Good as Gold, II: What Is “The Gold Standard”?

Yesterday we noted that reinstituting the gold standard wasn’t all that bad an idea.  It would restore a measure of sanity to the financial world, plagued throughout the globe by “flexible standards” for currencies . . . despite the fact that “flexible standard” is a meaningless concept, useful only for confusing the public beyond hope of comprehension.

Mentorship: Making Tomorrow’s Future

Guest Blogger: William R. Mansfield, Founder, Mansfield Institute for Public Policy and Social Change, Inc.

The Just Third Way — any culture, in fact, that includes capital ownership as an essential element of the system — is such a complete shift from today’s pervasive “Jobs-Jobs-Jobs” mentality that training the new type of servant leader needed is critical to “making tomorrow’s future.”  This is all the more necessary when we consider that tomorrow’s leaders will have the primary responsibility for teaching their fellow worker-owners how to be the best persons, and best members of the team at the same time, to say nothing of using their ownership responsibly.

Good as Gold, I: What’s Good About Gold?

According to a recent report, President Trump is in favor of returning to “the gold standard.”  We haven’t verified the quote, but he allegedly said, “Bringing back the gold standard would be very hard to do, but, boy, would it be wonderful. We’d have a standard on which to base our money.”  The report went on to say that few economists were in favor of such a move.

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 09

Things have been a little quiet around the Just Third Way network, what with the Three Rs of reading, researching, and ’riting.  We located a number of very rare (but fortunately relatively inexpensive) books about the Revolutions of 1848 and the New York City mayoral campaign of 1886 — yes, there’s a connection with the Just Third Way — and have had some rather interesting breakthroughs in tying together some seemingly disparate elements.  There have, however, been a few items of note:

Leading with Excellence in a Changing World

Guest Blogger: William R. Mansfield, Founder, Mansfield Institute for Public Policy and Social Change, Inc.

What is changing in the world?  Is it people?  Or is it the “tools” — including our “social tools” — that people have invented to meet every level of human needs?  People’s needs range from survival and security needs, to social and political needs, and from individual personal needs, to the highest level of human development.  Changes in these “tools” are having a profound impact on everyone’s daily life.

Philosophies at War, XIII: Vatican Letters, Part Two

Since today’s blog posting is simply a continuation from yesterday, we’ll just launch right into it:

Dear Just Third Way Blog:

Philosophies at War, XII: Vatican Letters, Part One

This brief series on “Philosophies at War” is not just of academic interest, nor is it particularly religious, although the issue is being fought out most visibly in religious circles.  Obviously, however, how we view the human person is key to how we understand the role of the State, the natural law, organized religion and, increasingly these days, the family, all of which are under attack today in one way or another.

Philosophies at War, XI: The Dumb Ox Bellows

Yesterday we quoted G.K. Chesterton on how the Catholic Church was under constant attack by the forces of unreason from both outside and inside the Church — and of the two, the more subtle (and thus more dangerous) was the attack from within.  This makes sense, for it is almost impossible for an enemy to betray you, but friends can do it at any time.

Twenty-First Century Coaching and Team Building

Guest Blogger: William R. Mansfield, Founder, Mansfield Institute for Public Policy and Social Change, Inc.

How will the economic realities of the 21st Century shape the way companies train and develop their workforces?

Philosophies at War, X: The Soul of the Hive

Last Thursday we looked at what led up to Saint Thomas Aquinas: The “Dumb Ox” (1933), G.K. Chesterton’s final word in the literary debate he carried on with R.H. Tawney, the socialist/New Christian author of The Acquisitive Society (1920) and Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926).

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 08

As the level of anxiety about the world situation continues to increase, so does the studied avoidance of the Just Third Way, which alone holds any promise of rectifying the situation.  This is made pretty clear from this week’s news items:

Philosophies at War, IX: The Apostle of Common Sense

Soon after publishing Saint Francis of Assisi, G.K. Chesterton wrote an introduction to a rather ponderous doctoral thesis by a student of his friend, Msgr. Ronald A. Knox, an obscure American priest by the name of Fulton J. Sheen.  Sheen’s book, God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy in Light of the Philosophy of Saint Thomas (1925), is, at one and the same time, Sheen’s most substantive work and the most difficult of all his voluminous writings to read.  It has almost none of the fluid ease, even sprightliness, that mark even his second book, Religion Without God (1928) — the “sequel” to God and Intelligence — as well as all his later works.

