Thomas Patrick Burke
 | Philosopher Tuesday, September 9, 2008 Is there a justice for society different from ordinary justice? Justice is the basic virtue of society. But at the present time our society is attempting to operate with two very different conceptions of justice. Our ordinary, everyday, traditional idea of justice has always been based on individual responsibility and on the right to own property, but "social justice" abolishes or weakens both of these in the interest of societal equality. This abolition carries over into civil rights and human rights, which have been profoundly changed. The current fate of the Boy Scouts in Philadelphia, dispossessed of their ancestral home because they do not conform to the city's rules prohibiting discrimination, illustrates dramatically the conflict between ordinary justice and "social justice." It is only one example among thousands. While "social justice" has brought some benefits to some people, it is at the great expense of many others. Economically, social justice is a form of protectionism. The great economist Friedrich Hayek wrote, "I have come to feel strongly that the greatest service I can still render to my fellow men would be that I could make the speakers and writers among them thoroughly ashamed ever again to employ the term 'social justice'." Read the text of the lecture. Watch the video. Thomas Patrick Burke, born in Australia, was professor of religion at Temple University in Philadelphia for twenty-nine years and has taught at other universities in the United States, Europe and Australia (the University of Iowa, Catholic University, University of Sydney, University of Hamburg). He took early retirement in order to run as the candidate of the Libertarian Party in the Congressional elections of 1996 and 1998 (Pennsylvania, 13th Congressional District). In 2004 as a personal response to the events of September 11, 2001, he founded the Wynnewood Institute in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, an academic educational and research organization devoted to the defense and explanation of Western civilization, the free society and free markets. His book No Harm (Paragon House, 1996) offers a sustained Lockean-type argument for the ethical foundations of the free market. He has also published The Major Religions (Blackwell, 1996), which offers a scholarly introduction to the principal world religions. The Website of the Institute contains many of his lectures, courses and essays. He is currently at work on a book on the philosophy of justice. |