The misuse of language

by Gary Berg-Cross

There they go again.  Speaking Words Freely.  Well loosely. GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson danced around the idea of President Obama’s being a “real black president.”

“I wouldn’t even get into such a conversation,” he told host Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “He’s the president and he’s black. " We’re dealing with semantics," 

Sure we are, and it’s important. You don’t do language math by adding Black and President and get a real meaning for “Black President” which is a phrase that capture a whole culture of meaning.

Socrates, via Plato, is often quoted (in translation) on the impact of corrupting language. It is variously translated as "The misuse of language induces evil in the soul." Notwithstanding the metaphorical allusions to religio-philosophical concept of evil and soul we edge into danger when we express ourselves poorly or use language to disguise the true situation.  There is room enough for this in ordinary conversation when language is used pragmatically to bend the truth, or smooth things over in uncomfortable situations. It is language used in support of a “white lie.”  “I can’t make your Christening, I have a family obligation.”

But the art of group or personal spin has spilled its banks and taken on a corrupting color that is not white at all. One simple example from recent events is the inflamed phrasing such as “criminalization of ... faith” uttered in defense of Kim Davis’ actions. 

Penned in by an avaricious ad strewn society we know that the “buyer” has to beware.  But language is used to get around our conscious defenses. A hospital bill may list a $15 charge for “disposable mucus recovery system,” but this was in reality, just a box of Kleenex.

Since we are likely to hear more language bending (ads and otherwise) in coming days here are a few thoughts on just 2 types we run into:

·        Political talk and

·        Translations

A professional, routinized version of tortured language has emerged called Spinglish—a wordy, devious dialect of English (I’m sure they manifest in other languages) used by professional spin doctors. These are all around us, but a gaggle of them fly over the political scene putting reasoned speech in shadow.

It is common now as the trope of saying “mistakes were made.”  This is a  rhetorical device, allowing a speaker to acknowledge that “a situation was handled poorly or inappropriately but seeks to evade any direct admission or accusation of responsibility by not specifying the person who made the mistakes. That rose to prominence in a political context with Reagan’s Arms-for-hostage or Iran-Contra deal, but some trace of this type of thing goes back to Watergate and  May , 1973, when Nixon’s White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler confessed to what amounted to sinful, spinful lies:

"I would apologize to the Post, and I would apologize to Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein. We would all have to say that mistakes were made in terms of comments. I was overenthusiastic in my comments about the Post, particularly if you look at them in the context of developments that have taken place."

What context?  On the previous day, White House counsel John Dean and Nixon aides Ehrlichman and  Haldeman had resigned.

The impact can be substantial when false words become an active part of crafted messaging as in the case of the Watergate cover-up or just a cover for policies that would be unpopular if not protected by false narratives.   . The Platonic-era Greeks were getting a dose of this political narrative as part of Athenian democracy and more recently you don’t have to have just read Orwell’s 1984 to understand a the language has the power in politics to mask the truth and mislead the public. Contemporary politics has lots of this along with innuendo so in this era of social media megaphones it is even more important for the public to be aware of this power of false narratives.

In the current political season we depend on the media and competing parties to penetrate the language miasma. Some recent examples within the Republican contest concern people, like Trump, being allowed to imply that President Obama is a secret, and one supposes traitorous, Muslin. It is language labeling one as an enemy.  When polled Trump supporters mostly explained that they found various Trump message  pitched to a 3^rd or 4^th -grade level and wrapped in a pro wrestling atmosphere) appealing because it is “easy to understand”. Sure “Make America great again” has simple semantics (unless you say it in Mexican, I guess). “We know his goal is to make America great.”  This is the vaguest of ends with narry a hint of means unless it means firing a whole House of pols.  The slogan “First we kill all the lawyers” has been updated to imply that conventional, compromising pols are also included.

There have been efforts to take more nuanced stances and explore the implications of statements. Rand Paul scolded generalissimo candidate Donald Trump for “careless language” in general, while Lindsey Graham accused Trump’s language of “playing into this hateful narrative, ” and Chris Christie said Trump had an “obligation” to set the record straight, although Trump has responded that he has no responsibility for such language cleaning.  Just a matter of semantics via dog whistles one assumes.

