Here
is the second part of the annual year-end news roundup, covering July through December
2016. The first part, covering January
through June, was posted Friday of last week.
From the volume of news from the second half of the year, perhaps we
should have done a 75-25 split instead of 50-50:
• Early in July CESJ sent an
outreach letter to the Notre Dame Center
for Ethics and Culture regarding the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution. CESJ’s contention (based
on the analysis of William Winslow Crosskey in Politics and the Constitution in the History of the United States,
Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1953) is that the current
interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment is based on the egregiously
incorrect U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down in the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873.
We invited Dr. O. Carter Snead,
Director of the Center for Ethics and Culture, to give Dr. Norman Kurland (who
had Crosskey for Constitutional Law when he attended the University of Chicago
Law School) a call to discuss Crosskey’s analysis in light of CESJ’s proposed
pro-life economic agenda. CESJ also
submitted a proposal for a paper to be delivered at the annual conference in
October at Notre Dame. There was no
response.
• Members of the CESJ core group
met with AME Bishop Don Williams in July.
Bishop Williams was referred to CESJ by the Rev. Virgil Wood of Houston,
Texas, a long-time supporter of CESJ.
Bishop Williams is active as a leader in Bread
for the World, and is interested in the Just Third Way as possibly having
the potential to bring a just and sustainable solution to poverty. Bishop Williams likes the idea of the Just
Third Way with its emphasis on power, private property, and justice, and the
linkage of economics and ethics.
• Members of the CESJ core group
met in July with a representative of Alex Cummings, who is a candidate for
president in Liberia. The discussion
centered on whether the Just Third Way could provide a model platform for the
candidate to present as a way of delivering justice to the country. The representative’s report to the candidate
resulted in the candidate scheduling a meeting with the CESJ core group. Specifics included the underlying philosophy
of government, and the need to make monetary and tax reform the cutting edge of
any program of social reconstruction, particularly since money and credit are
the predominant means of acquiring and possessing capital, and the tax system
defines in large measure to what degree someone actually “owns” that to which
he or she holds title.
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| Fabian socialist Richard Henry Tawney |
• Also in July CESJ received a copy of Edward R. Pease’s The History of the Fabian Society. Reading the book revealed that many elements
of the Fabian program — government control of money and credit, full employment
as the goal of economic policy, taxation for social engineering, and socialism
have been adopted by virtually every government on earth today. It becomes evident why, in light of the
Fabian demand that everyone be forced into a wage system job and become a dependent
of the State, willy nilly, Hilaire Belloc wrote his scathing indictment of
Fabian socialism, The Servile State
(1912), and why G.K. Chesterton and Msgr. Ronald Knox saved some of their
wittiest barbs and pointed criticisms for the Fabian blend of an expanded Henry
George-style socialism and spiritualist pseudo philosophy (and why Pope Pius XI
seems to have included a few jabs himself in Quadragesimo Anno and Divini
Redemptoris). Interestingly, Chesterton in his 1923 book on St. Francis of
Assisi drew a parallel between what some renegade Franciscans did in the
thirteenth century in an effort to invent a new religion under the name of
Christianity with the Fabian program, which drew an outraged response from one
of the leaders of the Fabians, R.H. Tawney, Religion
and the Rise of Capitalism (1926), in which Tawney viciously attacked
religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular, and sneered at
Chesterton and Belloc’s distributism. Ironically, many latter day Chestertonians and
distributists — to say nothing of interpreters of Catholic social teaching —
have adopted the Fabian program.
• In August, CESJ submitted a draft
proposal for a co-project with Virginia Tech.
The proposal was from a Just Third Way perspective, which makes it
sufficiently interesting to intrigue people who fund this sort of thing. CESJ looked at developing ways to help countries
in Africa (or anywhere else) open up the opportunity and means for every person
to be a productive and contributing member of society. In broad terms, this means shifting the
currency from being backed with government debt (the worst thing for a
currency), to backing it with private sector assets, reforming the tax system,
and making it possible for every person to purchase capital that pays for
itself out of its own future earnings.
• In August we found out that a
group called “New World
Standard Critique” republished one and a half articles by Louis Kelso and
Norman Kurland. The Kelso article is “The Great Savings Snafu,” Business
and Society Review, Winter, 1988.
The Kurland article(s) is a journal article split into two parts, “A New
Look at Prices and Money: The Kelsonian Binary Model for Achieving Growth
Without Inflation,” The Journal of
Socio-Economics, Vol. 30 pgs. 495-515.
Part
One is here, and Part
Two is here. The group even has a
menu item, “The
Just Third Way,” that gives full credit to Kelso and Kurland for their
work. There is even an
article by CESJ’s Director of Research, although he is misidentified as
“Deputy President.”
