A Little Creative Misdirection and Misunderstanding

    At first glance, it sounds like another instance of President Trump standing up for the little guy.  That’s okay, we all need a little help, and the smaller we are, the more we need someone with immense power to take up for us and give all those fat cats and oppressors of the poor and downtrodden what-for and tell them where they get off.

Private Property in Magnifica Humanitas

We have been saying for years that many people get fundamental principles wrong.  This is understandable given the state of education today, but it still doesn’t make it right.  As people like Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler have been warning for about a century or more, schooling has degenerated from actual education, to job training, and finally to ideological indoctrination.  This is important because it’s one thing to issue an encyclical, and quite another to have it understood, and understanding comes at a high premium today.

Yes, But What Do You Mean by Progressivism?

And, of course, What do you mean by “America”?  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has come out with a warning against something he calls “progressivism.”  In his opinion, “progressivism” has the potential to destroy America.

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.

Can It Happen Here? Part I: The Problem

 Recently, a Faithful Reader sent us a copy of “Disappeared to a Foreign Prison” by Sarah Stillman, from the November 24, 2025, issue of The New Yorker.  No, this is not a commentary on the New Yorker article, but on a few thoughts that bubbled up as we read the article.

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.

The Blind Leading the Blinder

We may have mentioned one or two dozen (or hundred) times how much we like it when people ask us questions we can answer and then use as a posting on this blog.  What we like even better is when someone takes the bull between the teeth or the bit by the horns and writes the entire blog posting for us, with only a little bit of editing and formatting to make it fit our needs.

Some Thoughts for the Present and Future

 Pope Leo XIV, the newly elected leader of the Catholic Church, faces many challenges in applying Catholic social doctrine to solving today’s problems such as the growing wealth, income and power gap in every nation; widespread poverty; destruction of the environment; conflict-driven immigration; growth of State power; the decay of families, and many others.

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.

Scrooge and the Virtue of Being Rich, Part IV

In the previous posting on this subject, we closed by noting that some new ideas had entered the general culture.  As a rule, prior to the middle of the nineteenth century people got rich to be able to live “the good life” (which didn’t mean quite what it meant to Aristotle, who referred to the “good life of virtue”), which required wealth and power to be able to obtain the goods and services that went along with a materially good life.  This meant as soon as they had “enough,” they could stop accumulating wealth, and then sit back and enjoy it.

Is the Proletarian Condition “Normal”?

Last week we looked at the question whether the rich, as F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed, are different.  We concluded that today the rich are, indeed, different . . . but not as human beings.  Rather, what makes the rich different these days is access to money and credit which enables them to buy advanced technology which can and usually does outproduce human labor at a quantum level.

“Freedom is Not an Empty Sound”

In the previous posting on this subject, we looked at William Cobbett, to whom some have referred as “the Apostle of Distributism,” meaning a sort of proto advocate of small ownership.  Of course, in some cases, the people who attach such a label have little understanding of what ownership consists.  We can sum up what Cobbett was talking about by quoting American statesman Daniel Webster: “Power naturally and necessarily follows property.”

Something Missing

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.

In response to the spread of socialism and the other “New Things,” Pope Pius IX, socialism and the other new things continued to spread.  Finally, in 1868 he convened the first ecumenical council since Trent in the sixteenth century.

Human Rights v. Property Rights

Some time ago we took part in a conference during which a participant made the statement that he was for human rights, not property rights.  This, while it garnered a large measure of applause, didn’t make any sense.  It was a little like saying he was all for meals but was against eating.  The startling fact that surprises so many people, especially today, is that property is a human right; only human beings are natural persons, and therefore only human beings have rights.

Ends, Means, and Might Makes Right

It may be open to debate (but not much), but the prevailing modern philosophy of modern times is that the end justifies the means . . . which translates into “might makes right.”  If you don’t agree with that assessment, think about it for a moment.  If someone wants something badly enough and is willing to run roughshod over everything and everybody in his or her way to get it, then — if he or she is strong enough to get it — that proves the means used were fully justified, regardless of where the chips fell.  It worked; therefore, it was good.

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.

Scrooge’s Social Problem

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted how Dickens took Scrooge about as far as he could go with his reformation and completion as a human person — but no further.  Scrooge’s character was expanded individually, and his sense of strict justice was completed and fulfilled by charity, but no more.

China’s Contradictory Messages

In a piece in this past Monday’s Washington Post, “China’s Contradictory Messages on Democracy and Hong Kong” (12/27/21, A-15), Keith B. Richburg of the University of Hong Kong noted how the People’s Republic of China is talking out of both sides of its mouth when it comes to democracy.  We agree, although not perhaps in the same way as Mr. Richburg.

What is “Environmental Justice”?

We’ll be the first to admit that the term “environmental justice” causes something of a kneejerk reaction in us.  That’s because, as some of its more vocal adherents insist, it means that “Nature” or “the Environment,” or “Gaia” or something else is a person and therefore has inherent rights that should not be violated.

What is “Social Justice”?

If you google the term “social justice,” you will get a flood of results . . . few (if any) of which have an accurate definition or even description of the virtue.  As a result, people generally go away with the same understanding they started with.  If they thought social justice is another term for socialism, nothing changed their mind.  If they thought that social justice means replacing individual justice with coercive, large-scale “charity” (actually redistribution), little was done to modify their position.