Eighth Commandment

Labor Laws

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Restitution & Forgiveness

Lesson: Labor Laws

Genre: Speech

Track: 86

Dictation Name: RR130AU86

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our text this morning, Leviticus 19:13, Deuteronomy 24:14-15, and Deuteronomy 25:4. First of all, Leviticus 19:13. Our subject: The Labor Laws of Scripture. “Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.”

And Deuteronomy 24:14-15. “Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates: at his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the Lord, and it be sin unto thee.”

And finally, Deuteronomy 25:4. “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.”

The labor laws of scripture are very important for us, especially in this day when so many in the courts, in particular, assume that labor is almost automatically in the right. There have been times, of course, when it has been assumed that the employer is automatically in the right. It is important for us to analyze the situation carefully in terms of what scripture teaches.

The first two of the scripture lessons we read, the first two laws, forbid fraud and oppression with respect to workmen. Moreover, they require prompt payment at the specified time. A rabbi summed up the import of these laws with a sentence: “He who treats a hireling with harshness sins as grievously as if he had taken away life, and transgresses five precepts.” In other words, they sought, not only as a form of theft to take advantage of workmen, but also a form of murder, because a man is dependent, his life is dependent upon his wages.

The law thus, clearly requires that all who are employers who are in superior positions use their power with kindliness, with thoughtfulness, and with mercy. To violate the contract a person has with a workman is a criminal offense in scripture. Now, this is an important distinction. Today, our labor legislation is not criminal legislation. It is administrative law, and this is the injustice of it. In terms of biblical law, a workman had recourse if wrong were done unto him, to the criminal law. Today, it is purely administrative law before a commission, and the normal rules of law do not apply. As a result, a group of bureaucrats adjudge the situation. Hence, the injustice in the last century, sometimes the capital, sometimes the labor, simply because it is no longer a law of justice, a matter of a {?} court, but of an administrative agency.

Moreover, in these laws, God declares that his own supreme court is the proper court of appeals for labor. “Lest he cry against thee unto the Lord, and it be sin unto thee.” God declares that when the courts of men fail, if labor be godly and cry out to him, he will answer them. There is a promise of judgment against thieves among employers, and also of a thieving state, which does not prosecute theft. There are many, many scriptures which declare this. We find it also in the Apocrypha. For example, Ben Sirach says in Ecclesiasticus that, “He that defraudeth the laborer of his hire is a blood-shedder.” Moreover, Jeremiah declares in Jeremiah 22:13, “Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong, that useth his neighbor’s services without wages and giveth him not for his work.”

A number of other passages stress the same thing. For example, Malachi declares, “And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts.” This is Malachi 3:5. In the New Testament in the epistle of James 5:4, we read, “Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.” Thus, very clearly, scripture condemns as theft, and a form of murder, every oppression of the working man.

Any delay in payment is similarly condemned as theft. This is an important fact, because delay in payment has become a major problem in the world today. Let me cite an example. A man in the steel business in the State of California won a major contract, the biggest contract in his business life. It was an order for more than a million dollars worth of steel, and for a small dealer, this was a major gain. The corporation, however, had overextended itself in bidding the lowest bid on the contract and they were in trouble. They knew that on another job, in about six months to a year, they would recoup their losses, and so they deliberately avoided paying any other creditors, figuring, “Let them take us to court. It will take a year or two years for it to come for trial, and in that time we can recoup and pay any and all obligations.” In this case, some of the suppliers were ruined. They went to court, but they went into bankruptcy before the payment came. The steel dealer almost was forced out of business, but fortunately was able to weather it out, by the grace of God. Now this was clearly theft. It is a form of theft also, now practiced by the federal government as well.

One of the policies introduced with the tight money program has been to delay paying people. Anyone who has a federal contract today is not paid, sometimes for six months to a year, always a deferred payment, and this has been one of the major ways whereby the tight money policy has been maintained. This is, according to scripture, theft.

The intent of these labor laws is to promote the godly use of power, but there is another factor. The honest treatment of a workman is not a favor to them, but an obligation. St. Paul declares emphatically, as he sums of these things in Romans 4:4, “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace but of debt.” Or as the Berkeley Version reads it, “Now to workman, wages are not credited as a favor, but as an obligation.” In other words, anytime anyone contracts for some labor, he contracts a debt. It’s not a favor to pay him. It’s a debt, due to him, and therefore, a debt must be paid or it is theft.

