"Convenient Social Virtue" and Moralizing Language

As described by John Kenneth Galbraith "convenient social virtue" is what the more powerful members of society expect of its less powerful members when they presume that they will acquiesce in their own exploitation because it is "the right thing to do."

Those who so acquiesce are praised, those who do not are subject to harangue, or worse, for their moral failure.

These days, with our so-called moralists more apt to be moralizers, ever punching downward, it seems that most of the moral disapprobation we hear expressed in the mainstream is of this type. Thus is it ever with, for instance, accusations of "entitlement" and "self-pity," ever directed at those apt to be least guilty of those faults--the charges likely to really mean that these people the moralizer thought unworthy of anything because of their low station committed the crime of caring about themselves when their social superiors do not care about them at all.