News from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 35

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is not much good news this week, or at least we haven’t been able to find it.  What little there is seems to be internal, e.g., some important publications are in the works for CESJ, and there has been a great deal of interest expressed in the projects.  As for the rest of the world:

“The Accident of an Urgent Necessity”

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, “the New Christianity”/”Neo-Catholicism” — euphemisms for “the democratic religion” of socialism — was a serious problem in the early nineteenth century — and not one confined to religious society.  The sea change in how people viewed the human person and his or her place in the world was devastating.  It undermined fundamental principles of the entire social order in all its aspects, religious, civil, and domestic.  The social earthquake triggered by the French Revolution has had aftershocks lasting down to the present day.

The New Greek Myth

Recently Alexis Tsipras, the Prime Minister of Greece, has declared the end of the bailout of the country, proclaiming a “day of liberation.”  Greece has completed a three-year emergency loan program worth €61.9 billion to tackle its debt crisis.  It was part of the biggest bailout in history, totaling approximately €289 billion, which will take the country decades to repay.  Cuts in public spending, especially for social welfare programs, will continue.

The Pilgrims of God and Liberty

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, in November 1831, calling themselves “the Pilgrims of God and Liberty,” de Lamennais, Montalembert, and Lacordaire set out for Rome to present their case to the pope.  Much to de Lamennais’s annoyance, the trio was not granted an audience immediately, although that should have been expected in light of the fact that they showed up in Rome without warning.

Just Third Way Podcast No. 31

How to reach Bernie Fans?  Why would we want to do that?  Well, why not?  Bernie Sanders has a following, and people pay attention to what he says, he’s concerned about things — and he is a strong supporter of worker ownership.  It should be a pretty short step for him to see that if ownership for workers is good, ownership for everyone is better, and can accomplish most if not all of the goals he says he wants to achieve through redistribution.  Why do it the hard way?

News from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 34

In case you were wondering how people are benefiting from all the presumably wonderful economic growth (e.g., the stock market booming, falling unemployment, protection of America’s infant industries, etc.), it’s a good idea to keep in mind that there is a difference between the collective and the individual human person.  In the aggregate — the collective sense — things may be going great, per capita income is $1 million . . . except that means one person gets $300 million a year, and the other 299,999,999 people get zip.  And why not redistribute by abolishing private property for one guy so the 299,999,999 can have it?  Because abolishing private property for one means abolishing it for all.  Why not just figure out a way to make everybody productive instead of just one person?  Or you end up with what we have today:

The Birth of Social Catholicism

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, if there was one thing that both the Catholic Church and the Church of England had in common in the early nineteenth century, it was “religious indifferentism.”  Although it stemmed from different causes in each country, the widespread neglect of religious duties and the belief that all religions are essentially the same was a serious problem in both France and England.

The Accountable Capitalism Act

Senator Elizabeth Ann Warren (Democrat, Massachusetts) has created a bit of a stir with her “Accountable Capitalism Act” proposal.  The ACA is a proposed piece of legislation recently introduced by Senator Warren that she believes would restore accountability of corporations to their employees and to the public at large.  At the heart of her proposal is her oft-repeated declaration that “corporations are not people.”

The Unusual Suspects

In the previous posting on this subject we mentioned that as early as the 1820s in France there were a significant number of sects of the “democratic religion” — socialism — springing up everywhere.  Within a generation there had grown to be so many that Alexis de Tocqueville commented in his recollections of the 1848 Revolution,

Just Third Way Podcast No. 30

Every organization needs not only a mission statement and a business plan — and yes, even non-profits need a “business plan” because if you cannot state clearly why your organization exists . . . why does it exist?  Further, the more vague or general an organization’s mission statement (e.g., “The Much Ado About Nothing Society works to promote interest in William Topaz McGonagall (1825-1902), the greatest poet who ever lived or ever will live, and to jabber on endlessly without knowing anything about him.”*) the more chance there is that the organization will eventually lose its way.  It may continue, but more and more people will simply ask Why?

News from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 33

A lot of bull.

