Justice University

What is the reason for having “core values” in the first place?  There is a link between solidarity and core values.   After all, if solidarity means accepting the principles that define a group as that group and no other, it makes sense that the principles be clearly defined or you won’t know who belongs to that group.

We need to consider the effect two key inventions, the cotton gin and the McCormick Reaper, had on society, whether for good or for ill.   The cotton gin made raising cotton profitable, while the McCormick Reaper made it possible to think about ending world hunger and famine.

A think tank that shall remain nameless recently presented a study, the point of which was that free childcare is more important than free college.   At first glance this seems like heresy.   For around half a century at least, the constant mantra in the United States was to study hard, get into a good college and you’ll get a good job.   That is, assuming that there are any jobs to get, but that’s another issue. . . .

Today we address a problem that most (if not all) economists do not even think of as a problem — which may itself be the biggest problem of all.   How, after all, can you solve a problem that most people will not even agree exists?

What with the “canonization” of John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) coming up in a couple of weeks, we thought we would add our two cents as well as a few hundred words into the discussions that are raging.   (Canonization does not "make" someone a saint; it is a certification process.)  By and large, the discussion seems to be whether Newman was a liberal or a conservative.   From the interfaith viewpoint, however, it seems more to the point whether Newman was in agreement with the Just Third Way.

On April 14, 1865, an actor by the name of John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865) entered Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC during a performance of Our American Cousin featuring Laura Keene (1826-1873) in the role of “Florence Trenchard.”   Booth, a pro-slavery Confederate sympathizer, shot and mortally wounded President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) four days after the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert Edward Lee (1807-1870).

We closed the previous posting on this subject with the comment that “America’s Prince of Cranks” — Ignatius Loyola Donnelly (1831-1901) — had influenced the interpretation and understanding of Catholic social teaching, and thus the natural law “written in the hearts of all men.”   At first glance this seems rather odd, since Donnelly left the Catholic Church and took up spiritualism, was a socialist, influenced theosophy, and may have inspired certain features of Nazi racial ideology.