Justice for all?

What is Justice? I don't mean the definition of the word, but the philosophy of justice. Who gets to determine what exactly is justice?

I ask because some make the distinction between justice and vengeance. For example, when society imprisons a person for committing an offense against another, it is called justice. But when a person who has been wronged responds in kind, it is called vengeance and is condemned by all.

Justice as we know it in the West is the socially accepted standards of what is morally "right".But what has been determined to be morally right for the masses by the few, may not actually be so for the masses.Vengeance than maybe the only recourse. It is still justice that the person seeks, but through means that require operating outside of the socially agreed upon structure that is we call law.

We are told to "turn the other cheek" and that "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" but is that really fair? Who are strangers to tell anyone what is a correct punishment for a wrong and what is not?

One also may wonder whether "society" is even capable of rendering an equitable assessment of justice. How many times have we seen a nations with properly elected governments pass or support laws that were discriminatory and cruel? The Fugitive Slave Law, the Dred Scott Decision,Plessey v Ferguson, Nuremberg Laws...to name a few of the morally odious legal decisions in history.

Furthermore, the idea that law is blind is very much in doubt. For example, Hate Crimes laws. While well meaning, they ultimately are unjust because the end result is the unequal weight given to crimes committed as a result of hatred of a race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation over a crime committed simply with malicious intent. A truly blind justice system cannot place the motivations of the actors over the end result.

A beating is a beating no matter what the motivation was. Hate should be considered in the strictly legal sense of why a crime was committed, but it cannot be separated and judged by itself in a system that claims to be "blind". Once you start judging beliefs you open your previously "blind" system to prejudice. A national justice system should only judge actions, not thoughts.

History provides many more examples of how a system constructed and approved by a body of people is quite often not just. The most infamous and egregious example of this was the murder of 14 year old Emmett Till by two white men on the 27th of August, 1955 in Money, Mississippi. After a short trial, the murderers of Emmett Till--Roy Bryant and J.W.Milam--got off because they were fortunate enough to have an all-white jury.

What infuriates one even more is what happened after the trial. This blurb from an About.com article about the Till murder highlights this travesty:

On January 24, 1956, Look magazine published the confession of Milam and Bryant, who had agreed to tell their story for $4,000. According to their confession, they beat Till with a .45 in Milam's barn. They proceeded to take him to the Tallahatchie River where they had him undress and then shot him. A gin fan was tied around his neck with wire in order to weigh the body down in the river. They proceeded to burn Till's clothes and shoes.

Justice? How can any system that does not permit the punishment of those who admit OPENLY to murder, be called "just"?

This leads me back to my initial question of what is justice. Justice is the application of punishment to those who have committed an offense upon another. Whether it is socially accepted or not, it does not matter in my mind. Those two men should have been subjected to the same treatment they afforded Emmett Till. It isn't a matter of bringing back Till or discouraging others from similar acts, but a equitable reaction to a heinous crime committed by low lives.That they were permitted to live out their lives is an injustice that no amount of Christ or Gandhi quotes can erase.

While for many, the philosophy of forgiveness is a foundation of their lives, I cannot accept it as my own.. While I respect such beliefs, they don't satisfy my guidelines for my version of justice.The best form of Justice, in my opinion, is that which punishes those who have done wrong with a punishment that fits the crime. That, to me, is justice.

Lincoln and the revisionists

Abraham Lincoln is one of our nation's most revered figures. His honesty, compassion, determination along his genius for writing and humble origins, have helped endear him to millions of Americans of later generations. That he was often vilified in his own times and had personal foibles has not been covered extensively until books like A Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

But some have attempted to alter our perception of "Honest Abe".Revisionists from the Left and Right have and continue to try to soil Lincoln's reputation with accusations of a lack of concern for the slaves as a result of racist beliefs and acting as a despot.

The former accusation is based largely on a famous statement Lincoln made about his priorities in a letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune , on the 22nd of August, 1862. In it Lincoln states that:"

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views."

This is proof, some leftist historians claim, of Lincoln's lack of concern for the eradication of slavery.But as even a cursory review of Lincoln's history reveals, he was an abolitionist and most of all, an astute politician who understood that in order to eliminate slavery he first had to preserve the Union. Without the ability to impose its will, what could the government do for the slaves?

As he would later display in the wording of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln to walk a thin line between abolition and heeding political and military concerns.(such as preventing border states from seceding)He had to have priorities and preserving the Union had to be number one.

Further, applying modern notions of race to those who lived 140 years ago is a bit preposterous.To judge one who gave blacks the chance to breath air as freeman so harshly is insulting and quite frankly, shameful.

Some right wing historians and southern sympathizers have tried to portray Lincoln as a tyrant who violated the right of the South to secede. The imposition of government upon the unwilling is the very definition of tyranny they say.

Save for the most obvious fact that Southern leaders fought to preserve the "peculiar institution" of human bondage, their argument could possibly generate some sympathy within unbiased minds.The distrust of a powerful, centralized, government is strong among many Westerners.

But one has to ask this: What can be more tyrannical than forcibly bonding someone to a lifetime of backbreaking work with the lash an ever present threat?Who can respect a society that actively works to keep in ignorance 40% of its population?(Bitter Fruits of Bondage: The demise of slavery and the collapse of the Confederacy, 1861-1865. Armisted L. Robinson) Who can sympathize with a society that is built upon the something as immoral as slavery?

In his Memoirs of General U.S. Grant, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant judged the South's reason for secession:

"I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse."