Category: Events

Over the last few years, notably in time for Putin to wage territorial war against Ukraine, both Russia and China have proposed a new concept for international relations: the civilization state. The international community has ignored this new way of thinking about who is right and who is wrong.

When I brought it up recently with Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States at the Vatican, he was keen to learn more.

I shared with him the important article on civilization states written by Ivan Timofeev in Moscow.  We included Ivan’s article in the November 2023 issue of Pegasus.

Here is George Will’s take on the failure of the American foreign policy elite to take notice of this new theory of international relations (Will is a columnist for the Washington Post):

Although there is no excuse for it, there is a reason for the failure of U.S. leaders to understand Putin.  He is an open book who has been reading himself to the world since long before he published his 2021 essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”  This farrago of ethnic mysticisms and history seen through a pseudo-theological lens is Putin’s “Mein Kampf.” His resentments and revenge aspirations are all there.  But are largely ignored or disbelieved by the West’s statesmen and publics who complacently believe that the end of history meant the end of toxic nonsense such as this:

Putin believes Russia is a “civilization-state” with cultural-cum-religious significance, rights and responsibilities that justify the erasure of other nations.  Which is why the Economist correctly says that for Putin, “war has become an ideology.”

What Johns Hopkins University’s Hal Brands describes as Putin’s “quasi-genocidal barbarities” are committed in the name of a totalizing, uncompromisable objective: the political and cultural extinction of Ukraine.  Russia has kidnapped, for the purpose of “Russification,” uncountable thousands of Ukrainian children.  Their return is, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says, Kyiv’s “number one” priority in negotiations.  Try explaining that to Steve Witkoff.

This real estate developer, Donald Trump’s designated war-ender, says he and Putin have developed a “friendship.”  Witkoff echoes Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, saying that Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev shares similar “dreams and aspirations.”  Witkoff wonders, “Why would Russia want to absorb Ukraine?”  Putin explained in his 2021 essay, which shows that peace is impossible.

Please join us at 9:00 am (CDT) on Monday, June 30 on Zoom to share your thoughts with us about the credibility of the “civilization state.”

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The event will last about an hour.

Please join us for a Zoom round table on tariffs and the future of our world economic order at 9:00 am (CDT) on Tuesday, May 13.

Here is a timely cartoon from the cover of the New Yorker, no fan of Donald Trump:

I also attach here a critique of Trump’s tariff proposals in the Wall Street Journal from the very conservative former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The event will last about an hour.

Are there limits to President Trump’s personal right to make decisions?

There are constitutional law cases on this point, the first of which might be Marbury v. Madison in 1803, a Supreme Court opinion by Chief Justice John Marshall (my hero) which is very, very long.

But in 1649, the Commons of England abolished the office of king.  Their legislation is here, setting forth their reasoning that prerogative is a danger.

Later, John Locke, in his “Second Treatise of Government,” took a more balanced view of prerogative:

A good monarch – one mindful of the trust put into his hands and careful about the good of his people – can’t have too much prerogative, i.e. power to do good.  Whereas a weak and poorly performing monarch – one who would claim that the power his predecessors exercised without the direction of the law is a prerogative belonging to him by the right of his position, a right that he may exercise as he wishes, to make or promote interests distinct from those of the public – causes the people to claim their right and to limit the power that they had been content to tacitly allow while it was exercised for their good.

On the matter of prerogative, there is an old question: Who is to judge whether this power is being used rightly?

If you were to judge whether Donald Trump’s use of prerogative is rightly done or not, what would you say?

Please join us for an in-person round table over lunch on prerogative at noon on Tuesday, April 29, at the Landmark Center, room 430, in St. Paul.

Registration will begin at 11:30 am.

Cost to attend is $20, which you can pay at the door.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The event will last between an hour and hour and a half.

Has history given us any case where tariffs did more good than harm?

Adam Smith, as a matter of principle, thought no, never.

Donald Trump disagrees.  Or does he?  Will he stop short of a tariff war if he gets something he wants?

Is he just a dealmaker from Queens, New York, huffing and puffing and bluffing, ready to accept a deal after strutting and showing off to his fans?

