Some interesting events this week, many dealing with
advances various members of CESJ are making in promoting the Just Third Way in
politics, business, and academia. A
number of people in various internet social media forums have commented very
favorably on the Just Third Way, suggesting that people may be ready to hear
the message:
• Yesterday CESJ was contacted by Jim Aulenti, a member of
the Knights of Columbus (a Catholic fraternal order) and financial advisor who
recently ran for Congress in Massachusetts, where he garnered 2% of the vote,
which is actually pretty good for someone not a part of the local political
machine. Jim has expressed interest in
the platform of the Unite America Party, as well as programs and proposals of
CESJ and EEI (neither CESJ nor EEI are connected or affiliated with the Unite
America Party, although you will see some of the same names). Jim seems to want to be a force for positive
change, and he might also be interested in EEI’s “JBM S-Corp ESOP” program, as
well as CESJ’s “Justice University” project, both of which are designed to
effect positive social change within existing law as a step toward a Capital
Homestead Act.
• CESJ has sent a proposal to the Rector of the Pontifical
Catholic University of Argentina to co-author an article expanding on the
Rector’s analysis of the teachings of Pope Francis, who, as Cardinal Bergoglio and archbishop of Buenos Aires,
was Grand Chancellor of the university.
The Rector recently published an op-ed piece describing how many media
commentators are simply missing the point of much of what the pope is saying.
• As suggested above, the finalized platform of the Unite
America Party (not affiliated in any way with CESJ or EEI), has excited a great
deal of positive comment. The recent
“Cantor/Brat Affair” may inspire politicians who are becoming less confident
that “business as usual” is the way to go to have a look at the platform and
consider adopting it, whatever their official party affiliation or lack thereof.
•
Deacon Joseph Gorini is founder, chairman and
CEO of Evangelization Enterprises, Inc. (EEI), and also Apostolic Action,
Inc. (AAI). Light and Heat Ministries (LAHMin) is an operating operation
division of EEI, and is currently the public face of the organization. He opened
up two very interesting discussion/teaching opportunities this past week on
LinkedIn, both of which related to ways in which the Just Third Way differs
from the now-traditional systems of capitalism and socialism, and their
near-infinite variations, permutations, and combinations.
Comments were very
positive, and came from around the globe, from Australia to Spain.
• Much of the discussion involved a comparison of CESJ’s
Just Third Way with the “classic” distributism of G. K. Chesterton and J. H.
Belloc. Aside from some easily
correctable bad assumptions about how capital is financed, the optimal size of
enterprises, and the proper role of the State, the Just Third Way and classic
distributism are very compatible. (What
we call “neo-distributism” is a different matter, as there are substantial differences
caused by the shift in the basis of the natural law from the Intellect to the
Will, the imposition of the “small is beautiful” ideology, and the distortions
of distributive and social justice derived from the work of Msgr. John A. Ryan,
who expanded the theories of Henry George from land to all forms of capital.)
• Guy Stevenson in Iowa recently located a very rare copy of
a 1938 pamphlet by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, “the American Chesterton,” Justice and Charity, Part I: The Social
Problem and the Church and contributed it to the CESJ research
library. The pamphlet was published by
the “National Council of Catholic Men,” and consists of a number of “addresses”
that Sheen gave over the radio on the Catholic
Hour radio program in early 1938.
Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the language seems to presage that
used by Pope John Paul II in Centestimus
Annus in 1991, suggesting that John Paul II might have been more familiar
with Sheen’s writings than was previously suspected.
• CESJ’s monthly Executive Committee meeting will be Monday,
June 16, 2014, in the evening.
• Business magnate Steve Forbes is advocating a return to
the gold standard as the cure for the economic malaise that currently afflicts
the United States. We agree that an
asset-backed reserve currency is essential to long-term economic stability, but
“elasticity,” i.e., a currency that
expands and contracts directly with the needs of the economy is also
critical. Since Forbes seems to be
advocating gold as the sole component of the money supply (a condition that has
never existed in all of human history), not simply gold as the standard of
measurement, and the supply of gold is relatively fixed, his proposal is
inadequate for achieving either stability or elasticity, and would potentially
create more problems than it solves.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 65 different countries and 47 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from
the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Canada, and Australia. The most
popular postings this past week were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “Aristotle
on Private Property,” “Avoiding Monetary Meltdown, II: Salmon P. Chase and the
Greenbacks,” “‘Inequality Is the Root of All Social Evil’,” and “‘Inspired Amateurs
Should Avoid Politics’.”
Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we
know about. If you have an
accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at
mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into the next
“issue.” If you have a short (250-400
word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog —
do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated anyway, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#
