News from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 22

Not as many news items as last week, but there are still significant events going on, especially as the powers-that-be insist on ignoring the Just Third Way:

A New View of Society

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, modern socialism (which includes Marxist communism) traces its roots to the thought of Robert Owen.  Owen’s theories anticipated the modern Welfare State as well as the drift into secularism, the deification of the abstraction of humanity, the decay of marriage and family, and a host of other ills attendant upon the alienation of most people from direct ownership of the means of production, and thus personal power and the means of participating as full members of society.

Chesterton and Shaw: The Last Debate

In our previous posting on this subject, we completed a brief overview of the lost debate between G.K. Chesterton and G.B Shaw.  Today we begin an equally brief summary of the last debate between the two “metaphysical jesters,” as one commentator termed them.  (William B. Furlong, GBS/GKC, Shaw and Chesterton: The Metaphysical Jesters.  University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1970.)  And so our story begins. . . .

Brothers Under the Skin

On Sunday, July 14, 1833 at Oxford University in England, the Reverend John Keble (1792-1866) ascended the University Pulpit and preached his scheduled “Assize Sermon.”  An “Assize Sermon” is preached in the Church of England at the opening of a term of the civil and criminal courts — “the Assizes” — hence the name.  The sermon is officially addressed to the judges and officers of the court and is intended to exhort them to do their duty and render justice.

Interview with Joe Recinos, Part I

This week we bring you the first part of an interview with Joseph W. Recinos, the Latin America Director of the Center for Economic and Social Justice.  Joe, a development economist, is a volunteer, and a co-founder of CESJ.

News from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 21

A lot has been going on this week, not the least of which is the annual conference of the ESOP Association in Washington, DC (which we may report on next week, as it is still in progress).  The bottom line?  Let’s cut to the chase and get to the news items:

Chesterton and Shaw: “A Reply to Mr. Mallock”

In the previous posting on this subject we saw how early in their relationship, George Bernard Shaw had used unfair debating tricks (are there fair debating tricks?) to “win” an argument against Chesterton by deliberately changing the real point under discussion.

Austrians and Distributists

Every once in a while we get a question that we answer and then realize we’ve written a blog posting.  On Friday of last week we had such a happy occurrence.  As someone asked in a forum discussing “Thomist Philosophy,” that is, the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,

Chesterton and Shaw: How to Argue With a Socialist

In the previous posting on this subject, we left G.K. Chesterton smiling benignly down on an infuriated George Bernard Shaw.  Clearly Chesterton knew exactly what buttons to push to bring Shaw to a rapid boil in the shortest period of time.  The fact was that Chesterton had figured out how to handle an argument with Shaw: refuse to argue except on principle.

Just Third Way Podcast: Norman Kurland on Power

Power is a dirty word to many people today, but that's probably because most people don't have any.  As a result, they tend to define the concept in terms of power over others, rather than the idea of having power over one's own life.  That is odd, because power is defined as "ability for doing."  Unless one plans on being a pair of ragged claws at the bottom of the sea (or whatever it was that J. Alfred Prufrock thought about), power is essential simply to exist.  That is why Dr. Norman Kurland, President of the Center for Economic and Social Justice, decided to talk about power and how to structure it for the benefit of everyone, not just a few:

News from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 20

Things are a little quiet due to the fact that expanded ownership initiatives are waiting to see what comes out of the ESOP Association conference next week, but some ongoing projects are making progress, and of course there are more personal matters:

Chesterton and Shaw: The Lost Debate

Sometime during the evening of a long day late in the summer of 1923, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), renowned wit and agent provocateur for Fabian socialism, had almost finished entertaining himself and other members of a party assembled at a house in Chelsea.  Having been there for about an hour, Shaw was preparing to take his leave when the arrival of Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was announced.