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| Whiteman Street Bridge, Rockford, Illinois |
• Also in August members of the
CESJ core group had an extended telephone conversation with a gentleman in
Aurora, Illinois, an actuary who has been involved in real estate and has been
active in working for political change.
An interesting discussion developed over whether economic democracy or
political democracy should lead. This
particular issue was not resolved, but he did promise to put us in touch with
the mayor of Rockford, a nearby city.
• The mayor of Rockford, Illinois
expressed interest in CESJ’s proposals for economic revival. He claimed to have reviewed the CESJ website,
but did not get back in touch.
• A column by George Will, “Illinois
Exemplifies Our Fiscal Foolishness,” painted a bleak picture of the state’s
economic situation, ironically nothing that couldn’t be solved readily with the
Just Third Way. We sent a follow-up
email to Dr. Will, reminding him that he had once met with Norman Kurland,
president of CESJ, during the 1986 Presidential Task Force for Project Economic
Justice.
• In August CESJ held its delayed
annual celebration. The event was
postponed from April due to a scheduling conflict with documentary filmmaker
Joyce Hart (Sisters of Selma) who wanted to tape the event for possible inclusion in a film about
Louis Kelso, inventor of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). After a brief business meeting, there was a
panel discussion on binary economics and the Just Third Way, followed by a
sandwich buffet lunch. After lunch,
there was a roundtable discussion on what Kelso’s ideas meant to each person.
• Eliza Riley, CESJ’s intern, began at the end of August and began
formulating questions for a survey to be taken in Ukraine in November to
determine attitudes toward widespread capital ownership as a way of helping to
counter the extreme corruption in that country as well as rebuild the economy.
• In September, Norman Kurland
gavea series of lectures via skype to Dr. Ralph Hall’s students at Virginia
Tech. With Dr. Nicholas Ashford of MIT,
Dr. Hall is the author of Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable
Development: Transforming the Industrial State (2011), which contains a
chapter on binary economics, the first on the subject to appear in a college
text. Norm, of course, will be talking
about applications of the Just Third Way within the current legal environment
as well as the direction that economic (and political) development must take to
reestablish justice and ensure as far as humanly possible, and restore the
proper social environment within which each human person — every child, woman,
and man — has the opportunity and means to “pursue happiness,” i.e., acquire and develop virtue in the
Aristotelian sense.
• Also in September, the CESJ core
group met with Dr. Anne Khademian of Virginia Tech. The purpose was to discuss how binary
economics fits into the Just Third Way, and how the Just Third Way fits into
Dr. Khademian’s field of Public and International Affairs. The author of numerous articles and books,
Dr. Khademian’s research focuses on leadership and organizational culture,
inclusive management, policy networks, and the work of organizations involved
in homeland security and financial regulation. The meeting went very well,
going over the time allotted, with follow-up meetings anticipated.
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| The Just Third Way is compatible with Catholic social teaching. |
• Members of the CESJ core group had an introductory meeting in September
with a Notre Dame alumnus who had come across a mention of the Just Third Way
and saw a compatibility with his understanding of Catholic social
teaching. This is not a surprising
development, as Catholic social teaching (as any social teaching should be) is
based on the Aristotelian-Thomist interpretation of the natural law, refined by
Kelso and Adler in the area of economic justice, and by Pope Pius XI into a
completed social doctrine, and analyzed by CESJ co-founder Father William J.
Ferree, S.M., Ph.D., president of Chaminade College, rector of the Catholic
University of Puerto Rico, and Chairman of Dayton University.
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| Father William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D. |
• In September CESJ received a request for an interview about Father Ferree
from a sister at Dayton University who is putting together a short biography of
Father Ferree, drawn from personal reminiscences of the people who knew
him. Many members of the CESJ core group
were friends of Father Ferree, and during the last year of his life he made
what he called his “monthly pilgrimage” from Dayton to Arlington to meet and
discuss the Just Third Way. Many people
don’t know that Father Ferree and Norman Kurland testified before the Lay
Commission on the Economy on September 11, 1985 during the preparation of what
became the U.S. bishops’ 1986 pastoral on the economy, Economic Justice for All. Sadly, the pastoral only made a single —
incorrect — reference to the work of Father Ferree, possibly the world’s
leading expert in the social doctrine of Pius XI, and made no reference at all
to Norman Kurland, a leading pioneer in the expanded ownership movement who
worked with ESOP inventor Louis Kelso.
