The League of Bearded Catholics

Distributism Defined

A blog called Bill Powell is Alive posts a succinct definition of Distributism penned by G.K. Chesterton in his G.K.'s Weekly paper.

Here's the juicy bit;

THE LEAGUE stands

For the Liberty of the Individual and the Family Against interference by busybodies, monopolies, or the State.

Personal Liberty will be restored mainly by the better Distribution of Property (i.e. ownership of land, houses, workshops, gardens, means of production, etc.).

The Better Distribution of Property will be achieved by protecting and facilitating the ownership of individual enterprises in land, shops, and factories.

Thus THE LEAGUE fights for:

Small Shops and Shopkeepers against multiple shops and trusts.

Individual Craftmanship and Cooperation in industrial enterprises. (Every worker should own a share in the Assets and Control of the business in which he works).

The Small Holder and the Yeoman Farmer against monopolists of large inadequately farmed estates.

And the Maximum, instead of the minimum initiative on the part of the citizen.

 

There is also a handy reading list. More shameless distributist propaganda to follow in the coming weeks!

Tip of the battered, shapeless fedora to The Distributist Review on Facebook.

Leaf it To Me

 
Oak Leaf - Oil on Panel - 24" x 24" - ©copyright 2010, Timothy Jones

 

A Tale of Applied Distributism

 

A few weeks ago, our kind neighbor across the street saw me out raking leaves and offered the use of his riding mower and trailer. I thanked him and said that I was nearly finished for the day, anyway, but I'd sure think about it, and that was true. I never have gone to ask him for it, though. We in the nation of Squirrelandia are an independent breed.

I have thought about his offer. The entire sovereign nation of Squirrelandia (all 2 acres) is covered with or surrounded by tall oaks. One may be tempted to think of an oak leaf as insubstantial, but when one begins moving them by the thousands, one sees this is not true. They have weight and take up space, and this, well... matters. They are also tough, as tough as the trees from which they fall. An oak leaf, undisturbed on the ground will be there the next spring. In my experience, they take a couple of years to break down.

I like our oak leaves. If it were only a matter of aesthetics, I would leave them as they are. There is something soothing and appealing about leaf-covered ground. But in practice, letting them lie means letting them kill what little grass still grows amongst our moss, rocks and weeds. This would lead to erosion (we live on a hill) and would also somewhat justifiably irritate the neighbors. So, every year leaf disposal becomes a duty that can't be altogether ignored. I let a few remain. I like the look. It says "country". I want to clear them away, but not with the cold efficiency of a hireling at Versailles.

But back to my neighbor. I have been reluctant to take him up on his offer because, for one thing, my leaves are my duty and not his, and if he let me borrow his mower, he would also insist on helping (he's a terrific neighbor) and he's of retirement age, with his own house and grounds to worry about. I'd feel a little like a freeloader allowing him to work up a sweat over my leaves. Incidentally, the reason we don't have a riding mower with a big grass catching trailer is that the investment seems a bit extravagant for our needs. Because we're heavily shaded, we need hardly mow much at all. I'm of (partly) Scotch descent and I'll be blowed if I'm going to drop a grand on a machine to suck up leaves one day a year. It would be unjust to let the fact that I won't buy a riding mower become my neighbor's problem.

But, truthfully, there is another reason for refusing his invitation to bring my leaf removal system up to post WWII standards. I have learned to enjoy it. Yes, I do somewhat relish grumbling about it every year to my family, and go through the motions of a debate with myself about finally geting a riding  mower, but I won't until I have to. The ritual has become a Zen thing to me. I begin, actually, to look forward to it in a weird way. I don't want a machine to do it. These are my leaves. In the words of General George S. Patton, "I love it. God help me, I do love it so.".

This brings me to a kind of Philosophy of Work that I have been ruminating upon as I rake, but that will be for another post. This one is already, well, long in the leaf.

Home Brew Update!

The first project to come out of the legendary plastic-lined tanks of the Bearded Brewing Co. in a couple of years, this Oktoberfest lager should be just right as we celebrate All Hallows Eve here in the sovereign nation of Squirrelandia. In a bid to brew more often, the humble brewmaster has very nearly convinced himself to take The Pledge and drink no beer at home but his own. That might mean going without now and then. A disgusting prospect, but the kind of dreadful scenario that often spurs men to heroic action.

 
 
 

What to name such a brew? Octo-Beard-Fest? The Lager of Beery Catholics?... ?

Local Patriotism - The Polar Freeze

 

 
My Uncle Jack in front of the Polar Freeze

Continuing our recent Distributist theme, this post initiates a series highlighting small, local production of goods - and in this instance the emphasis is definitely on the word "goods" (good = "yummy").

My uncle Jack has owned and operated the Polar Freeze, in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, for 51 years. It is an established, nay, a firmly entrenched local landmark, serving Jack's unique, home-smoked pork barbecue. Jack smokes his own meat, chops it and serves it with a vinegary sauce, dressed with cole slaw on a bun. I could eat about six of them. Right. Now. As a kid, I didn't care for the cole slaw on a sandwich, but I love it, now.

The Polar Freeze is more than just a drive-in babrbecue place, though. It's a landmark, meet-up spot and a just source of pride among the local citizenry. It's an institution, and Jack is the kind of business owner the world could use many more of. He is deeply involved in the town and the lives of his patrons and employees. The cliche of a business being "like a family" is actually true in this case. He brags about his employees, knows them personally, and still speaks fondly - glowingly - of many of them who worked for him decades ago. I believe he has helped several through college. They are like his kids.

It's difficult to imagine the Polar Freeze without Jack at the helm (he is there every day), and even harder to imagine Walnut Ridge without the Polar Freeze. It's like the soul of the town (sorry, First Baptist... you're very nice, too). Mostly, it's practically impossible to imagine driving past the place to get a burger from a fast-food chain outpost.

I have been just a likely as anyone to zip into a McDonald's on the road. After all, you know what you're going to get, about how much it will cost, and how long it will take to get it. You also, in so doing, drain half the adventure out of travel. Especially now, with the internet, it's possible to find out what other kinds of food - local, adventurous food - might be available. From now on, when I travel, I'm going to try and take a few minutes on the web to find out what kind of local gems (or dumps - let's face it, there's no adventure without risk) I might pass by if I do the Burger King drive-thru again.

I want to expand this series and keep it as a regular feature, and want all you Beardies to be on the lookout for heartening tales of modern Distributism. Send 'em in! It's easy!

Next: French Fry Warning Labels!

This really isn't a slam at Michelle Obama, but at all Nanny State-ers of both parties, asinine and elephantine.

The upshot of this LA Times article, I guess, is that there is more and more eagerness inside the beltway to regulate what restaurants can serve and people can eat when they go out... because it is obvious from their trim waistlines and firm muscle tone that our elected officials know more about this than we commoners do, and should be trusted to bring to our take-out menus all the myriad benefits they have bestowed on our school lunches.

Of course the underlying premise is right enough; we *should* eat better... we should much more often eat our own cooking around our own tables... but (forehead smack) we should be completely at liberty not to. Why is it that every "should" eventually becomes a "must" with big gub'mint types? It is irrelevant what kind of good they are trying to accomplish, they need to lay off harrassing the common folk with these petty regulations. As the Master once observed, "They pile heavy burdens on people's shoulders and won't lift a finger to to help.".

A tip of the crumpled, shapeless hat to Sean Dailey (via Facebook).

Distributism, TLBC Style

Oooooh, yes... it has arrived. Now the trick is to find a free afternoon and stake it out on the calendar for the advancement of the brewer's art.

Thoughts and shared info on the best sources for inexpensive, quality brewing goods will be appreciated.

More Distributist posts coming.

Ouch! Oldest Family Farm in U.S. For Sale

This hurts me someplace I can't quite pinpoint.