On the other hand, the property owner is the sole governor of his property. When he contracts for labor, he contracts a debt, but he does not contract any rights away to his property. The laborer therefore, has a claim against the employer, but he has no claim against the employer’s property nor any right to control it. Thus, in the Parable of the Householder, when the workmen came and complained, and they said, “You hired all of us for the same wages. Those who began work in the morning and those who began to work in the middle of the afternoon are all being paid the same wages,” and the attitude of the householder, quite properly was, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thy eye evil because I am good? Did you not receive a pay that was acceptable for you, when you contracted to work for me at 8:00 in the morning? If I needed somebody at 3:00 in the afternoon for two or three hours of work, and I had to pay a full day’s wages, or was ready to pay a full day’s wages to get them, to get the job done, what is that to thee?” This is an important declaration. It appears in Matthew 25:15. The laborer has no claim against the employer except for the contracted wages.

In Deuteronomy 25:4, “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn,” a principle of great importance concerning pay is made clear. This is an extremely important law which appeared repeatedly in scripture. Let us analyze what scripture has to say on this law in the main citations. Thus, St. Paul cites this repeatedly as does our Lord. “The workman is worthy of his meat,” our Lord said as he cited this passage. Again, in another passage, our Lord said, “The laborer is worthy of his hire.” This is the meaning of the muzzling of the ox passage. Then, St. Paul in 1 Timothy 5:17-18, “Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine. For the scripture saith, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, the labourer is worthy of his reward.” In other words, scripture declares emphatically that there is a correlation between the work done and the pay received. The work done is a debt contracted by the employer. Now, the ox gets out of his labor, the care that is his due. He cannot be muzzled. He is entitled to feed off the farm. However, there is a difference in pay. Therefore, St. Paul says the elders that rule, the pastors, are to be counted worthy of double honor. They are workmen who deserve more than others. There is no fair price for a particular kind of service. The value varies in terms of the need and the services rendered. The ox gets an ox’s pay. His feed. The laborer is worth of his reward, whatever debt his work contracts, that is his due. Therefore, a ditch digger is not entitled to as much as say, a doctor. There is a principle of justice involved.

This then, is the economic side of this law. The non-economic side is that there must be a relationship of master and workman which cannot be reduced to economics alone. The ox is not muzzled. He has been trained by his master, the master has a stake in him, and he cares for the ox. The apostle or the minister has more than an economic relationship. It is not one of charity, but it is more than economics. The law called the workman, “thy neighbor.” In other words, he is a person, and there is a personal relationship. In other words, the master/workman relationship cannot be reduced to economics, neither can it defy economics.

The relationship between an employer and those who work for him is also a person-to-person relationship. The relationship between a doctor and his patients, a lawyer and his clients, every working relationship is also a person-to-person relationship. Wherever the relationship between people is reduced to economics, it is depersonalized, and the consequences are unhappy. One of the reasons for the success of Japan today, economically, has been, precisely because the relationship between worker and employer, in terms of Japan’s feudalistic background, is still very personal. As a result, Japanese labor is far more productive than American labor, and it is able to out-compete American and European labor in the world markets, and its pay is approximately the same, as the U.S. News & World Report has pointed out, as American labor, in spite of ideas to the contrary. Our culture has too extensively depersonalized and atomized relationships.

Moreover, a wide variety of institutions today have intruded on the relationship between employer and employee. Today, it is no longer a person-to-person relationship. A variety of institutions exist which make it their business to interfere. As a result, the labor unions feel that they have to be the mediator between the worker and his employer. Thus, in many businesses, it is forbidden for the employer to speak directly to his workmen on any issue. Every relationship is mediated. Now, in terms of scripture, this is immoral. Again, a variety of governmental agencies intrude in every relationship. They intrude today in the relationship between a doctor and his patient, between a lawyer and his client, between a businessman and those who work for him. They intrude in the relationship between a servant in the house and her mistress. In other words, a vast variety of organizations now intrude into every relationship between laborer and employer. This, in terms of scripture, is immoral. It cannot be done. It is a personal relationship of which God and criminal law are the judges.

We spoke earlier of the correlation between the nature of the work and the pay. St. Paul asserted this emphatically in 1 Corinthians 3:8 when he said, “And every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor,” or as the Berkeley Version reads, “Each will receive his own pay in agreement with his particular labor.” This is an important declaration. It insists on the thoroughly personal aspect of all labor, and today, everything militates against it. For example, I have referred a number of times to Fairfax Christian School. Now, one of the things that causes many teachers, as they go there, more than a little offense is that the wage scale is not in terms of seniority, or any labor principle as is recognized by teachers associations, and unions. Fairfax School pays more than the public schools do, but the pay is in terms of performance, in terms of the Pauline principle, deliberately. “Every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor. Now, I recall a few years ago, one teacher who was an older man, a Latin teacher, who had taught for many years who was quite offended, because he was paid less than some who had taught half as many years, or only two or three years, but their performance was far superior, and they were paid, each of them, in terms of their ability. One of the effects of this system is, that the poorer teachers leave very quickly. They are not paid for what they have not performed.