Discipline: Being Your Own Boss

Guest Blogger: William R. Mansfield, Founder, Mansfield Institute for Public Policy and Social Change, Inc.

Where are the great thinkers, creators, innovators and entrepreneurs?

Everyone must be his or her own boss! Real leaders are their own bosses. It is our responsibility to encourage and teach others to be their own boss. Real leaders develop free-thinking, innovation and value ownership for all. The result is high output, positive productivity and innovation. However the traditional American workplace does not promote ownership. Most bosses, managers and supervisors today would rather control their employees.

Philosophies at War, VIII: The New Christianity Versus Chesterton

One can only imagine the rage that suffused the leaders of the Fabian Society with the publication of G.K. Chesterton’s book on St. Francis of Assisi.  Here was a former member of the Society, one whom they had ridiculed for years and characterized as a buffoon, almost an imbecile, for refusing to admit that they were right and he was wrong.

Philosophies at War, VII: Chesterton Versus the New Christianity

Last Thursday we noted that G.K. Chesterton published his little book on St. Francis of Assisi in the early 1920s to address the problems caused by the “New Christianity” movement of the early nineteenth century.  This had gone off into mysticism, spiritualism, theosophy, and “esoteric philosophy” as well as various creative reinterpretations of Christianity, and which, by the late nineteenth century, had evolved into modernism and New Age thought.

Activism vs. Leadership

Guest Blogger: William R. Mansfield, Founder, Mansfield Institute for Public Policy and Social Change, Inc.

In our postmodern world of rapid change and complexity, there are no final authorities. Given the greater “wisdom of crowds,” no single person can direct a complex business. A lone individual can only prod it to think differently.  The postmodern leader is an activist.

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 07

This has been another interesting week, with a number of important meetings and events, to say nothing of advances in basic research on the origins of the Just Third Way and the opposing paradigm.  Interestingly, thanks to having come across the work of Dr. Julian Strube of Heidelberg University (the one in Baden-Württemberg, not Ohio), we now have solid evidence of what we only suspected before: the link between pre- and non-Marxist socialism and “esoteric” philosophy that deviates substantially from (and often contradicts outright) traditional Aristotelian-Thomism that underpins the Just Third Way.

Philosophies at War, VI: Chesterton Throws Down the Gauntlet

Soon after entering the Catholic Church in the early 1920s, G.K. Chesterton published St. Francis of Assisi, a “sketch of St. Francis of Assisi in modern English.”  This he followed up a decade later with a companion volume, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The “Dumb Ox”.

Philosophies at War, V: The New Christianity

As we saw yesterday, both capitalists and socialists confuse justice and charity and (while they think they are polar opposites) end up in substantial agreement.  This is because what neither the capitalists nor the socialists see — or could admit even if they did see — is that the natural virtue of justice, and the supernatural virtue of charity are both as true, and are true in the same way, as the other, or (for that matter) anything else that is true.

Philosophies at War, IV: The Double Mind of Man

To summarize what we’ve discussed so far in this series, the world is in crisis, and it’s worse than anything Fulton Sheen imagined when he wrote Philosophies at War in 1943.  Then, Sheen could look to the Catholic Church to provide an integrated body of social thought to counter the distortions of capitalism and the insidious lunacy of socialism.

Philosophies at War, III: The Principle of Private Property

Last week we decided that the so-called “Reign of Christ the King” could not be fully understood if limited to a strictly religious meaning or interpretation.  Frankly, the term is more than a little misleading once we realize that it refers not to some kind of theocracy or even personal faith in any religion, but to the process of conforming one’s life to the precepts of the natural law — which, after all, applies to everyone, regardless of faith, hope, or charity, or lack thereof.

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 06

This has been an interesting week, with things coming to light that tend to underscore the need to adopt the Just Third Way as soon as possible.  No, we’re not talking about the “Two No Trump” movement to get rid of the U.S. president, but of what we think are the causes of such things:

Philosophies at War, II: The “Reign of Christ the King”?

Pius XI, who saw the rise of the dictatorships and the global situation that led up to World War II during which Fulton Sheen wrote Philosophies at War, took as his motto, “the Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ.”  Naturally, despite Jesus’s explicit assurance that “[His] kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36), and his insisting that “king” isn’t even the right word for what He is (Matt. 27:11; Mark 15:2; Luke 22:70, 23:3; John 18:37), many people took it to mean precisely that, for good or for ill.

