to be pushed aside for the sake of the many diminishes not just that single individual but all of us.

Remember What Your Enemies Are

As long as human beings have been social there has been a struggle between individual liberty and those extreme tendencies that work against us.  These enemies of the individual fall into two categories, self-centeredness and group-centeredness. Both of these enemies take on and have taken on many names throughout history.  Today I'm going to name a few of them.

Self-centeredness

Whenever I read scholarly works on individualism I see this repeated error, mistaking the avid pursuit for individual liberty for a totally self-centered self-interest.  There are even those who favor individual liberty who mistakenly believe that if everyone looks completely out for themselves without regard for most anyone else the world will be a better place.  It is in their belief system that some how everything will work out for the best this way.

The term for this sort of philosophy as characterized is Social Darwinism.  Whoever may be the source of it, it is just one of the latest masks worn by this particular ancient enemy of individual liberty.  This ancient enemy, no matter what mask it chooses to wear, always uses the same tactic.  It essentially argues that everyone should be free to do whatever they please and that will allow the strong to have their way and the weak to get what they deserve.  And through the struggles that follow the best of humanity will rise to lead us to be our best as a species.

The power of this argument is that it resembles the argument for individual liberty so much that many individualist fall for it, the parts about letting people do what they please and the being led to be our best as a species.  The problem with it is that it doesn't actually say what it sounds like it's saying.  For this philosophy, when it says everyone should be free to do whatever pleases them, it really means no one should try to stop the strong from picking on the weak.  That's a far cry from cherishing individual liberty, not to mention a recipe for civil disorder.

Logically there's a huge problem with this as well.  You can't be for the individual if you want your own interests to run over someone else's, since they are an individual too. 

The logical ends of Social Darwinism is also antithetical to the struggle for individual liberty.  Once the strong rise to the top and lead, what are they?  Their power over other individuals is as absolute as their acknowledged superiority.  They are virtual despots. While it is true any individual would be free in a society based on Social Darwinism to challenge those at the top, their actual individual liberty would be limited not just by their willingness to exercise it but by the strength of their personal resources to overcome those established before them. How can this be individualism?  Can an individualist be in favor of a system that by design only grants liberty to some, but not most?  Social Darwinism is just another excuse amongst many for the supposed right of some to rule others.

Another common mask of this enemy today is the “do your own thing”, “live and let live”, “everyone just leave everyone else alone”, and “do what feels good” philosophy.  For some this is a not so well thought out philosophy but one they follow none the less.  For others it is one of considerably deeper thought.  The ancient Greeks formalized this in the philosophy called Hedonism.

Unlike Social Darwinism there is supposed to be no conflict of interests in a Hedonistic society.  This is because everyone's goal is to maximize personal pleasure and minimize pain, and it is in that part about minimizing pain that people are expected to avoid conflicts with others whenever possible.

In spite of the negative connotations associated with the term Hedonism, the actual core of the philosophy has a lot of appeal but I see a few problems with it none the less.  One problem in particular as is relevant to the struggle for individual liberty is it looks outward in only a passive and selfish way, that of avoiding pain.  What happens if your neighbor's liberty is threatened?  Why should you care?

To Hedonism's defense, in a totally Hedonistic society your neighbor's liberty would never be threatened but the problem with that defense is we don't live in such a society.  And without a lot of caring about more than just pleasure and pain we have little chance of ever living in one. 

Hedonism is essentially, in a way, trying to live as though individual liberty has been secured and continues to be safe whether that's true or not.  And as any psychologist can tell you, pretending a problem isn't there can only tend to make things worse.

Then of course there is just raw self-centeredness and self-indulgence.  There is little long-term value to any philosophy that centers on these things. Perhaps if there is no meaning to our lives, our existence, these could be worthy center-pieces to a serious philosophy, but for those of us who struggle earnestly for anything beyond our most basic physical needs, we at the very least believe we know better, so on that very large common ground I'll say no more about this, the least reputable expression of self-centeredness.