Work, as we said earlier, is a debt contracted. It is not a gift. The employer has no right to consider it a gift, and the employee has no right to consider it a gift, and therefore, to expect something for what he has not done, to expect as much as someone teaching in the next room who does not perform services equivalent to his, or for an engineer to expect to be paid as much as the next engineer when he has not the same abilities and the same confidence, or the same value to the firm.

Now, this brings us to one of the most pressing of questions with regard to labor. Is there a right, on the part of labor, to strike, and here the answer must emphatically be that there is no such right. We have seen that the labor laws of scriptures specify that, while work involves the contraction of a debt by the employer, work never gives the employee any rights over the property of the employer. Leonard Reed, as the Foundation for Economic Education has stated, “No person, nor any combination of persons has a moral right to force themselves at their price on any employer or to forcibly preclude his hiring of others.” To do so is to violate the commandment, Thou shalt not steal. Leonard Reed states further, “To say that one believes in the right to strike is comparable to saying that one endorses monopoly power to exclude business competitors. It is saying, in effect, that government-like control is preferable to voluntary exchange between buyers and sellers, each of whom is free to accept or reject the other’s best offer. In other words, to sanction a right to strike is to declare that might makes right, which is to reject the only foundation upon which civilization can stand. Lying deep at the root of the strike is the persistent notion that an employee has a right to continue an engagement once he has begun it as if the engagement were his own piece of property. A job is but an exchange of fare, having existence only during the life of the exchange. It ceases to exist the moment either party quits or the contract ends. The right to a job that has been quit is no more valid than the right to a job that has never been held,” and yet it is strange how few will recognize that fact.

Some years ago, I was, for a time, on the staff of a conservative foundation. Most of the staff members were economists, conservative economists, and the amusing thing was that these economists all felt that they had a right, by virtue of being hired, to permanent pay from that foundation, and when one after another was fired for one reason or another, their argument was, “I have a right to stay on here because, think of the job I left, or the faculty position at such-and-such university I gave up to come here. I surrendered my tenure and therefore, you should give me tenure.” All these from some of the most conservative economists in the country. They were asserting the right to steal. No one twisted their arm to go there. They took a risk in leaving one job for another, but life is full of risks and no one compelled them to accept that risk, but they felt that they had a right to steal, and that’s exactly what it was, and of course, business today, also, too often feels that it has a right to steal.

A very outstanding book, much neglected, by Gabrielle Kolko, studies the anti-trust legislation under Theodore Roosevelt, and the point he makes is we have trusts and monopolies only because of the anti-trust legislation, that these laws were brought about by some of the major corporations, Standard Oil and others, for one purpose; to eliminate competition. They did not want competitors to come around and challenge them, and so in the name of anti-trust legislation, they eliminated competition and made-for trusts and monopolies, and their attitude was immoral. It was theft. It is state interference that leads to monopolies in business and in labor.

Now, there are many who say immediately, “Well, if we did not have all these government regulations, then it would mean that the employers would rob the worker. The answer to this is as we saw earlier, the labor laws of scripture are not administrative laws. They are criminal laws, and if you indeed recognize that Thou shalt not steal is a basic part of the criminal law of the land, it means then that any employer who defrauds his workers, and any worker who defrauds his employer is guilty of theft, but Thou shalt not steal is no longer a part of our common law.

Moreover, it is to assume that the world is not under God’s law, that there is no law from God, economic and moral, that governs the universe, and this is why conservatism does not long endure without Christian faith. What is the basic premise of classical economics, or conservative economics? The basic premise, and Samuelson himself has admitted this, in a recent issue of Newsweek, Samuelson, the great Keynesian economist of our day and the Kennedy economist said, the first law and the basic law of economics that he learned when he went to school was, there is no such thing as a free lunch, which is a popular way of saying Thou shalt not steal, and of course, he said, The first thing I’ve learned since I abandoned this kind of fallacy is that there is such a thing as a free lunch, but he did not go on to say there is a free lunch only if you steal it. If you steal it by the point of a gun, either in your hand or in the hand of the government, the free lunch the welfare workers have today, the welfare people who work the government because they are workers in that sense, is gained from you at the point of a gun. The federal government compels you to pay it, but if you have a free society, robbery does not prosper.

Some years ago, I was in a community in which every pro-union man pointed to a particular plant, as a classic example of the bloated capitalist and of how he could get away with murder. It was a garment factory, a sweatshop operation. It was a community of predominantly retired people. This businessman came there and established a shirt factory, because he thought, “This is an ideal place, inflation has begun to operate. A lot of these people who’ve retired have to supplement their pensions and they will have to work at my price because there is no business, no industry, in this community.” He also negotiated with the civil leaders. He gave them shares in his company so that they protected him legally from any trouble. He also had under the table agreements with labor so there was never a problem of a strike, when he was paying substandard wages. Thus, he was guaranteed against strikes, guaranteed against federal and local interference, guaranteed an opportunity to exploit these widows who had to work, “the most nominal of pay.” It was a shockingly immoral situation, and of course, everyone who was pro-union in the community was screaming about it and telling me, “Do you see? This is proof why you have to have laws,” and my answer was, “Well, where are your laws operating? Where are your unions? Where is the federal government, where is the local government? Every kind of law is being here violated, with the consent of capital and labor and of every agency of government. What good are your laws?”