Talk on “the Street” (when it’s capitalized like that it’s Wall Street, because that’s where everything is capitalized . . . right?  Wrong, but we won’t go into that today) is that consumer spending is up, up, up, and that’s a good thing, right?  Yes, it’s a very good thing . . . assuming it’s in response to people being able to meet their needs and reasonable wants out of current income.  When it involves buying luxuries on credit — or, worse, necessities on credit — it’s a very, very bad thing . . . but that’s what’s happening, even though that part of the equation is being ignored or downplayed.  In other news:

The Rise of Democratic Socialism

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, disconnecting ordinary people from the ability to produce and the resulting loss of power had serious repercussions throughout the social order in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  Traditional institutions no longer seemed able to fill human wants and needs, whether material, moral, or spiritual, and were increasingly seen as irrelevant or, worse, opposed to human development.

The Economic and Financial Revolution

The situation between John Henry Newman and Orestes Brownson described in the previous posting on this subject had not sprung from out of nowhere.  Nor were they the only ones confronted with what looked like an attack on the very fabric of the social order itself.

Is Development Bad?

At the end of the previous posting on this subject, we noted that some people with agendas had found what they wanted in John Henry Newman’s book, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.  The problem was that what they claimed to have found was the opposite of what Newman had actually written.

Just Third Way Podcast No. 29

This week your host Dave Hamill talks with Monica Woodman from Cleveland, Ohio.  Monica comes to the Just Third Way naturally.  Her father, Bob Woodman, was one of the movement’s earliest supporters, and her siblings are also very strong in their support of the Just Third Way.  It’s a kind of family heritage with the Woodmans, so let’s hear what Monica has to say:

News from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 32

Panic in the streets.  Again.  As this is being written, the stock market is crashing.  Again.  Don’t worry, though.  Give it another hour or two and it will be back up.  After all, it doesn’t really measure anything except people’s inability to recall what happened fifteen minutes ago.  Other things are of more concern, such as the surge in support for “democratic socialism” . . . which might not be all that worrisome, either, despite the hysteria from both ends of the spectrum.  Of course, if people would get off the spectrum altogether and on to the Just Third Way, then a lot of things that take up far too much of their time could take a back seat to what is really important: actually living life:

Newman and Brownson

John Henry Newman was arguably the most notable English convert to Catholicism in the nineteenth century.  We only qualify that statement because if we didn’t, we would get a flood of emails demanding to know why we didn’t consider so-and-so or detailing alleged faults of Newman that presumably disqualify him from a position of preëminence.

“When He Enters into a State of Society”

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, American liberalism that sounded very good in theory has a serious flaw in practice.  It is not too far out of the realm of possibility that this flaw may have contributed to John Henry Newman’s inability to see any difference between the English and European types of liberalism and the American type.  We refer, of course, to chattel slavery.

American Liberalism, Theory and Practice

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, we have been looking at American type liberalism as fundamentally different from the English and European types.  Our case is based on the claim that European type liberalism vests sovereignty in the collective, while English type liberalism puts it in an élite.

Just Third Way Podcast No. 28

This week’s Just Third Way Podcast is the second part of a rebroadcast of a “FOCUS” (Follow One Course Until Successful) show with host Meshorn Daniels and guest Dr. Norman G. Kurland.  Again we invite you to sit back and enjoy!

News from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 31

This week we cover news items from Japan to the Vatican, and that span nearly a century . . . but that you can still read quickly.  Don’t be worried, however.  The only controversial thing we cover is expanded capital ownership, which is very upsetting to the increasing numbers of democratic socialists:

Democracy in America

Following up on the previous posting on this subject, answering the question What is liberalism? is key to understanding the life and times of John Henry Newman, particularly since what has baffled many Newman scholars is the fact that he claimed to be against all forms of liberalism and yet held many opinions and took many positions that people today regard as liberal.  Part of this may be due to the possibility that Newman seems to have had trouble viewing this world as anything other than a temporary stopping place on the way to the next.

A Different Kind of Liberalism

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, John Henry Newman based his thought firmly on the idea that the human person is of paramount importance.  At the same time, he failed to account for (or possibly only failed to appreciate) the fact that human beings, while remaining individuals, are also social, a possibly unique combination Aristotle called “political.”  This may, in part, have caused him to lump all types of liberalism together under the umbrella of what he called “the Anti-dogmatic Principle,” which is to say to someone like Newman, “the Anti-truth Principle.”