A
number of things are happening that tend to bear out the sense we got last week
that things were starting to heat up in the Just Third Way . . . despite the “cold
snap” being experienced inside the DC Beltway (you’d think all the hot air
coming off Capitol Hill would warm things up a bit, though). That being the case, we’ll get right to it:
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| Can you sue a river for flood damage? |
• In an interesting
twist, New Zealand and India have granted the status of “person” to sacred
rivers within their borders. A person in
law is something that has rights and duties.
The ostensible reason for this move is to protect the rivers by allowing
them to punish people who harm them by suing them. While this sounds very nice, it should be
pointed out that rivers are not actually human beings, and are therefore not
persons by nature. The same end could
have been achieved simply by passing — and enforcing — laws prohibiting
harm. It also raises the issue as to
why, at a time when human beings are being stripped of personality on a massive
scale through abortion, poverty, and lack of access to the means of acquiring
and possessing capital, things are gaining personality. There is also the issue as to whether, if a
river can sue a human being if it is harmed (and does it have to appear in
court?), can it also be sued if it causes harm?
Floods kill people, inadequate water flow can destroy crop yields, and
people drown. The river should be held
responsible.
• An article on the real solution
to unemployment — expanded capital ownership — has been submitted to a major European newspaper. If accepted, the article will appear in a
special May Day issue — the first of May is dedicated to “Labor” in many
European countries. .
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| The New Ghost Towns |
• A brief article in The Washington Post noted that, with
President Trump’s proposed budget cuts, “Many rural communities depend on
federal grants that fund infrastructure projects and programs that benefit
residents.” Translated into common
English, this means that “many rural communities” exist only because they
receive federal grants, suggesting there is no reason for the community to
exist other than to receive grant money.
• CESJ’s Director of Research has
signed a contract for a book deal with a major Catholic publisher. While the book will be written from a Just
Third Way perspective, that will not be the book’s focus. Instead, the Just Third Way will be a
subsidiary theme, illustrating how lack of widespread capital ownership leads
to political as well as economic instability.
• An advisor to the Treasurer of
Australia has expressed interest in learning more about the monetary and fiscal
policies of the Just Third Way.
• The Labour Party of Western
Australia has been considering forming a working group to study the Just Third
Way.
• The Sidney Morning Herald has scheduled an article on the Just Third
Way.
• The CESJ Executive Committee held
its monthly business meeting this past Monday.
• William Mansfield of the Mansfield Institute
has been appointed CESJ Director of Millennial Engagement.
• Norman Kurland and Dawn Brohawn
will be presenting at the April 8, 2017 “Just Lead”
Mansfield Institute Conference in Louisville, Kentucky.
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| Be a Party Animal, Make Us Smile! |
• 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.
• We have had
visitors from 39 different countries and 40 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the
United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and India. The most
popular postings this past week in descending order were “Thomas Hobbes on
Private Property,” “1. Is Distributism a
Parody of Christianity?” “The Byzantine Homestead Act,” “2. Is Distributism a
Parody of Christianity?” and “The Millennial Workplace.”
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#