Given Vladimir Putin’s unilateral declaration of war against the human race, our lead stories this week are focused on the situation in Ukraine and Russia. As one of our correspondents in Ukraine near Kyiv has expressed complete disbelief even now that it is happening, that because of one deranged lunatic, cities are being bombed and women and children murdered. Still, there is some good news . . . after we give you the bad news.
• Help Joe Walk Again for Economic Justice. Just a reminder, if you haven’t already done so, to visit the GoFundMe campaign and consider making a contribution and spreading word out among your social media networks. It’s off to a good start, but it’s still just a start.
"I'M NOT CRAZY! EVERYONE ELSE IS!"
• Putin’s Desperation. Yes, strange as it seems, Putin’s actions in Ukraine are those of an increasingly desperate man. They are very similar to those Hitler employed in the final European phase of World War II, particularly during the Battle of the Bulge. In a daring bid for victory, Hitler threw everything he had at the advancing American army, including the new “superweapons” like the first jet fighter. It was very touch and go for several days — a “near run thing” as Wellington said of Waterloo — but the Americans held their ground, especially at Bastogne, where General Anthony Clement “Nuts” McAuliffe gave his famous one-word response to a surrender demand. As with the Russian column threatening Kyiv, the German advance was held up by an early thaw which bogged their armor down in mud, giving the Americans time to regroup and obtain supplies. The irony, as Eisenhower and Patton both realized almost the moment the attack started, was that it was easier for the Allies to defeat the Germans in open battle and force them to use up all their resources at once than to prolong the war for years with Germany on the defensive. Putin seems to have made the same mistake and has committed Russia to a war it cannot sustain at its current level for very much longer. Instead of pulling back and regrouping, however, Putin is continually escalating and committing reserves that he will need later if Chechnya rebels again, or if the Russian people finally get fed up and revolt.
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| Arresting dangerous enemies of the State |
• Russia’s Desperation. In what may be a unique event in world history, there are significant numbers of refugees fleeing Russia, the country now waging an undeclared war against Ukraine. Nearly 8,000 people — including children — have been arrested and are being “detained” in prisons across the country. The Russian economy is on the verge of collapse, Putin has made even the use of the word “war” a crime, non-government-controlled media have disappeared, and another iron curtain is beginning to descend on Europe.
• DAO Project. The plan for using a “Decentralized Autonomous Organization” (DAO) to create a game to present the idea of a functioning Just Third Way economic model is well under way. The idea is to teach people about the potential of the Economic Democracy Act and to collect data for an econometric model for the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism. Dev Rammireddy, Rick Osbourne and Dave Hamill are driving the project. To participate in the game, it will probably be a prerequisite to have completed one of the Justice University survey courses.
• Economic Democracy Act Initiative. Marc Plotkin of the Economic Democracy Act initiative reported that he has been gathering material for a graduate level course on the subject from Justice University. We have heard back from the people at the Boston Federal Reseve on the Community Development Committee, and that we have sent a letter to the incoming president of the Boston Federal Reserve.
• Biden on Inflation. President Biden has expressed a strong desire to get inflation under control, but this will not be possible without the Economic Democracy Act.
• Greater Reset Media Appearances. On Tuesday, March 8, at 9:00 pm EST (US), CESJ’s Director of Research and co-author of The Greater Reset, will be giving a talk to the “Top Gun Prayer Group” (the nickname, not official) on the subject “America’s Universal Principles of a Just Social Order.” A question and answer period will follow. Even though The Greater Reset is from a Catholic publisher, the subject is natural law, and the “Top Gun” group is not Catholic. Any group interested in having the authors — or anyone else from CESJ — give a presentation or an interview on The Greater Reset, the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism, or anything else connected with the Just Third Way should send an email to info@cesj.org.
• Audio Version and E-Book Available. The audio and e-book editions of The Greater Reset, the hardcover of which is due out March 15, are now available, and can be purchased directly from the website of TAN Books as downloads. We’ve listened to the audio version, and aside from a few misread words and some sentences that sounded better when we wrote them than when we heard them (it’s very humbling to hear your work read aloud or even hear yourself speak), we think it’s a very good presentation of what we think is a very good book — and, according to some people who have gotten a sneak peak at the book in the past few months, we’re being modest. For example, although CESJ is not a Catholic or religious organization, even the Censor Librorum of the Arlington Diocese telephoned us to express his enthusiasm for the book and described it as “a real page turner” — even after he said that economics was usually beyond him. The Greater Reset, however, is different from most books that bring in economics (possibly because it’s about natural law and not focused on economics exclusively) because it describes reality, rather than a Keynesian fantasy world.
• New Blogging Schedule. Apparently a success, with views up.
• Hortense and Her Whos. In case you’ve been wondering how you might advance the Just Third Way by introducing it to legislators at any and all levels of government, we’ve made it easy for you, with the “Hortense Hears Three Whos“ initiative. Visit the explanatory website, and consider downloading the postcard to send to people in government. Don’t worry if you think they won’t be open to it, as the postcard is intended to get them to open their eyes.
• Economic Personalism Landing Page. A landing page for CESJ’s latest publication, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, has been created and can be accessed by clicking on this link. Everyone is encouraged to visit the page and send the link out to their networks.
• Economic Personalism. When you purchase a copy of Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, be sure you post a review after you’ve read it. It is available on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble at the cover price of $10 per copy. You can also download the free copy in .pdf available from the CESJ website. If you’d like to order in bulk (i.e., ten or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to publications@cesj.org for details. CESJ members get a $2 rebate per copy on submission of proof of purchase. Wholesale case lots of 52 copies are available at $350, plus shipping (whole case lots ONLY). Prices are in U.S. dollars.
• Sensus Fidelium Videos, Update. CESJ’s series of videos for Sensus Fidelium are doing very well, with over 155,000 total views. The latest Sensus Fidelium video is “The Five Levers of Change.” The video is part of the series on the book, Economic Personalism. The latest completed series on “the Great Reset” can be found on the “Playlist” for the series. The previous series of sixteen videos on socialism is available by clicking on the link: “Socialism, Modernism, and the New Age,” along with some book reviews and other selected topics. For “interfaith” presentations to a Catholic audience they’ve proved to be popular, edging up to 150,000 views to date. They aren’t really “Just Third Way videos,” but they do incorporate a Just Third Way perspective. You can access the playlist for the entire series The point of the videos is to explain how socialism and socialist assumptions got such a stranglehold on the understanding of the role of the State and thus the interpretation of Catholic social teaching, and even the way non-Catholics and even non-Christians understand the roles of Church, State, and Family, and the human person’s place in society.
• 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 30 different countries and 43 states, provinces, and territories in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, India, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France. The most popular postings this past week in descending order were “Putin’s Problems,” “News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 6,” “Social Justice IV: The Characteristics of Social Justice,” “The Purpose of Production,” and “JTW Podcast: Robert Maynard Hutchins on Education.”
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.” Due to imprudent language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled comments.
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