Thoughts on the Fourteenth Amendment

The recent decision by the United States Supreme Court that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship to “every free-born person in this land” raises some interesting issues.  First, of course, is the situation itself.  The concept of an executive order that creates law or changes the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution is, at least in the opinion of this writer, intriguing.

The Ungodly Have No Rights . . . Right?

In the previous posting on this subject, we looked at the question whether Jesus, whom Christians consider a divine person, was also a human person.  We decided that — whether you believe him to be divine, he was human, and therefore necessarily a person.

The Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Just Third Way

This coming Friday, June 12, 2026, is the 250^th anniversary of the adoption of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the first article of which is generally consistent with the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism: “That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

A Certain Personality

    A short time ago we got into an incredibly pointless argument on FaceBook which began when someone made the somewhat “interesting” remark that because Jesus, whom Christians regard as a divine person, was a convicted felon, then no one should have any problems with the current president of the United States.

The Meaning and Purpose of Life, III: What is Social Justice?

 Last week we looked at the question of “justice as love.”  This week we look at the question of “social justice”.  This will baffle many people today, because they think they have already answered the question, and the answer they have is that something called “social justice” replaces and transcends both justice and charity as traditionally understood.

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.

Persons, Things, and Personalism

A while back we put together a short video to explain the idea of economic democracy along personalist lines.  Titled “People and Things,” it took a sort of “Dr. Suessy” approach, putting some very complex ideas in hopefully simple rhyming language to try and present them in a coherent and comprehensible way.  It was (and is) pretty good, but because it is both brief and simplified, doesn’t get into deeper meanings and implications.

Why “Binary”?

Occasionally, someone thinks he (or she) has come up with a brilliant criticism of the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism by pointing out “binary economics” is not a good way of describing the ideas of Louis O. Kelso which form the primary economic theory of the Just Third Way.  The critic takes a brief look and sees Kelso divided the factors of production into labor and capital instead of labor, land, and capital, and assumes it is the whole of Kelso’s thought, which is ultra-simplistic.

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.

Solidarity and Personalism

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.

Confronted today by growing conflict and inequality between people and nations around the globe, no one can ignore any longer the universal question that will shape the future for generations to come: What is the place of the human person — each of us — in society?

Was Henry George a Socialist?

In a recent email, someone stated, “Henry George was definitely NOT a Socialist.  Quite the contrary.  He wanted to untax labour and capital, treat land rents as the source of public revenue and restore the mediaeval system of financing the Crown through land rents.”

The Road to Limited Liability

In the previous posting on this subject, we saw that even if ordinary people had sufficient savings during the Industrial Revolution, or even if they had gained access to the commercial and central banking system in England, broad-based ownership of the new industries would have been much too risky under the law of the time to allow it.

More Than an Individual Problem

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, life in the early nineteenth century had thrown a lot of curves at most people in the form of massive social, economic and political change, and the institutions of the social order were not keeping up.  Instead, radicals were calling for the abolition of all old institutions, such as private property, organized religion, and marriage and family, and their replacement with what was called by many names, but with one substance: socialism.

Making the Best of a Bad Situation

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, Charles Dickens’s character Ebenezer Scrooge turns out not to have been so much a bad man, but an incomplete person.  Once he accepted grace and “converted” to personalism, as Dickens put it, “He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”

Scrooge v. the Socialists

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted how, in contrast to today’s super-rich, and traditional capitalists and socialists, when Ebenezer Scrooge saw the light (and the three spirits), and became charitable, he didn’t call it “justice” and he used his own money.  He also didn’t consciously control Bob Cratchit, despite the fact that the system of the time pretty much forced employees into a condition of dependency, which a master could make burdensome or easy.  Naturally, many masters really rubbed their employees’ noses in it, as they knew their employees were inferior beings or they would have been in charge . . . right?

The Honesty of Ebenezer

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that Ebenezer Scrooge, the, er, hero (or maybe “victim”?) of Charles Dickens’s 1843 story “A Christmas Carol” was portrayed as a strictly honest man, despite later dramatic characterizations that made him seem like a minor Robber Baron or major sneak thief.  Scrooge’s iron rectitude is, in fact, essential to the plot, as otherwise Dickens’s story could have been dismissed (at least within the context of the fictional world) as a lie or a delusion.

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.

The Un-Capitalist Manifesto

       In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that the Keynesian prescription for financing economic growth was based on a fallacy: the idea that savings must be accumulated before new capital can be financed.  Examining the period from 1830 to 1930, however, Dr. Harold G. Moulton of the Brookings Institution found that in each and every case, periods of rapid economic growth had been preceded not by reductions in consumption to accumulate savings, but by increases in consumption that depleted savings!

The Three Types of Liberal Democracy

       In the previous posting on this subject, we promised (or threatened, depending on your point of view) on the meaning of “liberal democracy.”  It turns out that there are three (at least) different meanings of the term, depending on whether you’re a collectivist, an individualist, or a personalist.

A Certain Personality

      Last week — or maybe it was really early this week (when something comes in on the weekend it’s sometimes hard to tell whether it’s late Saturday or early Sunday, especially when you don’t bother to look) — we got a question from a faithful reader of this blog regarding our position on persons, particularly that part of it that defines “person” as “that which has rights.”  As Faithful Reader said,