I have developed a curious habit of tearing up whenever I watch President Obama give an important speech. His Sept. 9 health care speech was no exception. The President reported more than 30 million American citizens cannot get health coverage, and 14,000 Americans lose their health coverage every day.
He told stories of individuals losing their lives because they could not afford treatment. If those statistics do not hit you somewhere in your gut, I am sorry to say you may not have a pulse.
These stories resonate because they pertain to issues of social justice. People do not agree on religion or politics. Yet there appears to be an overwhelming consensus that things are not as they ought to be in this world – that something has gone terribly wrong.
Obama's Sept. 9 health care speech is an excellent spring board to an urgent, fresh and open debate concerning social justice.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Obama's presidential campaign, partisan politics aside, was that his use of two words – hope and change – stirred the depths of a nation's soul. We could take the view that this is a sorry state of affairs (and it certainly is), or we could acknowledge the reality that these two words can and have instilled a renewed sense of purpose to a generation – a generation which, as demonstrated by their reaction to those two words, is clearly yearning for something more and unwilling to accept the banality of established order.
In his health care address, Obama quoted a letter written by Sen. Ted Kennedy regarding the issue. According to the speech, Kennedy wrote, "What we face is, above all, a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country." Obama elaborated on the character of our country, citing qualities such as empathy and defense of freedom. However, I was struck more profoundly by Kennedy's use of the term social justice, or "fundamental principles of social justice."
Is social justice embodied by providing affordable health care to all Americans?
Ron Paul takes a different approach. He writes, "Take for example ideas about rights versus goods. Natural law states that people have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A good is something you work for and earn. It might be a need, like food, but more ‘goods' seem to be becoming ‘rights' in our culture, and this has troubling consequences. It might seem harmless enough to decide that people have a right to things like education, employment, housing or health care. But if we look a little further into the consequences, we can see that the workings of the community and economy are thrown wildly off balance when people accept those ideas."
What Paul hints at when he cites food as a need but ultimately fails to consider is the following: When a good – say education or health care – is the primary means by which individuals realize their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, than that good must be treated with a certain delicacy – a delicacy that mitigates the pitfalls of a global capitalist economy and retains a limited, democratic government.
To achieve this delicacy, the stark dichotomy of partisan politics, or what Obama calls "politics as usual," is no longer adequate.
On Sept. 14, the following was posted on Paul's Web site regarding the Obama's health care speech: "Unfortunately, the most broken aspect of our system is that Washington sees the need to act on every problem in society, rather than staying out of the way, or getting out of the way."
Again, this is where debates fall apart. We may fiercely debate the means with which to achieve our goals – the appropriate size of government or the balanced role of society versus the role of the individual – however, we ought to frame arguments within a context where social justice is the firm standard of measurement by which we judge all competing political endeavors.
For insight into social justice concepts, I revisited the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1963 King wrote the famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."
He states, "Over the past few years, I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends."
In this context, while the means (a limited, democratic and capitalist government) may be moral, the ends (people losing their lives or being denied treatment because they cannot afford care) are immoral.
This is why Obama's speech was wildly successful. He was able to reframe the health care debate around concepts of social justice and offer means necessary to attain that goal within the dominant system. I propose we do the same on a broader scale.
What are the fundamental principles of social justice within a democratic, global and capitalist system? This is where political debates ought to begin, and I would like to invite others to constructively reflect upon these fundamentals.
Erin Bolton is a graduate student in Community and Regional Planning. Reach her at erinbolton@dailynebraskan.com.
is a member of the 
11 comments
"Social justice is a term that is used euphemistically to describe both a philosophical debate and an important issue in politics, religion and civil society. Most individuals wish to live in a just society, but each political ideology has its own concept of what constitutes a "just society". The term "social justice" is often employed as a euphemism by the political left to describe a society with a greater degree of economic egalitarianism, which may be achieved through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even property redistribution, policies aimed toward achieving that which developmental economists refer to as equality of opportunity and equality of outcome."Basically it a bunch of buzz word garbage designed to make socialism, (the government taking your stuff, your freedom, and your rights) sound attractive. Typical dishonest BS by the Left, Liberals, Progressives or what ever name they call themselves this week.
"By cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare -- which of course is a government-run entitlement program -- we'll be able to fund expanded health care without waste, fraud, and abuse. And of course we support Medicare. It's the Republicans who hate Medicare. We're only cutting over $500 billion from the already bankrupt program because there are other people, apart from our seniors, who need health care, too. Everyone has to sacrifice, particularly mom and dad, granddad, grandmom. But they won't mind. That doesn't mean, of course, we're going to ration care. We would never do that. We love our seniors. "These are scare tactics by the special interests who always oppose reform. No, we're going to cut Medicare because we support Medicare, and we're going to cut benefits to seniors because we love our seniors. And what's all this talk about the government taking over health care? More fearmongering by the special interests! No, what's going to happen is that we will oversee the insurance companies to make sure they don't cheat and rip you off. That's right. The same politicians and bureaucracy that stole trillions from the Social Security trust fund to pay for ever more spending -- and the same politicians and bureaucracy that stole trillions of dollars from the Medicare trust fund -- will use their carefully honed skills and experience to ensure that the private insurance companies treat you fairly. "And what we will do is tell these companies who must be covered -- which is anyone who asks to be covered-- we're going to tell 'em what they have to charge and we're going to tell 'em that they have to cover preexisting conditions. We're going to tell 'em what they can't charge. We're going to tell 'em what benefits they have to offer -- and if they fail to do exactly what we say, we're going to have to close 'em down to protect you. That doesn't mean, of course, that you have to change your insurance company. We would never tell you to drop your insurance if you like it! No. What we're going to do is put your insurer out of business. See the difference? And as you know, we are here to change Washington. We want to use free market language to massively grow government.