Despite the evident bafflement and lack of vision exhibited
by the powers-that-be on both sides of the aisle, we are making progress in
presenting and even implementing the Just Third Way. This appears to be making people nervous who
think — erroneously — that their jobs, reputations, careers, and so on, are
somehow threatened by the Just Third Way.
Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. The Just Third Way is not merely a rising
tide that lifts all boats, it makes certain that everyone has a boat that can
rise with the tide, and that none of the boats have leaks. It even includes a lifeline for people whose
boats, through no fault of their own, prove not to be seaworthy.
The only people the Just Third Way doesn’t really help
(except by managing to keep them afloat somehow) are those who (like the
Keynesians) insist on drilling holes in the bottom of their boats to let the
water out, or who (like the socialists) heroically lash themselves to the mast
and ram their boats into others’ because the other boats are too big, they don’t
like the color, or they don’t believe the others got their boats honestly, and
should be killed.
You can make the system foolproof, but you can’t make it
damnfoolproof. Still.
• We are getting closer to surfacing a macro model for the
Just Third Way within the confines of existing law. All the component parts of Capital
Homesteading have at some point been tested and work. They have just not been put together as an
integrated system at the macro level.
Every ESOP company, however, is a working model of Capital Homesteading
at the micro level, although none is perfect.
• Savvy secondary market investors are recommending
underpriced precious metals for their speculations. This is a significant danger sign that those
with their fingers on the pulse of the secondary market are worried that the
bubble may burst, and want to put their past savings into something that
presumably will always have value, no matter how bad things get.
• We expect very soon to finish a paper requested by a
graduate professor at a “Pontifical University” in South America outlining the
Just Third Way. The focus is on what
Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler called the slavery of past savings, and how a
shift to future savings can benefit everyone.
• A local clergyman has expressed interest in theories that
correlate the Just Third Way with what Pope Pius XI meant by “the Reign of
Christ the King.” Far from being a
theocracy or forced conversion of all (other) infidel dogs, Pius XI’s concept
appears to be a call to base civil society on the natural law, common to all
people, regardless of belief.
• We believe we may have located two books by Fulton Sheen
that are in the public domain. We will
be reviewing these works for possible publication sometime in the future.
• This past week’s efforts to surface someone who can open
the door to a meeting between Norman Kurland and Cardinal Dolan to discuss an
alternative to “ObamaCare” met with qualified success. Most Pro-Life leaders refused to stick their
necks out and preferred to pass the buck to someone else by claiming that what
they consider unacceptable provisions in the healthcare act is outside their
area of concern or competence. We did
get a few people, however, who are exploring possible avenues, demonstrating
that you don’t usually win a war by retreating.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 65 different countries and 48 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 United Kingdom, Maldives, Australia, and India. The most
popular postings this past week were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “Aristotle
on Private Property,” “The Dictatorship of Money, IV: The Turning Point,” “Binary
Banking Theory, V: Fractional Reserve Banking,” “Binary Banking Theory, I: The
Types of Banks.”
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.