Socialist Delusions, Capitalist Illusions, II: What is Property?

The reason so many socialists insist either that they are not socialists, or that socialism doesn’t involve the abolition of private property as a fundamental tenet, is that they don’t understand property — private or otherwise.  This, in turn, leads to a misunderstanding of money and credit, and even of “personality,” i.e., having rights — keeping in mind that having rights defines you as a person.

News from the Network, Vol. 9, No. 04

As of this writing, the stock market is soaring again, apparently on the news that the price of oil is going up.  Translation:  the cost of a basic input to production is going up, which means lower profits and slower (if possible) economic growth . . . so the stock market goes up.  Uh, huh.  Enough of that Keynesian Looking Glass Land, here are the news items for this week:

Socialist Delusions, Capitalist Illusions, I: What is Socialism?

Get into an argument with a socialist — any socialist — and you will sooner or later be informed that you just don’t understand, that you don’t know what socialism is, you’re ugly, and your mother dresses you funny.

Conclusion to Three Keys to Common Sense: Where Do We Go From Here?

In Return to Chesterton (1952), the “follow-up” to her biography of G.K. Chesterton, Maisie Ward commented of her subject, “The hardest thing to live with as the years passed must have been the vision growing daily clearer of ultimate failure.” (Maisie Ward, Return to Chesterton.  New York: Sheed and Ward, 1952, 281.)  Evelyn Waugh wrote of Msgr. Ronald Knox’s approaching end, “At first glimpse death appeared neither as an awful summons to judgment nor as a recall from exile, but as the final disruption and frustration of plans.”  (Waugh, Ronald Knox, op. cit., 330.)  Throughout his autobiography, Treasure in Clay, Fulton Sheen made references to his sufferings.

The American Chesterton, XVII: Sheen v. Radical Catholicism

As we saw in the previous posting in this series, what was being taught in the theology department at the Catholic University of America in the 1920s under the auspices of Msgr. John A. Ryan was substandard.  While it cannot be proved, it fits the facts that Bishop Shahan, the rector of Catholic U., brought Fulton Sheen in to counter Ryan and improve the quality of the theology and philosophy taught there.

Chocopalypse Now, II: Making the World Safe for Chocolate

In our previous posting on this key world issue, we noted we would post a solution to the coming Chocolate Apocalypse.  First, of course, we reminded our readers that a true world shortage of cocoa is not really likely — possible, of course, but not likely . . . if we get to work now to make the world safe for chocolate.  This was essential, because a number of the comments we received on FaceBook indicated that some people intended to kill themselves if chocolate disappeared.

News from the Network, Vol. 9, No. 03

The Worst-Blizzard-EVER in the entire history of the human race (or, at least, this winter inside the Washington, DC, Beltway . . . until the next one) managed to throw a monkey wrench into our plans for today and the weekend, but the Just Third Way continues to advance.  In particular, outreach continues, and new research materials continue to surface:

The American Chesterton, XVI: What is Truth?

As we saw in the previous posting in this series, the real issue for our day (and for the past several centuries, if you believe people like Mortimer Adler and G.K. Chesterton) boils down to the question that Pontius Pilate asked Jesus: “What is truth?”

The American Chesterton, XV: The Outline of Sanity

In the previous posting in this series we examined the problems Fulton Sheen addressed with God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy.  These were the new concept of God and religion, and the triumph of the will over the intellect, that is, the rejection of reason.

The American Chesterton, XIV: Problems and Framework for a Solution

As we saw in the previous posting in this series, the two problems Fulton Sheen addressed in God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy were, one, a new concept of God and religion, and, two, the rejection of the intellect.  Not that either of these two issues is peculiar to the modern age.  As far as the capacity for error goes (especially in religion), the human race has seen very little that is new under the sun.  As Sheen noted,

Chocopalypse Now, I: The Cocoa Crisis

Late last year it was announced that the venerable Wilbur Chocolate Company in Lititz, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, would close its factory there at the end of December, although keeping the shop and museum open (and moving the manufacturing elsewhere).  The closing gutted the economic life of the downtown area.  Taking more than a hundred jobs away also took away a lot of other business.

News from the Network, Vol. 9, No. 02

Interesting.  Yesterday the Dow Jones Industrial Average (which no longer has any industrial stocks) rose nearly 400 points to universal jubilation.  Today the Dow plunged nearly 400 points right after the market opened to universal despair.  Of course, if any of this actually meant anything, there might be reason for jubilation or despair, but let’s get on to more important things:

The American Chesterton, XIII: God and Intelligence

Fulton J. Sheen opened his first book, God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy, with the declaration, “Modern philosophy has seen the birth of a new notion of God.”  The new notion is easily expressed.  As Sheen put it, “It brings man into greater prominence.  It exalts him even to the extent of giving him a ‘vote in the cosmic councils of the world.’  It is, in a word, the ‘transfer of the seat of authority from God to man.’”  (Sheen, God and Intelligence, op. cit., 17-18.)  As Sheen went on to explain,

The American Chesterton, XII: Sheen at St. Edmund’s College

Fulton Sheen’s association with Msgr. Ronald Knox at St. Edmund’s College, Ware (with apologies to the Edmundians, vide Waugh, Ronald Knox, op. cit., 172), could only have strengthened Sheen’s commitment to reason and Aristotelian-Thomism.  It would also have confirmed him in his opposition to all forms of socialism.

The American Chesterton, XI: The Disciple of Common Sense

Fulton Sheen’s autobiography, Treasure in Clay, published soon after his death in 1979, has the advantage to the author of telling readers what the author wanted them to know about what he had done to set an example, and entertained with a series of edifying anecdotes.  It also has the disadvantage of telling readers very little of what, perhaps, they wanted to know about Sheen himself  — something Maisie Ward pointed out the American Chesterton’s autobiography shared with that of the English Sheen, G.K. Chesterton.

The Opium of Public Debt

After last week’s stock market gyrations caused — according to the experts — by events in China and alleged events in North Korea, other experts are predicting that 2016 will be “A Year of Sovereign Defaults.”  According to Carmen Reinhart, Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, “As 2016 begins, there are clear signs of serious debt/default squalls on the horizon. We can already see the first white-capped waves.”

News from the Network, Vol. 9, No. 01

The stock market has been bouncing all over the map and off the walls this past week in response to the falling Chinese market and the claims coming out of North Korea.  Since this means nothing in terms of the actual productive sector of the economy, except to make completely unnecessary trouble and siphon credit away from where it would do something other than make speculators rich, we’ll go immediately to this week’s news items:

The American Chesterton, X: The Hypothetical Fact

In his 1926 riposte to the New Age, Other Eyes Than Ours, Msgr. Ronald Knox has a character declaim in a speech, “The creeds and dogmas which rested their weight on the evidence of alleged facts have become old-fashioned; we have become familiarized with the idea that a historical statement may be false in the sense that the thing did not happen, yet true in the sense that it harmonizes with all that is highest in our spiritual nature.”  (Ronald Knox, Other Eyes Than Ours. London: Methuen and Co., 1926, 201.)  This individual — Mister Scoop — goes on, declaring,

The American Chesterton, IX: “Not Because It Is True”

In 2001 on the death of Mortimer Adler, the noted “Great Books Philosopher” at the age of 98, columnist Paul Greenberg presented his analysis of why (in his opinion) Adler had lapsed into semi-obscurity.  As he said,

The American Chesterton, VIII: Modernism and the New Age

In the previous posting in this series we saw that in the 1920s, when Fulton Sheen’s thought was formed, the new concept of religion found in the mutability of modernist and New Age thought made it particularly attractive to, the perfect foil for, and a seemingly independent verification of the various forms of socialism — and that socialism returned the favor.  This made the pseudo science of socialism and the quasi religion of the New Age a dangerous combination in a world that had lost its philosophical bearings.

Justice-Based Management, II: Reforming Corporate Culture

[This posting was rescheduled from November 30.  Sorry.  The refugee crisis seemed more important, and then the whole panic over falling prices by people who think we need to pay more for less to be better off.] In the early twentieth century, Judge Peter S. Grosscup of the United States Seventh Circuit Court published a series of articles on what to do about the problem of rapidly concentrating ownership of the nation’s productive capacity.  With such titles as “Who Shall Own America?” and “How to Save the Corporation,” Judge Grosscup outlined a plan for expanded ownership of corporate equity that, while it relied on past savings and was therefore not universally applicable, at least attempted to address the increasing wealth and income gap that was a growing problem even a century ago.

New Year’s Day, 2016

Happy New Year!!  (See yesterday’s posting for a snarky comment about posting blogs on holidays.)

New Year’s Eve, 2015

Happy New Year’s Eve!!  (What, you were expecting something more on a day when nobody is going to read this thing, anyway?)

News from the Network, Vol. 8, No. 53

Last week we had a retrospective on the news items from January through June of 2015.  Today we present the big news items from July through December 2015.  As you can see, the year got off to a slow start, but a large number of projects came to fruition (or at least started to bud) in the second half of the year:

The American Chesterton, VII: Socialism and the New Religion

As we saw in previous postings in this series, Fulton Sheen’s “obsession” with socialism was founded solidly on his commitment to the principles of reason found in Aristotelian-Thomism, the philosophy of common sense.  Socialism, as Pope Pius XI explained, “is based . . . on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity.  Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms.  (Quadragesimo Anno, § 120.)

What Would Aquinas Do? — The Abraham Federation

Two weeks ago (we had to reschedule this conclusion to our short refugee crisis series) we mentioned that there is a specific program that could be adapted and implemented to resolve the refugee crisis, once the global community has dealt with the immediate situation.  Rather than rewrite the original description, we present it here, with links to the full proposal:

Christmas Day, 2015

What?  Back again?  What are you doing here?  Are there no prisons?  Are there no workhouses?  Er, have you no family to be with or charitable works to occupy you?  Well, then . . .

Christmas Eve, 2015

Purely in the interests of maintaining a regular series of blog postings on weekdays, we’ve put up this little reminder that if you are reading this, you probably should be out doing something else:

News from the Network, Vol. 8, No. 52

Since this was a very short week (and this is a Wednesday instead of the usual Friday), we’ve put together a short “news roundup” for the first half of the year as a retrospective.  Leading off, of course, is CESJ’s participation in the Amazon Smile program, since it’s an all-year thing:

The American Chesterton, VI: The Logic of Christian Socialism

As we saw in the previous posting in this series, despite “Branch Theory” — the idea that the Anglo-Catholic, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Churches are all part of the larger Catholic Church — there was more dividing the Anglican Church from the Catholic Church than a matter of mere politics.  From its founding by Henry VIII Tudor, the man-centered Church of England was necessarily in direct conflict with the God-centered Catholic Church, and (at least in the eyes of G.K. Chesterton, Msgr. Ronald Knox, and Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson) this orientation was leading the Anglican Church away from Christianity altogether.

Chicken Little Economics

The financial world is in an absolute panic, the economic mavens are freaking out, politicians are starting to wonder if they should start looking for honest work . . . until they remember that their financial and economic policies have ensured that there won’t be any jobs waiting for them.  What to do, what to do?  And (for us normal people) what the heck is going on, anyway?  What is causing all the fuss?

News from the Network, Vol. 8, No. 51

This is the last full work week of the year, so this will be the last full “News from the Network” for 2015 — we’ll content ourselves with a retrospective of the important events for the Just Third Way for our next two “issues.”  Unusually for this time of year we have quite a bit to report:

The American Chesterton, V: Socialism as Social Justice

In the previous posting in this series we saw that, just as modern theology and philosophy separate religion from God, socialism and capitalism separate creation from the Creator.  This results in putting man before God.

The American Chesterton, IV: Sheen’s Obsession

One of the more unusual things (one might almost say “odd”) about the veneration accorded to Fulton Sheen is the fact that his tremendous intellectual achievements and social insights are almost always marginalized or ignored.  John A. Hardon’s entry on Sheen in The Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan (1989) makes no mention of that aspect of Sheen’s work — something that is also missing from the entries on G.K. Chesterton and Ronald Knox.  Adherents of all three seem to focus primarily on the admittedly great faith, spirituality, and mysticism of the three — those things that, with a few twists and adjustments, can easily be fitted into New Age thought.

