This has been a very interesting week — in a good way. (We can't help but recall the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times.") On the one hand, more people are expressing dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs and most still fail to grasp that the Just Third Way is not based on redistribution of current wealth in one form or another.
On the other hand, they are asking. If enough people ask, some will have that "eureka!" breakthrough and truly understand that we are not talking about merely tweaking the current system. Nor are we saying that the current system must be destroyed before any good can be done. That would be contrary to both social and individual justice.
No, we are talking about restructuring the system (social justice) so that our institutions can make certain that each is rendered what each is due (individual justice). To achieve that goal, here's what we've been doing:
• Norman Kurland was again interviewed on Tuesday on "Tuesdays with Tormala," a radio show out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. A former City Commissioner, the host Rick Tormala cleaned up the Assessor's Office, saved the 911 system, prevented waste to the tune of a couple million dollars, and describes himself as not being on the usual "right" to "left" spectrum — like most Americans puzzled by the antics of politicians intent on "business as usual" when it is clearly not only inadequate, but on a runaway train in exactly the opposite direction from where we should be going.
• Norman Kurland was also interviewed on Wednesday on "The Focus Show" out of Louisville, Kentucky. Needless to say, both interviews covered aspects of the Just Third Way, something the country and the world need to hear before we get too diverted by politics as usual as the election draws near.
• Also on Wednesday the CESJ Core Group had a luncheon meeting with an official from a major U.S. university. The official was very interested in the correlation between the Just Third Way and the renewal of the vision of America held by the colonists and Founding Fathers. As readers of this blog are aware, the just-ended series on Orestes Brownson (The American Republic, 1865) and Theodore Roosevelt ("The New Nationalism," 1910) analyzed the thought of these two pivotal figures in American intellectual history from the perspective of the Just Third Way, and did not find them wanting.
• CESJ is pleased to announce that the Economic Justice Media edition of William Thomas Thornton's classic proposal for ending the Great Famine in Ireland (1846-1852), A Plea for Peasant Proprietors, first published in 1848, revised in 1874, is now available for bulk purchase, and will soon be available in individual copies. Our edition features a new foreword, annotation, and appendices explaining certain aspects of 19th century Irish politics that might be unfamiliar to some people, as well as elements of the Just Third Way. Ordering information for wholesale purchases can be found on the special website for the book.
• Norman Kurland had an article accepted for a new publication from the "Global Harmony Association" headed by Dr. Leo Semashko. We will follow up and keep you posted when the book becomes available.
• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 60 different countries and 50 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, the UK, Bulgaria, Canada and the Philippines. People in Trinidad and Tobago, Australia, Russia, Venezuela and Poland spent the most average time on the blog. The most popular postings this past week were "It's the Academics v. the Politicians . . . v. Economic Reality, Part I: Accounting," "Orestes Brownson and Socialism, I: The Evil," "Thomas Hobbes on Private Property," "Orestes Brownson and Socialism, II: The Civil War," and "Orestes Brownson and Socialism, III: The Constitution."
Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we know about. If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we'll see that it gets into the next "issue." If you have a short (250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog — do not send them to us to post for you. All comments are moderated anyway, so we'll see it before it goes up.
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