• CESJ contributed a chapter to a
book to be published in India by Laj Utreyja, Director
of the Institute of Global Harmony in New Delhi. CESJ adapted a paper on sustainable growth
for the project, and submited the final draft to Dr. Utreyja in September.
• The CESJ core group had an
interesting conversation in September with an entrepreneur who has an
interesting idea about how to handle the refugee crisis . . . that doesn’t
involve building walls or shipping them back where they came from. Instead, the idea is to build new communities
of 10-12,000 people each, using new energy technologies and advanced corporate
finance to supply a productive economy that has a net contribution to the
economy instead of a net drain. Citizen
ownership and participation would be key to the concept.
• An article on CESJ appeared in The
Irish Rover, an
independent student publication at the University of Notre Dame. Written by a past editor, John Sullivan, “The
Third Way: CESJ and Binary Economics,” gives a pretty good thumbnail sketch of
the thought of Louis Kelso, and suggests it merits examination as a way in
which people in the future can meet their own needs through their own efforts —
not forgetting the need to take care of people now, of course. There was one small error in the article,
CESJ was called the Center for Ethics and Social Justice instead of the Center
for Economic and Social Justice . . . but it was noted that the Associate
Director of the Center for Ethics and Culture had an article on the previous
page, so someone might have had ethics instead of economics on his mind.
• CESJ connected in September with
a freelance journalist in Melbourne, Australia, who supports “distributism” and
works with the Democratic Labour Party there.
We put the journalist in touch with the editor of the Perth
Herald-Tribune, which has been running a regular column on CESJ and the
Just Third Way — after directing him to the CESJ website.
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| The Just Third Way turns pie-in-the-sky into reality. |
• In October the CESJ core group
met with John Sullivan, the past editor of the
Irish Rover, an independent student publication at the University of Notre
Dame. Although the meeting was geared
toward getting acquainted and giving a general presentation of the Just Third
Way, John took a number of CESJ publications and handouts, such as the ones
distributed last year at the World Meeting of Families. John said that he had become interested in
CESJ by coming across a mention of the Just Third Way in a Notre Dame alumni
internet group. For years he had been
interested in “distributism,” the expanded ownership proposal developed by G.K.
Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, but had decided that it was a little “pie in the
sky” as there did not seem to be any practical means to implement it. He had also been interested in the ESOP and
in applications of Catholic social teaching.
In the Just Third Way he thought he saw a practical program of
implementing the vision of Chesterton and Belloc — to say nothing of that of
Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI.
• In October the CESJ core group
met with Alex Cummings, a candidate for the presidency of Liberia, the country
established as a homeland for freed American slaves. Unique among the countries of the world, the
Liberian constitution states explicitly that everyone has the inherent right to
own property, and that no one can be denied exercise of that or any other right
except through due process.
• Also in October the CESJ core
group had a lunch meeting with a key Catholic academic and official in the
Diocese of Arlington. The meeting went
very well, and his and CESJ’s understanding of the natural law seemed to be in
full agreement. He asked to be kept up
to date on any events CESJ is planning, and mentioned that he has read the
first couple of chapters of Easter
Witness.
• The CESJ core group met in
October with Dr. Samuel Otterstrom of Brigham Young University, currently with
BYU’s Washington Seminar. In the
discussion during and after lunch, Norman Kurland presented Dr. Otterstrom with
a broad overview of the Just Third Way.
In consequence, Norm was asked to be a featured speaker at one of the
Friday sessions that end each week.
• In October CESJ began exploring
the possibility of a conference on a pro-life economic agenda, along the lines
suggested by Supporting Life, and based on the Universal
Declaration of the Sovereignty of the Human Person Under God. Ideally, this would lead to a “bipartisan”
conference bringing together people on both sides of the issue, with everyone
seeing the advantages of a life-affirming economic and financial system over
those of today, a rally at the Federal Reserve, and the passage of a Capital
Homestead Act for the United States to follow up on the success of Abraham
Lincoln’s 1862 Homestead Act, but with a form of capital that is not limited.
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| St. Dominic, O.P. |
• In November 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,
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. Subscriptions to Truth Be Told are free.
• In November the CESJ core group
attended a presentation by Dr. Norman Kurland at the Brigham Young University
Washington Seminar. The presentation was
on “the Just Third Way,” and the students were very attentive and asked a great
many insightful questions
• In November Norman Kurland spoke with Delegate Bob
Marshall of Manassas, a local politician with ties to Christendom College. Bob said he was impressed with Norm’s
analysis of the pro-life movement, and agreed that a Just Third Way approach
might help fill a gap in the economic and political strategies in ways that can
appeal to all people. Bob expressed
great interest in the work of William Winslow Crosskey (1894-1968), whose book,
Politics and the Constitution in the
History of the United States (University of Chicago Press, 1953), details
how the U.S. Supreme Court expanded judicial review far beyond the bounds
intended by the framers of the Constitution first in an effort to preserve
slavery, then to assert the Court’s power over Congress, making the Court the
final arbiter on legislation with the power to create law as well as adjudicate
disputes. Bob said he would talk to Dr.
