There seems to be
an increasing polarization between “left” and “right,” or between “liberals”
and “conservatives.” Very few people are
aware of the fact that the Just Third Way has the potential to attain liberal
goals without violating conservative principles:
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| Medieval Monetary Reform |
• This past Tuesday Dr. Norman G.
Kurland gave another talk (this one on the importance of monetary reform) on the Just Third Way over the internet to people in
Asia, the South Pacific, and Africa. More
than 50% more people attended the session, a 166% increase over last week. The geographical breakdown was 33% from Australia,
19% from Singapore, 14% from Hong Kong, 11% from New Zealand, 8% from Japan, 5%
from India, 3% from Taiwan, 3% from South Africa, 2% from South Korea, and 2%
from Thailand. The talk was very well
received, although again due to logistical difficulties (which may soon be
fixed), there was no question and answer period. Interest was again very high, with only two
people leaving before the session was over, a remarkable achievement,
considering the spread of time zones.
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| "I'm confused. I thought we developed distributism to counter socialism!" |
• The recent
postings on the Just Third Way blog
on “distributism” (the policy of widespread capital ownership, with a
preference for small, family-owned farms and businesses, and large enterprises
owned on shares by the workers, developed by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire
Belloc) have caused quite a stir in some quarters. A small number of prominent “Chestertonians”
and “distributsts” have started insisting that distributism is a type of
socialism, but a “good” type. We
disagree, as do a significant number of less-prominent Chestertonians and distributists. There have been a few negative commentators
(a total of four at last count), but by far the greater number of people is
“liking” and “sharing” the posts; within the space of a few hours for one
posting there were over 1,000 page views.
People are starting to wonder why prominent Chestertonians and
distributists either seem to be in favor of socialism, despite Chesterton and
Belloc’s clear statements on the subject, or are remaining silent.
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| The (Sheep) Skin You Love to Touch |
• CESJ has gotten a
larger number of applicants for internships than ever before. This is very encouraging, given the somewhat
“esoteric” nature of the Just Third Way and the significant differences between
it and the surrounding culture, as well as the fact that interns are not paid.
• The CESJ core
group had a very good meeting with “TK,” a doctoral candidate at Webster
University who also teaches a number of classes in Just Third Way-related
subjects. TK is looking toward having
Norman Kurland and others speak at some of his classes. TK would also like to
co-author some journal articles, and has some media outreach.
• Joe Recinos will
be attending an international
convention on cooperatives sponsored by the National Cooperative Business
Association in Washington, DC the first week in October. He wants to talk about how the Just Third Way
and cooperatives fit together. Joe has
also been working on arranging a meeting for Norman Kurland with the NCBA’s new
president.
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| Who needs Grumpy Cat with CESJ's Amazon 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 33 different countries and 42 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the
United States, India, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ghana. The most popular postings this past week in
descending order were “ ‘The Kingdom of God on Earth’,” “What’s the Problem,
Distributist?” “Orestes Brownson v. the Socialists,” “Social Justice IV: The
Characteristics of Social Justice,” and “Correcting a Few Distributist
Non-Facts.”
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#