Site Update - March 2019

Dear Readers,

A lot has been going on in my life over the last 15 months which has prevented me from pursuing more articles. I am, of course, grateful to the other contributors who have been able to submit articles during this time so that the site was not completely inactive over that time. I am happy to be able to tell you that things have been working out and that I hope to be able to resume publishing articles in the very near future. I am also getting the chance to continue working on a new book, which I hope to get published before the end of the year.

I am also happy to be able to report to you that, despite the sparse amount of articles over the last 15 months, the site has managed to maintain a higher amount of visits than I would have expected. Many of these seem to be from searches about distributism, which means that interest does still seem to be growing out there.

Thank you for your continued interest and support.

David W. Cooney, Editor
25 March, 2019

A New Coca-Colonization?

LETTER TO MY EUROPEAN CORELIGIONISTS

by Thomas Storck

This article is a slight revision of "Lettre d'un catholique américain à ses amis français et européens," published in L'Homme Nouveau, no. 1675, 24 November 2018, pp. 12-13.

Although Anglo-Saxon North America began as simply an extension of Europe, settled entirely by Europeans - aside from African slaves - over time it has developed a peculiar culture of its own, with roots in Europe, certainly, but often developing and exaggerating European ideas in peculiar directions. Since the end of the Second World War the prestige of this culture has been vast, due to the role of Americans in the defeat of the Axis powers in western Europe and, later, after the development of the Cold War, because of the common perception that the United States was the only effective alternative to the Soviet empire. Hence the term coined after the War, the coca-colonization of Europe, based on the ubiquity of the American soft drink, Coca-Cola. Even with the fall of the Soviet bloc, American mass culture and technology have continued to exercise a widespread influence all over the world. As an American myself, I recognize that this widespread influence is by no means altogether good, and that it requires careful evaluation with regard to each cultural or political sector in which it has influence.

Continuing a Legacy of Dissent

By Thomas Storck

One of the Acton Institute's publicists, one Kishore Jayabalan, has given us distributists a kind of left-handed compliment recently - that is, he mentioned us, he recognized that distributists do exist! With regards to what he said about us, his article was simply misinformation, but that, unfortunately, is par for the course with Acton. But what exactly did he say? Mr. Jayabalan was engaged in continuing Acton's long-time project of misrepresenting John Paul II's 1991 encyclical, Centesimus Annus. He wrote,

Another distinctive aspect of JP II's social teaching is his insistence that the "Church has no models to present" (CA, n. 43); there is no Catholic "third way" between capitalism and socialism. This is a hard teaching for distributists and others who think there once existed a special form of Catholic economy or polity (aka Christendom) that the Church should still officially support.

What Is Happening?

by Thomas Storck

It was about twenty years ago, at the turn of the last century, that a revival of distributist thought unexpectedly occurred. I say unexpectedly, even though I, along with John Médaille, was one of the small group of writers and theorists most responsible. After a few articles of my own, the website that is now called The Distributist Review began publishing, and later the Practical Distributism website on which you are reading this article. I suppose the high point of this revival, so far, was the April 2009 debate at Nassau Community College on Long Island, organized by Richard Aleman and Joseph Varacalli, where I represented distributism, the late Michael Novak, capitalism, and Professor Charles Clark, socialism. Perhaps even more significant was when our opponents themselves began to take account of us, as, for example, the sessions on distributism at the Acton Institute's annual Acton University. All of this certainly put distributism, decades after the deaths of Chesterton and Belloc, on people's mental maps, and provided a model for implementing Catholic social teaching in the economic order.

Change to the publication schedule

Practical Distributism is a volunteer effort. The authors contribute articles as the time and circumstances of their lives permit, and I remain grateful for their contributions and support of this site. At this time, I am simply unable to maintain the previously published schedule for articles. I have therefore removed the schedule, and have updated the About section of the site accordingly.

However, I remain committed to publishing articles as they become available. If you know of anyone who is interested in submitting articles for publication, please have them contact me.

Thank you,

David W. Cooney
Editor.

Distributism and the French Revolution

by Maciej Wąs

Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s attitude towards the French Revolution seems to be, at least in very many cases (and I know it from experience) a rather uncomfortable matter; Andrew Greely, in an introduction to the beautiful Sheed & Ward Classics reedition of Masie Ward’s Gilbert Keith Chesterton prophesized that the alliance between Chesterton and the so called “traditional Catholic circles” (the integrists, or whatever else we call them – every name seems somewhat deficient, and definitely controversial), which was forming at the time, would not last long. It was the year 2005. Indeed, Greely was right; and at least in Poland this alliance is now almost dead. Our traditional Catholic communities, first fascinated with Chesterton’s apologetics and imbibing his works almost maniacally (about twelve or ten years ago), tend to talk about him less and less, with the general tactics consisting in pushing him further and further away by the power of “discreet reticence.” “Chesterton? Ah, yes; good writer. Tea?”