As
the situation continues to deteriorate nationally and internationally, and the
long slide to moral relativism and nihilism (to say nothing of capitalism and
socialism and ismism) continues, the number of surreal incidents and just plain
nuttiness accelerates to what, without the act of social justice and the
principles of economic justice, would be the point of no return. Just keep the Just Third Way in mind as you
read this issue of New from the Network if you want to retain your sanity:
• A subject that has been addressed
many times on this blog and in last year’s article in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, “Pope
Francis and the Just Third Way”: is it possible to be both a good person
and a good citizen? A recent sermon preached by Rev. Tommy Nelson, pastor of Denton Bible
Church in Denton, Texas, on October 23, 2016, addresses this issue. It’s a bit lengthy, it separates reason and
faith, the history is a bit off, and you will have to filter through the
Evangelical Christian “language,” but the concerns are valid. The sermon
is titled, “Continental Divide” and it might be worth a view. Of course, it is essential to keep in mind
that without the laws of social justice and the principles of economic justice,
a real solution is impossible; we disagree with Rev. Nelson that people are
helpless in the fact of unjust or unnatural governments or other institutions,
our own tools gone wild, and ultimately the only thing you can do is pray and
wait for the Second Coming. The laws of
social justice and the principles of economic justice can be found in the
social doctrine of Pope Pius XI and CESJ’s Capital
Homesteading proposal, respectively.
• As if to provide a graphic
illustration of the trend of modern society, a professor of literature at a
small Catholic college in Rhode Island has been the object of student protests
over the professor’s adherence to “traditional” (i.e., natural law) standards and beliefs — and the college
administration sided with the protestors and against the teachings of the
Catholic Church in the name of “diversity.”
The story is related in an interview with journalist Rod Dreher published in The American Conservative, “Tony
Esolen Contra Mundum” (“Tony
Esolen Against the World”). It might
seem a bit pretentious or apocalyptic to use the same phrase used to describe
the Fourth Century struggle of Saint Athanasius against the Arian heresy, but
consider: had Arianism won the religious struggle, Christianity as something
distinct from traditional paganism would have disappeared (for reasons that we
won’t go into today or, hopefully, ever).
Similarly, if Dr. Esolen suffers adverse consequences for supporting
traditional moral values, it will not be decisive in and of itself, but it will
add to the avalanche of moral relativism and nihilism, especially in Academia,
that is so close to destroying the natural law basis of society completely.
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| Is Wynne saying the State, a "Mortall God," is your real father and mother? |
• Shades of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, in which the word
“mother” is an obscenity, and “father” an off-color joke. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any
more surreal, in an October 16, 2016 article in the Toronto Sun, “Wynne
Government Targets ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’,” by Joe Warmington, it is
reported that “Ontario” (meaning the government of Premier Kathleen Wynne, “the
least popular premier in Canada”) wants to remove the words “father” and
“mother” from the law code in the name of “diversity,” and substitute up to
four undifferentiated “parents.” In
other areas, universities are urged to adopt “inclusive language” that excludes
traditional definitions and beliefs, the University of New Hampshire has issued
a “bias free language guide” that is biased in favor of moral relativism,
meaninglessness, and nihilism, and, on the grounds that open discussion of same
sex marriage leads to suicide, the demand
has been made that the Australian Parliament should decide the issue
unilaterally without a plebiscite. We’re
still trying to figure out the logic of that last one.
• The Perth Herald-Tribune has published "Improvising History," about
how the tendency to (as Keynes put it) “re-edit the dictionary” is undermining
the traditional basis of the social order.
The Perth Herald-Tribune now
has half a dozen articles from the Just Third Way perspective from CESJ’s
Director of Research.
• Mark Gross, O.P., editor and
publisher of Truth Be Told, the newsletter of the Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, Western
Province Dominican Laity, has requested permission to republish
yesterday’s blog posting, “Faux
Solidarism and the Totalitarian State.”
“Faux Solidarism” is one of a number of recent blog postings that have
generated a great deal of interest and, possibly, some soul-searching among
people whose assumptions and “facts” are questioned at the most fundamental
level. By the way, subscriptions to Truth Be Told are free.
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| "I'm Number One! I'm Number One!" |
• For some time on this blog we’ve
been claiming that modernism, New Age thought, and socialism pervade today’s
society at all levels. Yesterday, an
article appeared on Tony Perkins’s Washington Update website, “Plenty of Question
Marx About Millennials.” The article
zeroed in on the many people today who have favorable views of Marxism, and who
have whitewashed or “improvised” history to conform to Marxist rhetoric, e.g., the stunningly ludicrous claim
that George Bush as president killed more people than Stalin. Making the situation even worse, the article
highlighted only Marxist socialism, and did not address the pervasiveness of the
presumably more moderate Fabian socialism and its offshoots that are embodied
in the modern Welfare State.
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| "A heavy and progressive income tax" |
• On Wednesday evening, November 2,
members of the CESJ core group had a meeting with a young political hopeful and
his wife. A number of topics were
covered, but the discussion centered on taxation, especially CESJ’s single rate
tax proposal versus the Marxist heavy and progressive tax specifically intended
to destroy private property. The hopeful
did not appear to be convinced of the justice or the practicality of CESJ’s
proposal, but it is not clear that he completely understood it, either.
• On Monday, the CESJ core group
had a lunch meeting with a staff member of a key conservative Congressman. Obviously we can’t give any information,
except to say that the staffer seemed impressed with the consistency of the
Just Third Way with his boss’s position.
• CESJ’s latest book, Easter Witness: From Broken Dream to a New
Vision for Ireland, is available from Amazon
and Barnes
and Noble, as well as by special order from many “regular” bookstores. The book can also be ordered in bulk, which
we define as ten copies or more of the same title, at a 20% discount. A full case is twenty-six copies, and
non-institutional/non-vendor purchasers get a 20% discount off the $20 cover
price on wholesale lots ($416/case).
Shipping is extra. Send enquiries
to publications@cesj.org. An additional discount may be available for
institutions such as schools, clubs, and other organizations as well as
retailers.
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| "You haven't signed up for Smile, and I'm sad." |
• Here’s the usual announcement
about the Amazon Smile program,
albeit moved to the bottom of the page so you don’t get tired of seeing
it. To participate in the Amazon Smile
program for CESJ, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift
through. Once you’ve typed (or copied
and pasted) “Center for Economic and
Social Justice Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you
will be taken to the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• As of this
morning, we have had visitors from 50 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, South
Africa, and Germany. The most popular postings this past week in descending
order were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “Aristotle on Private Property,” “Popes are
the Craziest People,” “The Purpose of Production,” and “A Brief Discourse on
Social Credit, I: What IS ‘Social Credit’?”
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#