“Like a Summer’s Cloud”

In the previous posting on this subject — John Henry Newman and what later became known as “the act of social justice” — we saw that the controversy at Oxford University in the 1830s at the height of the Oxford Movement was starting to heat up.  Although not clearly defined, the battle lines were beginning to be drawn between the more or less orthodox “High Church” Anglicans centered (more or less) around Newman, and the less or more unorthodox “Broad Church” Anglicans who started coalescing (less or more) around the Reverend Renn Dickson Hampden.

How Things Went Wrong

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject — the claim that modern society is going to Hell — we looked into three recent books that went into the subject in some depth.  These were Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option (2017), Anthony Esolen’s Out of the Ashes (2017), and Archbishop Chaput’s Strangers in a Strange Land (2017).  We identified what we believe to be the “cause behind the cause” of the problems on which the three authors focus.

Just Third Way Podcast No. 40

This week Host Dave Hamill relates the story of how he got interested in the Just Third Way and Capital Homesteading.  As a special bonus, he’s also trying out a new segment that he calls “Plutocracy Story of the Week.”  This first one is about former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker's interview with the New York Times about his just-released new book, Keeping at It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government.  Volcker says we are becoming a plutocracy . . . which comes under the heading of “everything old is new again,” meaning this is hardly “news.”

News from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 43

Fluctuations in the stock market have become so common that it’s almost not worth commenting on.  If you have publicly traded shares, you’re probably watching it like a hawk, anyway.  If you don’t, you probably don’t really care.  One thing you should care about, however, is getting the Capital Homestead Act passed as soon as possible and get things back to a more rational system:

Counterattacking in the Culture Wars

Recently we’ve been reading a few books about the decay of culture and civilization.  We mean recent books, although the general theme and even many of the specifics have been the subject of commentators for millennia.  They all have certain elements in common:

A Good Way to Go Bad

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal there was a relatively small item that, no doubt, many people missed.  On the surface, of course, there is no particular reason why anyone should pay attention to it . . . and that might be the biggest problem of all.

Distributism and Ronald Reagan, IV

Last week we made a series of postings on the Presidential Task Force on Project Economic Justice, creatively titled Distributism and Ronald Reagan I, Distributism and Ronald Reagan II, and Distributism and Ronald Reagan III.  Today we conclude the series with (what else?) “Distributism and Ronald Reagan, IV.”  Making it easy for us, the conclusion of Reagan’s speech sums up things nicely:

Just Third Way Podcast No. 39

Ƒor a slight change of pace, this week Dave Hamill interviews retired Merchant Marine Commander Robert Woodman who some years ago led the effort for a worker buyout of the Ogleby Norton line on the Great Lakes.  Some listeners may be aware that Ogleby Norton was once called the Columbia Line, and their flagship was an ore carrier named the Edmund Fitzgerald. . . .

News from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 42

The mode of this week’s media is market madness . . . with a nod toward a number of future publications hopefully soon to come down the pike.  Other than that, there have been a lot of thoughtful conversations and one meeting, as well as the usual advancement of the Just Third Way:

Distributism and Ronald Reagan, III

Even though we have provided links to the first posting in this little series, as well as the second posting in this series (so people can read the whole story, if they are so inclined), some readers — admittedly very, very few, a statistically “zero sample” — insist on either putting words into our mouth or don’t bother to read before jumping to a (wrong) conclusion or making an assertion they pull out of . . . the blue.

Distributism and Ronald Reagan, II

In yesterday’s posting we broke the astonishing news (a mere thirty-seven years old . . . so should it be called “olds” instead of “news”?) that Ronald Reagan, fortieth president of the United States, “the Gipper” in the second greatest movie ever made (the first, of course, being The Quiet Man), and the bane of whoever needs a convenient excuse or target for bane-ing, may have been a not-so-closet distributist! — that is, if you believe columnist John Chamberlain, but he’s a Dead White European Male (DWEM™), so you can believe anything you want . . . and you probably will . . .

Distributism and Ronald Reagan, I

President Ronald Reagan?  The Gipper?  A distributist?  Yes — at least according to John Chamberlain in his July 8, 1981 These Days column, “Everything Back to the Electorate.”  Chamberlain, who anticipated today’s Chesterton revival by a few years, compared Reagan favorably to G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.  Possibly outraging many who even then equated distributism with “democratic” or other forms of socialism, Chamberlain claimed that the problem with England and its “Nanny State” was that they had gone over to Fabian socialism instead of to distributism.