Trump was, however, offended that Jeb Bush spoke “Mexican” recently in McAllen, Texas.  Apparentely this doesn’t make America great.  In this context “Mexican” also has dog whistle semantic overtones that fire up prejudice as Bush noted:

"Those are dog whistle terms; he knows what he's doing. These are very divisive terms. If we're going to win elections, we need to be much more open, open and optimistic, rather than sending signals that prey on people's angst."

Setting the record straight after it has whistled out is hard to do as Mark Twain noted:

“A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes.”

Our language and cultural understandings are is also challenged by neat, translations from other languages and their cultures.  So can injustices wrapped in mistranslations and misunderstood expression. Two examples”

The idea that the Koran promises Islamic martyrs 47 virgins in heaven and the Iranian threats to destroy Israel.

Virginal beings  In Islamic mythology, there is a concept of  houris (which are described in a Wikipedia section as

“gazelle-eyed (woman)") or ḥūrīyah  (are commonly translated as "(splendid)^[2] companions of equal age (well-matched)", "lovely eyed", of "modest gaze", "pure beings" or "companions pure" of paradise, denoting humans and jinn who enter Jannah (paradise) after being recreated anew in the hereafter.^”

Among non-Muslims, the concept of the houri received wide publicity as "virgins" (most usually 72 in number for each shahid) promised as a reward to Muslim shahids (martyrs), after their death. However, contrary to such reports, the Quran states that all believers (not just martyrs, and nowhere either is it said it's just men) who go to Heaven shall be granted the company of more than one houris—explicitly mentioned in the plural, and the number 72 comes from a hadith with a weak chain of narrators (i.e. less than totally reliable), and not the Quran.

Up close if is quite a bit different than we hear thrown into conversations about the motivations for martyrs. But of course, the pop image of the 72 virgins has provided a lure for corruption on an historic meaning with a fleshy new one.  Language misuse creates it own reality.

According to no less an intellectual than the very Jewish Noam Chomsky there may be a similar misreading of Iranian statements about Israel’s existence, a topic of some import in the recent arguments about a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear program (see the Haaretz article  Iran Is Not an 'Existential' Threat to Israel - No Matter What Netanyahu Claims)

Chomsky, put it this way:

“To be sure, Israel faces the “existential threat” of Iranian pronouncements: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously threatened it with destruction. Except that they didn’t—and if they had, it would be of little moment. They predicted that “Under God’s grace [the Zionist regime] will be wiped off the map.” Another translation suggests that Ahmadinejad actually said that Israel “must vanish from the page of time”. This is a citation of a statement made by Ayatollah Khomeini, during a period when Iran and Israel were tacitly allied. In other words, they hope that regime change will someday take place. They do not say that they will attack Israel either now or later.”

There’s more of the translation history and its formulations in Steve Rendall’s  2012 Lost in Translation, Iran never threatened to wipe Israel off the map, which includes this:

Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor agreed with interviewer Teymoor Nabili’s suggestion that the supposed remarks were never actually made. Iranian leaders, Meridor said,

come basically ideologically, religiously, with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn’t say “we’ll wipe it out,” you are right, but [that] it will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor, it should be removed.

The Persian phrase Meridor was asked about, was used by Ahmadinejad in a 2005 speech in which neither maps nor wiping were mentioned. As Cole explained (Informed Comment, 5/3/06):

The actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all…. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.” It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.

Even the right-wing pro-Israel translation service MEMRI translated the Ahmadine-jad comment as “this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” (CounterPunch, 

8/28/06).

As they say, "The misuse of language induces evil in the soul." So we need to not only choose our words carefully to express ourselves, but interprete them critically. It’s another hard part of a citizen’s task as issues hiding in canned phrases are thrown about.

