Threads on "Distributivism" From 2007:
(A Rerum Novarum Recapitulation Thread)

As strange as it may appear, I had absolutely no intention of writing on this subject in 2007 when the year started. I saw no reason to considering that I had done a critique of a critique of "distributivism" published by The Acton Institute in late March of 2006, recorded a couple audioposts on it in early April of 2006, put up another posting touching on the subject in July of 2006{1}, and revisited the subject in another audioposting in September of 2006. Basically, I did not see anything more I could say or wanted to say on the matter in the future particularly since the core internal contradiction I highlighted that undermines "distributivist" methodology had not been interacted with anywhere to my knowledge. But a series of circumstances came about which facilitated a change of mind on the matter starting with the closing of audioblogger in late 2006.

I had noticed since November of 2006 that I could sometimes access my old audioblogging posts and sometimes I could not. This was chalked up to a system issue initially by me as it seemed that the problem was one of technology.{2} When the "distributivist" issue came up again around April-May 2007{3}, I decided to throw together a response based heavily on the contents of the previous audioblogger recordings. This was not however possible at the time due to audioblogger not working as they promised; ergo I noted that problem briefly on the weblog{4} after I had put together a weblog posting from scratch to deal with the matter in question.

It is probably for the best that at least temporarily there were audioblogger problems as it resulted in the thread of posts below where the matter is dealt with in a fair degree of detail -both in expository postings as well as responses to some email inquiries on the matter from people with different outlooks on the matter. One party was a passionate advocate of "distributivism", one was opposed to it for the reasons I outlined in the postings below, and a third was if not a fan of the outlook at the very least thought it deserved to be entertained as a viable alternative to current economic realities. Anyway, without further ado, here are the threads posted in sequential order from oldest to newest:

Revisiting "Distributivism" (circa May 25, 2007)

"The Empire Distributivist Strikes Back" Dept. (circa May 27, 2007)

On Fundamental Rights, Private Property, and Authentic Dialogue (circa May 31, 2007)

From the Mailbag on the "Phantom Menace" of Distributivism (circa September 8, 2007)

From the Mailbag on Distributivism and Economics Systems in General (circa September 10, 2007)

I will gladly admit that having noticed a rational flaw in the "distributivist" weltanschauung years ago that I dismissed it out of hand without explaining more in detail why this outlook has so many problems to it in the area of application as opposed to merely the abstract where it can sound downright tempting to entertain as a possible solution. The audiopostings recorded in 2006 were basically an amplification of and reiteration of the internal inconsistencies of this view without concern for other factors generally speaking. The lack of ready access to my audioposts made me have to revisit this subject from scratch and thus necessitated taking a different approach to it than I had customarily done up to that point -both in major as well as minor ways.

Should audioblogger's mp3 recordings be accessible again in the future, the readers can get a better idea of the various ways I have approached this subject both in the past as well as in the recent threads above. Until that time though, I hope what is outlined in the above threads provides plenty of food for musing for those who both have a passionate concern for people but also who take reason and logic seriously.

Notes:

{1} The material in this posting touched on the subject only briefly and was originally a private communication that I gave the recipient of permission to use publicly. When the contents were used publicly by that person and someone mentioned in the material contacted me about what I had written, I tracked down the material (after wondering where on earth I had said what was being attributed to me) and posted it to this weblog to clarify the material and retract one assumption made which had not been a correct one.

{2} Some computers I accessed would be able to play them and others could not.

{3} How or where this happened I do not recall offhand but it was probably someone emailing me about it and asking for my opinion on the subject.

{4} I recorded some audios last year which I tried to access for the next weblog posting but they are not available. This is despite Audioblogger's promise last year after they closed that feature to host the audios recorded "indefinitely", apparently "indefinitely" as a measure of time is less than a year now. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa May 25, 2007)]

Points to Ponder:
(From Alexander Hamilton -The Constitution's Greatest Defender)

I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.

Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

It is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another [for the Executive] to be dependent on the legislative body. The first comports with, the last violates, the fundamental principles of good government; and, whatever may be the forms of the Constitution, unites all power in the same hands.

The following article is yet another case study of not only what is wrong with the mainstream media but also why my use for them continues to diminish to the extent that it still can{1}:

Vatican Rejects Charges on John Paul II (New York Post)

The long and short of it is summed up in the first paragraph of the article:

ROME (AP) -- A doctor alleged Wednesday that Pope John Paul II violated Catholic teaching against euthanasia by refusing medical care that would have kept him alive longer - a charge immediately dismissed by Vatican officials.

