The main moral which I hope to justify is in a nutshell this: whereas the ideal of equality is in an easily understood sense forward-looking, and concerned with making and keeping everyone's condition equal; justice is in the corresponding obvious sense backward-looking, and concerned that everyone should obtain and not be deprived of (or, as the case may be, suffer) their several—and, presumably, often unequal—deserts and entitlements. If this is correct then egalitarians of outcome, albeit at the cost of sacrificing a powerful propaganda advantage, ought to urge their Procrustean ideal neither as nor as a part of, but rather as a rival to, what they should see as the reactionary, backward-looking, unsystematic, irrelevant, gothic pursuit of justice.
(Antony Flew, "Equality or Justice?" Midwest Studies in Philosophy 3 [1978]: 176-94, at 177)
Note from KBJ: Flew is accusing egalitarians of engaging in persuasive definition. They redefine the word "justice," which has a favorable connotation, so that it includes (or is identical to) equality. If they were honest, they would admit that equality and justice are different, indeed rival, ideals.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 