Everyone at CESJ and the Coalition for Capital Homesteading
is gearing up for the annual “Rally at the Fed.” Even so, there are a lot of things happening,
with this week being particularly productive.
This may be due in some measure to our current intern, who seems to be
something of a mover and shaker at American University. If you’re in the “market” for an unpaid
internship (although you do get free lunches), consider CESJ. You’ll be able to get in on the ground floor
of such initiatives and projects as:
• Mark the annual “Rally at the Fed” on your calendar for
the middle of April. This year’s could
be a pivotal event, as the Federal Reserve did not begin operation until
November of 1914, making this year the “real” centennial of the central banking
system of the United States. What with
the obvious need for an asset-backed and elastic reserve currency to secure the
foundations of the global financial system, more attention should be paid to
the original purpose of the Federal Reserve.
It was not established to finance government, but (you guessed it)
provide an elastic and asset-backed reserve currency to promote private sector
growth and development.
• There was a meeting earlier this week to further the plans
for the Rally and CESJ’s 30th Anniversary Celebration. If you were considering joining or renewing your CESJ membership at the
“sustaining” level, you might want to keep in mind that the $300.00 annual
sustaining membership dues would be particularly appropriate this year. Of course, “basic” members are always more
than welcome, especially since CESJ could not survive without them and our
volunteers. Nor are we inclined to turn
down lifetime memberships at the $10,000.00 level . . . .
• Amazon has (temporarily) started using CESJ Director of
Research Michael D. Greaney’s book, So Much Generosity, a survey of the fiction of Cardinals Wiseman and Newman,
and Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, as a “loss leader.” Yesterday the price for the $20.00 book was
$5.06. Today it is $4.81. We understand the limit is one per customer,
but how many do you really need? Get
your copy today for a more than 75% savings off the cover price. It’s not a CESJ publication, but (as you
might expect) there is a definite Just Third Way “slant” on the essays in the
book. The book is published by Universal
Values Media, Inc., which has a co-marketing arrangement with CESJ. UVM specializes in republishing “long lost”
morally oriented works of fiction, “adding value” in the form of forewords and
annotation. Publications of note are the “mainstream” novels of Robert Hugh Benson and the complete novels of John Henry Newman (both of them!).
• CESJ and UVM publications are available through the “CESJ Bookstore” and “Distributist Books and Media.”
There is also a selection of free materials available for download,
notably the two collaborations by Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler, The Capitalist Manifesto (1958) and The New Capitalists (1961) on the “Free Downloads” page of the new CESJ
website (which you should visit in any event).
• We just received a complimentary copy of John Horvat II’s Return to Order (2013) for review and
comment. Since we got the book late
yesterday (and we’re in the final stages of the first draft of our own book on
a related subject that will, of course, be a bestseller) we haven’t had a
chance to do little more than glance through it. There appears to be some good things about
the natural law and rights, especially private property. This, of course, is no more than you would
expect from the Vice President of the U.S. branch of “Tradition, Family, and Property,” a Catholic lay organization dedicated to the restoration of a moral
culture. The economics and finance
appear to be “Austrian,” which is about as consistent as it is possible to get
within the necessarily limited paradigm dictated by adherence to the principles
of the British Currency School. The Just
Third Way, of course, incorporates “binary economics,” which adheres to the
principles of the British Banking School.
Recognizing and allowing for the fundamental differences between
currency school economics and banking school economics, there appears to be a
great deal of common ground and room for productive collaboration.
• A few more glitches have developed in the oft-postponed
series of meetings in Pennsylvania scheduled for next week, but a CESJ team is
going ahead. Deacon Joseph Gorini, Chairman and CEO of "Evangelization Enterprises, Inc.," and Apostolic Action, Inc., has been moving
mountains in his efforts to arrange for members of the CESJ core group to meet
with as many key people as possible while there. While nothing is absolutely certain, most of the costs are generously being covered
by Joseph and his wife (and they should keep track of what they spend, as it is
a legitimate tax deduction on Schedule C or Form 1120 . . . ), so it is well
worth the time and the effort. The trip
is an excellent example of how to organize to create opportunities by being a
door opener rather than a gatekeeper.
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| Fulton Sheen Mini-me |
• Guy S. in Iowa, “The Fulton Sheen Guy,” sent us a copy of
a press release announcing that a miracle has been approved in the “cause” for
Fulton Sheen’s canonization, or official recognition as a “saint” by the
Catholic Church. Miracles and purely
religious declarations and teachings are a little bit beyond CESJ’s purview (we
focus on the natural law and how to create economic “miracles” by implementing
common sense reforms of tax and monetary policies), but it’s nice to know that
our best-selling author is getting recognition.
Of course, it also won’t hurt sales of CESJ’s Just Third Way Edition of
Sheen’s Freedom Under God.
• Yesterday Norman Kurland taped two one-hour episodes of
the Harold Channer Show for rebroadcast at a later date in New York. With the advantages of modern technology,
Norm was able to be interviewed on camera by Harold in New York without leaving
CESJ headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 60 different countries and 58 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada (we just hit a record number of readers in Canada for some
reason) to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the
United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the Philippines. The
most popular postings this past week were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “Aristotle on Private Property,” “The Fulton
Sheen Guy,” “Social Justice, IV: The Characteristics of Social Justice,” and
“News from the Network, Volume 7, No. 7.”
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.
#30#