Two economics professors teaching at Jesuit schools have achieved prominence as public intellectuals. Both are scholars at the Mises Institute, and both participate in traditional culture’s celebrations of the American proposition. Professor Walter Block of Loyola University New Orleans upholds the special sensibilities asserted by the political right’s victim groups:
many of us chosen people are supposed to be able to peer deeply into the souls of the goyim to determine if and to what degree anti-Semitism lurks. I don’t like to brag, but ... my jewdar abilities are second to none. I’ll pit them against any other Jew no matter how finely tuned are his abilities in this regard.1Professor Block's formulation of radiant anti-Semitism reinforces Joe Sobran’s observation that ‘anti-Semitic’ has come to mean someone that Jews are supposed to dislike, rather than someone who presumably dislikes Jews. Indeed, the most off-putting trait generally attributable to the Hebrew is his reflexive insistence that goyim must receive the anti-Semitic label with the same concern as would be the case when accused of an actionable offence.
As with radar, Professor Block’s jewdar commences with a signal generated by a self-certified adept such as himself. Guilt or innocence is then assessed according to the impression created by the return signal upon his expert sensibilities. Thus, should Mr. Jonah Goldberg's hypothesis of anti-Semitism's origins in the DNA of an ethnos be confirmed, it will most likely be through the DNA signature of a Semite. We may assume that these proper Semitic sensibilities are especially attuned to inadequate appreciations of the great materialist philosophers of the right, e.g.: Mises, Rothbard, Rand, Friedman, et al.
Professor Thomas J. DiLorenzo of Loyola University Maryland is also reliable in maintaining public awareness of the Nazi threat:
Every American who is concerned about this Nazification of the American government needs to own a copy of The Constitution in Exile.2— a literary form at which the Mises scholars excel:
why are there so few advocates of liberty within the government to fight against this turning of America into Nazi Germany?
The comparison to Nazi Germany is not at all an unreasonable one. There were many in Nazi Germany who reported on their neighbors and business associates out of fear of the government.
Government bureaucrats are turning America into Nazi Germany, because this trend is only getting worse every day.
others in Nazi Germany reported on their neighbors because of petty personal resentments, envy and business partnerships turned sour.3We note that, as with the Catholic Church, the Mises Institute dedicates itself to the eradication of evil. Mottoes at their website include do not give in to evil and proceeding ever more boldly against evil. (These are attributed as the personal maxims of Ludwig von Mises and his family — which they apparently took from the pagan secularist Virgil: Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.) The Institute’s dismissal of SFEcon’s solution to the economic computation problem gratuitously attached what is, in their catechism, the supreme evil of statist depredation 4 to our mere offer of a solution. Though the Jesuit Fathers are famously tolerant of rival evangelisms on their campuses, one might still wonder at the patience extended to Professors Block and DiLorenzo. As noted above, the Jesuits have officially esteemed President Lincoln’s re-creation of America as a propositional nation for half a century. While in their employ, Professor DiLorenzo has written approximately 200 articles 5 and a complete book in which President Lincoln is repeatedly described as an atheist, tyrant, war criminal, imperialist, and the ever-popular racist.
In 2009 Professor DiLorenzo invited his fellow Austrian Walter Block to speak on the Loyola campus in Baltimore. (A self-proclaimed obdurate atheist,6 Professor Block nonetheless avows belief in Mises’ literal miracle of the market.) According to a follow-up article published by Professor DiLorenzo, Dr. Block did criticize "liberation theology" in his lecture 7 — which is certain to affront to the Jesuit Order for whom this movement is a project valued even to a point of occasionally attracting Papal displeasure 8 and to which they have, as Professor DiLorenzo honorably recounts, contributed a number of recent martyrs.
Professor DiLorenzo adds his own affront by asserting papal authority for the instruction of ordained priests:
"liberation theology" has been condemned by the last two Popes — it is essentially Marxism masquerading as Catholicism.9
. . . which is nothing more than one layman’s summa of deliberations upon which the Clergy still maintains an open mind. Other laymen (perhaps more conversant with explicit church doctrine) might observe that both John Paul II and Benedict XVI regularly spoke with great solemnity in unmistakably Marxist terms:
But if the question be asked how must one’s possessions be used? The Church replies without hesitation that man should not consider his material possessions as his own, but as common to all.10
The means of production cannot be possessed against labor, they cannot even be possessed for possession’s sake, because the only legitimate title to their possession — whether in the form of private ownership or in the form of public or collective ownership — is that they should serve labor and thus by serving labor that they should make possible the achievement of the first principle of this order, namely the universal destination of goods and the right to common use of them.11
Economic activity cannot solve all social problems through the simple application of commercial logic. This needs to be directed towards the pursuit of the common good, for which the political community in particular must also take responsibility. Therefore, it must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.12Professor DiLorenzo’s presumption of theological competence is nonetheless secure to a point where he publicly charges the Father President of his university with uninformed libel, identifies Loyola Maryland’s moral code with that of a race huckster, and decries academic censorship of the faculty:
[Loyola] university president, Rev. Brian Linnane, S.J., who did not attend the lecture, issued an email to all faculty, staff, students and alumni that did not mention anything that was said in the lecture, but libeled Dr. Block as a racist and sexist.
This is what seems to have caused the Loyola University Maryland Campus Thought Police, led by the likes of Rev. Donahue and supported by the university administration, to adopt the "moral" code, such as it is, of Al Sharpton and commit a truly outrageous act of libel against Dr. Walter Block.
Their apparent objective is to do whatever they can to censor all future debate on campuses about the efficacy and morality of socialism, a debate that was ended in the real world several decades ago with the worldwide collapse of socialism.13And Professor Block is hardly to be outdone in the abuse of his Father President, as evident from his Letter to a Left-Wing Jesuit 14 — subtitled I'm Ruled by a Left-Wing Jesuit; Walter Block on his nasty university president — which [he] intend[s] to share ... any response you might give me, or none, with others. So there.
Given the Austrians’ affliction of those who pay their wages (and whose fortunes the
professors’ labors presumably enlarge) one wonders just how morally intrepid a scholar might
have to be in order to actually get the Jesuitical goat. Christian charity is apparently inexhaustible
when it comes to fostering ‘scientific’ conclusions as to the necessarily mysterious
origins of economic order.