How to Be a Socially Just Person

Last week, in “A Little Creative Misdirection and Misunderstanding,” we addressed the issue of whether people should decide for themselves which laws they want to obey.  Of course, ultimately that is something everyone does anyway, but we were looking at it from the perspective of people as members of society, not as individuals with no connection to others.

Kelso v. Keynes on Money

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, many people seem to confuse God and money, as well as religion and finance.  This, in the modern age suffused with what people like Mortimer J. Adler have delicately referred to as “philosophical mistakes,” is a disaster, whether the result of Belloc’s purported accusation of “knavish imbecility,” unthinking self-interest, or deliberate and considered villainy.

How to Understand Money

    In the introduction to one of his satiric songs written for the late, great show That Was the Week That Was (“TW3”) performed and recorded at the late, great “Hungry I” nightclub in San Francisco (the one that closed in 1970, not the strip club that replaced it . . . sort of), the late, great Tom Lehrer made the obvious and characteristic (“Seldom has any point to make except the obvious”) ironic comment that his Christmas Carol celebrated what everyone deeply and sincerely believes in: Money.  Of course, St. Paul made a similar comment in one or other of his letters to somebody or other, that love of money is the root of all evil.

Trump’s Morality and the Natural Law

It is a pillar of Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy that the natural law — knowledge of right and wrong constituting the general code of human behavior — can be known by the force and light of human reason alone.  This is because (in Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy) human beings “participate” in God’s Nature, and therefore reason the way God does, at least analogously, and in a far more limited scope.

A Short Course in Social Justice, I: What is Social Justice?

Ask anybody.  Go ahead.  We dare you.  For best results, carry a microphone and have somebody pointing a videocam at you and whoever (or whatever) you are asking.  And the question? “What is social justice?”

Personalism and Justice

Recently we got an enquiry regarding a misunderstanding about our use of the term “Economic Personalism” and some potential confusion with the virtue of justice.  Someone (Person A) had expressed disagreement with our using the term Economic Personalism to describe a type of economic democracy and then asked if we were trying to change the name of the Center for Economic and Social Justice to the Center for Economic Personalism.  Quick answer: No.

The Reasonable Alternative

 

Today’s blog posting is adapted from the book, Economic Personalism, which you can get free from the CESJ website, or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

It’s Not an Either/Or Issue

Occasionally, we feel the urge to explain a little about social justice.  This is usually prompted by a comment or question from a faithful reader or two.  This time it was sparked by a comment someone made on FaceBook about how they aren’t interested in helping people one-on-one, but in changing the system that makes it necessary to help people.

“Doing Fine So Far”

There’s a very old and very bad joke about the optimist who fell out of a skyscraper window.  As he passed some of the floors on the way down, people would call out to him, “How’s it going?” and he’d reply, “Doing fine so far!”

Not Owning Up: Why Dining Out is Dying Out

A recent New York Times story related the horrors of dining out in today’s society.  Bemoaning the high cost of food and the low level of service, the article went to great lengths to assert it’s point that it’s personal service and warmth that make the difference in whether people enjoy their dining experience.  Lack of experienced wait staff, the pandemic, and a few other factors were cited as contributing to the problem.  The high cost was virtually ignored, although the cited $200 for a simple dinner and drinks comes to more than four times this writer’s monthly food budget (food only, by the way. none of the other things you might get in a grocery store).

Rights and Wrongs About Rights

Recently in a discussion about something else entirely a question came up about rights and duties.  This is an important topic in the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism, for “personalism” derives from “person,” and “person” — legally speaking — is that which has rights.  This is important in the greater scheme of things because it is by exercising rights (especially life, liberty, and private property) that we become “virtuous,” that is, more fully human . . . which, according to Aristotle and other philosophers, is the reason and purpose of life.

Social Justice and Liberal Democracy

A popular meme floating around social media shows actor Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”  The problem was bad enough with a single word in a work of fiction.  It gets much worse when it is many words in real life.

Is Putin an Anomaly?

 

How did Russian president Vladimir Putin gain so much wealth and power that he was able to start a war to carry out a personal vendetta?  Is there something unique and special about him that gives him the ability to manipulate world events on such a vast scale, endangering not only the lives and property of the people of Ukraine, but the very existence of the world itself?  Is his power so great because he is more — or less — than human?  Or is there something else that accounts for his rise and incredible influence on the rest of humanity?

A New Philosophy of Money

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that the Industrial Revolution made it possible for a few people to produce far more than they could ever consume, while the discovery by politicians that they could finance government operations using newly created money backed only with their own debt made it possible to consume massive amounts of goods and services without producing anything at all.

The Very Model of a Modern Chestertonian

Our previous posting on this subject was an expansion of a comment we made on an article, “Catholics and Race in American History,” on the website of the Catholic World Report, a Catholic webzine.  We thought we were agreeing with the author, Kevin Schmiesing, but adding a few interesting tidbits we’ve uncovered in our research as well as a little analysis of our own.

It’s Not Socialism Except When It Is

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that, while the most popular interpretation of “Catholic social teaching” (really the natural law social teaching that applies to everyone, including atheists and anybody else who is a human being, regardless of faith or philosophy or lack thereof and how’s that for a run-on parenthetical?), and even considered “authoritative” — even though it contradicts the very authorities on which it bases its claims.

What Happened to Distributive Justice?

 

In the previous posting on this subject, we related that Msgr. John A. Ryan changed the basis and understanding of the natural law from reason to faith.  The problem there, of course, is that if the natural law is based on reason, it applies to every human being.  If it is based on faith, it only applies to those who adhere to the faith that determines the natural law.

A Slight Problem with Moral Relativism

Okay, a really big problem with moral relativism, which is the philosophical aspect of both capitalism and socialism.  Moral relativism and socialist-capitalism (or capitalist-socialism, not really too much difference atwixt the two) both shift the understanding of the world from what can be proved by logical argument or observed by empirical evidence and go with a “faith”-based personal opinion that ends up being whatever those in power want it to be.

A Better Alternative

      

As we noted in yesterday’s posting, there is a much better alternative to the proposed “Billionaire Tax” or the minimum corporate tax, which would tax corporations whether or not they made any income — another instance of taxing something that doesn’t exist.  It starts to sound as if the game plan for the U.S. economy was drawn up by the Greeks . . . the modern Greeks, not those like Aristotle who knew that economic life centers on being productive and supporting human dignity and sovereignty with equality of opportunity and access to the means.  He just didn’t work it out very well, but at least he had the right idea.

A Short Treatise on Sovereignty

       As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, honest or legitimate money can only be created by backing it with something of value to which the owner has a claim under private property.  Government debt, which backs most of the global money supply today, represents future or anticipated tax collections that may actually never materialize because in a democratic government, taxes are (at least in theory) imposed with the consent of the governed.