In the film version of The
Student Prince (1954) — featuring the voice of Mario Lanza because he
walked (as they say in film land) after recording the songs but before shooting
the scenes — the Doctor (the prince’s tutor) is summoned with his pupil to the
king’s chamber in the middle of the night.
They are both, obviously, concerned.
 |
| Prince & Grampa King Singalong. |
Earlier the king had called the Doctor on the carpet. It seems that the prince’s prospective bride
(whose dowry was essential if the kingdom was to keep out of the red) had found
him too much of a soldier, and too little of a lover. After the king demanded that the Doctor
instantly teach the prince how to be a human being, the Doctor explained that
it didn’t work that way, and that the prince’s study time had been diverted
into military training too many times to correct the problem with a royal
command.
 |
| "If you knew more history. . ." |
So, as the pair (the prince and his tutor) are being
escorted under armed guard after being dragged from their beds, the prince
remarks, “Well, they can’t do anything to me. I’m the heir-apparent.” The Doctor gives him a Look and says, “If you
knew more history, you’d be more worried.”
What’s the point of this otherwise tedious anecdote dredged
from watching too many musicals late at night instead of reading an improving
book or sleeping?
The stock market. If
you haven’t noticed, the swings are getting wilder and more frequent. If you knew more history, you’d be more
worried. The same thing was happening in
early 1929, when a series of “mini-crashes” alerted some investors who,
concerned about the volatility of the market, liquidated their holdings. Not too many, to be sure, but enough to
create a few myths later about “international bankers” (i.e., “the Jews”) who manipulated the market and deliberately
caused the Crash months later.
So, what are we doing about it?
 |
| John Paul II encouraging CESJ's work. |
• Due mostly to the
holidays and the press of year-end work, the launch date of the Campaign for
Economic Justice (formerly the Campaign for Distributive Justice) has been
moved to January 1, 2015. We still have
some ducks to line up and text to rewrite and refine. Don’t worry — we’ll be taking your money
soon. If you feel you can’t wait (or if
you want to get a charitable deduction for this year), send your check to
“CESJ”, P.O. Box 40711, Washington, DC, 20016, U.S.A. Be sure to note on the memo line that it is
for the Campaign for Economic Justice.
Any amount is fine, but because it costs time and money to process any
contribution, we ask that you give at least $5.
Any contributions received in excess of actual needs will be applied to
other CESJ programs, so everything advances economic justice, one way or
another.
 |
| Heinrich Pesch, S.J. |
• Recent research has
revealed that a number of thinkers in the past, such as Father Heinrich Pesch, were closer to the Just Third
Way than many people have supposed — and some were further away than many
people feared. In broad terms, what
we’ve discovered is that there are three strains of thought running through
western civilization, 1) liberal/ positivist, 2) conservative/ idealist, and 3)
real/ common sense-ist. Unfortunately,
such is the condition of academia today that few people have been taught to
think and are thereby able to hold contradictory assumptions at the same
time. Most people’s position on anything
is thus a confusing mix of positivism, idealism, and common sense, and is also
in a constant state of change, making presenting a new concept like the Just
Third Way very difficult.
• Guy Stevenson, “the Fulton Sheen Guy,” presented CESJ with
a rare first edition of Fulton Sheen’s Freedom
Under God from 1940. It, of course,
lacks the foreword we added to the Just Third Way edition, but we have plenty
of copies on hand that have that. If you
want to have a copy, it’s easy. Just go
to Amazon
or Barnes
and Noble online and buy one. If you
want ten or more, send an e-mail to “publications [at] cesj. [dot] org” we’ll
quote you a price. It won’t get there in
time for Christmas, but you’ll save 20% off the cover price (shipping is
extra).
 |
| Series 1875 "Lazy 2" National Bank Note. |
• We just received a
newsletter from an investment advisor who is convinced — as we are — that the
world is soon going to abandon the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency. The U.S., frankly, has been breaking the
Number One Rule for a reserve currency for far too long for the rest of the
world not to: it MUST be asset-backed . . . and government debt is not,
repeat, not an asset. It’s a (hold your breath) debt.
Unfortunately, the advisor didn’t have any solution (except to buy what
he is selling, of course), but we do: Capital
Homesteading, which includes an elastic, asset-backed reserve currency to
replace the tissue paper that now passes current.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 58 different countries and 55 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, Canada, India, and Greece. The most
popular postings this past week were “Two Key Questions for the Georgists,” “Aristotle
on Private Property,” “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “The Purpose of Production,”
and “Economic Justice, III: What is ‘Distributive Justice’?”
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#