Who me? I’m not responsible. Why do those things happen?

by Gary Berg-Cross

Flight from responsibility with its resulting dilemmas is nothing new, but it confronts us in a variety of ways across the country, globe and culture.  It is difficult not to think of the reign of unintended consequences of irresponsibility as we are showered with 21^st century news.  This ranges from the responsibility of deaths from police such as in Ferguson, Missouri; to epidemic deaths in Africa; to thousands and millions in conflicts around the globe.  No one thing seems responsible, although you can find attempts to simplify it down to a target cause.  Policemen are only doing their duty and protecting themselves.  They are not responsible if someone gets shot.  Riots break out as unintended consequence of that action.  Are the police, the community of the media responsible for that?  It’s just an unanticipated consequence of a diffuse system where it is difficult to locate one single, intended, responsible cause.  But a multi-causal/many hands explanation might mean that I, as a citizen, share some of the responsibility.  No, not me.  Society says that a crime and such must be intentional.  It's not my intent.  It must be them, or whatever, but not me.

So an easy, religio-cultural defense is that “I didn't intend for this to happen” any more that an anthropomorphic God intended bad things to happen.  Of course, social science suggests that "actions" are generally performed by some human or animal for some purpose.  Certainly we have things discussed in business, law, government, economics that depends on goals or purpose. It’s just that these or a person's model of what will happen based on some intended action may not be what will really happen. Our models are imperfect.  So we have the famous" unintended consequences" and a search for someone/something responsible to blame.  It is a difficult causal analysis and one can understand why we tend to avoid the complex explanation for the simple. Indeed it is a general phenomena that we may recognize which problems are significant, but they are often difficult and so we drift sideways on easier problems and topics that provide more immediate pleasure and conversation.

Fox News is blaming President Obama for being indifferent to the threat of terrorism.  He's an easy target of the focus of who is responsible for all that goes wrong in the Near East.  Who’s responsible for these deaths?  We want a simple answer.  Of course there is a history here and other players with various intentions.  But there is one model to analyze all of this, so as beings with limited analytic ability, we simplify with rules of thumb and biases.  It’s hard for most of us to believe that the President intends things to go wrong, but in politicized times we look for a simple agent explanation.  It’s a very natural way of thinking. But is can be dangerous.  Things happen for a “reason”, but if it is something I don’t like it makes sense to find a cause external to one’s self and group to blame.  And blaming can make enemies of lead to the gridlock of two 6 year olds fighting.

Why are there high divorce rates, the spread of venereal disease, troubles in our schools, and increases in teen suicide, along with alcohol and drug abuse among the poor?  A simple answer is that it’s their culture (see The Poverty of Reason by Glenn C. Loury) .  They are responsible, not the larger society in which poverty is created.  So if "they" rather than "I" are responsible I don't have to do anything about this problem and its unintended (by me at least) consequences.

I can ignore social sciences understanding of dysfunctional behavior patterns adopted by people in poor communities. It’s just too complicated for me to understand and this support broad solutions. 

A worrisome, perhaps central, example of this fight from responsibility is the creeping impact of climate change. Why aren't we taking action? Sure there are scientific warnings about what is happening and why. We  don’t want the anticipated climate changes let along unanticipated ones.  But since they are part of a very complex natural system, coupled with human institutions and power centers beyond my control, it seems to say that “things just happen”. Someone responsible will have to deal with that. 

As passengers on planet earth we can say “I don’t intend that the seas warm and polar bears die off.  My conscience is clear and my moral principles say that I am not to blame.  And thus we drift to unintended consequences unless we see some shared responsibility. As noted in the lead up discussion for the recent UN climate summit:

“...stating that nobody is responsible for climate change leads to paralysis. Second, empirical evidence of public and private initiatives in distant corners of the world ... suggests that both individuals and groups are actively taking responsibility for climate change mitigation.

Climate change can also be approached as a problem of collective moral responsibility. “

Who Has Moral Responsibility for Climate Change?

VANESA CASTAN BROTO, MAR 6 2013

Climate and Secular Change

By Gary Berg-Cross

Some important topics like secular humanism and climate change are hard to get accepted by people for one reason of another. Secular humanism has its principles, goals and core ideas laid out in the various Humanist Manifestoes.  But to many it explanations and approach aren’t satisfactory.   Part of the reason is that is an inconvenient threat to biblical and older views of the world and a God who intervenes in natural phenomena and is indispensable for salivation.

