And in the introduction to his 1992 anthology, Kenneth Kraft writes:

In cases such as the treatment of animals in scientific research, classic Buddhist tenets are being applied to situations that differ greatly from the contexts in which those tenets were originally conceived. The Buddhist creed of nonviolence that once functioned as a personal moral code for monks in ancient India is now expected to provide guidelines for dealing with complex social and political dilemmas. Though such leaps may seem dubious from certain scholarly or religious standpoints, they are earnestly being attempted nonetheless. Graphic reminders of the discrepancies between ancient and modern worldviews are furnished by the traditional stories cited in these pages. (1992: 6)

Modern Western socio-political theory presents unique and unprecedented solutions—It must not be “read back” into Buddhism—“Historical reconstruction” must be avoided

Modernists consider the unique problems of the modern world to have spawned some unique solutions. For example, in the same 1992 introduction Kraft first cautiously writes:

An essayist in the New Yorker magazine recently observed that nonviolence “ranks as one of the few great modern discoveries.” At first, this remark may appear short-sighted: Jainism and Buddhism have stressed nonviolence for millennia, and the Sermon on the Mount was not preached last Sunday.

But he then continues, highlighting the significance of the modern (mostly Western) contributions in this area:

Yet the point is well taken. The twentieth century has witnessed Gandhi[,] … Martin Luther King[,] … and the nonviolent reversals of … Communist party power[s]. … Though we tend to associate the concept of nonviolence with ancient Asian thought, some of the most notable instances of nonviolent political action have occurred in the West during this century. […]
Gene Sharp argues in his essay that the political potential of this “modern” discovery has yet to be fully appreciated. (1992: 7)

When traditionists counter that many such “modern solutions” are in fact evident in ancient Buddhist teachings, modernists simply dismiss such traditionist contentions as methodologically naïve and historically “reconstructive.” These modernists tend to be well aware of the scriptural “evidence” that the traditionists cite (Nāgārjuna’s Jewel Garland; Aśoka’s edicts; the Cakkavati-, Kūṭadanta- and Sigālovāda-suttas, and so forth), but they claim that too much has been read back into such sources. For example, in The Social Face of Buddhism: An Approach to Political and Social Activism,(14) Ken Jones levels the “reconstructionist” critique at what I have been calling the traditionists (what he here calls “modernists”):

We believe that it is unscholarly to transfer the scriptural social teaching uncritically and without careful qualification to modern societies, or to proclaim that the Buddha was a democrat and an internationalist. (1989: 66)

[I]t is not legitimate to find instant scriptural and historical authority for contemporary secular ideas and ideologies (like democracy or Marxism) by reading them back into the evidence from scripture and history, whilst ignoring both the spiritual significance of that evidence and/or its culture-bound meaning. This is a common device of … reductive modernism(15)(1989: 197-98)

Concerned to make Buddhism manifestly relevant to the social and political requirements of the post-colonial era, these [reductive] modernists tend to read the scriptures in terms of certain dominant contemporary ideas, as if they were originally a programme for social reform; their over-arching spiritual and existential context and significance is lost beneath a burgeoning humanistic rationalism. Meanings are read into them which are at best arguable and at worst extravagant and tendentious. (1989: 237)

Likewise, in his introduction to the recent anthology Engaged Buddhism (1996: 20), Christopher Queen levels a similar charge at what he discerns to be two types of “reconstructionists.” Thus, following good Buddhist style, having first convincingly presented his pūrvapakṣa (the opponent’s view—primarily Rahula’s), he then presents a lengthy argument in which he attempts to refute this view by formulating his own definition of “social engagement” in such a way that he can admonish us to reject the “two extremes of historical reconstruction.” These (traditionist) extremes are (1) “the extreme of a primitive Buddhist counterculture bent on social reform,” as exemplified, presumably, by those such as Thurman, and (2) “the extreme of a sangha directing social change from its position within the power elite,” as exemplified by Rahula.

While Queen focuses the bulk of his critique on his second extreme, Kenneth Kraft takes on (at least implicitly) what Queen has identified as the first extreme, here with reference to the essay by Thurman (1988b) cited above (p. 8):