John Rawls on Naturalization
If people are unequal in their natural gifts, is it unjust to treat them differently?
We may reject the contention that the ordering of institutions is always defective because the distribution of natural talents and the contingencies of social circumstance are unjust, and this injustice must inevitably carryover to human arrangements. Occasionally this reflection is offered as an excuse for ignoring injustice, as if the refusal to acquiesce in injustice is on a par with being unable to accept death. The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts.
| John Rawls, Theory of Justice
As Matt McManus put it:
Natural inequalities are real, and however we respond to them, we’ll never succeed in making a morally perfect world.
But we must refuse the inducements of conservative rhetoric to determine how we, as a society, define — and implement — justice.