Coming to grips with climate change is another one of those difficult topics where complex, scientific evidence and reasoning comes in conflict with simpler and perhaps emotionally satisfying non-scientific beliefs. People’s immediate experience is with weather and local weather at that.  This easy understanding gets confused with climate as it in entangled with common sense and verbal habits (always a factor in discussing atheism and concepts of God too).  So people say you “can’t change the weather” (or predict it well going past 10 days) and these seem to be powerful arguments against knowing about climate change with a needed degree of certainty.  If fact they are not good arguments at all. One may predict a green house will be warmer than its surroundings even on a cold day.

You can see and example of how particular issues, often statistical in nature, get resolved  such as how much warming is going on in Antartica  see- On Edge-Pushing Statistics and Climate Basics. Statisticians like Noel Cressie have directly investigated  "Uncertainty
Quantification for Regional Climate Projections in North America" by studying the various model projecting temperature change that is projected for North America 30 years in the future (2041-2070). Regional Climate Models (RCMs) projections are run up to 60 years into the future for "small", 50 km x 50 km regions in North America.

The results including degrees of uncertainty are analyzed statistically for all regions and all four Boreal seasons. The preponderance of results throughout all of North America, as shown in the pinkish figures below is one of warming, usually more than 2°C (3.6°F). As Cressie asked, "is this hot enough for you."
 

 

 OK so there is converging and ever increasing evidence and a scientific consensus on climate change exists.  What about regular citizen's beliefs?  It's a function in part of macro weather. Following a winter of record snowfall in 2010, the public’s acceptance of climate change fell to a low of 52 percent, according to the National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change (as published by the Brookings Institution). After 2011's mild winter, support jumped to 65 percent.  Still fewer think it human caused. 2012 polling conducted by the Pew Research Center suggests that a greater number of people in the U.S. are accepting the reality of climate change. 67 percent of Americans said that there is now  "solid evidence" that average global temperatures have been rising in recent decades. That's a gain of 4points over 2010 and 10 points since 2009. Yet only 42 percent say this warming is "mostly caused by human activity," according to Pew.You know, the climate always changes.. Maybe we'll have an ice age...

Recently some scientific efforts have been directed at such phenomena and understanding why belief in climate change has decreased rather than risen as more evidence has been generated. It turns out there are a variety of complex psychological, and cultural reasons for this as well as scientific.

One obvious factor is complexity of space, time and factors. There are lots of facts to consider and models to integrate since almost every aspect of our planet influences the climate –

ocean circulation,

weather patterns,

plate tectonics (over long time) and ,

atmospheric dynamics are just a start.

A change in one of these affects climate and progress has being made in modeling each although the interaction of factors with each other and the climate is still a challenge.  But like the weather everyone has something to say on the matter even if the complexity is ignored in most opinions by laymen. Psychologically we like simple answers and simplifying problems down to familiar terms.  Still understanding is possible to the literate and astute who have the time to study it.

But there is a problem with space and time. The impacts are somewhat off in the future or impacting far away space like the artic now (Super Storm Sandy being an exception which did get our attention.) . But  these demand action and costly action now. So there is a mis-match and what is being asked (see recent blog on protests) for now is some sacrifice for some hypothetical gain. What is being asked for is deferred gratification. It’s not like cleaning up a park or a polluted river. There we can often easily track responsibility for a problem and results can be quickly seen and rewards such as return of fish in river a known reward. 

Handling climate change is new and the expected rewards far off and maybe beyond our lifetime.  No matter how much we slow the growth of emissions, we may not see the benefits in the short-term. Thus, climate change activists are asking fellow citizens to sacrifice something concrete (say my investment and retirement portfolio) now for potential benefits that may not be evident for many years to come.

 

In its own way this is a bit like what secularists are asking of religious people – sacrificing some comforting habits now to avoid down sides over time. We need to have the maturity to understand the dangers of climate change and the wisdom for that may translate as a useful skill for the advancement of humanist and secular thinking too.

