Timothy Dalrymple on the Tea Parties and Social Justice

Timothy Dalrymple has a wonderful article on the Tea Party as a social justice movement. I want to quote a couple of passages but I urge you to read the whole thing here: "Is the Tea Party a 'Social Justice' Movement?"

First, he identifies correctly (in my opinion) the source of the passion directed against the Tea Party and conservatives by liberals: [my bolding]

What I witnessed in the Tea Partiers, however, were a moral, sensible, and patriotic people who had a justified concern that their representatives have grown disconnected from those they represent, and are perpetuating a dysfunctional political culture that will thrust our country back to the precipice of economic collapse. Washington cannot pour rivers of money we do not possess into thousands of programs we do not need, in exchange for the mountains of votes that will keep them in power, and complain when the taxpayers get upset. The Tea Partiers are not objecting because they would rather leave the poor to rot than surrender a little more of their money; polls show (as I will discuss in the next part of this series) that Tea Partiers are perfectly willing to accept the need for moderate taxation and social services. Rather, Tea Partiers are objecting because they fear that Washington is caught in a vicious circle of reckless spending and political payback that will cripple our economy and harm all Americans, rich and poor.

This led to the question on my mind that morning. Since it is intent on the formation of a more accountable and more restrained government that will better serve the interest of all Americans: Is the Tea Party movement a social justice movement?

When I asked this question of my beloved liberal friends, they were mortified. There may be no quicker way to help a food-poisoned progressive empty the contents of her stomach than to suggest that the Tea Party movement is just as much a "social justice" movement as are living wage or immigrants' rights movements.

The reason for their response is simple. For many religious progressives, "social justice" has eclipsed the old God in whom they no longer quite believe. The hope of a socially just world has not complemented and enriched (as it should) but impoverished and occluded their hope of eternity with God. Thus, for them, social justice is the final refuge of the transcendent, the one pure act that remains in a tarnished world, the last vision with the power to stir the graying embers of their religious devotion.

Even religious progressives who still believe in an eternal relationship with God tend to see social justice as holy in the Hebrew sense, as that which sets them apart -- apart from the fat cats and the country clubbers, to be sure, but also apart from those Christians, the Christians who live in "Jesusland," attend megachurches, and wear flags on their lapels: the very same conservative Christians who might be found at a Tea Party rally. Thus, to suggest that the Tea Partiers are engaged in a social justice movement is not only to soil their sacred ideal with the grubby fingers of the bigoted Tea Partiers, but to suggest that progressive Christians and conservative Christians are not separated so much by the presence or absence of love for the poor but by their sense of the policies that best serve the poor and the rest of society.

Darlymple goes on to discuss the meaning of the term "social justice" and while I cannot reproduce his whole discussion, here are some salient bits the whet your appetite:

Whether the Tea Party movement actually is a social justice movement obviously depends on how the term is defined. The irony is that one cannot exclude the Tea Party from the social justice category without betraying that "social justice" is a partisan political theory. . . .

When Glenn Beck condemned social justice as a "code word" for liberal political activism, the question that was presented to progressive activists like Jim Wallis was whether social justice is the sole province of left-wing political agitators. With apologies to Albert Einstein, we distinguish between general and special theories of social justice. The general theory is that "social justice is in fact a personal commitment to serve the poor and to attack the conditions that lead to poverty." That is how Jim Wallis defined the term in a Washington Post column. The special theory, by contrast, asserts that social justice is when one attacks "the conditions that lead to poverty" by advocating specifically the policies that liberals prefer. In other words, on the special theory, it is not enough to fight for the conditions that would allow the poor to prosper; one must do so through redistributionist policies, or living wage movements, or stronger unions, or etc. . . .

. . . when Wallis is pressed on whether he is merely anointing his own political preferences in religious rhetoric, he retreats to the general theory of social justice. People all over the spectrum, he says, are social justice Christians; what is important is simply "to stand up for the poor, even against wealth and power when necessary."

The Catholic theologian Michael Novak also offers a universal definition of social justice. After noting all the ambiguities in its history and meaning, Novak suggests that social justice is a joint, cooperative action (thus "social" in its form) for the good of the whole of society (and thus "social" in its end). By this definition, social justice is not an "ideological marker," but is "ideologically neutral." Social justice "is practiced both by those on the left and those on the right" because there is "more than one way to imagine the future good of society." If we adopt Novak's definition, or Wallis' universal definition, then the Tea Party movement is in fact a social justice movement. The great majority of those attending the rallies would tell you that the policies they advocate are for the common good of all, including the poor.

Yet Wallis does not actually hold to the universal theory of social justice. When Wallis actually uses social justice language amongst his supporters, it clearly means pressing for the systemic changes that Wallis and other leaders of "the faith community" prefer. I have never seen Wallis refer to a movement pressing for conservative policies, even when those policies are overtly intended to serve the poor and needy, as a social justice action.

One might respond that movements must press for a biblical vision of justice in order to qualify for the social justice category, and that conservative policies are simply not oriented toward the biblical ideal. To which the answer must be: According to whom? Countless thousands of conservative Christians vote the way they do, and press for the policies they do, precisely because they believe that they fulfill the biblical ideal of justice. . . .

Thus one must adopt the general, ideologically neutral theory of social justice, and then accept that all sorts of activities from soup kitchens to living wage demonstrations to, yes, Tea Party rallies, can count as social justice movements -- or else one must adopt the special, partisan theory of social justice and accept that Glenn Beck had a point. I leave it to my liberal friends to determine which is the more painful.

The dilemma for leftists articulated in that last paragraph is brilliant and true. Jim Wallis calls continually for a new conversation but what he really means is for letting left-wing rhetoric become dominant in places it has not previously been heard. Darlymple is asking for an actual debate between those advocating conservative and socialist methods for serving justice and fighting poverty.

This would require the Left to be willing to allow its left-wing theories to be placed in questioned without resorting to attacks on the character and motivations of conservatives. Are they willing to do that? In my experience most are not and therein lies the problem with having a new conversation.