In other words, someone makes an allegation and that constitutes news!!! If that does not tell you just how downright pathetic the drive by mainstream media (msm) has become, I do not know what does.

Basically, we have a doctor here who jumped on some news from March 30, 2005 about the late pontiff who proceeded to draw unwarranted conclusions from minimal if any evidences. She in other words made a rash judgment of the sort that does her no credit. I say "rash judgment" because she did so based on press releases and news reports the accuracy of which should always be questioned rathe on the basis of reviewing the late pontiff's medical records. Or at least that is what the Vatican has claimed:

Vatican officials said Wednesday that the tube had actually been inserted well before March 30 but that the procedure was only announced on that date - casting doubt on Pavanelli's core argument. They disclosed the information in response to Pavanelli's charges, which they said weren't serious because she had no access to the medical records and based her accusations only on press releases and news reports.

The subject of of hydration for the terminally ill or near-death "proportional means" pertains to the issue in question and it is a complex one. What you have with it are solid moral and ethical principles which must guide one's dicernment but ultimately the variables admit of differing possible applications.{2} Thus, with the example in question, we have yet another case study of what I have for years referred to as The McElhinney Media Dictum.

Of course before the reader presumes I am uncritically accepting at face value the Vatican's side of the story, the story itself claims that woman in question admitted to the veracity of the Vatican's assertions with regards to her allegations:

At a news conference Wednesday, Pavanelli acknowledged she didn't have access to John Paul's medical records and acknowledged the likelihood that he may have been outfitted sooner than March 30 with a nasal feeding tube.

So she was not possessing of the requisite information to thereby make an accurate assessment of the matter but decided to spout off publicly anyway. Sadly this is all too typical today but I digress.

But she maintained...

Who cares what she "maintained"??? She made an allegation based on supposition and when cornered, she admitted to not having reviewed key evidences that should accompany such an allegation considering the gravity of the issue involved. This whole incident is a bunch of fark in other words, not real news. That would be all that needs to be said about it except for the opportunity to set forth and/or reiterate{3} a principle which I believe bears noting here.

It is no secret that Pope John Paul II (RIP) was in some respects a controversial figure: this goes with the territory of being an original thinker and on many subjects, he was just that. And obviously different people may not have agreed with him on some of his opinions -heck, I know on occasion that I did not. Such a situation of course should not surprise as no one agrees with someone else all the time -indeed if they did then only one of them is doing any thinking.{4} But consider if you will what we have here and what the presence of this article intends to convey.

We have here a man who by every objective standard was a great and good man apart from his stature as a serious and personally pious religious figure in general. Therefore, in the absence of significantly solid evidence to the contrary, it should be presumed that he died in accordance with the beliefs he espoused while he was living. That is what people of a good reputation deserve, not to be made the object of detraction based on incomplete and/or uncharitable speculation either years after they have passed on and are not here to defend themselves or on the basis of contemporary realizations{5} which themselves have no greater claim to infallibility than past "certainties" which with time showed themselves to be anything but certain themselves.

Notes:

{1} The depravity to which the journalistic profession has fallen since the days of Watergate can be to some extent pinned on Woodward and Bernstein...not as much them personally as what they ushered in in the aftermath of the Nixon resignation.[...] The journalistic profession has become one where you "make it" by finding someone whose reputation you can destroy. Ethics are often not a factor, indeed morals and ethics often get the screw from journalists who are trying to "make it" and then (for those who "make it") the same tactics are utilized to try and stay "on top." The same is the case with the legal profession and the political profession: oftentimes those who "make it" do so by screwing other people. So the parallel to prostitution is an apt one. The only difference of course is that prostitutes are somewhat honest about it. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa June 1, 2005)]

{2} A phenomenon which is common to matters of the prudential order.

{3} I am sure I have discussed this somewhere before but cannot recall where and am too busy right now to bother looking for the threads.

{4} Credit for this phrasing goes in part to the late President Lyndon Johnson who once said something to the tune of "if two people agree on everything, only one of them is doing the thinking."

{5} I noted that principle before at sundry times and in divers manners on this weblog -most recently in March of 2007 when I concurred with a defense of someone (Hillaire Belloc) I have vehemently disagreed with on some matters of principle. The reason: attempts by modern persons to tar and feather him unjustly as an antisemite based on writings of his which while over the line by modern standards were hardly so in his own day and certainly on their face are too ambiguous to be given such a label for the reasons so noted in the posting above.

