This past week seems to have been a
“Justice University” week. A number of
projects relating to that endeavor have been advanced materially, and
relationships are being built. We’re
also seeing increasing evidence that the world needs the Just Third Way, and
for many reasons:
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| Maybe not THIS university president. . . . |
• Meetings With University President. The CESJ core group has had a number of
meetings with the president of a university in the Midwest, although not like this. Discussions have been going very well, and
CESJ has already gotten a first-hand refutation of our somewhat misplaced claim
that no one in Academia is teaching justice.
Thankfully we were wrong. We will
have to start saying that not enough schools are teaching an adequate
understanding of justice (and the “Social Justice Warriors” in many places are continuing
to do all they can to discourage interest in and understanding of social
justice). The core group has been put in
contact with the chairman of the Business Division, and we are looking forward
to even more fruitful discussions on integrating the personalist principles of
the Just Third Way into Academia.
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| People over things |
• New Video Short, “People and Things.” CESJ’s new video, “People
and Things,” which was released to a limited audience last week, is getting
some good feedback — but we need more.
We invite you to follow the link, take a look over the material, view
the video, and send us your comments.
The video is, of course, not intended as a full course in the Just Third
Way; it’s less than two minutes long, after all. The idea is to “hook” the viewer with a
simple and straightforward (not simplistic or dumbed down) presentation that’s friendlier
than a six-hour lecture course. What
(sort of) inspired us was the way Dr. Seuss managed to convey some extremely
complex moral and ethical issues through rhyme and pictures. The idea is not to give the whole paradigm,
but to get viewers to think about it and want to learn more.
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| Everybody can get into the act! |
• Video Project. Work on
producing some pilot videos that are more didactic in tone (but still
entertaining, of course) is proceeding, although the usual glitches and delays
occur with the usual frequency. When a
project is initiated using all-volunteer help and available equipment and
materials, a quick turnaround is, of course, out of the question. On the plus side, a successful completion of
a couple of pilot videos will enable us to approach grant-making foundations
with a “sample product” and a specific proposal to fund more productions. It will also help us surface volunteers who
like to work on specific projects and be able to tell their family and friends
what they’ve done and show them. High
school and college students should also find both the videos and the production
process of interest, especially in building a resume for continuing education
or professional advancement (“getting a job”)..
• Spam Plan. This week’s Wall Street Journal had an article about
how to stop the tsunami of spam telephone calls: tax them, one cent a call for
all telephone calls. If that doesn’t
work, raise the tax to five cents a call.
According to the article (which we unfortunately didn’t save), there
were (are you ready for this?) fifty billion spam calls made last year in the
U.S. alone. That’s 50,000,000,000
telephone calls that NOBODY wants.
Taxing all telephone calls would hardly be noticeable for most
individuals and legitimate businesses, but it would add $500,000,000 to the
cost of the spam calls, which might put them out of business. And if half a billion dollars in increased
cost without return doesn’t do it, how about an additional $2.5 billion? That’s more than the GDP of some countries
(okay, the dozen or so poorest countries, but still . . .), and should make a
dent in the endless and annoying interruptions to your life.
• Taiwan and the Just Third Way.
In today’s Washington Post (in
an article we did not misplace), Josh
Rogin gives an enlightening — and frightening — look at the situation Taiwan
faces, relying on support that they are not getting from the U.S. to counter
mounting pressure that they are getting from Communist China (“Taiwan Needs America’s
Help,” The Washington Post, 03/29/19,
A-19). A growing number of people in
Taiwan are starting to look at absorbtion into China as the best alternative
for the future of the country, evidently having a blind spot to the situation
in Hong Kong. Of course, the best help
the U.S. could give Taiwan is what would also be the best help the U.S. could
give itself: a Capital
Homestead Act to secure the dignity of every person.
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| Ignore him. |
• Jussie Smollett Charges Dropped.
At first it seemed like an outrageous example of how the Rich&Famous
can get away with anything. The mayor,
police, and people are outraged. So were
we . . . until we thought about it for a moment. Why did he stage a fake attack on
himself? Publicity. What did he want? Publicity.
What would bringing him to trail give him? Publicity.
Refusing to bring him to trial may just be the best thing to do. Why waste the taxpayers’ money to give Smollett
exactly what he wanted in the first place?
Anyone who is truly outraged can stop watching his show, and any company
can pull its advertising. The worst
thing that can happen to someone like that is to be ignored.
• CESJ Newsletter. The
Spring Issue of the new CESJ newsletter is well along and should be out before
the end of April.
• CESJ Publications. Work
proceeds apace on a significant number of publishing projects, ranging from a
compendium of short pieces by CESJ co-founder Father William J. Ferree, S.M.,
Ph.D., a second printing of CESJ’s classic Curing
World Poverty, and What Happened to
Social Justice. There are also a
number of other projects for other publishers that are in the works, including
a short history of “Catholic Action,” a “Manual for Modernism,” and an
introduction to personalism from the Just Third Way perspective.
• 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 29 different countries
and 44 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over
the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada,
India, and South Africa. The most
popular postings this past week in descending order were “Freedom
Under God,” “Just
Third Way Special Video Broadcasts,” “News
from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 12,” “The
Four Pillars of a Just Market Economy,” and “Thomas
Hobbes on Private Property.”
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#