Studies in Political Philosophy

Eminent Domain

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: Eminent Domain

Genre: Speech

Track: 07

Dictation Name: RR124D7

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that thou hast called us to be members of thy household and heirs of thy kingdom, so that as we face a world that is destined to ruin and destruction, we have the privilege of knowing that we are heirs of no mean kingdom, that we are destined to victory, that thou, O Lord, wilt establish us and confirm us, and strengthen us in thy service and in terms of thy victory. Prepare us, therefore, by thy word that we may expect great things from thee, do great things for thee, and rejoice in the abundance of thy blessings. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture is from the Gospel of St. Luke 19:28-48. “And when he had thus spoken, he went before, ascending up to Jerusalem. And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying, Go ye into the village over against you; in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither. And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him.

And they that were sent went their way, and found even as he had said unto them. And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? And they said, The Lord hath need of him. And they brought him to Jesus: and they cast their garments upon the colt, and they set Jesus thereon. And as he went, they spread their clothes in the way.

And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen; saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples. And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.

And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.

And he went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought; saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves. And he taught daily in the temple. But the chief priests and the scribes and the chief of the people sought to destroy him, and could not find what they might do: for all the people were very attentive to hear him.”

The Gospels as they record the events of Palm Sunday, call attention over and over again to one particular incident, the colt. As they prepared to go into Jerusalem, our Lord send disciples out to a neighboring village to get a colt. He ordered his disciples to simply go up and take the colt, declaring “The Lord hath need of him.” No promise of payment was to be made. No promise that the colt was to be returned. Simply this: “The Lord hath need of him.” The colt was confiscated. He was simply taken over, and Jesus, by that act, declared the essence of his position and his ministry. By that act, he declared himself to be God, to be sovereign, because it was an act of eminent domain.

Now, the essence of eminent domain is simply this: it is an assertion of sovereignty, and in eminent domain, the sovereign exercises the right to take everything in the realm because it is his property ultimately. It is his possession. Jesus Christ, as very God of very God, as the creator, he by whom all things were made and without him was not anything made that was made, asserted in that act that, as Lord of all creation, he had come to claim that which was his. That sovereignty did not belong to kings and to governments, civil governments. It was not an attribute of state. It was an attribute of God, for to God alone belongs dominion, to God alone belongs sovereignty, and God alone, therefore, has the right of eminent domain. So his march into Jerusalem began with an assertion of that sovereign right. The Lord, that is, God, the king, has need of him.

It was a declaration also of his right to possess all Israel and the entire world. When he marched into Jerusalem and got off the colt, he walked into the temple. Now, the literal meaning of the word “Temple” is that it is the house, or palace, or throne room of the God, and thus, the temple was the throne room of Almighty God, and Jesus walked into it and cast out the moneychangers and said, “My house is a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.” It was his house, his palace, his throne room, and they had no right to turn it over to thieves, and this was what the priesthood had become. Eminent domain, this is what Jesus proclaimed on Palm Sunday from start to finish.

Now, let us turn back to an incident that took place centuries before. Samuel the prophet was ruler over the Hebrew conflict{?}. The people rejected him and said they wanted to abandon the old form of government and have a monarchy. There was no eminent domain in the Hebrew conflict{?}. God, as the king of Israel, alone had the power of eminent domain, and no judge, no tribal head or governor had the right to exercise such a power, and when they rejected Samuel, he went to God in grief, and God rebuked him and said, “They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them.” God ordered Samuel to speak to the people, and to make clear to them what it meant for them to reject God as their sovereign and to make the state their sovereign, to make a king their sovereign, and he said, first, “He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself,” so that he will exercise his power of sovereignty of eminent domain to take your sons and to make them his servants, to do his will. He will make them part of his labor battalions, and he will force them to make his instruments of warfare.

“And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.” Moreover, he will expropriate “your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.” This nine-point program of confiscation, God said to Samuel, is the result of your choice, of the peoples’ choice, of another sovereign than God, because the kings of this earth, the powers of this world, when they claim the right to be gods over men, will exercise eminent domain, and they will seize and confiscate and destroy. This is the consequence of having another sovereign than God.

Now, the consequences again of this choice on the part of Israel were being brought home to them by Jesus Christ. As he looked out over the city he wept. They had rejected him. They did not recognize his sovereignty and his eminent domain, and therefore, they would face his judgment, and not one stone would be left standing upon another. But even though his disciples hailed him saying, “Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest,” the people and the leaders want him on their terms, not on his. As king, he entered the temple, the house or palace of God. As king, he blasted the fig tree, the symbol of fruitless Israel. As king and prophet, he prophesied the downfall of Jerusalem and Judah, for their rejection of him, and as king and priest, he went to the cross to establish and usher in his kingdom.

In that last week, after Palm Sunday, as he taught them on the last day that he visited the temple, Wednesday, he expounded the parable of the wicked husband. The Lord had a vineyard, and he gave it into the care of certain men. These men perversely and wickedly rejected the ownership of the Lord, and seized as much as they could get away with. Then when servants were sent to collect what was the Lord’s due, they beat them or killed them and threw them out, and so the son was sent by the Lord to declare the Lord’s rights, and they plotted against him saying, “Let us kill the son and {?} the vineyard.” Jesus said, “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” And he, the Lord, shall come and destroy these husbandmen and shall give the vineyard to others, and when they, the people and the leaders heard, they said, ‘God help it{?}”

They knew what he was talking about. He had come in as God the Son. He had asserted his right of eminent domain, and they denied it. They were sovereigns. They exercised it, not God. They were outwardly of the church. They were priests. They were lawyers. They were supposedly the pillars of God’s chosen people, but they wanted the church to reflect their will, but the church is not a democracy, and the kingdom of God is not a republic. It is an absolute monarchy, governed by God’s word, God’s law, and in our relationship to God we deal with an absolute sovereign. He is the king of the universe, who possesses and blesses as he wills and confiscates and destroys as he wills, and when this absolute sovereign God, the Son, marched into Jerusalem, they tried to use him rather than to be used. They tried to possess him rather than to be possessed. They hailed him, expecting him to be their kind of king, and immediately were outraged when he asserted that the sovereignty belongs to God alone.

So it was they turned on him, and they conspired against him and turned him over to Pilate to be tried. Pilate saw the issues, and he said “Would you have me crucify your king?” and they said, “We have no king but Caesar,” and this was an inescapable pride {?} because the issue is Christ or Caesar, and sovereignty is an inescapable fact of life. You do not, when you deny God, deny the fact of sovereignty. Sovereignty is inescapable. It has to reside somewhere, and when it is denied to God, it immediately goes to man, to the state, and so if you refuse to have God as your sovereign, then the state will become your sovereign. Sovereignty is always a part of our world. The question is Where will it reside? With God or with Caesar?

So when they denied Jesus Christ, they had no other choice but to say, “We have no king but Caesar,” and those who have denied Christ in the church today, and in Washington today, and in London and elsewhere, have no choice. Whether they are preachers of the social gospel, or presidents of the United States, or prime ministers of England, their gospel is simply this: We have no king but Caesar. Sovereignty is an inescapable fact of life. Deny it to God and you surrender it to Caesar. But God is the only true sovereign, and it is he who alone can create, and he alone who governs, and he alone who judges, as he declared in Deuteronomy 32:39, “See now that I, even I, am he and there is no God with me. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal. Neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.”

Thus, when any people denies the sovereignty of God and denies his eminent domain, they fall into the hands of Caesar, and into his power of eminent domain, and the judgment of God is also upon them. How small, how insignificant the disciples seemed compared with the power of the Sanhedrin and of Rome, and yet our Lord prophesied that the Fall of Jerusalem, and declared of old through the mouth of Daniel that out of him should come a people and a power that would crush Rome and all other powers before them. And Jerusalem is gone, and Rome is gone, and the Caesars of our day will soon be gone, and his true church shall prevail.

There shall not be left one stone standing upon another of the Jerusalem that is from below, and just as the Jerusalem then was to destroy the physical, the anti-Christ Jerusalem of today that surrounds us, and that commands {?} or pulpit will be destroyed because it is declared that, “We have no king but Caesar.” This is our social gospel.

Wherever God is dethroned, eminent domain then flows from God to the state, and sovereignty flows from God to the state, but the state is a {?}. It cannot create. God creates, and the state trespasses. It enters into God’s domain and claims God’s sovereignty. It claims God’s eminent domain and therefore, when it exercises it, it exercises to enslave man. When a thief enters a house, the only way he can function is to tie you and your family down, and then he robs you, and since he is only interested in that which serves him, he is heedless of all else, and destroys. This is the eminent domain of the state. This is the sovereignty of the state. It is not creative. It is purely destructive.

But God as Lord, having sovereignty, having the right of eminent domain, cares for and protects his property which we are, and which every country and people that claims God as their sovereign are, the state’s eminent domain is for our enslavement. Christ’s eminent domain is our freedom. Because we are his, he declares, “The gates of hell cannot prevail against us.” Because we are his, he cares for his own, and so it is today, as we face the power of those who declare, “We have no king but Caesar,” you can rejoice, because Palm Sunday is the declaration of Christ’s eminent domain. And that which proves faithless to him, he destroys. And that which proves to be a false city, a false Jerusalem, he destroys. And the state today is busy condemning what does not belong to it, to embark upon its urban renewal programs, but Jesus Christ today declares unto us, even as he declared unto Jerusalem, his urban renewal program. Jerusalem shall be destroyed and not one stone left standing upon another, and to the city of man, and to the church of the social gospel of Jesus Christ, declares again his urban renewal program. I alone have the right of eminent domain, and you, having betrayed me and denied me, I declare unto you that not one stone shall be left standing upon another. For my house should be a house of prayer, and ye have made it a den of thieves. Let us then say, as against those who cry out around us, “We have no king but Caesar,” die then with Caesar. As for me and my household, we are the Lord’s. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee that thou hast called us and set us apart to be thy people, that thou art our king and our protector, our shield and our defender, a sure defense in the time of need, and so, our God, we commit ourselves unto thy government. We thank thee that thou art our redeemer, that thou hast made us thy people through thine atoning blood, that thou didst declare thy sovereignty on Palm Sunday, and that by thy grace thou hast chosen us and made us sons and heirs of thine eternal kingdom, of the Jerusalem which is from above. Make us strong, therefore, in the confidence, our Father, that we are citizens of no mean city, that we have a sure defender, and that we’ve been called unto victory. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] May I ask a question about today’s lesson, but something that has been bother me a little bit, is that may use the word, I use the word paradox {?} Christians believe. Do we see paradoxes in the humanistic society? For example, in India today, because of their religion, they’ll starve {?}, and yet in our election {?} the people will vote their pocketbooks, and vote {?}. Is this a paradox?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Very well put.

[Audience] May I cite another one?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] We were fighting the communists in Vietnam, and you’ll see this {?} I saw a movie recently where the hero was fighting communism, {?} and he {?} but his girlfriend in England was a communist, but she was {?}, I don’t know {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. This is the blindness of unbelief which leads it to do exactly those things that are most destructive of it, and the verse in the Old Testament that is most often quoted in the New, is the latter part of the sixth chapter of Isaiah, where the Lord says to Isaiah, “Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.” This blinding whereby they are guilty of this self-contradiction, this paradoxical behavior, is God’s will, God’s judgment on these people for their sin and their apostasy. It’s interesting that the other passage in the Old Testament which is most often quoted, the second most often quoted in the New Testament, is Psalm 2, which asserts God’s victory over the worldly conspiracy. “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.” He shall break them in pieces, and so on. Another question or comment?

[Audience] The variety of eminent domain as expressed in Exodus and Isaiah, in which he commands Israel to go into all nations, and regularly commanded Abraham to {?} in the land of {?} and Canaan, and later on into Goshen, is this eminent domain?

[Rushdoony] Exercised by God, very definitely and very well put. God exercised it. god requires it, not man, not the state. He doesn’t give the state that right, and you see, in history we find this. That the right of eminent domain, during the early part of feudalism was not exercised. It was not believed in, because they were building a Christian order. It was one of the things our Founding Fathers resented most. They did not want it, and part of the difficulty which led to the War of Independence was the exercise of eminent domain, because the King of England claimed the right to the best timber in the American forests for the masts of his ships, and so he would send his men into the forests to mark the trees with the king’s mark, because these were for the king’s navy, for the king’s ships, and the attitude of the Americans was simply this: What right does he have to take these, the best timbers? Why doesn’t he get onto the free market like the rest of us who are shipbuilders and buy them, and their attitude was a logical one, and so, this led to a great deal of the conflict between King George III and the colonies, this claim to eminent domain. They did not believe the state had it, and I think they were right. God alone can exercise it, that you so well demonstrated in those citations.

[Audience] {?} isn’t there a right then that remain now in some {?} and state laws, and I just wondered when that {?}

[Rushdoony] There is a claim to eminent domain by county, state, and federal government now. Yes, very pronouncedly.

[Audience] Is that recent, or does that {?}

[Rushdoony] It has crept in gradually and been exercised with increasing power since World War 1, and with exceeding frequency. Now, one of the most common arguments you find in justification of the right of eminent domain is road construction, but road construction was once believed to be entirely a private enterprise, and as a matter of fact, in the last century, when Rhode Island began to build the first state-supported turnpike, they had to drop it because the people rose up in protest. They said, “It’s no different than establishing a church out of tax funds. Why should we put money out of our pockets to take care of those who want to use the roads. Let those who want to build the road do it, as a free enterprise project, and let those who want to ride pay for the privilege.” So, the construction was halted. Yes?

[Audience] I wonder if you wanted to mention this article {?} for you yet, but this is the one on the criminologist from Santa Barbara who wants to prosecute the criminals of the corporation.

[Rushdoony] Yes, this is an interesting article from the Los Angeles Times, Sunday, March 20, and this Santa Barbara criminologist, or at least speaking in Santa Barbara, asks that gang bosses be prosecuted as corporations rather than as individuals. Now, this is a very dangerous thing. Our law says that you cannot prosecute a family because the family is guilty of a crime, and you cannot prosecute a church because a member commits a crime. Nor can you prosecute, say, the John Birch Society because a particular member has committed an offense, if he has. Now, to prosecute criminal gangs as corporations rather than as individuals is to destroy law and order, and to leave the way wide open to prosecute any organization or any group of people under any fancied law. What they have done steadily is to destroy the law, whereby the police can operate. So, what are they going to do? They are creating a crime problem, and their answer is more power to the state at the top, to take over what was being handled at the local level, and this will open the door to the prosecution of any group if it should ever be adopted. I doubt that we shall see its adoption, but I have no doubt that they will certainly attempt to have such legislation, but it is fantastic. It is a violation of everything that hundreds of centuries of biblical faith have worked to produce.

[Audience] Could it just be that the recent incorporation that was yesterday at the Hells Angels recognized by Mr. Jordan up here of the state government, could it be because the Hell’s Angels are a national group that this could try into the thing and that they would then prosecute the Hell’s Angels being that they had so much publicity, free publicity, anti, and then attack them whom very few people {?} come to their defense, and that will set a precedent?

[Rushdoony] Right. It’s easy, you see, to destroy our liberties by attacking them in someone who is obviously a hoodlum or a criminal. We want to see them behind bars, and so they will do it in such a way as will enable them to destroy anyone who resists them, including us. It’s a diabolical business, but they are in these things claiming a sovereignty that belongs to God, and God has his word concerning them, and God hasn’t missed once yet. All the enemies of God so far have died and you can go to their grave, but you can’t find God’s grave anywhere.

[Audience] I wanted to ask you about an insurance settlement we just heard about. Maybe this has happened before but it’s news to me, where the insurance company ruled it was 50/50, the fault of the one who had it{?}, and I was just wondering if they changed any of the decisions on, this was an automobile that hit another one, and investigating this insurance company {?}, half the one’s fault and half the other’s fault. Now, if they knew if they did too much of this, this would break down the person’s rights that was wrong, sort of thing. Wouldn’t this {?} our concept of right and wrong again, in another area?

[Rushdoony] I don’t know too much about that, but I do believe that there is valid precedent for that in that a person who is guilty in a situation doesn’t have a valid claim. You have to come with clean hands before the law, have a valid right to prosecute someone else. I’d have to know a little more about that. I’m not an expert in that area of insurance claims, and have very little knowledge of it. Yes?

[Audience] I have {?} kind of interest in {?} ran into yesterday, we ran into a young man and his wife who {?} with this company and one of {?} here is a 1959 November issue of {?}, and I brought it over so you could see it {?} mainly because that shows some of the terminology and the words have been changed in the Bible, but one of the things that was interesting here is that early in 1959 {?} United States resigning from the American {?} Association in protest over the public’s release of a reporter {?} Bar Association citing twenty-three major decisions {?} up to that date which were {?} favorable to the communist conspiracy, and in {?} with the United States {?} something here {?} know whether you might want to glance at this, which is reports of the standard versions of the Bible put out by the council of churches.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, all these translations, these new versions, are progressively altering the basic text of the scripture, more and more. It calls attention, for example, of how the New Revised Standard Version has, in Matthew 1:25, omitted “firstborn” in the verse “brought forth her firstborn son.” So, “firstborn” is omitted, and then, it gives numerous examples where anything that points to the deity of Christ, as well as his Virgin birth and a good many other things. The resurrection, are clearly omitted, and this actually, glancing through it hastily, is a summation of just some of the more important ones. You could go through and have a small booklet of the changes that have been made, and as I say, this gets worse with each translation. It is worse in the New English Bible than it was in the Revised Standard Version. It will be far worse in the Anchor Bible when it is finished, and any new one that will come after that will be far, far, more a departure from the text.

Quite a few verses, of very good ones, are cited here, very important ones. For example, in Romans 5:2 where it speaks of the fact that we have access by faith to God the Father, “by faith” is omitted. In Romans 13:9, “thou shalt not bear false witness” is left out.

[Audience] {?} guilty conscience {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, I think that was an honest gesture on their part. After all, since they were going to bear false witness, it was best to leave that out.

[Audience] Are they trying to destroy the Bible by the Bible?

[Rushdoony] Oh, of course, very definitely, and the Bible is steadily being changed into another book with another meaning, very subtly, so that you can find people today who believe that they are good Christians and will cite the Bible to prove almost anything, and they don’t realize how far they have strayed. This week I met a woman who was as strong a champion of the Civil Rights Movement as you could hope to find, but believed herself to be an absolutely sound and orthodox Christian. I don’t think she had heard anything but social gospel preaching for twenty or thirty years, and she had no recognition, not the faintest, to the extent to which she had been brainwashed. So, that as she read the Bible, she was reinterpreting everything there to fit into this new mold, and of course, any version that was recommended from the pulpit was the authentic version as far as she was concerned.

[Audience] I wonder if you’d comment on this. Yesterday, {?} through all kinds of pickets {?} types. How {?} afternoon, and I saw a man with a sign, and I could scarcely believe my eyes. It said “Jesus Christ is the son of God” on one side, and on the other side it said, “Avoid eternal damnation,” and I couldn’t see the rest of it. Now that is not honoring to our Lord, {?} and I wondered what your comment would be on someone who walks along the street in this manner?

[Rushdoony] I think it’s foolishness. I don’t think it accomplishes anything, and it is not the kind of witness that is at all honoring to Christ, and I think such peoples are foolish. There is an important article, I know this issue. There is a very important article here. “Why Your Church Can’t Be Built,” by Ralph I. Yarnell{?}, pointing out that zoning commission laws prohibit the building of churches increasingly. I have given a chapter to this subject in The Nature of the American System, to the matter of zoning laws, but they clearly document this here and point out how the Supreme Court has backed this kind of thing. The strategy today, increasingly, is to use the law to destroy the law. You don’t come out and say you are going to deny religious liberty to certain kinds of churches, but you use the zoning commission to rule them out of existence. You’ve accomplished the same thing. You’ve abolished their right to exist. They cannot exist if you have, by your zoning laws, said they cannot function.

[Audience] Well, in regards to that, I think it was three years ago, or four years ago, went down to the city planning office in Los Angeles, and it was quite interesting, on the radio show {?} and here was an area that it was called over-churches, that’s around the Hoover area, and it was quite interesting because {?} over-churched, or what are you going to do about it, if there are things in the zoning laws {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, you can actually say that you don’t want a church in an area or in a community entirely, and some cities are ruling out all churches. They are simply saying there are to be no churches in residential areas, no churches in industrial areas, no churches in business areas. So, where are they to do? Well, we don’t have any room for them. In other new communities, they will simply provide for three churches, a Jewish Synagogue, a Roman Catholic church, and one Protestant church with the National Council of Churches. No more, and none of these three groups can have more than the one, and that’s it. This is being done. In other cases, they get around it. For example, in Los Altos Hills, they dealt with it by saying that only 8% of the land in the community was to be for recreational, educational, or religious purposes. Now, they very quickly, with all the park areas they set up, ran over the 8%. They make exceptions to the law every time they want to put in a new public school, or when they put in Foothills College, but not for the churches. No church of any kind can get a variance from that law.

[Audience] What is your opinion on the {?} the {?} in that area. Now, the {?} are some of the leaders{?} they want {?} I think {?} trade school.

[Rushdoony] Well, I don’t see any point in either the junior college or the trade school for the simple reason that this will be education provided freely for people who’ve had abundance of opportunities to get an education of almost any sort, who can go anywhere in Los Angeles and get it, and they’re not using the opportunities they have. Why provide people with opportunities when they don’t want them? And they will sit in school year in and year out, and make no attempt to learn anything, and then we are supposed to provide something further for them because ostensibly we have deprived them. This, to me, is utter nonsense, and it is fantastic the extent to which they expect these things. I was speaking at Fuller Seminary this past Tuesday, and they have had a conference there on race and equality, and this one man, a United Presbyterian Negro leader, Dr. Wilmar{?}, I believe, spoke five or six times and gave the standard Civil Rights justification. The reason why these people riot is they have a cause and their cause is the cause of Christ, and so on and so forth. This is the essence of his position, and of course, they sat there and took it, and I tried to get him to realize, but of course it was futile, he was blaming not just the white man, but the white Christian, which is a peculiar thing, and he was saying it was the white Christians who were the worst. These who believed their Bible and had family devotions, they were the ones who would go into the slave quarters and break up the families, and separate and sell husband and wife, and children, who would be deliberately nasty. And I said, “Isn’t there a great deal of mythology in your thinking? First, you admit these people believed their Bible from cover to cover, and then you say these people who are so moral in their homes went out there and did these things.” And I said, “Can you document that?” and I said, “I doubt that you can.” Then I said, “You have continually blamed everything that happens to the Negro on the white man, on particular on the good, Bible-believing white Christian.” And I said, “What about the responsibility of the Negro?” And of course, he wouldn’t answer, because he was not concerned about that, and I said, “I don’t like the word ‘equality,’” but I said, “Instead of talking, let’s use the word equality, and instead of talking about equality of rights, why not talk about an equality of responsibility?” and I said, “Why aren’t you for that?” Again, he wouldn’t answer, and there is no dealing with these people except in terms of good, hard realities.

I think one of the few good columns that Kilpatrick has written was one titled, “Let’s Treat the Negro Like a White Man.” Let’s make him keep the law and be as responsible as any other citizen, and if he doesn’t, clobber him just like everybody else gets clobbered, if he steps out of line.

[Audience] I would like to have you discuss this business of the Christian rule in the world, {?} why things are getting better. Now, do you mean by them ruling the world, the Christians are the ones who {?}

[Rushdoony] I believe God will. Now, we get here into the area of eschatology, doctrine of last things, and there are pre-mil, post-mil, and a-millennial positions. I would come closest to being what is called post-millennial, although I reject the idea of the millennium as being something which is in the future, and being the period of triumph. This would get us into a long discussion to deal with it, but I do believe that the enemies of Christ shall be defeated, and a Christian order prevail throughout the entire world before Christ comes, and I believe that these people are already under sentence, they are going to be destroyed, that they have passed the point of no return with God, and in terms of economics, and so we need to figure that they’re finished, that there will be a very difficult time of chaos and anarchy before they are out of the way, but we need to begin now to think in terms of reconstruction.

[Audience] {?} away from this time.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Audience] You don’t think so?

[Rushdoony] I don’t see how this present world order can continue too many years. Five years, ten, maybe. Fifteen? Possibly, but I doubt it.

[Audience] Well, I agree with that, but when you look and find young people who are Christian leaders that are also scared{?} the churches have {?} the social gospel people, and if they were the future, {?}.

[Rushdoony] That’s right, but leadership comes up very quickly, and one of the things that has impressed me as I go around and speak to college young people, I spoke three times and with discussions, it was a total of quite a few hours yesterday, from 9:30 to about 4:30. So it was seven hours of speaking, and I was startled at the readiness of those young men especially, to grasp everything that I said and to go along with it, and I find this repeatedly, everywhere. So, I think we’ll have the leadership before too long. All they want is the teaching. They’re ready for it, and as far as they’re concerned, everything they see around them is bankrupt. Granted, these are handfuls here and there, but they are the elite, the most brilliant younger men, and it only takes a minority, a dedicated minority.

[Audience] {?} happened after the riots three weeks ago, and {?} riots {?} in and out of class. Is there anything wrong with {?} and then the week before that {?} two teachers were {?} in the paper, but {?} L.A. School Board {?} I can hardly wait to see what {?} as far as {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, and another thing that’s been taking place which ties in with that, Friday, yesterday, and today, there has been a conference at UCLA, university-sponsored, with a number of teaching assistants, and professors, and outstanding students from various campuses in Southern California, and it has had to do with moral values and the future, and the gist of the position taken is the most subversive, the most anti-Christian, and they talked about Christianity, the most subversive and anti-Christian thing today is a belief that there are unchanging laws and moral standards, that the essence of progress in true Christianity and true morality is to meet each age with change and to change with it. In other words, the new morality, the Death of God School of Thought.

Now, what can this do? Just as what you talked about in Watts means the destruction of the schools there. It’s going to lead to anarchy. It’s going to lead to anarchy in the educational sphere, and education is breaking down in these universities. Now, it’s going to be far, far greater than this. It’s going to be a collapse of law and order. This is going to go down the drain. It’s going to be an ugly time when it does, but it will go down the drain and then there will be a period of reconstruction. This has happened over and over again. This has happened at the end of the Roman Empire. It happened at the end of the Middle Ages when they went overboard for humanism, because the 15th century was an age of thorough-going humanism. They had their beatniks then who were wandering from college to college across the face of Europe, and creating riots. The Goliards, and they were subversives. They had their sexual freedom leagues and the Goliards were connected with it, these students, everything, and it led to the destruction of everything, and a new order had to come out of it, and it will be the same again.

[Audience] {?} some of this, however, is that this is a planned {?}, a planned chaos, and {?} plans for the reconstruction period also, so the period of {?} will not be in the deconstruction period, but in the construction period.

[Rushdoony] God did the planning before they ever did, and they’re going to run counter to his plans, and if we look too strongly to what the opposition is trying to do, we are, in a sense, in danger of becoming Satanists, because we believe in the power of Satan rather than of God, and God knows what every plotter is conspiring, and Psalm 2 says, “He that sitteth in the circle of the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision,” so that I don’t believe we need to be afraid of these people. We need to share God’s laughter, and that’s what Luther said, and Luther was living in very difficult times, and as he taught that Psalm, he summoned every believer to join with God in his heavenly laughter, and I think we need to laugh at these people, because they conspire in vain. They imagine a vain thing.

End of tape