Category: Events

Is war-fighting unidimensional (the clash of the big battalions) or multi-dimensional (morale, will, economics)?

Clausewitz (1838) wrote a lot about “the battle,” but never considered “the battle” as sufficient unto itself in bringing an enemy to acceptance of defeat and surrender of will to assert its moral goals.

Similarly, Sun Tzu (544–496 BC) had pointed out the high value-added of understanding and then disabling an enemy’s strategy.

Consider how the Ukrainians have fought the Russians to a standstill and are now capable of carrying “the battle” deep in the Russian homeland.  That’s tenacity and innovation at work. Turns out the Ukrainians had some high “cards” that Donald Trump overlooked.

What are the Iranians fighting for?

What is Donald Trump fighting for?

What do Iran’s neighbors need and want to advance their futures?

Clausewitz most famously wrote that war is an extension of politics by other means.  So, in war, politics must never be discounted.  In Iran, maybe regime change needs to come before “the battle” can win the war?

What is the role of alliances?

A Caux Round Table perspective on war would start from setting moral standards and rules of right and wrong in going to war and in fighting and killing others.  Just war theory, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war; the United Nations compact among sovereign nations, etc.

Please join us at 9:00 am (CDT) on Tuesday, June 2, for a Zoom round table on what should be the lessons learned, so far, from the Israeli/U.S. attack on Iran.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

Event will last about an hour.

The war with Iran raises many concerns: issues of strategy and purpose, law and morality,  intemperance and intolerance, retributive justice and forgiveness, fear and suspicion, religion and compassion and human arrogance and frailty.

The Caux Round Table has long provided its good offices to convene round tables for the exchange of views, perceptions, judgments, fears and aspirations, even passions, without rancor or disparagement.  At times, process seems more needed than immediate affirmation of another’s beliefs.

Please join us for an in-person round table over lunch to reflect on the war with Iran and its consequences for all at noon on Thursday, April 30, in room 430 in 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.

Event will last between an hour and hour and a half.

What lessons should we learn from Jeffrey Epstein’s successes in accessing social and financial capitals from a network of elite cronies and supportive women?  Was it just the sex or was it more the money to be made from insider deals and gaining access to insider information?

Could it be as simple as Epstein finding willing co-conspirators in contributing a fin d’empire misadventure, contributing to the failure of the American experiment in ordered liberty?

Did his charm and talents not degrade liberty into decadence?

Consider the social, cultural, financial, commercial and political statuses of his “pals,” as revealed in the released emails.

Elite failure with sinister implications for our future?

Please join us at 9:00 am (CDT) on Thursday, April 9, on Zoom to discuss the Epstein contagion.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

By the way, March Pegasus will also be on this topic.

The event will last about an hour.

Please join us at 9:00 am (CDT) on Monday, March 9 on Zoom to celebrate the release of our new book, Adam Smith and Modern Economics: Reclaiming the Moral High Ground!

The book was planned to commemorate one of the most significant steps forward in Western intellectual history and in its political and economic production of modern civilization – the publication of Adam Smith’s book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (more commonly known as The Wealth of Nations) 250 years ago this March 9, 2026.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

Event will last about an hour.

Please join us for an in-person round table over lunch at noon on Thursday, February 26, in Landmark Center to get an update on what we’ve been doing for St. Paul’s future since our last round table back in mid-October kicked-off the effort to use our good offices to bring people together, stimulate ideas and insights and identify growth assets in St. Paul.

After the report, we would like to listen and learn from you ideas and concerns for St. Paul’s future now that we have a new mayor and the attention of a number of civic leaders.

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

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

Event will last between an hour and hour and a half.

It has been years – maybe never – since Minnesota, where we’re based, was a daily news lead around the country and world for over a week.  And the news has not been “nice.”  For some, it seems to be the harbinger of worse days to come for our republic, now 250 years old and slowing down in mind, heart and spirit.

Please join us, on short notice, at 9:00 am (CST) next Wednesday, February 4, for an emergency Zoom round table to discuss how we got here and where we go from here?

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

Event will last about an hour.

Given that the week between Christmas and New Years tends to be a slower one for many, we would like to invite you to reflect with us.

The Chinese Book of Changes (Yijing) concentrates the mind on where we are and where we are going.  In 1858, future American President Abraham Lincoln put the politics of a divided country on a timeline:

“If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do and how to do it.”

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar says to the Soothsayer, “The Ides of March have come!”  The Soothsayer wisely replies, “Aye Caesar, but not gone.”

Should our New Year’s resolutions be attempts to overcome the past or more resilient actions to meet the future?

Please join us at 9:00 am (CST) on Tuesday, December 30, for a Zoom round table on what we might learn from 2025 and what might we expect in 2026 with wars, AI, the value of the dollar, the results of the November 2026 American election, self-proclaimed civilization states like Russia and China, hurricanes and drought, …

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

Event will last about an hour.

Looking forward to your prognostications.

Friedrich Nietzsche intuited that the European Enlightenment would self-destruct, as reason would come to ignore truth and replace it with narratives and psychological self-fulfillment.  For Nietzsche, the ultimate driver of human experience is the will to power, which doesn’t subordinate itself to reality and transcendental idealisms.

Have we, in the U.S. and Europe, now come to the cultural condition of surrendering to the will to power?

Please join us at 9:00 am (CDT) on Thursday, October 23, for a Zoom round table discussion of this possibility.

The triumph of the will, as Nietzsche wrote, actually follows the second law of thermodynamics by letting loose in its victims the proclivities of entropy – the disordered disbursal of energies and the inability to accomplish work.  As the individual will collapses in on itself, an implosion of psychic energy and brain and muscle matter, the person separates from society and the sustaining ecosystem.

Narcissism, nihilism – “my” truth can be any truth – splinters and disintegrates society and culture, bringing about the Hobbesian order of nature, where our lives become “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”  Not civilized, but savage without moral nobility, excellence of thought, elegance of word or depth of heart.

If our age is, indeed, one of nihilism, what is to become of us?  What should we do – role over and play dead?

I considered his influence in my recent essay, “Friedrich Nietzsche: The Devil’s Advocate,” in August Pegasus, which you can read here.

To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.

Event will last about an hour.

If you were the mayor of St. Paul, what would you do?  Raise taxes?  Revitalize downtown?

If you were a member of the city council, what would your “to do” be?

As a resident or bystander watching St. Paul seemingly give up on hope and ambition, overcome by inertia, rudderless, defining its expectations downward, resigned and fatalistic, giving into decline, what would you expect of its leaders – public and private?

Please join us and Mike Burbach, editor of the Pioneer Press, for an in-person round table over lunch at noon on Thursday, October 16, at Landmark Center.

Please bring your recommendations, insights, tactics and strategies.

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.

Space is limited.

Event will last about an hour.

Loren Swanson, one of our regular participants, attended our Zoom round table on social media/AI earlier today and thought this Rotary program on AI would be of interest to many of you.

For those who can’t attend in person, you could participate via Zoom.

We will be drafting a statement of ethics for AI shortly.