 

 

 

 

Images
 

The Psychology of Climate Change: http://guide.cred.columbia.edu/

Noel Cressie ergional models of climate change: http://www.stat.osu.edu/~sses/collab_warming.html

Sacrificing investments:http://grist.org/article/2009-11-05-climate-psychology-in-cartoons-clues-for-solving-the-messaging/full/

 

Religious addiction: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=flynn_27_4

 

The Golden Rule & Social Justice

by Gary Berg-Cross

We have all heard of the Golden Rule (Treat others as we would like others to treat us), which is accepted as a universal moral principle and perhaps THE starting principle of morality. Many religions and moral philosophies build on it. And many people aspire to live by it on an individual basis. That's all to the good, although one might expect that it should be broadened to include what others need as well as want. As historian Karl Popper said:

"The golden rule is a good standard which is further improved by doing unto others, wherever possible, as they want to be done by." (The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 2)

But often the Golden Rule is equated to its individualistic Christian form without acknowledging its implied recognition of a broader, contextualized reciprocal responsibility. This implied impartiality leads logically to some notion of justice for all and the common good. This connection to a proto-Social Justice is what some conservative voices have objected to as a morality matured beyond the basic Golden Rule.

The notion at the core of any mature morality involves some idea of impartiality. In simple situations if you are asked to justify your actions, and you may just say,"Well I wanted to". This is just an expression of selfish desire and not ethics or impartiality. But a person might have a more complicated explanations guided by a rule like "It was my turn" or as when young siblings argue "He got one and this is my fair share". These are more like a nuanced moral, stance because they imply that it is reasonable that others in similar situations could or would have done the same. This is reasonable and is the sort of argument that could be convincing to a neutral observer and is at the foundation of standards of justice and law. The philosopher Peter Singer suggests that this notion of impartiality and reciprocity can be found in systems of morality, starting with the golden rule.

This basic ethic of neutral reciprocity itself was present in certain forms in the philosophies of ancient Babylon, Egypt, Persia, India, Greece, China and elsewhere, but it is worth considering some of the ideas implied in alternative formulations and variants that go beyond it to rules of other metals than Gold.

The Wikipedia section on Golden Rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule describes the maxim as an ethic of reciprocity. The core idea can essentially be stated in positive or negative terms about individual responsibility:

One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself (positive form)
One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated (negative/ prohibitive form)

The later form is also called the Silver Rule, but it is only one variant of many possible expressions. Statements that mirror the Golden Rule appear in Ancient Egypt in the story of The Eloquent Peasant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eloquent_Peasant. states that "the label 'golden' was applied by Confucius (551–479 B.C.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius , who wrote a version of the Silver The Christian form of it from Matthew [7:12] is probably the best known in the West that crowds out other formulations (and some subtle implications_:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

But there are many versions as various religions have their form of it as well as many schools of philosophy. Among the earlier statements that capture the idea of a Golden Rule are those appearing in an ancient Egyptian (Middle Kingdom, c. 2040–1650 BCE) the story called The Eloquent Peasant:

       "Now this is the command: Do to the doer to cause that he do thus to you"

According to many, the first know use of the phrase 'golden' was by Confucius (551–479 B.C.) and expressed the well-known principle, "Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself", one of the earlier versions of the Golden Rule [Analects 15,23]. He also wrote a version of the Silver form.

These, along with the classic Greek versions found in Thales & Plato, predate Christianity and therefore could claim prior credit - if one was to look at this as Judeo-Christianity finding some newly found moral principal, which they did not. What we find in older version is the responsibility idea connected to other ideas or rationales.Thales version includes the idea of blame as a test of doing something wrong:

"Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing."

Plato's translated version is simpler:

"May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me."

The Wiccan formulation is perhaps the simplest and is similar to words in the Hippocratic Oath - "Do no harm." Some call this the Silver Rule as later championed by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. as a way to compensate for the Golden Rule's shortcomings. To others the silver rule is the golden rule without the gold:

“What you do not wish done to you, do not do to others.”


The Golder Rule with is positive responsibility is sometimes contrasted with the "right of 'wild' reciprocal justice, such as seen the Jewish formulation in Exodus 21 of "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe".

