U.S. Republicans Blindly Attack Social Justice

By William Pfaff

The determination of the Republican congressional majority to destroy the country’s legacy of what once was known (in religious circles, at least) as social justice is being accomplished amid the ignorance of the vast majority that such a thing ever existed and was defended, in the 1940s, 1950s and even after, by what were known as progressive Republicans. Not only has that breed of Republican been stamped out, but so has the memory that such a movement even existed under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover (a humanist, if a credulous economist), Dwight Eisenhower, Wendell Willkie, Thomas Dewey and even under the demonized Richard Nixon.

What has replaced it has been an ignorant and repressive socio-political ideology that rests on assumptions of class and individual privilege devoid of responsibility. The United States has experienced this before. It might in Rumsfeldian idiom be called one of the “known knowns” of American history, and that history would indicate that it will eventually be brought to an end by electoral choice, after voters have experienced its consequences. When this will happen is an unknown known.