Group-centeredness

The pursuit of maximizing individual liberty is a balancing act. Self-centeredness is one direction to fall in where, for lack of protection for the weak, only the strong end up with liberty.  The other direction to fall is group-centeredness where the individual is diminished in the name of the group.  They are the two extremes of a spectrum.  Interesting to me is that which ever way we fall, if we fall, we end up in essentially the same place, tyranny.  Here are some of the recent masks of this other extreme.

Collectivism is one. I tend to use this term to describe all of the group-centered systems across the ages, but most think of it only in its contemporary form, which justifies itself as looking out for the least fortunate in society (See the Wikipedia entry for a relatively neutral definition). One of the arguments of collectivism is that there is a common good that over-rides individual liberty and dignity from time to time.  Some of its proponents go on to make a moral argument that it is wrong for an individual to not share wealth and/or property with those less fortunate.  This, they argue then justifies some degree of forced confiscation and redistribution.

The obvious problem with this moral argument is that it takes a moral decision away from the individual by forcing compliance with someone else's very un-individualized decision.  

Allow me to illustrate with an example.  If an old lady with a walker needs to cross a busy street, it seems the right thing to do to help her across if you are able. That is a moral and charitable decision. Now what if someone else orders you to stop whatever you're doing and help her? Are you now doing what is morally correct if it wasn't your decision? What about the person who ordered you?  Do they know for sure that there may not be some reason you shouldn't help, like maybe you're having a heart attack or stroke and need to call 911 and wait for an ambulance?  It doesn't need to be that serious of an obstacle of course.  There are many others of a lesser nature.  Some obvious obstacles and some more subjective, but the point is it is best to allow you to make the decision yourself.

Anyone who believing they know what's best for you or society who then uses the force of law to make you participate and thinks they are morally justified is walking through a figurative field of land mines.  The mines are of a logical and ethical nature.  Can you build a moral society out of amoral people who merely follow rules because they have to?  Is it ethical to make someone act charitably?  Even if you aren't technically steeling their wealth and property from them with redistributive government policies, aren't you at least stealing their opportunity to act in true charity?

For a more pointed discussion of the moral aspects of this see my June 19th entry My Christian Brothers And Sisters, Social Justice Must Go .

More to the point of individual liberty and dignity, collectivism's assertion of a greater common good gives it undue justification to run over the individual.  There is no such thing as a good, at least as determined by human means, that can be clearly said to be so much more important than another good that it justifies forcing any individual to sacrifice their own good goals for it.  If there was then we should all seek some great enlightened group of people to direct us in the details of our lives and history should already be replete with great societies who found such leaders and followed them to their betterment.  But we can clearly see this is not the case.

History instead is full of examples of how whenever a nation or society has sought some higher goal, some greater good, some common good at the expense of individual liberty or dignity, that nation has ultimately left a legacy of horror and suffering.  This is because whenever we as human beings pretend that our ideals and best understandings of the divine are greater than the individual or equal to God, we become monstrous fools.  We forget or never think to ask this basic question.  If no two of us can always see everything the same way how can any one of us be worthy to make decisions for the rest of us?  We fail to recognize that someone else may see something differently than we do, and when we do, we fail to respect them as a human being separate from ourselves.

Many have rightly argued that just because the Nazi's philosophy was a combination of Social Darwinism and Collectivism does not mean all followers of these things are ready and willing to send millions to death camps.  They also rightly argue that it insults the memories of those who survived such atrocities to suggest such, but it also insults their memories to pretend that it was a group of non-human monsters who did this, and not real human beings like ourselves.

Let us not just look at the holocaust which is so painful and awful a memory that it's hard for us to accept it happened (though we must). How about the aftermath of the French Revolution as described so graphically in Tale Of Two Cities.  Groups of people, especially when they see themselves as in line with their societies in general are capable of horrors against individuals that they could never consider as individuals.

Yes, let's put that more personally.  We are capable of these horrors whenever we allow ourselves to be convinced that we are part of a group that by virtue of being a group has some common good that supersedes what some individuals may see as good or precious to them.

Other recent masks are Communism, Socialism, Progressivism, and Fascism.  I'd consider throwing in Corporatism as I believe it is yet another mask of the same thing, but explaining that may require an article unto itself.  As different as these things may seem to be from each other, even to the point that their adherents kill each other at times, they are all at fault for the same reason from the individual liberty perspective.  They all depend on the invention of the the common greater good to justify running over the individual.

