Justice University

“ It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good wife, must be in want of a job.”   That, of course, is the famous opening line from fictional author Gianny Austin’s apocryphal novel, Property and Prejudice , a comedy of manners in which ownership of the means of production (except for an economic or political élite ) is depicted as being not quite polite, and the characters spend all their time cleverly positioning themselves for higher wages and fixed benefits, and then wondering why prices are so high and why other people keep telling them what to do.

Misunderstanding of the development of the concept of social justice to counter the “new things” of socialism, modernism, and the New Age is pervasive in our day.   Briefly, many people confuse the act of social justice with measures directed to the good of individuals, not to the common good.   The act of social justice is not, however, a substitute or supplement for individual justice or charity, but a corrective intended to restructure institutions to make it possible for the individual virtues to function so that individuals can meet their own needs through their own efforts.

We got into a little argument a short time ago about socialism, capitalism, and Christianity.   Coming across a FaceBook placard or whatever you call ’em that proclaimed, “Capitalism causes socialism”, we made the mistake of putting our two-and-a-half cents in, although you would have thought that by now we would have learned our lesson about trying to argue with people who think assertion is argument and personal insults are proof.

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.

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.

One of the more interesting things we discover about Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (1805-1859) and his greatest work, Democracy in America (1835, 1840), is that the author — like Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-1876) a generation latter in The American Republic (1866) — considered himself a Catholic writing as a Catholic.   What surprises many people is to find out that both de Tocqueville and Brownson considered the American system (slavery excepted) to be the closest to “Catholic” political theory.

In case you didn't know, George Bernard Shaw was as insistent that socialism is the universal panacea for all problems (as long as you don’t eat meat or drink alcohol) and that distributism is just another name for Fabian socialism* as G.K. Chesterton was adamant that Shaw was full of . . . nonsense.

One of the things we find most consistent about socialism is its inconsistency, the ability to say one thing and do another with astonishing regularity.   This was brought forcibly home to us when we came across the writings of Robert Owen, considered the first of the British line of socialism.

Recently we received a quote from a news commentary on an allocution by Pope Francis to the effect that the head of the Catholic Church had abolished the natural law.   Not all of the natural law, of course, just the part that some people disagreed with and needed some credible authority to back them up regarding the alleged abolition of private property by Pope Francis (or any other pope).   Specifically,

There is a problem with having government pay for infrastructure . . . especially when we expect government to pay for everything else!   Of course, what is really at issue is that “the government” doesn’t actually pay for anything.   Either it collects taxes or borrows money . . . which it is supposed to repay by collecting taxes.

In the opening of A Tale of Two Cities , Charles Dickens noted that the French Revolution was a time so like his own day as to be practically indistinguishable.   Although Dickens was employing a literary device to bring the reader into the story, a similar observation could be made comparing the early twentieth century to the present time.

Leo XIII In his landmark social encyclical Rerum Novarum , Pope Leo XIII managed to do two things that took the socialists, modernists, and New Agers off guard.   One, he followed up on the series of social encyclicals that had started with Gregory XVI’s Mirari Vos in 1832 with an unexpected twist.   Instead of simply condemning the “new things” of the modern world, he presented an alternative that could deliver what socialism, modernism, and the New Age only promised, and that without sacrificing one iota of the natural law or Catholic doctrine.

The other day someone referred to the Just Third Way as “utopian.”    It was one of those occasions when you realize that some people might not know exactly what they are talking about.   Quite a large number of people seem to think that a utopian scheme is one for an ideal society.   Not quite.

According to Dr. Lawrence Ball on a recent episode of “Squawk Box Europe,” inadequate regulation will bring about the next financial crisis.   Dr. Ball, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of the book, The Fed and Lehman Brothers: Setting the Record Straight on a Financial Disaster , getting rid of regulations such as the Dodd-Frank Act lays the groundwork for an economic meltdown of cosmic proportions.

Last week in the Wall Street Journal Walter Russell Mead gave his opinion that the “Crisis of Democracy” in the modern world is a bit exaggerated (“The “Crisis of Democracy” Is Overhyped,” WSJ , 08/28/18, A-13).   According to Mead, the democracies are, if not precisely doing-just-fine-thank-you, at least doing better than the non-democracies.

Answering the question What is liberalism? is key to understanding the life and times of John Henry Newman, particularly since what has baffled many Newman scholars is the fact that he claimed to be against all forms of liberalism and yet held many opinions and took many positions that people today regard as liberal.   Part of this may be due to the possibility that Newman seems to have had trouble viewing this world as anything other than a temporary stopping place on the way to the next.