Aquinas on Private Property

In the previous posting on this subject — private property in general, and under what circumstances (if any) private property ceases to exist — we examined the arguments Msgr. John A. Ryan of the Catholic University of America used to justify substituting the definitions of social justice and distributive justice used by the socialists and modernists of the 1830s and 1840s for those of the Catholic Church derived from Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy.

More Waugh on Vatican II

No, that’s not a cute way of saying we’re waling on the Second Vatican Council, which would be inappropriate for an interfaith group in any event.  It’s a way of continuing our piece on Evelyn Waugh and his take on the Council, which is somewhat different from what may have been recorded.

Just Third Way (Re)Podcast, No. 48

This week we have a special treat in store on the Just Third Way podcast: the first part of an interview with renowned binary economist and author Dr. Robert H.A. Ashford.  Dr. Ashford teaches law and binary economics at the University of Syracuse law school, and is the co-author of Binary Economics: The New Paradigm (Lanham, Maryland: The University Press of America, 1999):

News from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 19

Although we do know from the number of people viewing the blog and other indicators that word of the Just Third Way is getting around, it seems as though it ought to be faster.  Nevertheless, each day a little progress is being made, but not in a way that generates news items, unfortunately:

Evelyn Waugh on Vatican II

In the eyes of some, the Catholic Church prior to the Second Vatican Council was a cesspool of corrupt authoritarianism and abuse that insulted human dignity at the most fundamental level.  To take only one example, Monsignor George A. Kelly (1916-2004) quoted Malachi Brendan Martin (1921-1999) in his (Kelly’s) book, The Battle for the American Church (1979), giving a lengthy list of things in the Church that “do not work,” especially anything that made the Church Catholic or even religious. (Msgr. George A. Kelly, The Battle for the American Church. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1979, 5-6.)

"America's Greatest Social Philosopher"

On his death in 1985, Father William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D. was eulogized as “the second founder” of his religious order, the Society of Mary.  Father Andrew F. Morlion, O.P., Ph.D., Belgian philosopher and founder and first president of the International University of Social Studies in Rome, referred to Father Ferree as “America’s greatest social philosopher.”  But who was he?

A Study in Contradiction

One of the things we find most consistent about socialism is its inconsistency, the ability to say one thing and do another with astonishing regularity.  This was brought forcibly home to us when we came across the writings of Robert Owen, considered the first of the British line of socialism.

Adler on the Air

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!

WE HAVE DELETED THE PODCAST TO EDIT FURTHER.  IT WILL BE UP AGAIN AS SOON AS WE ARE FINISHED.  IN THE MEANTIME, WE PUT UP A LINK TO WALLACE'S 1959 INTERVIEW WITH ADLER

For the Just Third Way Podcast this week, we have a special treat in store: Mike Wallace’s interview of Mortimer Adler.  Adler, of course, co-authored The Capitalist Manifesto (1958) and The New Capitalists (1961) with Louis O. Kelso, but is also noted for the Great Books program and as the editor of the Syntopicon:

News from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 18

Back in the early nineteenth century, the proto-socialist and founder of “the New Christianity” Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head.  He missed, but his followers claimed that the shock brought about his realization that he was either God’s Special Messenger or possibly even God.  Ever since, failure has been taken as proving that socialism actually works.  It only fails because people can’t seem to deal with a system that relies on them becoming God.  We, of course, just assume that people are going to keep on being people, so the Just Third Way is based on working with human nature rather than trying to change it:

Money Isn’t Everything

It’s time for another esoteric blog posting on the nature of money.  Today we’ll be looking at the difference between what is called “the Currency School” that virtually all modern economics, whether or not mainstream, accept, and “the Banking School,” on which binary economics is based.

The Four Pillars of Socialism

We’ve been doing a great deal of research for a series of books a publisher (obviously intelligent and astute) has requested that we submit “on spec” — i.e., they’d like to see a manuscript, but aren’t making any specific promises about acceptance.  Much of this has involved investigation into the roots of the “New Things,” as Pope Leo XIII referred to them in his landmark 1891 encyclical “On Capital and Labor” (the current official title).