I have not taken one of those online quizzes in a long time but this one was of particular interest to me (and it was not that long) so I took it yesterday during lunch:

Which Civil War General are You?

Robert E Lee: You are the very image of the gentleman warrior with the soul of a river boat gambler. You place a very high price on honor and personal loyalty. Lee is widely regarded as one of the greatest generals in US history. Personally opposed to slavery, he only joined the Confederate army after Virginia seceded from the Union. Some say that he personally prolonged the war at least two years with his tactical brilliance
Take this quiz!








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This quiz had one question which could have been answered in multiple ways so I did so and it gave me two answers. One was General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson and the other was General Robert E. Lee. Because I do not have the sense of reckless abandon and do not consider myself to be possessing of some special God-given mandate, I went with the Lee test result instead. Either way though, I am shocked by the test result and would have banked on it being General James Longstreet for a variety of reasons.

From the Mailbag;

Hi. I hope you don't mind me e-mailing you. As a Catholic, I thought you might be interested in the abortion issue. I want to tell you about a new pro-life website that I think has some great information on it. It's at http://www.clinicquotes.com and it has articles about abortion, including several about babies born alive after abortions. I also has collections of quotes from abortion providers taken from interviews, books, magazines and newspapers. There is a section of abortionists admitting that abortion takes a life, a section of first hand accounts of abortion procedures, court transcripts where abortionists testified, information about clinics using deceptive practices to sell abortions, and more. I hope that you can use some of this information in your pro-life work and spread the word about the page.

Here is the link for easy click access:

Abortion Quotes

I do not write on this subject very often admittedly.{1} Nonetheless, it is appropriate at times to remind people of what goes on behind closed doors and out of view. That situation makes abortion for many an abstract rather than a concrete issue. No matter how the issue is viewed, I cannot understand how anyone could not rationally conclude that (i) life begins before birth, (ii) life begins a long time before birth, and (iii) where innocent life is deliberately taken with no self-defense or due process, there is murder.

I hope readers of this weblog take a look at the thread above, view the pictures, and share them with others. This needs to be a tangible issue for most people and not merely an intangible one if there is to be any conversion of hearts amongst those who advocate this abominable practice. And that is the bottom line really.

Note:

{1} For those who may have forgotten, here is my last weblog posting on the subject:

On Fundamental Rights, Common Law Principles, and Abortion (circa February 1, 2007)

Miscellaneous Notes and Notifications:

I want to touch on a few things here in brief subject-wise as well as notify the readers of this humble weblog of some upcoming posts and projects. Without further ado...

--Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is speaking at the United Nations as I put the final touches on this posting. It is nice to see President George Bush getting a bit of support from French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on this one -I forgot when mentioning earlier this year my recent about-face on Sweden and France to mention Angela Merkel and Germany too. Consider that oversight with this mention to be rectified.

--In a posting from last week, I noted how someone should by default approach national security matters. After that thread was posted, I was reviewing a thread reporting that Israel bombed an installation in Syria that may have been a joint Syrian-North Korean nuclear facility As there is speculation on the matter, that is all I will note on it except to point out how former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the sort of approach that the opposition parties in America should learn from.

I do not mean that the opposition party needs to explicitly and uncritically support everything the party in control does mind you, that would be ludicrous and contrary to one of the principles of our underlying weltanschauung here at Rerum Novarum. Uncritical acceptance is the problem here much as uncritical rejection is. If any opposition is taken at all it should be solidly based, principled, and not for the sake of being contrarian but out of a genuine concern for just public order and the common good of society. Few issues impact the latter elements more than that of national security. And as I have noted before on several occasions -including in a recent blog posting revisiting the Able Danger controversy- matters of national security should be free of the sort of partisan bickering that has been all-to-common in recent years on this issue among numerous other ones.

--The Senate of the United States deserves to be given some credit for their condemning of a full page ad against General Petraus issued prior to his testimony before the Congress. The vote was 72-25. Among those of note are Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Christopher Dodd for voting against the condemation -hopefully voters will remember their craven nature when it comes primary time.{1}

If not for the fact that these sorts are so evidently out to undermine the Iraq situation by any means possible, I would not care what they say. Nor would I care if this ad was run after Petraus' testimony was looked atbecause at the very least they would have at least had the testimony to review before running such an ad if they wanted to run it at that point. For all the talk these so-called "progressivists" have about so-called "free speech", they do not realize that with freedome comes responsibility and those not willing to accept the responsibility for their public statements do not deserve the freedom to make them.