One could also follow the money, so to speak, to see this same point. With a mere formal exception for Fascism, not a functional one, all property and wealth in a nation under these systems is ultimately that of the nation.  Individuals may be allowed to operate to an extent as though it's there's, but given the perceived needs of some common greater good anything and everything can be taken from an individual.  Whether one says the wealth and property belongs to the people or the nation it's all the same insult from an individual liberty perspective.  It is also all the same essential false argument, that some common greater good exists.

The Ancient Struggle

And so the ancient struggle goes on. It's very ironic, if not out right perverse that Progressives, Socialists, and other collectivists assume the mantle of human progress and accuse people like myself of wanting to “turn back”, as one President Obama has taken to putting it.  It is after all those like myself that work towards the maximizing of individual liberty who fight against the tyranny and horrors that inevitably result when people like him use governmental power to advance what they think is best for us.  We are the only ones actually pointing the way forward, not him.



>> Notations <<

* “ we would have taken the better option between extinction and survival as something less than human”, should not be taken as an argument for euthanasia since the measure of what it means to be fully human is not in our physical state of being, but in that we endeavor to do the best we can with whatever we have and can ethically obtain.

It's Not Quite Tyranny Yet, But It's Very Close

People all around the political spectrum love to look at the other side and point out tyrants.  The right points to the likes of Stalin and Castro while the left to Franco and Pinochet and both point out Hitler and try to claim he's on whatever side the spectrum they're not.  The thing about individual tyrants though is that their tyranny doesn't outlive them.  Franco and Pinochet left free nations in their wakes and to be fair we don't yet know what Castro will leave behind.  We do know what Stalin left behind.  Russia continued to be tyrannized for several decades after his death, and that leads me to my point.

No, it's not to say communism is bad, though anyone who knows me knows I believe that.  It's something much more generally useful than that to identify, and something very relevant as to why current scandals in the United States government are so very important.  Something I call "institutionalized tyranny".  yourdictionary.com defines tyranny as "a government or ruler with total power".  Institutionalized tyranny is when a government and not just one person has total power.  This is what Soviet Russia suffered under, and it made it such that the tyrants could not simply be waited out.  There were institutions in place guaranteeing the tyranny would continue no matter who was in charge.

The reason this point is so much bigger than saying "communism is bad" is because institutionalized tyranny threatens all of our modern forms of government.  Everyone all around the political spectrum and all around the "free world" must be on watch to prevent it from taking hold wherever we live.  We must be able to recognize it when we see it, both when it's forming and when it's already here to some degree.

Tyranny's Champion

The easiest and most useful sign of institutionalized tyranny is the use of the term "greater good".  e.g. "So you're forced to do something you don't want, it's for the greater good."  The "greater good"'s more legitimate but also dangerous cousin is the "lesser evil".  The "lesser evil" unfortunately exists at times like in war for example, but the "greater good" doesn't ever, at least not in a civil context. 

The greater good is simply a lie, or in some cases a dangerous delusion.  It's premise is that some great objective is so good that other competing goods should be forced aside.  The problem with this is that the greatness of a good is not an objectively measurable quality.  It's a subjective thing, and more dangerously it can be manipulated.

Get enough people to believe there is such a thing as a greater good and we have just made the first big step towards institutionalized tyranny.  The second  and near final step is to convince them that some cause championed by their government is that greater good.  Now their government can do anything it wants as long as it can in some way be made to seem as though it's doing it for this greater good.

So the threat of the most lasting tyranny doesn't come from out of control generals or dictatorial thugs, for these people don't inherently have the power to convince nations of people that there is some greater good, and without doing that they're ability to tyrannize is limited by both their immediate resources and the lengths of their lives.

Beware the academics and media people who tell you there is such a thing as the greater good.  We must remember that once we allow ourselves to believe in such a thing, whoever has the power to decide what that is will have total power.  And they will not only be tyrants but their ideas will become institutionalized and their tyranny will be able live on after they die.  

