News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 31

This week, instead of the usual format for “News from the Network,” we’re trying out what we hope will be a regular monthly feature: an expanded posting with more of the character of a typical newsletter.  Instead of just a brief introduction and a list of news items, we’re including links to feature articles, quotes, definitions, videos and — if those of you who are artistically inclined are moved by the spirit — perhaps some cartoons or more serious artworks.  We’ve also included some suggested action items if you want to know what you can do to help advance the Just Third Way.  (This, by the way, is the 3,200^th posting on this blog!)

Left or Right, What’s the Difference?

Frequently in our research we’ve come across claims such as Marxist communism and Fabian socialism are two different things, that Nazism isn’t/wasn’t real socialism, that fascism and Nazism were/are right wing, and so on, so forth, etc., etc.  Of course, it might be helpful to define what we mean by “left,” “right,” and “center.”

A Language Lesson

No, this isn’t a “real” language lesson, a sort of “Latin pro populo” (“Latin for everybody”) that you can use as a handy phrase book when ordering dinner at the Vatican.  It’s just that we got into a discussion about singing in Latin the other day, and one of the participants in the conversation happened to mention that singing “Church Latin” is much easier than singing “Germanic Latin.”  That started us off on our “Latin Pronunciation Lecture,” which — bear with us — does have a bearing on the Just Third Way.  Of course, everything does, but it might not be obvious at first glance.

Karl Marx, the Great Reductionist

A short time ago we got a request to comment on Karl Marx as “the second economic reductionist.”  In the context of the discussion this referred to the socialist movement which, to make a very long story short and oversimplify greatly, began in the early nineteenth century with Henri de Saint-Simon’s declaration in his posthumous book, Le Nouveau Christianisme (1825) that what would in a few years be known as “socialism” was “the New Christianity.”

JTW Podcast: Communism, Part I: The Groundwork

This week we have a video blog from "Sensus Fidelium," hosted by Steve Cunningham.  Yes, it's a "Catholic" show, but don't let that fool you.  The topic — the origin of socialism — is actually a discussion of natural law that applies to everyone.  It just so happens that the origins of socialism and of Catholic social teaching are related: Catholic social teaching developed in response to the rise of socialism, and socialism was first presented as a replacement for traditional Christianity.  Anyway, here goes:

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 30

Yes, most of the news is related one way or another to the pandemic, but it also relates to the Just Third Way.  The one news item we don’t see that we’d like to is an announcement that the powers-that-be have finally figured out that a strong economy depends on making ordinary people productive, which in a modern advanced economy (or any other, for that matter) means ownership of whatever is producing marketable goods and services, be it technology or human labor:

What Do You Mean By “Distributism”?

Somewhat to our surprise, we seem to have become something of a “distributist guru.”  Of course, that could just be an impression, but if it’s true, it might be because we seem to be able to give consistent specifics instead of vague and contradictory generalities.  Not that G.K. Chesterton or Hilaire Belloc gave out anything contradictory, or at least, not that they intended to be contradictory, but that’s not our point.  Our point is where Chesterton and Belloc wanted to go, not necessarily how they thought it expedient to get there.

Interfaith Catholic Action? Why Not?

In a recent article, His Auxiliary Excellency Bishop Robert Barron opined (how do you like that word?) that if the laity want something done — such as protecting religious statues — they should stop asking the bishops to do something, and start thinking about doing it themselves.  That’s something of an oversimplification of a rather more involved argument, but that’s the message most people took from it . . . and they were not pleased.

The Quest for Utopia

We’re having trouble keeping up with what various commentators are proposing as their respective solutions to the pandemic, racism, the economy, the politicians, the academics, the guy next door, and can you believe the price of [fill in the blank] these days?  Case in point: a few weeks ago (or was it months? it’s getting hard to tell . . .), an article appeared in Catholic World Report, a webzine, “America’s Utopian City Wreckers.”