The American Chesterton, III: The Esoteric Twenties

As we noted in the previous posting in this series, Academia was in terrible shape in the 1920s — at least when it came to upholding orthodox Jewish, Christian, and Islamic belief systems and philosophies in a world that seemed to have completely lost its mind, or at any rate its sense of identity.  As Fulton Sheen commented in the Preface to Religion Without God, published in 1928, “Present-day religion is not in evolution, but in revolution.”  As he continued,

Saving the Middle Class

According to a new study by the Pew Research Center, “The American Middle Class is Losing Ground,” the number of “middle class” households is now less than those in the “upper class” and “lower class” combined.  We put “name of class” in quotes, because we just have a gut reaction to being described as belonging to a class in a legally classless society.  We’ll try not to do it again, at least today.  We’ve made our point.

News from the Network, Vol. 8, No. 50

The stock market has been up and down this week like a rubber ball.  This is bad, because people think that the fluctuations actually mean something, and are taking the stock market as a leading economic indicator.  News flash, folks, it’s not.  It’s not a real economic indicator at all.

The American Chesterton, II: The World of Fulton Sheen

One of the things that strikes the reader of Fulton Sheen’s God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy — assuming that Chesterton’s The “Dumb Ox” and Knox’s Enthusiasm were read first and the reader has a little knowledge of what was really going on in the world of the 1920s — is the pervasiveness of certain ideas that Sheen found in both civil and religious life.  Understanding these ideas and becoming somewhat familiar with the environment and culture within which Sheen wrote go a long way toward helping us understand what Sheen was doing.  By that we mean the world in which he lived and that provided the environment within which he formed his thought when he began writing, and against which, in large measure, he was reacting.

The American Chesterton, I: The Triumph of the Will

We come now to the third and final book in our series on “Three Key Books on Common Sense.”  Paradoxically (but consistent with the thought of Chesterton, Knox, and Sheen), Fulton J. Sheen’s God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy was the first written (in 1925), but would make little sense to the reader unless it is read last.  This is because, unlike many books, God and Intelligence is easier to understand by reading it in light of what came after publication, rather than before.

Enthusiasm, XV: Remaining Characteristics of Enthusiasm

In today’s posting we conclude our brief overview of the characteristics of enthusiasm — at least, those that we selected.  Not by coincidence, we also conclude that portion of the blog series dealing with Msgr. Ronald Knox’s Enthusiasm and his take on the development of a new concept of religion.  So, today we look at 10) Antinomianism, 11) Lust for Martyrdom, 12) Invisible Church, 13) Desire for Results, and 14) Experimentalism (Novelty).

What Would Aquinas Do? — The Refugee Solution

Last week on this blog we decided that trying to solve the refugee problem strictly as a refugee problem was not a solution — viable or otherwise.  Nor is military action, while it may be necessary, a solution to a refugee problem.  What is needed, frankly, is a two-pronged approach.  The first prong would be to take care of the immediate situation.  The second prong is to implement an actual solution.

News from the Network, Vol. 8, No. 49

Oddly enough for a week so close to the end of the year when things usually slow down substantially, we’ve had a significant number of happenings this week. Mostly this has been due to the large number of outreach efforts we’ve been making, and the door-opening that has resulted.  Of course, there are other things going on, too:

Enthusiasm, XIV: Further Characteristics of Enthusiasm

In the previous posting in this series, we looked at two of Msgr. Ronald Knox’s fourteen characteristics of enthusiasm as identified and summarized by Dr. James Hitchcock in his book, The New Enthusiasts, 1) Excessive Piety and 2) Schism.

Enthusiasm, XIII: The Laws and Characteristics of Enthusiasm

In the previous posting in this series we had a graphic illustration of the dangers of abandoning Aristotelian-Thomism and the intellect as the basis of the natural law.  This was Dr. John D. Mueller who, by going outside the Aristotelian-Thomist framework for his analysis of a system based on Aristotelian-Thomism, invalidated his own theories.

Enthusiasm, XII: Damning Economics

In the previous posting in this series we noted that G.K. Chesterton, Ronald Knox, and Fulton Sheen (in common with Mortimer Adler), traced many — if not all — of today’s “philosophical mistakes” and the failure of common sense in academia and elsewhere to the abandonment of Aristotelian-Thomism.  In its place there has been an almost universal reliance on a distorted Platonism. This is achieved by exaggerating and twisting the thought of Augustine of Hippo.   By this means the principles of reason are jettisoned and a reliance on personal will substituted as the basis of the natural law and the principles of a just social order.  This is usually in the form of a personal interpretation of something accepted on faith as God’s Will.