Everyone here at
CESJ survived Black Friday . . . mostly by staying in the office and working to
advance the Just Third Way. We figure
the greatest gift we could give to the human race is one of hope for the
future, and the Just Third Way has that and more:
• In an interesting development,
the Just Third Way Hour podcast has been named by at least one listener as a “recommended
podcast.” The latest one (recorded
yesterday) is now available. It’s a
little shorter than some of the others, but there are now half a dozen others
from which to choose. One listener (a
different one from the one who recommended it, although she recommends it, too)
said she now has a “Bluetooth” (an electronic device, not a cosmetic
prosthesis) so she can listen to episodes as she does her housework; it’s
better than soap operas, at least in her opinion. (Of course, the problems addressed by the
Just Third Way start to sound like a soap opera after a while, except that they
can be resolved much easier.) Word does
seem to be getting around, though, about the Just Third Way Hour (which may be
as short as 28 minutes. . . .); the “competition” (one group “sort of”
promoting expanded ownership . . . in a somewhat socialist fashion) has begun
its own series of podcasts on the same subjects we cover. Coincidence? . . .
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| Fr. Coughlin: not quite social justice. |
• We just obtained a copy of Rev.
Charles Coughlin’s Lectures on Social
Justice (1935). It is . . .
interesting. The first thing we saw on
opening the book was a tirade against a wealthy individual who said that
corporations should not be subject to laws that are any different from the laws
affecting human beings. This sounded
reasonable to us, as all persons, natural or artificial, should be equal before
the law, except for natural rights inhering in human beings concerning which
the State has no competence to grant or abolish in any event. Coughlin, however, declared that what the
wealthy individual really meant was
that corporations should not be subject to any law at all! This was a blatant example of a “straw man
argument,” for Coughlin made the mistake of quoting the wealthy individual
verbatim, and it was crystal clear that the capitalist had not said what
Coughlin claimed he said. Scanning the
rest of the book, it is evident that the arguments are no better on any other
subject.
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| Keynes: "The joke's on you!" |
• In a similar instance in a FaceBook
comment this past week, someone took exception to the statement by John Maynard
Keynes we quoted in a blog posting to the effect that the State has the right
to “re-edit the dictionary” when it comes to altering the meaning of money and
changing the terms of contracts.
Evidently missing the fact that Keynes was quoted verbatim and the cite
given, the commentator declared Keynes had never said any such thing. The only thing we could do was point out that
the quote from Keynes was in boldface type, almost impossible to miss, and that
the source was given. There has been no
response from the commentator yet.
• Ten Battles Every Catholic Should Know. As many of you already know, TAN Books, an imprint of Saint Benedict Press,
has made Ten Battles Every Catholic Should Know
available for pre-order, for delivery in mid-January. Interestingly, this book is already the
bestselling of any book by an author connected with the Just Third Way. And why is this of interest to the Global
Justice Movement, or an interfaith organization like CESJ? First, there is the little-known synopsis of
the efforts of Heraclius to promote widespread capital ownership. It must have worked, because the Eastern
Roman Empire survived for another 800 years or so, during 450 of which it was
considered the most powerful political entity in the western world. Second, if you want to have a world without
war, you had better know what war is about — otherwise, you just end up like
the people who want monetary, tax, or ownership reform who have no idea what
money, taxes, or private property really are.
(And if those reasons aren’t good enough, it’s an exciting book to read,
anyway.) It’s available now for
pre-order from Amazon
and Barnes
and Noble
• Work continues on the draft of The Question of Human Dignity: What Happened
to Social Justice. A tenured
professor of Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy is giving the manuscript the
once-over, and we’re hoping to run it past an expert in the natural law and
Catholic social teaching, even though the book is from an interfaith
perspective.
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| "I do so enjoy a good book and contributing to CESJ!" |
• Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making
your purchases through the Amazon Smile
program, Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your Amazon 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.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 40 different
countries and 48 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 Poland. The most
popular postings this past week in descending order were “How to Stimulate Economic
Growth,” “About That Corporate Tax Rate,” Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “How
to Make America Great Again,” and “Birth of the British Currency School.”
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#