On the issue of how to end the war in Ukraine, it seems that the Europeans, offended, are calling his bluff.  Now, he has to put up or shut up – either do the right thing or go your own way with Putin, just the two of you.

I doubt any person, even Trump himself, knows what he is going to do at the last minute.  After shaking the chess board, where will the pieces land?  Which ones will fall off the board and which will still be in positions to take down castles and knights?

As I wrote earlier, tariffs cannot be squared with the Caux Round Table Principles for Business.

Therefore, making a compelling public case for expanding markets, lowering prices and free trade is a duty for those who care about raising standards of living.

Economic nationalism, a form of social Darwinism ignoring the moral sense, has its defenders who think more in terms of we/they, them/us, than in terms of all of us interdependent and each with something to contribute to the whole or to us.  It is me first and the Devil take the hindmost?

What, then, is the best strategy for a people, a country, a community, to use in seeking prosperity and security?  What does game theory tell us – go win/win or win/lose?  Should cities shut themselves off from towns and small farms with entrance taxes and market fees?  Should farmers charge more for eggs, butter and chickens to those who live in cities?  Adam Smith answered those questions with a “Never!,” if you want to optimize your prosperity.

Please join us at 9:00 am (CDT) on Tuesday, March 11 for a Zoom round table on tariffs and what may lie ahead of our global community, thanks to Donald Trump.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The event will last about an hour.

Looking at the United States at the present time and considering trends and decisions over the past four years, our times “seem out of joint”.

Executive orders in Washington, a Minnesota House of Representatives that cannot convene.

What was once in place for good civics to happen out of their own sense of right and fair seems to have gone missing.

It has been said these past few years, though more on the right than on the left, that politics is downstream of culture.  So, if politics is of concern, we should look first to culture.  Civics is shaped by culture, so maybe the pundits have it backwards – culture is downstream from politics.  Bad politics can make for bad civics.

Where then is the fulcrum on which the lever of good civics can rest to balance our needs and wants, our agreements and our disagreements, our gender agendas and our racial discontents, our communication of our truths and our use of law to overcome our insecurities?

Or rather, is it a fulcrum of civics – no longer taught much at all – that we need on which to rest the lever of politics, as it seeks to check extremes and balance passions with interests, ideologies with compromises?

A public statement of wise advice is needed to share with our politicians and educators.  Will you help us draft one?

Please join us for an in-person round table over lunch at noon on Tuesday, February 25, at Landmark Center, room 430, in St. Paul.  The topic on the table will be “is our politics at odds with our civics?”

Registration will begin at 11:30 am.

Cost to attend is $20, which you can pay at the door.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The event will last between an hour and hour and a half.

This coming Monday, January 20, at noon, Donald J. Trump will take an oath for a second time to “faithfully execute the office of President” of the United States.

Trump has caused no little controversy in recent years.  That phenomenon is not likely to stop once he becomes president again.

As you reflect on the current condition of the U.S., the changes in the flow of power among nations and international organizations, the track record of Donald Trump, where would you put priority in seeking to promote high standards of trusteeship of the public good?

Please join us at 9:00 am (CST) on Thursday, January 30, for a Zoom round table discussion on Donald Trump and moral government.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The event will last about an hour.

You may read a copy of our ethical principles (second set on page) for moral government here.

Today, I write before going out to vote in our national election.  Who will win and who will lose are not small matters.  The destiny of this country and the world will turn on that outcome and on which party will have the majority in our House of Representatives and Senate.

The polls as to who is most likely to win are so close that few commentators are risking their reputations to predict winners.  And the American people seem so closely divided even though over $1 billion has been spent trying to persuade them to vote one way or another.  Democratic capitalism?

No matter the outcomes here, there will be plenty for all to consider, discuss and plan for.

Please join us on Zoom to share your thoughts and concerns about this election at 9:00 am (CST) on Tuesday, November 19.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The discussion will last about an hour.

I have been discussing with our staff and some fellows and interested participants the value to our network of starting a book discussion club in 2024.

