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.
 |
| Bull Session (Informal) |
Nevertheless, we had a brief informal Justice University “bull session” this
past week when we took a step back and realized that the movement has made
significant progress over the past year, evidently initiated with the
publication of the Just Third Way Edition of Fulton J. Sheen’s “long lost” gem,
Freedom Under God, originally
published in 1940. The book sparked
contact with a number of individuals concerned with the decay of reason and the
degeneration of the concept of the natural law in the world today.
Consequently, it is becoming even easier to respond to
critiques and criticisms of the Just Third Way that rely on assertion or
logical fallacies to build a case against it.
As a case in point —
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| Henry George |
• CESJ recently came
across a critique of Dr. Norman Kurland’s paper, “A New
Look at Prices and Money,” originally published in The Journal of Socio-Economics.
The “unpublished essay” (published on the website of “The School of
Cooperative Individualism”), “A
Georgist Take on Kelsonian Binary Economics,” while more thorough than some
other commentary on Dr. Kurland’s paper, errs in analyzing binary economics in
terms of the thought of agrarian socialist Henry George (1839-1897), noted author
of Progress and Poverty (1879). This, we believe, was unfair. It is perfectly proper to point out where
binary economics might not hold together given basic logic or its own
principles (although no one yet has), and then demonstrate how George’s system
is presumably superior. To say, in
effect, however, that binary economics is flawed because it is not georgist
socialism invalidates the critique.
You first have to demonstrate that you know what an apple is before you
can explain why an orange is better as a fruit, not because oranges are just
better than apples. Otherwise you’re
just . . . comparing apples and oranges.
 |
| We only know what we read in the papers |
• The paper being
prepared on the business cycle for The
American Journal of Economics and Sociology will directly respond to some
of the criticisms raised by georgists (followers of Henry George) about binary
economics. The paper is in the final
stages of editing. A project still in
development, What Happened to
Distributive Justice?, will go into the issues raised by George in much
greater detail, especially since CESJ gained access to key newspaper files and
unpublished contemporary sources about the controversies stirred up by his
proposals.
• Sales of CESJ’s
latest “Paradigm Paper,” The Political
Animal: Economic Justice and the Sovereignty of the Human Person, are doing
well. The Political Animal, like all CESJ publications, is available in
bulk at substantial savings. With the
20% discount applicable to bulk sales (i.e.,
ten or more copies of a single title), a full case of 50 is $400, plus
shipping. Enquire at “publications [at]
cesj [dot] org” for details and cost of shipping bulk/wholesale orders. Individual copies are available now on Amazon, and on Barnes and Noble. Please
note: CESJ does not sell retail.
• Deacon Joseph
Gorini, member of the CESJ Board of Counselors, has been invited to submit a
series of articles or videos on economic justice to Catholic Online, possibly the single
largest Catholic internet presence. This
ties in very well with a number of other connections CESJ has been making
recently, all with a fundamentally sound natural law/reason-based approach to
all forms of justice.
 |
| "Are we in the right meeting?" |
• CESJ is exploring
the possibility of jointly sponsoring some JU (that's "Justice University" for those not in the know) events to introduce key elements of
the Just Third Way to religious teachers and leaders of all faiths, possibly
having a “pilot” event as early as February, when CESJ’s Belgian Fellow, Astrid
U., will be visiting for a week from the University of Leuven as part of her
program in getting a Master’s degree in economics.
• CESJ is also still
working on surfacing student interns or others willing to put together a short
promotional video to launch the Campaign for Distributive Justice to fund a
number of projects over the coming year.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 51 different countries and 45 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from
the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and India. The most
popular postings this past week were “Aristotle on Private Property,” “Thomas
Hobbes on Private Property,” “Halloween Horror Special: The Faith that Ate
Reason,” “The Purpose of Production,” and “Poverty and Freedom.”
Those are the happenings for this week, at least those 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, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#