A Slightly More Subtle Route To Tyranny

All government is based on the sound assumption that we must give up something in return for some civil stability.  "Good government" is the lesser of evils between itself and civil disorder.  A better term for this would be "best government" as there really isn't such a thing as "good government" as government requires that we give up some of our freedoms and resources.  Even the communist utopia would do away with government once everything was essentially perfect.  That's because even the creators of communism agree that government is at best a necessary or lesser evil.  

But there are some who believe government can be good or "cool" as President Obama termed it when he was first running for president in 2008, and we should beware of people like this.  Believing that government can be "cool" or good is yet another big step towards institutionalized tyranny.  For once the lesser evil of government is seen as good, all the good things we currently give up or may later be asked to give up for the things government provides us will by necessity be defined as lesser goods and government's good goals the greater good.  Once we get to that point the vehicle of tyranny will have been assembled, warmed up, and waiting in the driveway for someone to take for a spin.

There is no way government can be good.  To believe it can is to have a mindset that enables tyranny, and only human perfection could make that tyranny avoidable.

So in the battle for individual liberty verses tyranny it is essential that we reject the ideas of a greater good and good government.  They are amongst the most dangerous of lies and they lead quickly to tyranny.  Necessary and lesser evils do exist and best government is one of those things, but there is no such thing as good government and most especially no such thing as the greater good.

My Christian Brothers And Sisters, Social Justice Must Go

I've written this before but it needs more effort from me.  The concept of "social justice" is a poison both to Christianity and to anyone who is truly interested in human compassion.

This is no easy subject.  The "social justice" throng will attempt to claim that anyone who doesn't accept their corporate goals is some how against individual justice and individual compassion.  Rather than be distracted by that faulty generalization I will start with a story.

One time before the dawn of cell phones there was a college student. He was making a fourteen hour drive from his parents house to his college when he saw something on the other side of the highway he couldn't believe. There was a car stopped on the far shoulder and a muscular young man walked up to it and opened the driver's side door. He then started to assail a woman inside the car with a rapid and fierce barrage of punches.

The scene was beyond belief for this young college student.  So much so that he was almost a full mile down the road when he finally convinced himself he actually saw it happen. In his fantasy life he had always thought of himself as a hero, and at that moment he was asking himself why he hadn't rescued the maiden in distress.  He could have veered his car across the median and over the opposing lane, right? The answer was reasonable enough, though not enough to keep him from feeling ashamed. The student was relatively scrawny, especially compared to the muscular attacker. It probably would have been foolish for him to have intervened, especially while trying to cross highway medians in a sedan poorly designed for any road hazard, let alone a full highway median, and highways medians in the state this took place in are especially treacherous.

The student passed an exit and the thought occurred to him he could have stopped at a pay phone to report the attack to the police. Unfortunately he had passed the exit before he thought of it.

“Okay, the next exit then”, he said to himself, “I'll report it then”. 

The thought of what horrible things may have yet transpired back there on that highway shoulder made him wince. He didn't even want to think about the woman possibly being killed.

He had convinced himself of the urgency of informing the police as soon as possible, but then he thought what it might mean to his school work. He was in a different state, almost five hundred miles from his college, and his classes were way too intense for him to be able to take time out to assist a police investigation.

“How amazingly selfish of me”, he scolded himself for even considering putting his schoolwork ahead of protecting someone's life. He was definitely in his mind going to inform the police at the next exit, but then another thought came to him, one much more potent.

'The police patrol the highways. There will be one along sooner or later. Probably one has already gotten there considering all the time I've wasted struggling over the issue. Anyways, we have police precisely for that sort of thing. What do we pay them for right? College students returning to school on fourteen hour drives ought to be able to do just that.  College is all about the future after all. Let the police handle this.'

And so the young student returned to his college to attend his classes, making no report. The future was supposedly served and who knows what happened to the woman on the side of the highway, it wasn't his concern considering we have public servants to take care of such things.

As awful as it is, that's the end of that story.

Awful story and awful ending, right? Of course. This is the legacy of a culture that has decided to delegate individual responsibility to the employees of the collective, not to mention puts too much emphasis on the higher education and potential of its young people. While to be fair one could argue the young student in this story shirked even his corporate responsibilities to the collective, it was precisely the collective that enabled his ultimate excuse. If he had been centered in himself as an individual he would have had no one and no thing to hide behind. He would have either done something to help the poor woman or he would not have, and his own self-assessment would have no other two choices but that he was good or bad in it.

