← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · edward gibbon
Thread ID: 18499 | Posts: 8 | Started: 2005-06-02
2005-06-02 19:21 | User Profile
Almost forgotten today was the radio priest Father Coughlin though what he had to say should be reexamined for astute foresight and if it is applicable today. I submit the below with hope that some, most especially lurkers, will read and make up their own minds.
[QUOTE][url]http://www.ssa.gov/history/fcspeech.html[/url] Father Coughlin on Social Justice. [B][CENTER]THE NATIONAL UNION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE [/CENTER] [/B] (Sunday, November 11, 1934) SIXTEEN years ago this afternoon, my friends, I mingled with thousands of my fellow citizens who were celebrating the termination of a war that was fought to end wars. As I look back upon these years--years identified with the Peace Treaty of Versailles, with the League of Nations, with assassinations of men in high office, with the birth of Bolshevism, with repudiations of debts and with universal poverty--I honestly believe that in all history such destruction of ideals and such miscarriage of justice were never chronicled save during the years which witnessed the assassination of Christ. Instead of making the world safe for democracy, the bells which tolled their message sixteen years ago this afternoon were sounding its requiem. Instead of announcing that here was the end of all war, we were being ushered into a new conflict too terrible to contemplateââ¬Â¦ Are you not aware of the fact that in 1914 England's financial and commercial supremacy were in jeopardy due to the rapid advance of German commerce? Are you ignorant of the fact that during the first two years of the World War the United States industrialists and bankers had poured billions of credit dollars into the war chests of Great Britain? Need I remind you of the pleading on the part of English statesmen for us to enter the war or of the letters sent by Ambassador Page to President Wilson demanding that we should join the allies for the sole reason of preserving our bankers' foreign investments--bankers, who in league with England, had wagered on the losing horse; powerful bankers who, in a few months after the outbreak of hostilities, perverted the mind of President Wilson to such an extent that, although elected to his high office on the promise of keeping us out of the war, he now submitted to the fallacy that it was more sacred to protect the capitalistic dollar than to preserve the life of a mother's son!...
Following this preamble, these shall be the principles of social justice towards the realization of which we must strive:
I believe in liberty of conscience and liberty of education, not permitting the state to dictate either my worship to my God or my chosen avocation in life.
I believe that every citizen willing to work and capable of working shall receive a just, living, annual wage which will enable him both to maintain and educate his family according to the standards of American decency.
I believe in nationalizing those public resources which by their very nature are too important to be held in the control of private individuals.
I believe in private ownership of all other property.
I believe in upholding the right to private property but in controlling it for the public good.
I believe in the abolition of the privately owned Federal Reserve Banking system and in the establishment of a Government owned Central Bank.
I believe in rescuing from the hands of private owners the right to coin and regulate the value of money, which right must be restored to Congress where it belongs.
I believe that one of the chief duties of this Government owned Central Bank is to maintain the cost of living on an even keel and arrange for the repayment of dollar debts with equal value dollars.
I believe in the cost of production plus a fair profit for the farmer.
I believe not only in the right of the laboring man to organize in unions but also in the duty of the Government, which that laboring man supports, to protect these organizations against the vested interests of wealth and of intellect.
I believe in the recall of all non-productive bonds and therefore in the alleviation of taxation.
I believe in the abolition of tax-exempt bonds.
I believe in broadening the base of taxation according to the principles of ownership and the capacity to pay.
I believe in the simplification of government and the further lifting of crushing taxation from the slender revenues of the laboring class.
I believe that, in the event of a war for the defense of our nation and its liberties, there shall be a conscription of wealth as well as a conscription of men.
I believe in preferring the sanctity of human rights to the sanctity of property rights; for the chief concern of government shall be for the poor because, as it is witnessed, the rich have ample means of their own to care for themselves.
These are my beliefs. These are the fundamentals of the organization which I present to you under the name of the NATIONAL UNION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE. It is your privilege to reject or to accept my beliefs; to follow me or to repudiate me.[/QUOTE]********* Further topics addressed by the priest. [url]http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:kGPNzMwVu7oJ:www.radiomemories.com/radiomemories/fathercoughlin.html+father+coughlin+jews&hl=en[/url]
C05268 01/29/39
"Why Leave Your Own?" A Very Inflammatory Address In Which Coughlin Comments On The Fall Of Barcelona - Praising Franco's Victory As A Defeat For he "Loyalist Communists".
