Justice, Just Is

Justice just is. What do I mean by this?

Some view justice as transforming society into a 'new reality'. These are change agents, which view justice as a social construction. These social justice types view the law as a positive.

While the "social justice" types view the law as a positive, the "self-governing types" view the law as a negative. They view the law as protecting "rights". These view individual conscience and liberty of opinion as "moral".

Today on NPR, I listened to a Harvard professor, Sandel. He was discussing his book, "Justice". He had a number of terms that I disagreed with. Terms such as solidarity, and "the common good". His view sounded socialistic or communistic to me. He did acknowledge that there was another view; an individual and free market view.

As I consider myself an individualist, I do not value the terms of "solidarity" or the "common good".

Our Founding Fathers viewed the individual with "certain inalienable rights", the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I don't think that defining these terms in a monistic way is allowing for individual differences of opinion and conscience. Our Founding Fathers granted us liberty of expression and differences of opinion in theBill of Rights.

Kohlburg in his stages of moral development understood that the convetional level of justice was defined by the "status quo" or social groupism. The "self-actualized" conscience is a reasoned or principled conscience. Don't we want the highest standard to represent our society?

Since we are a Representative Republic, we value the individual voter's opinons, or at least, in principle. We are a government for the people and by the people. Justice is reprentative, and not a "dictatorship". History has all kinds of examples of oppressive regimes that limit individuality based on solidarity or the 'common good'.

C.S. Lewis in "Mere Christianity" viewed the human as having an innate sense of justice. Individuals know when they are being taken advantage of. Our laws protect these "rights" from other's greed, coveteousness, and unlawful confiscation. America affirm property rights.

I believe because humans are endowed with an innate nature of justice that doing injustice is what our country stood against. And this is why we are a country that is ruled by law.

I believe that there are many ways of "being good", and we should not define another's good for them.