Chesterton offers some helpful perspective;

"Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property." - Commonwealth 10-12-32

"Making the landlord and the tenant the same person has certain advantages, as that the tenant pays no rent, while the landlord does a little work." - "Hudge and Gudge," What's Wrong with the World

"You can't have the family farm without the family." - Tales of the Long Bow

Special Thanks to The American Chesterton Society for the quotes

The Distributist Review

From League stalwart Joe Grabowski via Facebook, I am informed that The Distributist Review is showing off a snazzy re-design of their website. Very inviting it is, too. I hope it serves to draw more people to spend more time digging into this wonderfully helpful magazine (It's been added to our links at right>>>).

Distributism, that economic ideal championed by Chesterton and Belloc, is built on the foundation of the Catholic idea of subsidiarity (say it three times, slowly, and you'll have it)... which is a fancy term for a very simple moral principle... that everything ought to be taken care of at the lowest practical level. This means first the family, then the immediate community (ideally the parish), and on upward. Any system that turns that order on its head amounts to a kind of tyranny, eventually. Economic freedom is real freedom compared to which elections and so forth are just window dressing.

In the economic realm, Capitalism is a narrower reflection of true subsidiarity, and so contains some useful truth, but it is inadequate and those inadequacies have been showing more and more, lately.

One of those philosophical inadequacies is the unconscious confusion of "money" with "property". Money can certainly serve as a handy representative medium, a symbol of property... but it is no substitute for property. In a sane world, a farmer who lost all his money might still have his property, and so would not have lost everything. The way things are, few of us are able to really own much of anything in a full and final sense. So, for instance, when someone asks if you are a "homeowner", what they really want to know is if you are a mortgage holder.

This confusion spreads to the concept of work. Work, for most people is now defined as some-or-other money making activity. The early feminists rightly complained that this was nonsense, that work in the home was at least as valuable as any paycheck-earning gig, but in the end they abandoned this moral high ground in favor of a pale substitute; that is, Equal Pay in the workplace. They should have held out for real respect. As it is, they have helped make the word "homemaker" into a kind of joke. "Little Suzy Homemaker". But it takes work (and more than work, a kind of inspiration) to make a house a home. Presumably, this is what a "homemaker" does... or did. It is a high calling, but if no one is now willing to do this work, it will not get done, and our houses will remain hastily and haphazardly decorated boxes, drearily impersonal.

We are not forced to participate in this system, as such, at least not in any way that we normally associate with the word "force". If we were being forced in that way, we would not stand for it. We would have taken up pitchforks and torches a long time ago. But we are softly coerced. From grade school, we are taught to see the world this way, to entertain only this narrow sphere of possibility, and by the time we are out of our formal schooling we find we are on the hamster wheel and are more or less at a loss as to how to get off the damned thing.

I have worn out the following Chesterton quote, but it sums up the shortcomings of our current money-obsessed Capitalism and the need for a Distributist revolution as well as any you could hope to find;

"Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people's property." - Commonwealth, 1932

To Bee, or Not to Bee?

A door opened and in came Tom Bombadil. He had now no hat and his thick brown hair was crowned with autumn leaves. He laughed, and going to Goldberry, took her hand.
"Here's my pretty lady!" he said, bowing to the hobbits. "Here's my Goldberry clothed all in silver-green with flowers in her girdle! Is the table laden? I see yellow cream and honeycomb, and white bread, and butter; milk, cheese, and green herbs and ripe berries gathered. Is that enough for us? Is the supper ready?"

- from Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring - In the House of Tom Bombadil

"Why can't you have a normal mid-life crisis, like everybody else? Buy a motorcycle!" These the words of my 19-year-old son, after I mentioned that I was thinking about keeping some bees.

I don't know if it is just another artifact of my life-long ADD, but after spending a scant ten minutes talking with a beekeeper hobbyist I met quite by accident the other day, I came away really wanting a few hives of my own. It just fits, some way, and we have a great spot here for it. The back acre of our property is not good for much, but two or three hives would work in very nicely in the shade of the tall oaks. I don't want hives the way a man wants a sports car or a wide screen TV. As I say, the idea just fits... "Bees. Yes... of course".