Timothy O’Donnell, president of Christendom, with an eye toward arranging a
meeting between Dr. O’Donnell and the CESJ core group the next time Dr.
O’Donnell was in Arlington.
• Dave McDonald in Hartford, CT, reported in November he has formed a core
group to start a CESJ chapter there.
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| Emblem of the Fabian Society |
• EWTN ran a show on the
infiltration of socialism into the Catholic Church, “Wolf in Sheep’s
Clothing.” Although CESJ is not a
religious organization, it does rely heavily on a natural law understanding of
Catholic social teaching, something that has been under attack for some time,
notably through adoption of the program of the Fabian Society . . . whose emblem
is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. CESJ has
been warning people about this problem for years, but has not managed to make
much headway. Ironically, some people
insist that R.H. Tawney’s 1926 book, Religion
and the Rise of Capitalism, details a correct understanding of Catholic
social teaching. Tawney, however (who
was on the Executive of the Fabian Society from 1920 to 1933) attacked the
Catholic Church in his book, and claimed that religion would have to get rid of
its spiritual elements if it was to become relevant for the modern world.
• Also in November CESJ heard from the acquisitions editor of
a Catholic publisher indicating that the publisher might be willing to discuss
an exclusive distribution agreement for Easter
Witness.
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| The Great Gate of Kiev |
• CESJ intern Eliza Riley’s
original research survey for the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and Human
Subjects Committee of Brigham Young University was approved in November and was
administered in the field starting Friday, December 2, 2016. The survey was part of a standard omnibus
survey that has been conducted in Ukraine for many years. The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology
(KIIS) conducts the Omnibus, and international clients that have made use of
KISS’s survey services include USAID, the World Bank, UNICEF, Cambridge
University, Duke University, the London School of Economics, and other
universities. The research aimed to
measure how Ukrainians view property ownership (and the unequal distribution of
it in their country) and its effects on a number of problems facing their
country including corruption, low levels of support for democracy, economic
decay, and the erosion of welfare programs in Ukraine. This has important implications for CESJ on
how to implement legislation emphasizing universal access to ownership.
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| Churchill Downs, Louisville, Kentucky |
• Dr. Norman G. Kurland traveled to
Louisville, Kentucky in December to be keynote speaker before an audience of 250-300 people at
Churchill Downs in the Triple Crown Room of the Jockey Club. The topic was “The Game Changer in You.” The closing was a discussion on motivation
and mobilization of the Millennial Generation. Participants discussed workforce readiness for
the future, monetary reform, innovation, and infrastructure for the twenty-first
Century and the responsibility and role Millennials can play in that. Norm also spoke on a panel on
sustainability moderated by Martin Smith. The sponsors had effectively promoted
CESJ’s Just Third Way writings before the event. The ideas were enthusiastically supported among
the 350 participants, including millennial activists in several Southern
states, multi-faith religious leaders, the Unite America Party of Kentucky,
Kentucky members of American Descendants of Slaves, bankers, lawyers,
entrepreneurs, and faculty members and students from several Kentucky
universities. Norm described it as “[T]he most exciting gathering I’ve
attended since I first learned of Louis Kelso’s ideas in March 1965.”
• In December Norman Kurland also attended the World Bank’s
Global Forum on Law, Justice, and Development, which he described as “exciting.”
Norm met many participants who were open
to the Just Third Way principles and strategy for financing the advanced
non-fossil-based energy technologies that need to be developed, manufactured
and marketed globally for addressing global Climate Change. He met with the Forum’s Senior Project Manager
and World Bank legal counsel, gave them some of CESJ’s writings on resilient
green growth, and expects to meet with them on the ideas within the next two
weeks. Norm was introduced to him by a lawyer
from Brazil, who works with him at the World Bank, and wants to become involved
with CESJ and the professional team at Equity Expansion International,
Inc.
• CESJ’s latest book (makes a great
post-Christmas gift), 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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| Can you resist a face like that? |
• 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 57 different countries and 52 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, Russia, the United
Kingdom, and France. The most popular postings this past week in descending
order were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “A Dishonest Way to Argue, I: Apples and
Oranges,” “How to Make America Great Again,” “Book Review: Field Guide for
Heroes,” and “Minimum Wage Follies.”
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#