Just Third Way Podcast No. 38

In this week’s Just Third Way podcast we continue our series of discussions on CESJ’s Core Values.  This episode covers Core Values 5 and 6, discussed by Dr. Norman Kurland, president of CESJ, Dawn K. Brohawn, CESJ’s Director of Communications, and Michael D. Greaney, CESJ’s Director of Research.

News from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 41

Naturally many people this week are obsessing about the drop in the stock market as if it actually means something.  It is, of course, useless to point out that if you buy a share of stock at $10, and it goes up to $100, and then drops to $50, you haven’t lost $50.  At the same time, you haven’t made $90 or $40, either.  You haven’t made or lost one cent, and won’t until you actually sell your share of stock.  It would be different, of course, if you had purchased your shares on the margin and had to come up with the money to repay the acquisition loan or meet the margin call, but that doesn’t happen too much any more, since the minimum required margin these days is 50%, not the 1-3% sometimes required prior to the Crash of 1929.  In any event, most of what goes on in the stock market is speculation, not true investment, as recent events once again demonstrate:

Non-Christian Christianity

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, the appointment of the Reverend Renn Hampden to the Regius professorship of Divinity at Oxford University in the 1830s provoked an intensification in the ongoing struggle to define the identity of the Church of England.  Hampden’s innovative views on what constitutes Christianity provoked a storm of outrage among the more traditionally minded (meaning those who accepted Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah), which in turn prompted a reaction from Hampden’s supporters.

Halloween Horror Special: Regulation v. Internal Control

According to Dr. Lawrence Ball on a recent episode of “Squawk Box Europe,” inadequate regulation will bring about the next financial crisis.  Dr. Ball, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of the book, The Fed and Lehman Brothers: Setting the Record Straight on a Financial Disaster, getting rid of regulations such as the Dodd-Frank Act lays the groundwork for an economic meltdown of cosmic proportions.

The Romish Menace

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, a number of people became worried by the success of the Oxford Movement in waking people up to the perceived need to return the Church of England to a more traditional understanding of Christian doctrine and even the meaning and purpose or religion.  Those with a vested interest in adapting doctrine and practice to modern conditions to make the Church of England more relevant to the modern age needed a cause around which they could rally.

Just Third Way Podcast No. 37

In this week’s Just Third Way podcast we continue our series of discussions on CESJ’s Core Values.  This episode covers Core Values 3 and 4, discussed by Dr. Norman Kurland, president of CESJ, Dawn K. Brohawn, CESJ’s Director of Communications, and Michael D. Greaney, CESJ’s Director of Research.

News from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 40

A lot of things have been happening this week, and we still don’t have to resort to the usual causes of the day about which the major media obsess.  As far as we are concerned, this demonstrates that the Just Third Way is the way to go; all other presumed solutions to the messes of modern society are simply the result of desperate people trying desperate measures before they have tried common sense:

Birth of the Broad Church

As we hinted in the previous posting on this subject, even after the defeat of the motion at Oxford University in the 1830s to replace the Thirty-Nine Articles with something even more vague and stripped of all substance that students and faculty could sign, the situation did not improve.  John Henry Newman had earlier predicted that “bitterness” would ensue as a result of the conflict, and he was right.

CESJ Looks at Money, Part II

This is the second part of a posting completing the one begun last Wednesday.  Recently members of the CESJ “core group” got into a discussion with a couple of monetary theorists who confused what CESJ says about Just Third Way monetary reforms and the proposals of, e.g., the American Monetary Institute.  The monetary theorists requested a detailed analysis of exactly where what CESJ advocates from the AMI’s proposal.

Politics and Religion

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, in March of 1834 members of the Cambridge University Senate petitioned parliament.  Their goal was to abolish the requirement for students and faculty to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England in order to take a degree or obtain a fellowship, respectively.  Although it was not rigorously enforced at Cambridge, requiring someone to sign the Third-Nine Articles kept anyone who was not a member of the established church from obtaining a degree or teaching.

Just Third Way Podcast No. 36

For a little change of pace (and subject), this week your host Dave Hamill talks with Jerome Peloquin about the psychology of change: