Studies in Political Philosophy

False Responsibility

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: False Responsibility

Genre: Speech

Track: 06

Dictation Name: RR124C6

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we come to thee mindful that because thou art God, our times are in thy hands, and we have the blessed assurance that our times and our world being in thy government, we stand security. Teach us to trust in thee. Give us grace, day by day, to move in the confidence that because thou art God, the wickedness of man is futility, and only that which is done in thy name shall endure. Teach us, therefore, to commit ourselves unto thee and to work in the assurance that not even a cup of cold water given in thy name is without its reward. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture is 1 Chronicles 13:1-10. “And David consulted with the captains of thousands and hundreds, and with every leader. And David said unto all the congregation of Israel, If it seem good unto you, and that it be of the Lord our God, let us send abroad unto our brethren every where, that are left in all the land of Israel, and with them also to the priests and Levites which are in their cities and suburbs, that they may gather themselves unto us: and let us bring again the ark of our God to us: for we enquired not at it in the days of Saul. And all the congregation said that they would do so: for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people. So David gathered all Israel together, from Shihor of Egypt even unto the entering of Hemath, to bring the ark of God from Kirjathjearim.

And David went up, and all Israel, to Baalah, that is, to Kirjathjearim, which belonged to Judah, to bring up thence the ark of God the Lord, that dwelleth between the cherubims, whose name is called on it. And they carried the ark of God in a new cart out of the house of Abinadab: and Uzza and Ahio drave the cart. And David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and with singing, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets. And when they came unto the threshingfloor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the ark; for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzza, and he smote him, because he put his hand to the ark: and there he died before God.”

This incident is an embarrassing one to a great many people. Many church-goers wish that things like this weren’t in the Bible, but God wouldn’t embarrass them with incidents that really are a bit trying to man’s reason, but nonetheless, it is there, and I think we should be joyful that the death of Uzza is in scripture.

What this incident records is the return of the ark to the capitol, or to its proper place in Israel. The ark which had been in Shiloh, had been captured by the Philistines. After it was restored, it rested for a time in the care of Abinadab, a Levite, and then David decided that it must be brought to Jerusalem, and so it was a formal affair in which all the nation took part, leaders of church and state, a grand parade, music, the cymbals clashing. The ark was returned to Jerusalem.

They did not get very far, and they paid no attention whatsoever to the requirements of God concerning the handling of the ark, because the law very definitely specified that only priests were to touch the ark, not any Levite, not any member of the tribe, but only those Levites who were priests of the household of Aaron. None other, but the penalty for transgression was death.

Moreover, the proper way of carrying the ark was for certain of the appointed ones, recognized by the law to carry it on their shoulders without handling it. Uzza was a Levite, the son of Abinadab, and he was enjoying the limelight, and rather officiously, he was assuming that he was in charge, and so when the ark was shaken a bit as the oxen stumbled, he officiously and presumptuously put out his hand to steady it, as though it were his responsibility, and immediately he was stricken by God and died. Uzza was guilty of presumptuous and false responsibility. What does it mean?

We encountered presumptuous responsibility in scripture with respect to Cain. Cain killed his brother Abel, and when God confronted Cain and said, “Where is thy brother Abel?” Cain said, “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?” Note the contemptuous reference to his brother. “Am I his keeper?” A poor idiot who can’t take care of himself in other words, and needs to be cared for, and “Is it my responsibility?” Now, many a preacher has said the true answer is, I am my brother’s keeper. This is to fall into Cain’s trap, because both irresponsibility and presumptuous responsibility are ungodly. Cain was not Abel’s keeper. He was Abel’s brother, and he had an obligation to be a brother to him, and when we deny the responsibilities that are ours, or when we presume upon them and say we are keepers to people, we are equally guilty of sin.

Uzza’s sin was that he thought it was his responsibility where it clearly was not. His attitude was, “I am going to be in the limelight. I am going to be the one who is going to take care of everything. If there is anyone who needs to be told, I will do it. I am in charge.” In other words, he appointed himself as the presiding governor of the move of the ark to Jerusalem. His rationale was, “It cannot be done properly if I do not do it. Therefore, I must do it. I must do everything.” This is a false sense of responsibility, and a false presumptuous sense of responsibility says always, “I am responsible for all things, for all people, and ultimately for God as well.”

This is an attitude we encounter often. Regularly, I encounter people who are insistent that it is my duty as a minister to preach that we are responsible for everyone under the sun, for the people in Africa, for the people in Asia, for the people in Watts, for the people in every slum across the country. For all men. And that I should preach this kind of total responsibility to everyone, and what they mean thereby is that I should not preach responsibility, but control, because the word responsibility is a weasel word, a dishonest word used, but what is meant: All things must be controlled.

In other words, when they say we must be responsible for everything, they know that none of us can meet that responsibility and they are saying there must be a control of everything and you must assent to this, and we are God’s, we who are the elites, and who can do these things. We must control and sustain all things.

Thus, people who assume a false, a presumptuous sense of responsibility are not honest. They want to be gods. The essence of our Christian faith is simply this: God alone governs all things. God is the supreme governor and the only governor of the universe, but these people with a presumptuous sense of responsibility say, in effect, “It is man’s duty, my duty as the elite man to govern all things, all men, all beings.”

Now the strategy of presumptuous, of false responsibility, is this. First of all, make men feel responsible, and therefore, guilty for all men and for all things and whatever happens to anyone. They are responsible for the starving, as someone told me recently, in India, and this man maintained that we had a moral duty toward the people in India, and no man should get up into the pulpit without preaching that we are responsible to care for those people in India. Indeed, they are in the grips of a famine. They should be. Their religious faith is one that is perverse and wicked to the “nth” degree. The streets are full of cows they will not kill. Their agricultural crops are eaten up by monkeys they will not kill. Vast areas of productive farmland are abandoned because the man-eating tigers which they will not kill. One of them may be their grandmother reincarnated, and if we support them when they suffer the consequences of their sins, we are subsidizing their sin, and so I have no hesitation telling any man that I do not feel responsible for the starving in India. I feel that they are responsible, but the first strategy of false responsibility is to make men feel responsible, and therefore, guilty for all men and all things.

And second, ask them, since they cannot possibly take care of everyone, to delegate it to the state and to the elite class. If you are given this total responsibility, you cannot begin to meet it yourself, and so the logical answer is the state must do it. Therefore, delegate to the state the power to take care of everyone.

And third, this means the state and the elite planners become gods. That is, governors of all things.

And fourth, salvation therefore, becomes the work of man. Man remakes man by statist law and action. This is the goal of false presumptuous responsibility. To be God’s controlling and remaking man, and in this strategy, guilt is basic. Guilt is necessary. Men are told they are guilty for their failure to care for all the world, and it’s man’s duty, it is said over and over again, to feel responsible for all men. Are we not the family of man? And the essence of this position is that there is a universal morality, a universal ethics, and we have been brainwashed into believing that if anything is true, it has to be universally true, so that if there is a true moral code, it has to be applicable in all situations and circumstances, and this is nonsense, and no biblical Christian can subscribe to it. No true Christian can affirm it, because we must affirm that there are three kinds of moral relations, and we cannot universalize any one of them.

First, there is a moral law, according to the scriptures, concerning our relationship to our family. Our parents, to them we render honor. To our household, our children, our wife, we render support. Towards the wife, love. Towards a husband, obedience. This is the law of God concerning the family. When we are asked by God and we are told we are in infidel, an unbeliever, if we do not care for our own. We are not told we have this same responsibility towards the neighbor and his wife, and his children. We can get in trouble if we try to exercise it. There is, therefore, a very limited moral code, according to scripture, that applies exclusively to our relationship within the family.

Second, there is another level of moral relations, and that is to fellow believers, and we are told that we are to consider ourselves a household, a family in a larger sense, but not as strictly as with regard to the blood family. Here we have an obligation towards one another, and deacon’s funds were ordered by scripture for the care of the needy and the dependent within the church, although the law there was, “If a man will not work, let him not eat,” so there was no condoning of laziness, but there was a law, definitely, for the family of God, for the true believers in their relationship one to another.

Third, the law of God as it applies to all men outside the church, to deal honestly and justly with them, to fulfill God’s law of love, which means to recognize their right to life, home, property, and reputation in word, thought, and deed, to proclaim to them the Gospel. This is our duty, and our duty towards the family is one thing, towards the believers, another, and towards the world at larger, another, and if you deny that there is a three-level morality in the Bible and you universalize it, then you say all men are one family and we are responsible for the support of all men, and the only conclusion of such a universal moral code is communism, and so, in the strategy of guilt, we are told that we are guilty for our failure to care for all the world, and since when men believe this they know they cannot do it, except by delegation, they delegate their power to the state to ease their guilt, but they remain guilty, because delegation does not take away their sense of guilt, and guilty men are amenable to robbery since they are made to feel guilty for whatever they have.

A year ago, when I was in one community in Northern California, our hostess who was the daughter of the professor in one of the most exclusive girls’ colleges in the East, said that it was routine for the faculty members to work to make every girl who came there feel guilty because she came from a wealthy home. This was their strategy, and people who are made to feel such a sense of guilt are then amenable to robbery, because they feel they have to make atonement for their guilt by being robbed, and yet, there comes a point even as a citizenry is robbed through socialistic plunder, where they begin to begrudge this enforced giving, and they grumble, but they grumble with impotence and guilt since they are without salvation. Guilt for grumbling reinforces their guilt for having anything that others do not have, and their guilt for not caring about the poor in India, and so they are all the more enslaved. The word used to accomplish this is world responsibility. Responsibility, a universal moral code, but the goal is slavery for man, and power for the state, and for the elite.

You see why God struck Uzza? Why Uzza had to die? And why this incident is so important to us and so great comfort? It declares that God’s judgment against the Uzzas of every generation is death, that even as God hates those who escape and deny their responsibility so he hates even more those who presume and those who assume a false responsibility, because God is sovereign, and the cornerstone of any biblical faith is the sovereignty of God, and man’s responsibility under God is to do his duty, as God prescribes it, towards his family, towards his fellow believers, and towards the world. Not to feel any total responsibility which is not man’s business, and which leads to a demonic attempt at total control. God wills the death of Uzza in every generation, and God will destroy them in our generation.

Those of us who, under God, day by day, strive humbly to meet our God-given responsibilities, as children, as parents, as husbands, as wives, as citizens, as workmen, to do our duty and through the church to serve God and to further the witness of Christ in every area, can rejoice because the blessing of God is upon us. God has declared in his word that even a cup of cold water, given in his name to the least of his people has its reward. We are rewarded for meeting our responsibilities, but the sentence of God is death to every Uzza who presumes to be God and to assume total responsibility.

Therefore, we need to rejoice at this incident, for it is another assurance of the certainty of God’s government and that indeed, the Uzza’s of our day are destined for death. The meek shall inherit the earth, and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee for thy word, and we thank thee, our Father, that thou hast called us to be members of Jesus Christ, hast by thy grace empowered us to meet our responsibilities in home, in church, and in the world, and hast given us grace to know our place under thee. Therefore, our Father, according to thy work, we look unto thee for the blessings which thou hast promised. We open wide our mouth that thou mightest fill it. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now?

[Audience] I’d like to ask a question. I don’t know whether it’s apropos in this particular discussion, but {?}. Is there any mention that you have found or considered possible between the word Babylon and Vatican?

[Rushdoony] No.

[Audience] There’s no etymologist {?}

[Rushdoony] None whatsoever. Yes?

[Audience] I have an article here I was going to underline the question I was going to ask you in particular, but maybe you know about it. My {?} is how Constitutional amendment could establish a commission on family relations is place of existing divorce procedures?

[Rushdoony] No, I hadn’t heard of that, but that is fantastic and it is a step toward total control.

[Audience] It says reconciliation could not be accomplished. In other words, through the parties that want a divorce, and a simple divorce decree would be issued, including {?} legislation should not {?} proposal to eliminate alimony as currently set up. There would be child support payments based on a certain percent of income, and rehabilitation paid to the wife while she was learning a trade to support herself.

[Rushdoony] The point of that article is whatever is good or bad in it, it is all evil in that the federal government is to take over, and it will mean total control and total helplessness.

[Audience] Another section of the measure would prevent property from becoming designated as community property until after five years.

[Rushdoony] Again, a very dangerous thing because, well, this is fantastic.

[Audience] That’s why I would urge that in an effort to spare people from marriage, a Constitutional amendment will require certain classes for school in terms of {?} and then there is like, such classes that ought to be for required for adults to get married {?}. The legislation will be sent to Sacramento{?} with request that it be placed on the ballot. {?} placed on the ballot {?}.

[Rushdoony] In other words, the state is to replace the family and the church.

[Audience] Dr. Brockman{?} said that one week ago, Governor Edmund G. Brown announced his intention to investigation the state’s ability of the family court in California to replace the existing and hopelessly outmoded divorce machinery.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] It seems this is following a pattern that so many {?} civil rights, and all {?} rights, they’re bypassing the courts. Now, I thought they weren’t supporting the courts to to do, and it seems like they’re bypassing the courts like they do in the, what do they call it? The labor relations board is bypassing the courts. Everything to bypass courts. What is the relationship here in all of this?

[Rushdoony] What they are doing is to substitute one kind of court for another. They are bypassing our legal system as it has existed, to substitute psychiatric law, which is no law, and administrative courts for courts of law that are county-created and county-supported courts. I think, in view of measures like this, we had all better blow our nose which it is still Constitutionally acceptable. Yes?

[Audience] May I ask who it is sponsored by? Is there a certain group that’s sponsoring this?

[Audience] By the American Marriage and Divorce Reform Organization.

[Rushdoony] This is as beautiful an illustration of what I’ve been talking about as anything, because this is presumptuous and false responsibility, playing at being God.

[Audience] There is an organization in Sacramento, known as {?} Divorcees {?} Incorporated through {?}. It has no point in trying to change the {?}. What they’re trying to eliminate the strictly biased decisions in favor of the rights {?} almost never in favor of {?} only in the State of California.

[Rushdoony] Yes, this state is quite feminist in its laws. Texas is a rather prejudiced against women in its laws, but again, I think it’s better to have the matter in the hands of the states and have injustices of this sort than this kind of dictatorship. Thank you. Another question?

[Audience] This is in relation to the Amish school problem. I found this in the Times, March 22nd. Parochial school status. Do you know anything about this particular, well, whatever was settled between the schools, and the Amish. It says here that it seems as though it’s integrating the parochial schools with the state public school system, which seems to me that this {?} now, could be dangerous to all parochial schools. In other words, that they might be attempting to integrate the Christian schools to the public schools?

[Rushdoony] Yes, what is taking place is that a few states have decided they don’t like the Christian school movement. It’s growing too fast. It is the greatest possible menace to the power of the state that exists. So they are out to bring these under state control. Now, in Iowa and in the State of Washington, of course, and one or two other places, attempts are being made in this direction. In Washington, and I believe the same is true in Iowa, they have passed laws requiring that Christian schools certify their teachers through the state certification agency, so that the Christian school teacher, the parochial school teacher, will have to go to the State Board of Education and get accreditation by taking the required major in education. Now, in the State of Washington, there is a fine. This is as of the past two years, for any parent to send his or her child to a Christian or a parochial school where there is even a single teacher who hasn’t gotten a state certificate. This is an insidious thing. It is a first step towards control, and I think the answer is being taken properly by some of them there. They’re going to comply with it in their own way.

I was out there this week and one of the groups I spoke to several times was Christian Schools Incorporated. It’s a Washington state organization of Christians who have set up this organization to start Christian. They’ve started about ten, fifteen, in Washington state. They’ve started one in the Midwest, and they are putting in 10,000 this year towards starting other churches throughout that area, the Midwestern area. So they want to build up networks of Christian schools everywhere. This law has, of course, hurt them quite a bit, but their answer has been, as of a year ago September, to start a Christian college. They’re meeting in the Christian school in Mount Lake Terrace, Washington. They hope to start putting up a building within a year, but they meet after the Christian school gets over from 4:00 till 9:00 in the evening to give teachers training course for prospective teachers, and their attitude is, “So they want a certificate? We’ll give them the kind of courses they prescribe, but we’ll give it our way so our teachers will not go through the brainwashing of the state institutions,” and they have fifty students already and they are going to move ahead. Yes?

[Audience] I wanted to ask you about something. I had a conversation the other day and I answered it, but I was wondering if you wouldn’t have some more information. I was talking to someone who went all the way through public school and prefers her children go through public school, irrespective of the fact that she knows {?} etc, and the reason was this. She likes the football games, the track meets, the school dances, all the fun and she said, “I attended private school for a short time and I didn’t like it. I think that the children in public school have to have fun when you can.” You see what the emphasis is, but how {?} in other words, do we have years of Christian school, will they engage in sports, and do some of these things?

[Rushdoony] They not only can, but they do, and very often, there is more activity of a better sort by far in the Christian school than in the day school, but I think one of the first things I would say to such a woman is that she’s a featherbrain, because if what she is interested in primarily is that her children have fun in their schooling,

[Audience] She wasn’t a Christian.

[Rushdoony] I know, but you don’t have to be a Christian to be serious or sensible, and the kind of world she’s going to make, they aren’t going to leave much room for her in it. We Christians will leave room for featherbrains. There is a book for her some time to read, that might scare her a bit. J.L Moreno’s, Who Shall Survive? He has very definite ideas.

[Audience] If you read that one, you really will. You have to get past, say, 100 pages or so, because in the beginning, if you don’t know what you’re for. It sounds pretty good. Did you find that?

[Rushdoony] Oh, I knew who he was when I read it.

[Audience] Well, yes, you do, but in the beginning it sounds pretty good and you have to get further into it, to really find the insidious things that are projected, and along with that, there is an Assembly Bill 45 that was introduced February 16 by {?} on education. I can’t speak too well about it because I am waiting for the bill, and {?} said he would have it analyzed also, and I’m waiting to see how he will have it analyzed, but it is horrible, and it’s {?} I can’t {?} bill because it’s, I don’t know if the Christian school can over come it or not.

[Rushdoony] What is its purpose?

[Audience] Well, it’s {?} down your state’s control of schools. They will all go together.

[Rushdoony] You mean your local control?

[Audience] {?} No.

[Rushdoony] Oh, I see. Local federal control. Yes?

[Audience] Can you make a comment on this {?} flying saucer episode?

[Rushdoony] No, except that I take all those things with a grain of salt, and I’ve encountered too many of those people who are devotees of occultism, and with the thousands upon thousands of flying saucer episodes that have taken place in recent years, you would think of them would have had an accident, one of them would have fallen down, say near the Los Angeles Airport, and you could have seen what they were like, but they’re sighted all the time in every country and nothing ever happens, so I am dubious. Maybe I’m wrong, but I still say there is no evidence for anything, and these people always end up writing for some occultist magazine, which means they want to see things. Yes?

[Audience] Back to this education, well known I’m sure, that whether you have children in school or not, you pay school taxes, and if you send your children to a private school, or a Christian school, you still have to pay taxes to the public school. Now, what could be done, if anything, towards initiating legislation to change this tax structure for the support of education? A fair tax.

[Rushdoony] A good question. Yes. In every session of Congress, a number of bills have been introduced to give parents who are providing for their children’s Christian school, or private school, or parochial school education, or for their college education, tax exemption for their contributions to their children’s education, and when Senator Goldwater was in the Senate, he introduced quite a number of bills towards this end. The total number of bills that have been introduced, I have a volume somewhere of them, it’s a big spiral-bound book about that thick, but while some of these measures have made progress, they’ve always been blocked by the administration. Now, we have to continue working towards this end, but the purpose, of course, of blocking tax relief is to force these schools to go to the federal government for federal aid, and then, of course, they will control them, but if your gifts are tax deductible, then the giving to Christian schools will increase greatly. Not only will parents get an exemption for their tuition, but they will then increase their giving to gain further tax exemption and to help the movement along, and this they do not want to do.

So, I think, first, we’ve got to work to get such legislation through, and we need to badger our Congressmen and Senators on this score. Second, I think we need to work steadily to abolish the public schools, which is the best answer. Yes?

[Audience] I think the next best thing would be to get some free-thinking Congressmen and Senators in Washington and getting the brainwashed people, and retire them back to the farm.

[Rushdoony] Yes, definitely. Yes?

[Audience] {?} Before {?} go to your lecture tomorrow morning, is there another thing we have scheduled {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, I gave it about two or three weeks ago here. The tape for that is available, and you can get it through . . .

[Audience] {?} the same lecture?

[Rushdoony] It will be perhaps somewhat expanded, yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience] Going back on your talk on Israel, if you have time, I had someone put me on the mailing list, {?} I don’t mind getting it, and I can’t {?}. Are you familiar with him? Is he British Israel.

[Rushdoony] Yes, he is very definitely, British Israel.

[Audience] One of the questions and answers in one of the sessions was Does the soul die? And he said, Definitely, when the body dies, the soul dies, too. Now if the soul dies?

[Rushdoony] No, we do not believe that. We believe that when a person dies, his soul goes to heaven to be with the Lord, that at the end of the world we put on the resurrection body. So that this business of soul sleep, I do not believe is scriptural.

[Audience] Well, I thought all the time the people went to a place called Hades.

[Rushdoony] No, Hades is a general term for the other world, and Hades includes heaven and hell. In other words, it’s a general term. For example, we say “the world,” or “the earth.” That’s a general term which includes North America, South America, Asia and all the continents. So that Hades was a Greek work which was a general term for the whole of the other world.

[Audience] {?} people go to hell and good people go to heaven?

[Rushdoony] Heaven.

[Audience] Really? And is the punishment {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, but the fullness of it comes with the resurrection of the body.

[Audience] I see. {?} they cannot contact, these people cannot contact people {?}

[Rushdoony] No, we do not believe that, normally, this is possible. The only instance we have of that is clearly a supernatural one whereby God was going to denounce Saul, and that was with regard to Samuel, and there are various interpretations there, but the mediums and so on who supposedly hold séances and the dead return, I have gone through a great deal of their literature, and the Psychic Research Societies, both in this country and in Europe, have made extensive records of these people. Clearly there are some things which are difficult to explain, but the one thing that stands out clearly is this: the vast amount of fraud of everyone who is involved in this, so that the very people who profess to be the mediums are so constantly involved in fraud, that the one thing that is so clearly apparent is this: That engaging in such thing has a devastating effect on the human personality. It is destructive of it.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] It is forbidden in scripture very definitely, and it has a disintegrating effect on the human personality on all who have ever engaged in it.

[Audience] What would be considered do-gooders {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The do-gooders are Uzza’s, very definitely. They are going to be responsible for everything and everybody, bless their little pin-heads.

[laughter]

You’ll have to excuse my disposition today, but I was flying all Friday night and I was up late last night working, so I’m a little bit impatient with some kinds of people today. Yes?

[Audience] I believe you said that Lord, {?} at these people, but {?} follow suit {?} natural lifespan, including {?} Did you mean that he was {?}?

[Rushdoony] Yes, God’s judgment will come on such a people, and it has over and over again in history, and in scripture, not only do we have the death of Uzza, but we have the death and judgment, and captivity of peoples who followed a course of waywardness. We have the judgment pronounced upon Jerusalem in our Lord’s day and it coming to pass in its fullness. We have the judgment that the early church said would overwhelm the Roman Empire for its way, and it did come to pass, and I would say now, all we need to do is to prepare ourselves to survive through the judgment and to rebuild, because it’s coming. It is coming. We have passed the point of no return economically. We are facing a judgment. One of the things, for example, whereby Isaiah pronounces judgment on Jerusalem, in his first chapter, is that they have debased their silver coinage, and I was interested that Luther, during his lifetime, I was reading Luther on Romans when I was in the State of Washington this week, among other things I had with me to read, and I was interested. Luther said that the world around him was headed for a tremendous crisis and destruction, because, he said, they had debased their coinage and God’s word is true, and he was right, and this was one of the reasons why he was in such grief, because he knew what was going to overwhelm Europe, and the devastation and war and turmoil that was going to come as a result of their course. God has laws and men who are presumptuous and believe they can set aside God’s law are going to reap the whirlwind. Inflation, managed money, is one way of presumptuous responsibility, because you cannot have socialism without funny money, without managed money, and every time you have any state managing money it is one end to manage people.

One of the most fantastic schemes was in the paper this past week. Some conference here in Southern California, and this man proposed, he said it will take some years for it to be done, for which we can be grateful, because the whole thing will go down the drain before they get around to trying that, but he said we won’t need money anymore. We will have coded numbers and cards which no one can steal and use because only the owner will know how to feed this code into the machine, and you will have credit posted in the central agency, and you will go and spend those credits, and just by putting it in a machine, they will know how much you have in the way of credit, and money will be abolished, and also total control will be instituted.

[Audience] How they are going to evaluate the merits as far as {?} are qualified to earn?

[Rushdoony] Oh, central planning agency.

[laughter]

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] That’s immaterial. It’s what they feel you should get depending on the kind of person you are. In one of my recent trips, I heard of one city, a fairly sizeable city, but in an area where they had no Negros, but they did turn up one Negro family, but they had to have a civil rights commission, they had to have a poverty program, and all, but these people, with the husband and the wife, and the wife’s brother, three Negros in the community, since they were working they didn’t need anybody to take care of them, but no, they had to have someone to protect their rights, and so they set up a huge office in this city. The director gets $22,500 and an office staff and so on, to take care of these three Negros who don’t want anybody taking care of them.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] That all depends on who you are. They were related, no doubt, to some Congressmen, these directors, and they had to have a job, and if they couldn’t find these three Negros, they would certainly have imported some. Yes?

[Audience] Speaking of {?} , and I don’t think the attitude {?} conservative. It says something about {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, I don’t believe in the twilight, it’s silver and gold either, because it’s the only real money and it will be here when the other is gone, except as museum pieces.

I was interested Friday night, my plane didn’t leave until 12:45, and Bob Lindburgh took me to the airport and visited with me for awhile, and he had been in Shanghai in 1949 when the inflation began to hit there, and he said that when he went there, the Chinese dollar, well, it took 1,000 Chinese dollars to buy one American dollar. He said when the inflation got underway, it began to snowball, quite rapidly, and one of the heartbreaking things, he said, was to go downtown one day and see Chinese, many of them had been well-to-do, sitting on the sidewalks sobbing, uncontrollably, with stacks of bills all around them. The government had just posted a decree that all bills under $5,000 were worthless, and their lifesavings were wiped out, and they had been knocking on the doors of the banks, and stores, and they were worthless. The smallest denomination that was legal tender was the $5,000 bill. Then, when it got further underway, Bob said he bought a new suit one day for $25 million. Exactly a week later, to the day, to buy a small 5 and 10 cent store harmonica for his little boy, took $50 million, and he said by that time, no one trusted paper money at all. He said you had to give two American paper dollars to buy one Chinese silver dollar, because even though you could take those American paper dollars to a bank and get silver for them, they didn’t like paper. They didn’t want to accept it.

Well, our time is up and we stand dismissed.

End of tape