Since the formidable works of Adam Smith and Karl Marx, our understanding of capitalism and its alternatives – and of economics, sociology, psychology, politics – has been formed by books.  Those who don’t (can’t) read are at a great loss for not having many contextualizing frames of meaning and narratives with which to think about and rationally act in our world.  They know little about how we got here, what is shaping our lives and where we might go.

Every week or so, it seems to me, there appears one or more new books with relevant contributions to our assessments of the past, present and future.  Too many for me to keep track of.

As we learn from books, we also learn from each other.

We will meet once a quarter by Zoom to discuss a book which has been selected for us to read.

Somewhat haphazardly, we propose these four recently published books:

–Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle OverTechnology and Prosperity, by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson
–Why Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West, by Peter Heather and John Rapley
–The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives, by Brook Manville and Josiah Ober
–Mandeville’s Fable: Pride, Hypocrisy and Sociability, by Robin Douglass

The times and dates of the discussions are:

-9:00 am (CST) Thursday, February 15 – Power and Progress
-9:00 am (CDT) Wednesday, May 15 – Why Empires Fall
–9:00 am (CDT) Thursday, August 15 – The Civic Bargain
–9:00 am (CST) Friday, November 15 – Mandeville’s Fable

We will send a notice of meeting and reminders before each date so that you may register to participate.

If the discussions prove fruitful, we can consider adding books and discussion sessions.

I hope this initiative meets with your approval and that you might want to participate.

Please let me know any thoughts you might have on making this initiative as rewarding as possible for participants.

Not only in the United States, but in Europe, the question of citizenship is center-stage in politics, culture and society – what is expected of immigrants?  Why do we need citizenship?  Why not let freedom ring globally and have people move anywhere they want, as some are now suggesting?  Just being me anywhere I want to be is a human right, yes?  What should we expect of those who are our neighbors?  What is a nation anyway these days?

Attached here are our Principles for Good Citizenship.

Please join us for an in-person round table at noon on Tuesday, October 29, at the Landmark Center in St. Paul.

Registration and lunch will begin at 11:30 am.

Cost to attend is $20, which you can pay at the door.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The event will last between an hour and hour and a half.

Please join us at 9:00 am (CDT) on Thursday, September 12, for a Zoom round table on emigration and immigration – the abandonment of one sovereign and the supplication of a new one.

The August issue of our newsletter, Pegasus, proposed new ways of thinking about the status of those who flee the sovereign protection of the country of their birth to live under the authority of a foreign sovereign in another nation state.  Who is a persecuted refugee?  Who is an economic migrant?  Who deserves asylum?  Who deserves a work permit?  Who can be a resident?

What moral and social duties do refugees, asylum seekers, foreign workers, immigrants – legal or illegal – and those escaping failed states to make a better life for themselves and their families owe to their new sovereign and those who are citizens of that national sovereignty?

When is the tie to one’s birth sovereign broken, abandoned or suspended?  What tie to a new sovereign takes its place, if ever?

Here are two historical examples and one contemporary case of people between sovereigns:

The Pilgrim immigrants to Massachusetts in 1620, depicted with their Native American guests, including Squanto, at the first thanksgiving:

A member of the Patuxet Tribe of the Wampanoags, Tisquantum or Squanto, was likely born around 1580.  When he encountered the Plymouth Colony settlers, he spoke English, having lived five years in Europe, including time at the home of a London merchant.  He proved indispensable to the English settlers at Plymouth, but in the end, was reviled by some of his own people for his role in brokering a treaty that undermined tribal sovereignty.

But without Tisquantum to interpret and guide them to food sources, the Plymouth Colony Pilgrims may never have survived.

Secondly, here are Vietnamese fleeing communism in a boat out in the South China Sea, hoping for rescue or for a safe landing in Thailand or Malaysia (I actually took the lead in April 1975 to arrange resettlement for the first wave of Vietnamese who refused to live under a communist regime and later worked on resettlement for these boat people).

And just the other week, riots in the U.K. between Muslim immigrants and citizens who don’t want such strangers to be in “their” country.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

Event will last about an hour.