Better are other reciprocal responsibility that adds (or implies) the associated ideas of duty, goodness, rights, harm, desires etc which them interesting in their own right. The Baha'i Faith presents the rule in the context of burdens, avoiding unnecessary ones and lays out what outcomes an individual should want or desire.

“Lay not on any soul a load that you would not wish to be laid upon you, and desire not for anyone the things you would not desire for yourself.”[Baha'u'llah, Gleanings, LXVI:8 ]

Buddhism has a similar ring using the stronger implication of harm, but still has a self centered notion of it:

"Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." [Udana-Varga 5,18] as does Hinduism with its:

"This is the sum of duty: do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you." [Mahabharata 5,1517]

Islam sees the golden rule as affirming their belief:
"No man is a true believer unless he desireth for his brother that which he desireth for
himself." [Azizullah, Hadith 150]

One problem with many of these older formulations is that it is not clear what the scope of responsibility is. In some cases old commandments were to men and asymmetrical reflecting women as property. In others, it might be interpreted as just a rule applying within the community. It is better when we make it clear that we should apply the reciprocity ethic, not just only within one's community, but when dealing with persons of other religions, the other gender, other races, other sexual orientations, etc. This is we note always a welcome idea in an individualistic age where the idea of Ayn Rand and Glenn Beck are treated with religious conviction. Followers of such thinker are threatened when some non-religious philosophy expressed the rule more explicitly in a broader social context. I think that they err by claims that we exist only for our individual selves or only for some focused grouping of family, tribe or nation. The more we grow in ethical maturity, the wider has become the range of our moral concern. But cosmopolitanism is an old idea itself, which we see in the Greeks and other around 400 BCE. Mohism, for example, developed around the same time as Confusionism and expressed it golden rule not in terms of individuals but of families and neighbors:

" If people regarded other people's families in the same way that they regard their own, who then would incite their own family to attack that of another? For one would do for others as one would do for oneself."

The philosopher Mozi regarded the golden rule not a panacea in itself, but as a corollary supporting the cardinal virtue of broad impartiality. In secular terms, the 20th philosopher John Rawls developed a similar idea asking people to look at what is virtuous from a "veil of ignorance" perspective which gives others rights simply by virtue of because they are human. Within a neutral, impartial context a golden rule works to encourage egalitarianism and selflessness in relationships and thus promotes a civic and just society.


This gets much closer to W. A. Spooner (1844-1930) interpretation of the rule:

"The Maxim [of the Golden Rule] does not imply that we should always do to others exactly that which we should wish under our own present circumstances (which may be quite different from theirs) to be done to us. What the maxim implies is that we are, as far as possible, to put ourselves in the place of others; to consider what we would wish to be done to us, were we in their circumstances."

This has been formalized as a Platinum Rule,  which takes others desires into account and simple says:

           "Treat others the way they want to be treated."

Now we are accommodating the feelings of others. The focus of the relationships shifts from a self insight "this is what I want, so I'll give everyone something.The more we grow in ethical maturity, the wider has become the range of our moral concern. But cosmopolitanism is an old idea itself which we see in the Greeks and other around 400 BCE. Mohism, for example, developed around the same time as Confucianism and expressed it golden rule not in terms of individuals but of families and neighbors:

" If people regarded other people's families in the same way that they regard their own, who then would incite their own family to attack that of another? For one would do for others as one would do for oneself the same thing" to an insight about what others wants (and possibly needs). It's more cognitive and relies on connecting an understanding of what others want with some social responsibility to enabling them to have it. This is an insight that emerges within human societies made up of intelligent, deliberating and negotiating beings. Its value is that it can override more parochial impulses.

So its great power is that it is just a few small steps from this formulation to the idea of social justice with its implied broader social responsibility. We quickly come to a principle that asserts that society has an obligation to ensure all have a right to have basic needs met regardless of their level of wealth, social status or political power. We quickly come to a recognition of others needs for things like adequate nutrition, health care, shelter, education and others. These rights are based on a more social principle of the common good that contrasts with the pursuit of unbridled, leaden self-interest. It's an idea that people like Glenn Beck hate it. Among the things they had is the idea that social justice is a broad civic obligation. We need look no further than the preamble to the US Constitution whose rules exist to, among other things, "establish justice."