Believe it or not, there is some good news this week. Progress is being made in introducing people to the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism — which has the ultimate goal of the enactment of the Economic Democracy Act. As our first news item, an interview that was only supposed to take an hour, went to an hour and a half . . . and CESJ was invited back as regular guests! As for the rest:
• Inside the Vatican (Magazine). Earlier today CESJ’s own Dawn K. Brohawn, Director of Communications, and Michael D. Greaney, Director of Research, were interviewed on Inside the Vatican’s livestream podcast to talk about the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism. If you missed it, just follow this link. Although it’s an hour and a half, it’s time well spent. They have been invited back to cover other related topics. The short book on the subject, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, is available as a free download from the CESJ website or in trade paperback from Amazon. Although the discussion was wide ranging, the basic message was the importance of adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) as soon as possible.
 |
| Lots of IFs in there . . . |
• Clouds in Kiddie Accounts. President Trump has been touting that “his” accounts for children are going to . . . excuse us, gonna be big, big, big and beautiful and make them lots and lots and lots of money, so much they won’t know what to do with it. As reported in Yahoo! Finance, “President Trump rang the opening bells of the NYSE and NASDAQ from the Oval Office on July 4, 2026, officially launching Trump Accounts. Two days later, he told reporters: ‘If we have a good market like we do now, they're going to become actually very rich. They'll have hundreds of thousands of dollars. Think of that.’” Yeah, think of that. There are a few downsides, though, and a big, big, big number of ifs. For instance, IF people can make the maximum contribution annually and IF the never take out a cent and IF the market grows at a steady 10% or so every year, and ALL earnings are reinvested, and IF the law doesn’t change, and IF the dollar isn’t undermined any more, and probably a bunch of other IFs we haven’t thought about it, then $13 million could be accumulated by age 55. Then there’s the article in Benzinga which posits that if the accounts work as advertised, they could disqualify children from college aid: they would have too much in the way of assets that they couldn’t touch. This is the danger (one of them, anyway) with cutting consumption to acquire capital instead of adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA), and acquiring self-liquidating assets. There’s also the problem the accounts are initially being funded by increasing government debt . . . and somebody is going to have to pay the taxes in the future to pay that debt.
 |
| There's a difference? |
• Getting It Backwards. It seems a little bizarre, but on the issue of birthright citizenship, the “conservatives” are taking the “liberal” position, while the “liberals” are taking the “conservative” position . . . and neither side seems to be getting it right. The correct understanding is that the Constitution is a grant of rights from people to the state, not the other way around. Instead, one group is maintaining all rights come from the state, while the other side is maintaining that the state grants all rights. There is, therefore, no real difference in the two positions any more than there are differences between liberals and conservatives or Democrats and Republicans, except in the specific things they want. Neither side seems to recognize that all natural rights inhere by nature (hence “natural right”) in the human person, and that every human being is automatically a human person. The only thing that’s going to solve this problem is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) because the whole anti-immigrant frenzy is driven by fear, which is driven by lack of power, which is caused by lack of property.
 |
| State capitalism or private sector socialism: Servile State |
• Do as I Say, Not as I Do. Some people say that the difference between communism and socialism is that under communism the state owns everything, while under socialism the state owns almost everything. The bottom line for both, however, is the same: abolition of private property in capital as a natural right. It doesn’t matter ultimately whether the state allows you to own or whether it doesn’t, because in both cases, private property in capital is a gift from the state, not recognized as a right. As for capitalism, private property in capital is recognized as a natural right (although the source of that right seems to be in doubt these days), but only a relatively few people end up owning capital. That’s why it’s a little bit troubling that President Trump is loudly condemning the communists (and presumably the socialists) for wanting a bigger role in the economy . . . all the while doing exactly the same thing himself. The solution, as you might expect, is to have a limited economic role for the state, and figure out a way for the great mass of people (as Pope Leo XIII put it) prefer to own capital — and do. That can be done by adopting the Economic Democracy Act (EDA).
• Daylight Nutty Time. On occasion we’ve heard that the reason some people like Daylight Saving Time is they get an extra hour of sleep in the Fall . . . after being deprived of an hour of sleep in the Spring. (Er, why not just go to bed an hour earlier if you’re so anxious to get more sleep?) Now Congress is considering making DST permanent, thereby permanently taking away that hour they “stole.” There are a large number of problems with that, but if you don’t like the time change, why not just leave it alone without the DST? Just have normal time year round? DST never really did what it was supposed to do, anyway. We’re not sure how the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) can be worked into this, but there is probably some way.
• A Dicey ICE-Y Situation. Word is out that cities who don’t want ICE agents running loose could lose federal funding for selected programs. What seems odd is that people strongest for “states’ rights” (as opposed to human rights) are also in many cases supporting the federal government overriding the rights of the states. As for the natural rights of persons, the less said about that, the better . . . until we get the Economic Democracy Act (EDA), in which case the people will have the power and thus the rights, which is right where they should be.
• TankX? The shares of SpaceX have been dropping since the initial frenzy over the biggest IPO in history, and trading at around $124.00 as of this writing. The reasons are multi and various. It doesn’t help any that the company’s loudly touted starship launch was aborted immediately after ignition. This was not a move calculated to inspire confidence. Frankly, SpaceX is not a company “too big to fail,” it’s a company too big to exist. It’s trying to do too much and take in too much territory. Then there are the problems with its capital structure, with Elon Musk’s shares each having ten votes to anyone else’s one vote per share. That may be capitalism, but it’s not democratic, whatever else you may call it. That’s one reason why in the Economic Democracy Act (EDA) everyone has the same rights of ownership as everyone else. One share, one vote; a right to full payout of earnings, and so on. The way to deal with power is not to concentrate it, but to spread it around.
• Greater Reset “Book Trailers”. We have produced two ninety-second “Book Trailers” for distribution (by whoever wants to distribute them), essentially minute-and-a-half commercials for The Greater Reset. There are two versions of the videos, one for “general audiences” and the other for “Catholic audiences”. Take your pick.
• The Greater Reset. CESJ’s book by members of CESJ’s core group, The Greater Reset: Reclaiming Personal Sovereignty Under Natural Law is, of course, available from the publisher, TAN Books, an imprint of Saint Benedict Press, and has already gotten a top review on that website. It can also be obtained from Barnes and Noble, as well as Amazon, or by special order from your local “bricks and mortar” bookstore. The Greater Reset is the only book of which we’re aware on “the Great Reset” that presents an alternative instead of simply warning of the dangers inherent in a proposal that is contrary to natural law. It describes reality, rather than a Keynesian fantasy world. Please note that The Greater Reset is NOT a CESJ publication as such, and enquiries about quantity discounts and wholesale orders for resale must be sent to the publisher, Saint Benedict Press, NOT to CESJ.
• Economic Personalism Landing Page. A landing page for CESJ’s latest publication (now with an imprimatur), 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., 52 or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to info@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 persons place in society.
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 well see that it gets into the next “issue.” Due to imprudent and intemperate language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled comments.
#30#