JTW Podcast: Intro to Thomistic Personalism

Continuing our videos/podcasts on personalism, today we bring you another video which — while it is not one of ours — seems to be okay.  Frankly, at this point, anything is good that helps shake people loose from the individualism/collectivism shtick, you know, in which people assume as a given that only collectivism/socialism or individualism/capitalism does exist or can exist.  So today we're looking at a video (with which we don't completely agree, but so what?) on certain aspects of Thomistic personalism:

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 29

If you’re worried about the way things are going in the world, you might want to skip the first half of this edition of News from the Network and go down to the good news (qualified good news, anyway) near the bottom.  Yes, there actually are a few rays of hope, notably the success of the “Sensus Fidelium” videos about the origins and effects of the “new things” of socialism, modernism (probably not what you think it is), and esotericism, so tolle lege (Latin for “take and read):

The REAL Story of the First Social Encyclical

In the previous posting on this subject, we looked at how a social encyclical should be read.  That, however, was not the point we set out to make, but an introduction to the main point.  We just wanted to be sure that our faithful readers understood that when we talk about a “social encyclical,” they know what we are talking about: a document on a natural law teaching that, while it may be expressed in religious terms, applies to the whole of society, not just Catholics.

“The Jobs We Need”

A while back, toward the end of June (the twenty-fourth, to be exact), the New York Times ran an editorial on “The Jobs We Need,” although it was evident from the fact that the piece was written by staff that they didn’t include themselves as part of us.  Anyway, we got to work and sent a letter to the editor that was never published, a slightly edited version of which we post here today:

An Eternal Question

One of the things we’ve noticed about people who call themselves capitalists or socialists is that far too often those who advocate or defend a system seem to have trouble defining it consistently, and sometimes at all.  It calls to mind what Alexis de Tocqueville said about socialism during the 1848 Revolution in France:

JTW Podcast: A Few Words on Personalism

Today we thought we'd try something a little different . . . rather than a whole lot different as we usually end up doing.  Seeing as how we have a book on "economic personalism" coming out soon, we thought we'd blogcast a video on personalism.  Don't be alarmed, however.  While we use the personalism of Pope John Paul II as the basis of our economic personalism, it's not a Catholic thing or even a religious thing, properly speaking.  You can either filter out the religious talk and opinions, or wait until we get the funding to do our own videos on personalism. . . .

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 28

We admit that much of what is happening these days does not lend itself to brief news items.  Making matters worse, those events that are genuinely brief are not infrequently completely unrelated to the Just Third Way.  We did, however, manage to find a few things:

Citizens Land Cooperative

As we noted in the previous posting on this subject, distributism as presented by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc had the right idea: a wide distribution of private property in capital, by which they did NOT mean a redistribution of what belongs to someone else.  (See the final comment in What’s Wrong With the World (1910).

Feudalism v. Distributism

Someone asked us recently whether we thought distributism and feudalism are pretty much the same thing.  Off the top of our head (or is that “heads”?) our first response is “no.”  After all, feudalism meant that most (if not all) land was “public” land, and people “held” the land in return for specified service(s) to the State, usually military service.  Land was not private property.

Job Security for (Personalist) Revolutionaries

A while back in response to an item touting Capital Homesteading as a possible way to bring people together and turn the economy around in our weekly Just Third Way news roundup, someone posted a comment to the effect that the original 1862 Homestead Act was (wait for it) . . . racist!  As a way of refuting our promotion of Capital Homesteading as a way of possibly establishing a little racial harmony and putting the economy back on a sound footing, the Righteous One went on to explain that the 1862 Act was “Whites Only,” and Black homesteaders were completely unheard of.

JYW Podcast: Stevenson on the Just Third Way

This week, as sort of a belated Independence Day celebration (very "sort of"), we have a video presentation of Just Third Way stalwart Guy "the Fulton Sheen Guy" Stevenson.  Sit back, watch, and enjoy:

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 27

Frankly, we don’t know what to think.  On one hand the “June Jobs Report” makes it sound as if the economy is booming, and the stock market is rising.  There is also the bit that there is an actual “worker shortage” as people refuse to take jobs as long as their unemployment benefits are paid; it seems that they are better off economically not working at all . . . at least, not that the authorities know about.  At the same time, we’re told the “jobs market” won’t recover for at least ten years.  What are we to believe, and what are we supposed to do?  Well, why not go the Just Third Way:

Was the State Made for Man, or Man for the State?

In the previous posting on this subject, we addressed the question whether the United States was founded as a “Christian nation,” and came up with the non-answer that it depends on what you mean by “Christian nation.”  We decided — that’s us, not you — that, yes, you could use that term if you didn’t mind saying something misleading, but it would be better to say that the United States was founded as a country that — with certain rather key exceptions — embodied respect for the dignity of the individual human person.

What Do You Mean By “Christian Nation”?

A couple of weeks ago an article appeared in The Christian Post on how America was departing from the values of the Founding Fathers of the United States.  The idea was that the principles espoused by the Founders were essentially Christian, and that therefore the United States is properly a “Christian nation.”