So, I have begun tentatively poking around looking at plans for hive construction, and how to get started, where to gets queens, etc...

First, though, I really should go ahead and make up my next batch of homebrew. It's been languishing in the pantry for too long, and it seems rash to take up another hobby when it appears I lack sufficient leisure to keep my current interests going. My stint as a substitute teacher took so much of my time and energy that I didn't smoke my pipe for a solid month. I've been making up for that, however.

I honestly don't know how anyone can manage to be bored. If I should ever retire, I'll be kept racing between my oil painting, home brewing, bread baking, bees... I'll be in constant motion. Taking my interests as a collection, their composite flavor reminded me of Tolkien's description of life in the House of Tom Bombadil, which sounds a lot like Heaven, or rather, like Earth without the evil.

This return to domestic production of things is what I wold like to encourage in the way of Distributism. Sort of a quiet revolution of... home brewers and beekeepers and gardeners. Step by step, making the macroeconomy a bit less critical to the welfare of families. Let the billionaires have Wall Street. In an ideal world, the bread and beer would vary from block to block.

Now then...I've also been thinking about some chickens...

Hot Dog Wars

In the combox of a previous post, esteemed Leaguer Will Duquette comes to the defense of the humble hot dog, and the ever-reliable John Kasaian responds with a theological meditation on the frankfurter, pouring rhetorical gasoline on a furious partisan controversy that threatens to rival the divisive, antagonistic power of the Reformation. Is there no middle ground on hot dogs? Can't we all just get a foot-long?

There is a great deal of satisfaction in defending anything that is really humble, and if anything is humble, a hot dog is. A hot dog has no pretense, no social ambition.

I like hot dogs. Hot dogs are associated with fun and with informal socializing of a particulalrly American kind, like at a ball game or a summer picnic. Pretty dreary if that's all you have to eat, though. A single dude microwaving a hot dog for dinner is not in a very enviable state, and I speak from experience. It's better than nothing, but...

Hot dogs could be made at home, perhaps, but one hardly sees the point. The whole rationale of the hot dog is to work in industrial volume... to convert a huge amount of seemingly irredeemable processed leftovers into a homogeneous, reliable and continuous stream of extruded meat product. It's like pro-active recycling!

But the hot dog stands as an icon of the entire highly processed, mass produced and centrally distributed approach to food (and everything else) that signalled the sad downfall of the American kitchen. Along with reflecting some of the best aspects of American culture, a hot dog embodies some of the worst; a hot dog is unpretentious, versatile, reliable, fun and simple... but it is also (in the worst sense) cheap, easy, unhealthy, homogeneous and bland. Hot dogs are for the appetite what television is for the brain.

It actually appears that the hot dog is a surprisingly complex and significant symbol of American life and culture. Even as I write, I begin to become convinced that if we can ever figure out the true iconographic significance of the hot dog, then balancing the budget and providing universal health care will almost take care of themselves.

In the poem below, G.K. Chesterton speaks highly of the Sausage, but his opinion of hot dogs is, as far as I know, a subject only for speculation.

A Ballade of an Anti-Puritan

  

THEY spoke of Progress spiring round,

Of light and Mrs Humphrey Ward--

It is not true to say I frowned,

Or ran about the room and roared;

I might have simply sat and snored--

I rose politely in the club

And said, `I feel a little bored;

Will someone take me to a pub?'

The new world's wisest did surround

Me; and it pains me to record

I did not think their views profound,

Or their conclusions well assured;

The simple life I can't afford,

Besides, I do not like the grub--

I want a mash and sausage, `scored'--

Will someone take me to a pub?

I know where Men can still be found,

Anger and clamorous accord,

And virtues growing from the ground,

And fellowship of beer and board,

And song, that is a sturdy cord,

And hope, that is a hardy shrub,

And goodness, that is God's last word--

Will someone take me to a pub?

 Envoi

Prince, Bayard would have smashed his sword

To see the sort of knights you dub--

Is that the last of them--O Lord

Will someone take me to a pub?

 

• Poems of G.K. Chesterton - 1915