[B][I]He Further Accuses American Jewish Leaders Of Propagandizing For US Intervention In Europe, Accusing Those Leaders Of Being More Loyal To Judaism Than They Are To "Americanism," And Asks If "[COLOR=Red]Americans Want To Go To War For The Jews?"[/COLOR] [/I] [/B]
2005-06-03 00:15 | User Profile
If you like Christian socialism, no, he was not wrong. He seems to contradict himself on property rights, though.
As for this thought:
[QUOTE]15. I believe that, in the event of a war for the defense of our nation and its liberties, there shall be a conscription of wealth as well as a conscription of men. [/QUOTE] Running a war and then enacting a tax cut, which runs up the public debt, seems the exact opposite of Father Coughlin's "no free lunch if you want to go to war" idea. What he wanted was scutage from the wealthy.
[QUOTE=edward gibbon]Almost forgotten today was the radio priest Father Coughlin though what he had to say should be reexamined for astute foresight and if it is applicable today. I submit the below with hope that some, most especially lurkers, will read and make up their own minds.
Further topics addressed by the priest. [url="http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:kGPNzMwVu7oJ:www.radiomemories.com/radiomemories/fathercoughlin.html+father+coughlin+jews&hl=en"]http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:kGPNzMwVu7oJ:www.radiomemories.com/radiomemories/fathercoughlin.html+father+coughlin+jews&hl=en[/url]
C05268 01/29/39 "Why Leave Your Own?" A Very Inflammatory Address In Which Coughlin Comments On The Fall Of Barcelona - Praising Franco's Victory As A Defeat For he "Loyalist Communists".
He Further Accuses American Jewish Leaders Of Propagandizing For US Intervention In Europe, Accusing Those Leaders Of Being More Loyal To Judaism Than They Are To "Americanism," And Asks If "[color=red]Americans Want To Go To War For The Jews?"[/color] [/QUOTE]
2005-06-03 02:24 | User Profile
Coughlin was right on the money as far as I am concerned. I may be a Lutheran, but I have agreat deal of respect for late 19th Catholic social thought. Funny how Coughlin was, in the end, betrayed by his bishops, men who were tied to the corrupt Democratic urban machines. In the end Franco too was betrayed by his bishops, despite being a devout and loyal Catholic.
Calling Coughlin a socialist is rather imprecise. He rejected both Capitalism and Socialism, as do I. Don't fall into the trap laid by the Libertarian fanatics that anyone that dosen't believe in almost complete lazzez-faire (sic) is a socialist. That would be like saying that the German Chancellor is a Stalinist.
2005-06-03 02:56 | User Profile
[QUOTE=edward gibbon]Almost forgotten today was the radio priest Father Coughlin though what he had to say should be reexamined for astute foresight and if it is applicable today. I submit the below with hope that some, most especially lurkers, will read and make up their own minds.
Further topics addressed by the priest. [url]http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:kGPNzMwVu7oJ:www.radiomemories.com/radiomemories/fathercoughlin.html+father+coughlin+jews&hl=en[/url]
C05268 01/29/39
"Why Leave Your Own?" A Very Inflammatory Address In Which Coughlin Comments On The Fall Of Barcelona - Praising Franco's Victory As A Defeat For he "Loyalist Communists".
[B][I]He Further Accuses American Jewish Leaders Of Propagandizing For US Intervention In Europe, Accusing Those Leaders Of Being More Loyal To Judaism Than They Are To "Americanism," And Asks If "[COLOR=Red]Americans Want To Go To War For The Jews?"[/COLOR] [/I] [/B][/QUOTE]He was of course a close associate of [URL=http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9143]Gerald L. K. Smith[/URL], whose efforts lasted much longer.
2005-06-03 03:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=CornCod]Coughlin was right on the money as far as I am concerned. I may be a Lutheran, but I have agreat deal of respect for late 19th Catholic social thought. Funny how Coughlin was, in the end, betrayed by his bishops, men who were tied to the corrupt Democratic urban machines. In the end Franco too was betrayed by his bishops, despite being a devout and loyal Catholic.
Calling Coughlin a socialist is rather imprecise. He rejected both Capitalism and Socialism, as do I. Don't fall into the trap laid by the Libertarian fanatics that anyone that dosen't believe in almost complete lazzez-faire (sic) is a socialist. That would be like saying that the German Chancellor is a Stalinist.[/QUOTE] OK, if he wasn't a socialist, was he a theocrat?