Philosophies at War, I: The Meaning and Purpose of Life

In 1943 at the height of the Second World War, the late Fulton J. Sheen published a book giving his perspective on what the conflict was really about, Philosophies at War.  A follow-up of sorts to such earlier works as Religion Without God (1928), and Freedom Under God (1940), the book is not very well known, and is very rare.

School Choice and the Just Third Way

In the early 1960s, as a young government attorney fresh out of the University of Chicago Law School, Norman G. Kurland, now president of the interfaith think tank, the Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ) in Arlington, Virginia, was given the assignment to build the case supporting newly elected President John F. Kennedy’s election pledge that there would be no government aid to church schools.

“Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa?”

Despite the legend that he had made the pejorative comment about “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” Blaine seemed the ideal Republican candidate.  While he was raised Protestant, his mother was Catholic, and had his siblings brought up in that faith.  Catholics tended to view him with a tolerant eye if only because fanatic nativists questioned his faith.  Blaine even managed to oppose government aid to religious institutions without coming across as anti-Catholic.

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 05

This has been a somewhat quiet week for action, but a full week of important meetings.  Admittedly actions are easier to report than meetings, but meetings sometimes have far more reaching resulting in actions.  In any event, here are this week’s news items:

The Growing Romish Menace

By 1880, it was clear even to the most obtuse politicians that “the Catholic vote” was becoming key to a successful national campaign.  This combined with other factors, such as the surprising popularity of Leo XIII among non-Catholics, and the able leadership of the American Church by Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop John Ireland (1838-1918), and Bishop John Joseph Keane (1839-1918), then bishop of Richmond, Virginia, and from 1886 to 1896 first rector of the Catholic University of America.  This brought about a resurgence of nativist hysteria, ironically chronicled in many of the cartoons of foreign-born Thomas Nast (1840-1902).

A Political Hayes

Near the end of his second term, Grant began hinting that he would be open to a third.  An anti-Catholic Methodist bishop, Gilbert Haven (1821-1880), made a speech in Boston in which he declared that Grant, a fellow-Methodist, was “the only man who could conquer their enemies.”[1]  The Boston Herald, evidently more cognizant of the growing power of the Catholic Church, and fully aware that the Catholic vote had handed Grant his second term, cautioned the president against running on an anti-Catholic platform.

Grant Takes Command

Hiram Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822-1885) may not have been the worst president in U.S. history, but both his administrations set a standard of corruption that would be hard to beat.  When he was asked to run for president in 1868, he was initially very doubtful . . . and he probably should have gone with his gut reaction.

“Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion”

On the morning of October 29, 1884, the Republican candidate for president of the United States, James Gillespie Blaine (1830-1893), attended a rally of Protestant clergy at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City.  The afternoon was to be devoted to a final visit to the city’s Irish neighborhoods to clinch the Catholic votes Blaine seemed certain to get, and on which he relied to secure his election.

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 04

We rather like the way actor Tom Hanks put it.  We hope President Trump does so well that we’d vote for him for a second term.  That being said, however, it is painfully obvious that if Trump wants to do well, he desperately needs the Just Third Way, both to “Make America Great Again,” and to repair past efforts that, regardless how well-intentioned, didn’t quite make the grade.  So here’s our take on this week’s news items:

The More Things Change. . .

It comes as a complete surprise to many people today to find out that one of the most burning issues of the latter half of the nineteenth century in U.S. politics was “the Catholic Question.”  The fact that not even textbooks in Catholic schools mention this, or give any hint that something was amiss, may be a symptom of just what is wrong with both Academia and politics today.  After all, if you don’t know why something is the way it is, how can you expect to come up with a just or even workable solution?

Panic on the Street

. . . on Wall Street, that is.  It seems that the “Baby Boomers,” who have an estimated $10 trillion in tax-deferred savings accounts according to the Wall Street Journal (“Boomers to Start Mandatory 401(k) Exit,” 01/17/17, A1, A10), are going to have to start receiving the mandatory distributions required under law in the year in which someone turns age 70½.

