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 II: The Solution

 Last week we took a look at a book with a hook in a nook with a cook.  That in itself is not unusual, even without a visit from Dr. Suess.  We read a lot of books.  We even write a lot of books.

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.

What Would Trajan Do? Part I

 Once upon a time, in the glory days of the Roman Empire, Pliny the Younger had a problem.  It seems certain slaves of the lesser sort — those who had been condemned to slavery for criminal activities — had managed to insinuate themselves into the ranks of municipal slaves.

With Eggroll, You Get Six

According to CNN, President Trump’s White House — or, as we are coming to know it, “the Business Administration” — is seeking corporate sponsorships for the annual Easter Egg Roll.  This is a tradition initiated by Dolley Madison in 1814 and reinstated in 1878, under the otherwise unpopular Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes.

Five Levers of Change: Politics

Aristotle

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.

Despite what “politics” means to most people, it is not something to avoid.  In the Aristotelian, philosophical sense, politics refers to the behavior of human beings as “political animals” having both individual and social aspects. In this broad sense, politics refers to the art of securing and maintaining fundamental human rights of all persons without harm to other individuals, groups, or the common good as a whole. Social justice is the particular virtue directed to the common good by means of which this social order is structured, reformed, and maintained.

The Framework of Economic Justice: A Limited Economic Role for the State

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.

Especially today with two centuries of people being brainwashed that all good things come from the State, it is difficult to persuade them that they should have control over their own lives.  This in many cases boils down to access to money and credit . . . not for consumption (there’s never been any problem with that, as the rich and powerful want people to buy what they are selling, unless it would take power away from them), but the means to acquire and possess private property in capital, that is, to be a productive member of society.

Separation of Church and State

It’s often astonishing how much words and phrases can change meaning or have a different meaning depending on the time and place.  “Money,” for example, used to mean a means of carrying out economic transactions, the consideration in a contract, or “all things transferred in commerce,” to quote Black’s law dictionary.

Something Wild and Crazy

Given that virtually the whole of the global media are focused today on the outcome of the as-of-this-writing undecided U.S. presidential election, we thought we’d do something so wild and crazy that everybody will want to read it.  And contribute their lives, fortunes, and their sacred honor to promoting the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism.

The Means of Acquiring and Possessing Private Property

“Power,” as American statesman Daniel Webster said two-hundred years ago during the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, “naturally and necessarily property.”  Yes, the political ballot is important, but if people do not have the economic power to back up political power, what inevitably happens is that those with property seize power, or those with power, seize property.

The Billion-Dollar Indemnity

So, you think we have it bad today with mushrooming government debt, a global pandemic, economies verging on collapse, and world leaders who seem to have no idea what to do about anything except point the finger at whoever seems a likely suspect?

How Everyone Can Win in November, Part III

As we saw in the previous two postings on this subject, there is a way that Joseph Biden can win the U.S. presidential race in a landslide in November, and there is a way that Donald Trump can win in a landslide.  All it takes is a new vision of leadership and a coherent plan where this country is going, respectively.  Now today we’re going to finish off this subject and look at what will happen if both candidates catch on and carry out campaigns in which everyone wins, even if he or she is not elected.

How Everyone Can Win in November, Part II

 

Imagine, if you will, a scene in the White House within a few hours of Joe Biden announcing that he is dropping his support for government funding of abortion, as suggested in the previous posting on this subject.  There is (as you might imagine) a great deal of consternation and wringing of hands.

How Everyone Can Win in November, Part I

      What with all the acrimony, even hysteria about the upcoming presidential election in the United States, we thought it might be useful to present a plan that would guarantee (as far as is humanly possible) that everybody would win, even people not voting and those residing in every country in the world.  Yes, and even the “losers,” who would lose nothing substantive under our proposal.

Building a Strategic Plan, Part II of II

As we noted in the previous posting on this subject, CESJ does not support or endorse any candidate for public office.  Any opinions expressed on these matters are personal and represent the views of people as individuals, not as members or representatives of CESJ.  The mention of any specific candidate(s) is purely expedient.

Building a Strategic Plan, Part I of II

As we noted in the previous posting on this subject, CESJ does not support or endorse any candidate for public office.  Any opinions expressed on these matters are personal and represent the views of people as individuals, not as members or representatives of CESJ.  The mention of any specific candidate(s) is purely expedient.

Need for a Strategic Plan

In the previous posting on this subject, we discovered that using the United States Supreme Court to create law and impose the views of one group on everyone else in the country is something of a double-edged sword.  Specifically, when the slave-owning “interests” in the American South succeeded in making human chattel slavery a federal issue instead of confining it to the individual states, they got what they wanted — legal justification to extend slavery anywhere in the United States, regardless whether or not it was legal in a specific state.

A Question of Sovereignty

Although it seems to be upsetting to adherents of various new theories (“new” being very relative in this case, referring to non-Aristotelian ways of thinking), our series explaining the Core Values of the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ) has proved to be rather popular.  Evidently a significant number of people are pleasantly surprised when the realize there is an ethical alternative to both capitalism and socialism that doesn’t require you to check your brains at the door.

Is Keynesian Economics Socialist?

The other day while doing some research into the origins of the “new things” of socialism (which is not all that social), modernism (which is not all that modern), and the New Age (which is not all that new), we came across an article from 1993, “Liberalism and Socialism: The Same Thing?” (Paul E. Corcoran, University of Adelaide, Australian Political Studies Association Annual Conference, Monash University, September 29-October 1, 1993)