If you want war, work for justice

I was recently talking about something similar relating to framing the international development arm of an NGO in the context of 'social justice.' That piece of semantic propaganda can cause a lot of trouble later on. The understanding of 'justice' that we nurture in our normal, functional societies is one that relies on one party having absolute power: A just ruler.

A Judge (or the legal system) has all the power. The defendant, only those powers given to him in the name of justice. In the context of this kind of society, unwavering commitment to 'justice' is extremely useful. People fall into line. It is harder to game the system by increasing barriers to justice. This all oils essential machinery like contracts, security & a fixed set of rules.

It is harmful taking this to a different context.

Once you leave that context, justice doesn't work so well. If you need the recipient of the sharper end of justice to agree to it, that's a problem. Who expected Omar Al-Bashir to show up voluntarily for his arrest? The reasoning was that asserting the International Court's in this context authority would be a step towards subjecting criminal rulers to the same justice as criminal citizens. But the power balance is all wrong.

Like the article rightly points out, making claims of ustice is no good if you are appealing to the party directly, via negotiations.

so why is everything framed as justice?

Partly it's habit. There are parallels between stealing cattle from a farm & stealing from the national treasury. But also, the proponents of 'justice' are often appealing to 'the public' as the judge. For example, the Israelis & Palestinians appeal to 'world opinion.' While perhaps strengthening their hands individually, that kind of appeal hurts their joint ability to negotiate with each other. IE, it gets them better terms in a less likely agreement.

One approach is to start with "Let's assume that I'm evil and you're good and discuss only what is correct/leads to better results." That makes many of the rhetorical games worthless.

And, if you play your cards right, you get to conclude with "Hmm, I'm the evil one but your approach ends up with {horror} while mine leads to {smiling bunnies}."

While I agreed with a lot of their positions, in retrospect the pro-Bush movement was bad for the level of discourse in this country. People became accustomed to dismissing their opponents as evil idiots, and this phenomenon is especially noticeable among my generation.

It probably depends on what you are comprising about, and how much scope for a freely negotiated deal there is in that subject matter. In general, negotiation rather than compulsion makes both parties to the negotiation winners.

I'm pretty much a strong advocate of freedom of speech, having lived in countries without it, but just for mental exercise I'll try disagreeing with the example you give, which I agree is well chosen to force agreement with your much more general point.

What if Group A says, "We should have a right to free speech to impugn your mother's moral character," and Group B says, "We like free speech in general, but we think defamation should still bear legal penalties." Is your example as strong if it is that concrete?

The difficulty caused by introducing 'principles' like justice. Free speech is such a principle.

Principals are compromised by compromise. Preferences are not. Therefore if you think in terms or the right to freedom of speech, compromise is how you lose. If dislike restrictions on your freedom to say what you want, negotiation is how you win.

My reading of "No justice, no peace" is not "If there is no justice, then will not allow peace", but rather "Without justice, peace is not possible"

This is the far more sensible reading imo. A free, peaceful societies must rely upon universal, and equal enforcement of law in order to encourage and protect peaceful behavior.

That's not to say that there aren't other ways to attain a "peaceful" society. Totalitarian regimes may have little to fear from their citizens, but only through the extermination of dissent and corruption. But, that's where the "free" part is important.

The author of the submitted blog post is an economist, and as his example points out, if people are FRANK that what they are arguing about is personal expediency, they can usually be persuaded to make reasonable trade-offs that reach a mutual, peaceful agreement. But if people think "justice" (who defines that?) must always be defended to the utmost, they are unlikely to reach agreement with other people who have different ideas of what justice is.

A readily apparent example: is there some basis in "justice" to say which national government should control the territory of east Jerusalem?

However, these military actions represent a small fraction of the wars going on around the world, most of which are internal civil conflict; Chad, Nigeria, ethnic conflict and insurgency in India, etc. Not really much of a moral component in these conflicts.

In general I've found that zeal for justice correlates with the tendency to disregard the possibility that one's own argument is wrong. That's the danger: if you can't even admit the possibility you're wrong, you really have no options apart from agreement or conflict.

I'd say there are plenty of things where you and I will differ about the morality. You may call those grey areas, but I'd say there's a whole lot more grey than there is black and white.