The Problem of Wealth, IV: The Just Third Way Solution

The problem as Louis O. Kelso saw it was that technology was becoming so productive and cost-effective that it was rapidly displacing labor from the production process.  Aside from all the other problems this caused, this meant that people who formerly were able to gain an adequate income from selling their labor were no longer able to do so.

The Problem of Wealth, III: The Fabian Failure

Last Thursday we gave a summary of the capitalist solution to global poverty . . . which bears a striking resemblance to the socialist solution.  Both bear a striking resemblance to what Hilaire  Belloc called the Servile State in his 1912 book with that title.

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 03

You mean you’re reading today’s news items instead of protesting, counter-protesting, or watching the political antics on television? . . . There might be hope for you yet!  Seriously, the new administration represents a new opportunity to implement the Just Third Way that would empower ordinary people instead of the State or a private sector élite.  This can be done by making all Americans, not just the abstract America, great again:

The Problem of Wealth, II: The Capitalist Solution

In a sense, this posting might be considered a trifle redundant.  That of a few days ago covered the agenda of the World Economic Forum currently meeting in the resort town of Davos, Switzerland.  Briefly, the discussions center on two issues in the struggle to find a viable solution to the growing problem of poverty.  These are, one, how to create jobs, and, two, how to train people to fill those jobs.

The Problem of Wealth, I: The Socialist Solution

The word is out.  Eight people in the world own more wealth than half the human race combined.  Given Adam Smith’s first principle of economics (“Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production”), that means less than a dozen people each have the potential to consume 430,000,000,000 times what it takes to support one individual at a minimum — give or take a few million.

Jobs, Training, and the World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum starts today in Davos, Switzerland, and will go through Friday, January 20, Inauguration Day in the United States.   The Forum, which describes itself as being a unique advocate for public-private partnerships, has been meeting since 1971.

Just Third Way Home Economics, II: Optimal is Beautiful

Last Thursday we looked at the reason why Keynesian economics divides the science into “micro” and “macro”: to justify crazy stuff that no one with any common sense would accept if it wasn’t presented to him or her by people hiding their pointy heads behind Ph.D.s . . . which could easily stand for, “Pointy-headed Dunces.”

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 02

The New Year is off to a good start, as you can see from this week’s news items.  They illustrate the importance of outreach — and persistence (as well as persistence and persistence, the first, second, and third keys to gaining acceptance of revolutionary new ideas):

Just Third Way Home Economics, I: Micro v. Macro

Back in 1984 Father William Ferree, S.M., Ph.D., Dr. Norman Kurland, and a number of others came together in a cafeteria at the American University in Washington, DC, and organized the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ).  From the first — possibly because of the cafeteria connection — CESJ events have almost always included food and drink.  There has even been talk of putting together a collection of recipes one day.

The Real Fix for Corporate Tricks

When a Harvard professor who also happens to be a past president of Harvard, a former Treasury Secretary, and economic advisor to President Obama speaks, it’s probably a good idea to listen.  The words of Lawrence Summers carry weight.  They have what the Romans used to call gravitas.  He is Somebody, in italics and with a capital S.

The Anti-Francis Effect, II: Leo’s Vision

Yesterday we looked at how so many people seem to be upset with Pope Francis.  Neither the liberals nor the conservatives seem to be getting their way.  One thing we discovered, however, is that none of this is particularly new.  It’s all happened before, with Pope Leo XIII, with whom Pope Francis has a number of similarities.

The Anti-Francis Effect, I: Leo & Francis

It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic — and, frankly, silly.  With increasing regularity, headlines about Pope Francis appear that seem calculated to shock Catholics and non-Catholics, believers and non-believers alike.  FRANCIS FRENZY FULMINATES FAITHFUL!  PAPAL PRONOUNCEMENTS PROMOTE PONTIFICAL PERVERSION!  VATICAN VEILS VILE VEHEMANCE!”

News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 01

The New Year is off to a good start, as you can see from this week’s news items.  They illustrate the importance of outreach — and persistence (as well as persistence and persistence, the first, second, and third keys to gaining acceptance of revolutionary new ideas):

Crisis of Reason, II: Why is This Important?

Yesterday we looked at the problem that the Catholic Church (and other faiths) are having retaining young people.  It’s not that they’re converting to other religions or denominations.  They’re just sort of drifting away from religion altogether, some of them persuading themselves that they are “spiritual, but not religious” (whatever that means), others just not wanting to bother with all that jazz.