News from the Network, Vol. 7, No. 47

This week has seen a sudden upswing in book sales, mostly of the Just Third Way Edition of Fulton J. Sheen’s Freedom Under God.  There also seems to be a spurt in the works of Robert Hugh Benson, the unique novels of John Henry Newman, and even those touching on the subject of widely distributed ownership of capital listed on the Distributist Books and Media website.

Economic Justice, V: Being Thankful

At this time of year, today especially, it is customary to rack (not “wrack,” evidently) one’s brains to try and figure out something for which to be thankful.  This is especially the case if you’ve been invited somewhere for dinner and the tradition of making a short speech covering what you have to be thankful for is suddenly sprung on you.

Economic Justice, IV: What is “Social Justice”?

Today’s subject, social justice, involves us in a double difficulty.  First, there is a problem with defining it.  To many people, “social justice” means State action to take up the slack when individual justice and charity just don’t seem adequate, and people are in need.  When that happens, so the theory goes, the State steps in and mandates or imposes desired results.  Not surprisingly, this error is virtually identical to the error many people make with distributive justice.  Even less of a surprise, many people confuse distributive justice with social justice by defining both in the same way, and thus both incorrectly.

Economic Justice, III: What is “Distributive Justice”?

If you thought yesterday’s posting on participative justice was a bit difficult to grasp, you ain’t heard nothing yet.  Participative justice is relatively easy to get across.  It’s a new term, so there’s no baggage to jettison before we started to talk about it.  Unfortunately, everybody “knows” what “distributive justice” is: just what Karl Marx said in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Economic Justice, II: What is “Participative Justice”?

As we noted yesterday, economic justice is divided into three principles, which are themselves forms of justice.  These are participative justice, distributive justice, and social justice.  We will look at participative justice today.

News from the Network, Vol. 7, No. 46

The increasingly surreal world situation makes it ever more clear that, of all the various proposals that have been made, and (especially) those that have been implemented, only Capital Homesteading has the potential to deliver economic justice for all.  Everything else focuses exclusively on direct action to ameliorate the effects of problems, rather than dealing with the underlying causes of the problems — an individualistic or collectivist approach, rather than a truly political or systemic approach.

Economic Justice, I: What is “Economic Justice”?

A few days ago we completed a short series on the importance of each and every individual, and of each and every institution in society being in conformity with the natural law.  Some people may have been confused, of course.  Because the breakthrough in moral philosophy that reconciled individual and social ethics — the life of the individual as an individual, and the life of the citizen in the State — was the accomplishment of a religious figure (Pope Pius XI), and he framed his thought in religious terms, some people might have been turned off.

How to Distort Anything

Everybody is jumping up and down about the stream of videos on which Jonathan Gruber, the “Obamacare Architect,” is caught saying that Americans are stupid, and other words to that effect.  What they seem to be missing is that this attitude is nothing unique.  Do an internet search using the words “Americans are stupid,” and you’ll be amazed at how many matches pop up.

Religios Politikos, IV: The Act of Social Justice

Thirty years or so after Leo XIII issued Rerum Novarum, Pius XI was elected to the papacy.  From the very beginning of his pontificate he made it clear that he was going to reconcile individual ethics and social ethics, and thereby present a practical means to implement the vision of Leo XIII.

Religios Politikos, III: “Are You a King?”

In this short series we’ve covered how essential it is to conform our individual and social behavior to the absolute moral standards of the natural law in order for that behavior to be truly human.  In Christian/Western terms, this is often characterized as “the Reign of Christ the King.”  Nor is this substantially different for any other faith or philosophy.  Substituting any other personified moral standard gives you the same thing.

News from the Network, Vol. 7, No. 45

We sometimes get too close to things to see if there is any progress being made.  Nowhere is this more evident than when you are charged with reporting the news from the movement each week.  Things seem to go much more slowly when you keep a constant watch on them — “a watched pot never boils,” as they say.

Religios Politikos, II: Humanity is Social

See yesterday's posting as to why we changed the title of this series.

Yesterday we noted that, given the Christian belief that Christ is the perfect embodiment of true God and true man, people become more fully human and acknowledge Christ as “king” by adhering to the precepts of the natural law.  Nor is this only a “Christian” belief.  Every philosophy and organized religion says essentially the same thing: become more fully human by adhering to the precepts of the natural law as taught by your religious or philosophical teacher.  This is an idea that came to us from the pagan philosopher Aristotle — and that Aristotle probably got from others.

Religios Politikos, I: What is “Politics”?

Yes, we changed the title.  It looked as if we were picking on Catholics or other Christians. No, we offend everybody.

Earlier this week we were copied on an e-mail that was in response to last week’s election.  It seems there was a lot of discussion in religious circles whether a committed Christian (or a member of any other religion) could even vote when the choices on all sides were so bad.  The obvious response, of course, is “If you know how the job should be done, why aren’t you running?”

In Your Face

A while back in ancient times (i.e., September 16, 2014) there was an article about how “the rich” who were tired of associating with us peasants were starting their own social network called “Netropolitan.”  Netropolitan bills itself as a sort of Facebook for the elite, as “the online country club for people with more money than time.”  We’re reminded of Robert (formerly “Bob”) Hope’s opening to Fancy Pants: “No popcorn during my performance, peasants.”

Death to Reason! Long Live Love!

The idea seems to have gotten about in the last couple of centuries or so that “love” has triumphed over and abolished reason.  Love conquers all.  All you need is love.  All that jazz about truth and justice . . . feh.  It just gets in the way.

News from the Network, Vol. 7, No. 44

Even the Devil backed down from this guy

Even given the “massacre” of the Democratic Party on Tuesday (of which less below), we don’t expect that anything will change with respect to fundamentals when the Republicans are in power.  There still aren’t any political leaders with any kind of realistic vision or even idea of returning power to the people through capital ownership.  Maybe that’s understandable.  Daniel Webster, who pointed out in 1820 that “Power naturally and necessarily follows property,” was a Whig, not a Democrat or a Republican.

“The Classical Forms of Justice”

Is it Thursday already?  A few weeks of Mondays ago, we were asked to prepare a briefing sheet on areas of potential differences with a potential new member of CESJ’s advisory board, the Board of Counselors, with whom we met shortly after.  (Happy ending: the potential new member became a member, so any differences were straightened out.)

The Academic Fantasy

Every now and then students, especially college students, complain that their education and the academic environment isn’t anything like the “real world” it’s presumably training them to enter.  That’s true.  In one sense, academia isn’t supposed to be a reflection of the real world, but of real life, a place in which one prepares to assume the great task of becoming more fully human.

Election Day Special: God or Cæsar?

Two questions a lot of people are asking themselves today as they stand in line at the voting booth (aside from, “Is this really better than working?” and “How much longer is this going to take?”) is whether they can morally vote for the lesser of two (or more) evils, or respect their religious convictions and be good citizens at the same time.

Poverty and Freedom

Almost exactly one month ago the Wall Street Journal ran a piece by William Easterly.  The point of the article was that there is a link between poverty, and economic and political freedom or (to be precise) the lack of wealth and income leads to a lack of economic and political freedom.  (“Singing About Fighting Poverty, Slightly Off-Key,” Wall Street Journal, 10/02/14, A13.)