I used this story to encourage thought. Those who already agree with me may see new reasons why we're right, and those who don't agree with me are at this very moment thinking of ways they think this story doesn't support my point or that some other point is missed. Either way the pump on the well of thought has been primed. Now's a good time for some strait logic and reasoning.

The term “social justice” was coined by a Catholic priest named Luigi Taparelli in 1840. What he did was take the compassion of Thomism, a religious philosophy derived from the great saint Thomas Aquinas and try to apply it to groups of people as if these groups were individuals. e.g. The Bible teaches us to be compassionate to those less fortunate than ourselves, therefore, according to Taparelli, communities and societies as a whole should enact practices and policies to help the less fortunate. The persuasive power of this reasoning is apparent as we now see “social justice” preached, taught, and practiced throughout modern Catholic and Protestant churches, not to mention much of secular culture.

The problem with this, I argue is twofold. First off there is no such thing as social justice. Justice cannot be achieved by addressing people as groups instead of as individuals. Secondly, taking Biblical teachings and instructions meant to apply to individuals and applying them to collectives distorts the very message Jesus Christ tought. I will support this with reason, logic, and the some of the very scriptures the social justice believers try to justify their belief with below.

Point number one is that there is no such thing as social justice.

It is almost damning to academia that this flaw is so reflexively brushed aside even though the logic is unavoidable. Any attempt to achieve justice that demands something of one group of people in order to give it to another cannot in any way be just, since the individual members of the group effectively being punished are being punished for no fault of their own. They didn't decide to be born into a privileged ethnicity or gender, and in the case of those who are rich, all of them didn't get there by making morally bad decisions. While some may welcome the collective's efforts to help the less fortunate by taking things from them, some may not and for good reasons, demanding respect for individual human dignity not being the least. Put simply social justice policies of forcing people to share, especially through governmental actions, inevitably commit injustices on some individuals at least and since justice cannot be injustice, there is no such thing as “social justice”.

The common argument from academia against this clear logic is that people in privileged groups benefit from injustices and thus are in fact culpable. This is also the argument terrorists use to justify blowing up civilians. Most civil societies do not however consider the merchant who sold food to a criminal an accessory to whatever crimes he committed. They usually don't even consider the criminal's dependent children to be accessories. So how is the rich oriental man culpable for the poor black woman's misfortune? Simple, he's not, and to tax him more or to make it harder for his kids to get into a college is plainly the opposite of justice. There is no such thing as “social justice” since it is in fact inevitably unjust.

Point number two is that social justice distorts the Christian message of compassion it claims to be part of.

For this point I will lean heavily on the Christian message itself, as I should, and I'll begin with what I call the key to it all. Our Lord referred to it as the greatest two commandments.

Mark 12:30-31 ~Jesus
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”

These two commandments are about three things, God, ourselves, and others. They pretty effectively show the emphasis of Christ's message and ministry. First we are told to love God with our all, and what is entailed and detailed out as that tells us something, "your heart", "your soul", "your mind", "your strength". None of those things are properties or responsibilities of any collective. Of the four, three are only aspects of individuals. Only strength could also be something beyond our immediate self. The other three are so clearly individual that they are often seen as synonymous with singularity.

The second commandment then ties our love for others inseparably with our love for ourselves. The absence of the collective in this becomes almost obvious if one asks one of the most obvious questions. That is, 'how do I love myself?'. Do I give control of my resources to someone else so they can look after me when I'm fully capable of doing it myself? No. I want my dignity. Therefore if I am to love others as myself I must do it whenever possible with the utmost respect for them and myself. I should whenever possible and/or practical do it personally, directly, as one individual to another. And when I can't do it directly and instead make use of some in-between service, I should do it of my own volition, not through force of law or even in response to some community born sense of oughtness. It should always be my choice, a moral obligation perhaps, but never a legal or in any way a coerced one.