I look at that list and see significant threads from the socialist weave, but to be fair and to acknowledge your point, many themes in 18th and 19th century thought concerning "the common good" were not strictly Socialist.
You don't need to be a libertarian fanatic to belive in personal property rights. There are degrees of that, under the structure of due process.
2005-06-03 03:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angeleyes]OK, if he wasn't a socialist, was he a theocrat?
You don't need to be a libertarian fanatic to belive in personal property rights. There are degrees of that, under the structure of due process.[/QUOTE]Sounds like you've ben talking with the losertarians. He was as good a man for thoser times, and ours, as you're likely to find.
2005-06-03 07:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angeleyes]If you like Christian socialism, no, he was not wrong. He seems to contradict himself on property rights, though. [/QUOTE]
Angeleyes - I'm not an expert in Coughlin's thought, but from the above I'd say he sounds like a Distributist, which if you're not familiar with it is basically the Catholic take on economics and society. I consider myself a Distributist.
I believe that some of the economic discoveries of the past 70 years or so bolster the case for Distributism, which Belloc, Maritain and others (Coughlin seems to have read Belloc especially) intuited but lacked the tools to explain clearly.
I think that Distributism really is simply the recognition of the Natural Law bases of private property and free market exchange, where private property maintains a significant nexus with human labor and free market exchange entails honest accounting and full internalization of all the costs involved.
The great discoveries of the past 70 years are, in my opinion, (1) the objective existence of social capital (which is where honest accounting comes in, our corporate libertarians hate talking about social costs), (2) the role of the state in ending externalities (i.e. forcing economic actors to internalize all their own costs, including social costs), and (3) the objective existence of the human social organism made up, hydra-like, of individuals who act for the good of the organism when they act in their own best economic interests, provided that the organism via its state prevent externalities and promotes full competition (this is proved beyond reasonable doubt by computer modeling of societies).
In short, Distributism is the economics of the well-funcitoning human organism. The Catholic thinkers of 100 years ago didn't really have a handle on social costs, externalities, and of course computer modeling of human societies, and so they groped about for the right formula.
I believe that we have it now, or at least some Catholic economists and others are approaching the answer.
So, it isn't "socialism" as you say. If you read some of the documents I posted on the Distributism subforum you'll find the seminal document Rerum Novarum, which condemned socialism while embracing private property in no uncertain terms.
Regards,
Walter
2005-06-03 14:42 | User Profile
Yet again, many thanks Walter.
I scanned the Distributist threads a couple of weeks ago, but time did not permit the longer meal necessary to digest it all. I will take a closer look over the next few days.
My formal education in economic theory is a bit out of date, and since I majored in Engineering not all that deep. I keep up where I can.
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Angeleyes - I'm not an expert in Coughlin's thought, but from the above I'd say he sounds like a Distributist, which if you're not familiar with it is basically the Catholic take on economics and society. I consider myself a Distributist.
I believe that some of the economic discoveries of the past 70 years or so bolster the case for Distributism, which Belloc, Maritain and others (Coughlin seems to have read Belloc especially) intuited but lacked the tools to explain clearly.
I think that Distributism really is simply the recognition of the Natural Law bases of private property and free market exchange, where private property maintains a significant nexus with human labor and free market exchange entails honest accounting and full internalization of all the costs involved.
The great discoveries of the past 70 years are, in my opinion, (1) the objective existence of social capital (which is where honest accounting comes in, our corporate libertarians hate talking about social costs), (2) the role of the state in ending externalities (i.e. forcing economic actors to internalize all their own costs, including social costs), and (3) the objective existence of the human social organism made up, hydra-like, of individuals who act for the good of the organism when they act in their own best economic interests, provided that the organism via its state prevent externalities and promotes full competition (this is proved beyond reasonable doubt by computer modeling of societies).
In short, Distributism is the economics of the well-funcitoning human organism. The Catholic thinkers of 100 years ago didn't really have a handle on social costs, externalities, and of course computer modeling of human societies, and so they groped about for the right formula.
I believe that we have it now, or at least some Catholic economists and others are approaching the answer.
So, it isn't "socialism" as you say. If you read some of the documents I posted on the Distributism subforum you'll find the seminal document Rerum Novarum, which condemned socialism while embracing private property in no uncertain terms.
Regards,
Walter[/QUOTE]