Furthermore, in a free society decisions should be made after evidence is heard, not beforehand. The Moveon.org crowd has proven with this stunt{2} that they do not care about dialogue or discussion on issues. They also proved that they have no interest in questioning their own infallibility by dismissing in advance without a hearing information that could possibly give them reason to reassess or even (possibly) change their mind on the matter. This is how kangaroo courts have been (and are0 run in totalitarianist nations -obviously the marxist apple does not fall far from the communist tree methodologically.

--I am working on a piece in dialogual format responding to some recent statements made by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. I am not sure when it will be finished but probably sometime in October time-willing.

--The talk I have seen in some circles about the Catholics for Ron Paul movement has got me thinking about the draft I started on a necessary third way in politics earlier this year and how I need to find the motivation to finish it.{3} If I continue to read material on the Ron Paul movement, I may well have that motivation because I do not see him as fitting that necessary third way at all. Instead, in his own way it would be more of the same as that posting (when it is finished) will hopefully make reasonably evident.

--The frequently-mentioned dialogue on the atomic bombings of 1945 will commense soon.{4} I still need to format the opening posts and review my dialogue partner's opening statement a few more times to get a sense of how he wants to go about handling the subject. The first posting will be a joint statement of principles that was drafted back in early August and to which my dialogue partner gave his full concurrence to after reviewing it and offering a few small revisions which I gladly accepted. Basically, we should be ready to go on it within the week now -time willing as always but this will be put in priority over and above anything else being blogged once it starts.

--There is also a sports posting I have been working on here and there as well as a posting on my approach to blogging which will touch on the weaknesses of my approach to this medium.{5}

--The "points to ponder" series featuring key Founding Fathers has one more installment to go to wrap it up -that will be tended to soon as well.

More could be noted but that is enough for now to point out what will be worked on in the immediate future at this humble weblog.

Notes:

{1} Senator Barack Obama also should be noted because he abstained from the main vote and voted in some package proposition condemning this ad and specific ads in the past. Nice try Senator Obama but we can take that kind of retroactive approach to condemnations of ads even further back than 2004. This attempt on your part shows not decisiveness but indecisiveness and even cowardice. Any chance you had of getting my vote in 2008 (and you had a decent chance) is practically nill after this stunt. I can vote for someone whose principles are not the same as mine but not someone who puts principles behind politics. Politics should never come before principles. PERIOD.

{2} If there was any doubt whatsoever prior to it and this writer certainly did not have any.

{3} I am not sure when I first mentioned it on the weblog but I believe it was in this posting from April of 2007 which was written as a prelude to it. The idea had been in my mind for quite some time prior to that posting though -the seeds of which were in retrospect planted when I was publicly noting my views on the need for a third party in the United States. (As noted in a pair of postings from 2002, a pair of postings from 2004, and a couple of posts from early 2006 prior to the elections.) Perhaps the time it would take to make the vision as I outlined it occur coupled with the intuition I have had for years that serious fixes are needed and needed now facilitated this approach to the issue in question. Anyway, it has been in the works for some time and hopefully I can put the finished product into the arena of ideas for criticism and/or interaction with soon.

{4} To note the history of this briefly, after watching the usual babbling on this subject last year, I decided in early 2007 to entertain issuing a challenge for 2007 on the matter if things looked no different this year than in the past. In the meantime, I wrote some posts dealing with procedural matters that went so badly askew the last time this was publicly delved into with others and waited to see if history would repeat itself. Well, it always does and this time the subject in question was delved into even earlier this year than last in some places. For that reason, I pondered what would be needed for a potentially fruitful dialogue on the matter and in July issued a challenge for a dialogue on this matter. I did this as I noted before fully expecting no Catholic to measure up to the very basic criteria I outlined -heck I said this in the challenge posting itself!!!

As I predicted, a few people (including one fairly known author/"apologist") contributed to making a prophet out of me on the matter until I received a couple emails from people interested in the idea who were willing to fulfull the criteria I outlined. From that point, I dialogued behind the scenes with them to set it up and in the process have occasionally mentioned here and there that this project was in the process of being done. After several delays due to more pressing issues and also lack of time, it is on the verge of being started now; ergo I mention it here for those who are interested in the topic.

{5} As a way to balance it out since my methodology overall has a lot of strengths to it.