Now the implications I draw here from just two verses, as important and key as they may be to the entirety of the Christian message, may be countered by the throngs of Christian leaders and teachers who insist that “social justice” can be found all over the scriptures. So much so that some have claimed if we cut out all support for “social justice” from the Bible we wouldn't have very much left. But not to worry. I can brush this throng aside, not with a premature reflex but with reason. I don't even have to use the trump card I established earlier, that there logically is no such thing as “social justice”. I can use the very scriptures they claim support it.

One of the favorites of these areas of scriptures they claim support “social justice” is the Beatitudes, found in Matthew 5:3-10. They are as follows (NIV translation). There are eight of them so I numbered them accordingly.

(1) “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
(2) Blessed are they who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.
(3) Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth.
(4) Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied.
(5) Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy.
(6) Blessed are the pure of heart,
for they shall see God.
(7) Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called children of God.
(8) Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

There is little if any serious scholarly claim that “the poor in spirit”mentioned in the first beatitude are anything other than the humble. Humility, I should add, is an extremely important goal set in Christian teaching and should always be pursued by Christians, as difficult as that may be. “Humility, like a rose, once grasped ...” I was taught while getting my masters. So in my humble yet educated opinion (oops there goes the rose) the only beatitude here that could have anything directly to do with what the throng would call “social justice” is the third one.

This however is very problematic for them because that part about “they shall inherit the earth” seems a bit more grand than receiving unemployment compensation. I suppose they could argue I'm just being difficult in interpreting it as quite so grand, but look at it in the context of the first and second beatitudes. " The kingdom of heaven"? And those who mourn "will be comforted"? What will comfort those who mourn short of God fixing the problem of death itself? All of the remedies seem pretty clearly to be of a divine source, not a human one and certainly not a collective or social source.  So why would a task for the human collective be thrown into the middle of list of things only the divine can achieve?

As for the other verses the throng may point to, I have read them and I could fill a book explaining each away, but I would just be wasting space and time re-hashing the same few effective refutations of their interpretations. They all come down to this.

All of these verses that they say refer to groups and communities either refer to God, as in the beatitudes, or to individual moral obligations to other individuals as they encounter them, not the actions or policies of communities or governments.  The strongest support the “social justice” throng has is from the prophets where God chastises Israel for its treatment of the poor and needy, but if one reads on in each case God blesses individuals who made the right choices. If the principle of “social justice” were applied, no one would have been spared His wrath. Instead in each case it is individual responsibility and God's power and intent to bless that comes out as the true theme, not something called “social justice”.

As a Christian I believe God deserves our all and we are instructed to give Him that. In all that He has done and tells us through the scriptures He will do, He is ultimately and primarily concerned with individual relationships with him and others. Yes, He did work out part of His plan through a nation, Israel, but Israel failed because of the inability of humanity to obey the law even through a national effort and ultimately, both as evidenced in the prophets and in the New Testament, God holds individuals responsible for their decisions. In all of His punishments towards Israel He always either spared certain individuals or spared larger groups for the sake of individuals, and it was because of the choices they made, not the groups they were a member of.

Jesus came to make it possible for individuals to have personal relationships with God and this good god commands us to love others as we love ourselves. We are therefore called to empower others as individuals to be able to choose what the nature of their relationships with God will be. There can be no coercion of any kind, no legal or social pressure in this. Only persuasion in an atmosphere of respect for individual dignity and free will. If at any point we drop the element of individual choice from this we become disobedient to His commandment to love others as ourselves and in turn to love God with our entire being.

This is not just true in bringing people to Christ. The Church universal is not one thing on the outside and the opposite on the inside. Christian character continues to be a matter of individual and not corporate decisions. It is individual Christians' relationships with God and other individuals that are most important, not their commitments to communities.

For the Christian community social justice is worse than heresy, for unlike heresies that distort our perception of the nature of God, social justice diminishes our roles as individuals both in helping and receiving help, and worst of all causes us to be disobedient to God's commandments, most notably the two Jesus told us were the greatest. Our brothers and sisters in Christ who teach social justice need interventions where we take them aside in a loving manner and show them the errors of their ways. If they reject our correction and insist on continuing to teach social justice we should send them on their way without us. Tough medicine, I know, but in these critical days where the church universal is so infected, it's high time we took it.