Restoring Social Justice

We’re troubled by the extent of social breakdown today.

We’re troubled by how it afflicts individual lives and how it affects our society in general.

We’re troubled by the fact that a teenage boy going to school in one of our major cities may learn more about a life of delinquency than he does about a future filled with hope and opportunity.

We’re troubled that four out of 10 children and nearly seven out of 10 black children in America are born to unmarried mothers, a fact that will cast a long shadow down the course of a child’s life.

We’re also troubled by welfare state responses to problems like these. It’s not only that welfare state responses discourage independence and self-sufficiency and that costly programs have proven ineffective at stopping social breakdown. We’re also troubled because some of these approaches actually make people and society worse in the process. Welfare state programs have sometimes hurt the very people they were intended to help.

We need an approach that better reflects human dignity and leads to better results for all concerned.

The challenges are daunting. Some are born into bad circumstances; others have made bad choices. But we believe that individuals have the capacity to defy the odds stacked against them, that every human being has the potential to correct course, and that freedom and opportunity are the birthright of all people.

We believe that successful solutions combine sound policy and people-driven initiatives. Stopping social breakdown means restoring personal responsibility and mutual responsibility….mutual responsibility not through government redistribution, but through relationships based on reciprocity. That’s why we look first to the vast resources of the family, neighborhoods, religious congregations, community groups, and other support networks to tackle social breakdown.

When it comes to public policy, our priority is to cultivate the conditions in which these civil society institutions can flourish. For those individuals who have become dependent on government, policy should create the proper incentives to point them toward independence. The welfare reform of 1996 is a good example, but it only achieved this in one major program among many other welfare-related programs in Washington.

Clearly we have much more to do.

RestoringSocialJustice.com highlights sound policy and people-drive initiatives that are changing society by transforming individual lives. The principles at work extend across borders, and this site’s ideas and research are drawn from several countries. Together, we seek a more effective approach that will restore individuals, families, communities, and our societies at large to full flourishing.