But God’s laws are operative. How? God’s laws were operative because God has declared Thou shalt not steal. God has declared through the song of Deborah as she spoke of evil, “The stars in their courses fought against Israel,” everything in the universe works against the evil-doer. What happened? Paying wages that constituted a theft, he had workers who were unhappy with their work, and their work was substandard, and what happened? They went out immediately and got all kinds of contracts with every kind of department store in the State of California and fanned out across the country, and these shirts were immediately available for men up and down the State of California. The contracts from Los Angeles to Verone{?} were fabulous, but in a very short time, the contracts were evoked and the good began to go back. They were substandard. People took them home and the seams had not been properly sewn, and the shirt would suddenly begin to come apart. They had paid widows’ wages that were theft, and they hurt themselves most of all. They went bankrupt. Here was an experiment in what you might call bloated capitalism, with a consent of labor and of government, and it failed, and God’s law is operative. The stars in their course fought it down{?} against Israel.

Laws are important, but laws cannot change men. The law requires force as an instrument, but it is legitimate only against law-breakers. Not as an instrument to convert, but for the violation of criminal law. The law cannot be used to change the heart of man, or to rearrange the world, because you can never make a good omelet with bad eggs. The law can never allow us to steal from the thief, but the law can allow us to recover stolen property. Too much legislation in recent years has had theft as its premise. It is said that it is right to steal for the sake of business since business is good for the country, or since the worker is poor, it is right to steal for the sake of the worker, because he is poor, but the word of God says, Thou shalt not steal.

Thus, there is no right to strike in scripture, because there is no right to steal. There is no right in scripture for labor to claim that which is not its own, and the sad fact is that the labor movement today, like too much of the business world, is dedicated to theft.

One final point, there are those who look with hope to Christian labor movements that have been established in various countries. Europe has many Christian labor unions. Canada has a Christian labor movement also, which is now beginning to cross the border into some of the eastern states. Supposedly, the men in these Christian labor unions in Canada are ultra-conservative men, religiously, but the principle of a union is immoral, and when you begin with an immoral principle, a group of men seeking to coerce another group of men, you end up in immorality. You begin with an immoral premise and therefore, you can have only an immoral conclusion.

Thus, the recently issued principles of the Canadian Christian labor movement sound like very good Marxism. The second principle of the Christian Labor Association of Canada reads, “Discrimination in employment because of color, creed, race, or national origin conflicts with the biblical principle of equality of all human beings before God and the law of love toward all men.” A very interesting statement, is it not? Where in the Bible does it tell us that there is a principle of equality? The Bible emphatically does not assert any such principle. The Bible emphatically does not tell us that all creeds are equal, for to do so, will be to say that Christianity is equal to Mohammedism, or voodoism, or Shintoism, and if there is anything that the Bible asserts is that there is none other way under heaven by which men can be saved other than Jesus Christ. Now, that’s as anti-equal as you can get.

Moreover, the scriptures emphatically assert that various races and people are lower because they are morally and religiously apostate, and that when men forsake God, they degenerate, and that where there has been a culture without any such faith in its background, it is a degenerate culture and we must see it as such. We have no right to place it on an equality with ourselves, because this is then to deny the validity of a religious and a moral heritage. All men are not equal before God. The facts of heaven and hell certainly militate against the idea of the equality of all men. A belief in good and evil requires us to discriminate. An employer therefore, has a property right to prefer whom he will, and he can prefer whom he wills in terms of color, creed, race, or national origin. A Japanese Christian church in Los Angeles has a right to a Christian Japanese pastor, and a Norwegian who has an apartment house has a right to prefer a Norwegian as his manager.

The fifth principle of the Christian Labor Association of Canada reads, “Creational resources may not be exploited for personal gain, or the enrichment of a group or a community, but must be developed for use in the service of all mankind.” Who needs Karl Marx with Christians like that? In other words, everything that everybody has belongs to everybody. It can’t even be for your country. Everything in Canada and everything in the United States belongs to the entire world, and how dare we hold it for our country alone, or for our own group, for our own family, or ourselves? This is simply total communism, theft made into a principle of operation. Not a word in all scripture gives any group any right for such a statement.

There are a large number of principles {?} by the Christian Labor Association of Canada, and every other so-called Christian labor union around the world. We don’t have time to analyze all of them. Suffice it to say, they all bear out this same fact. If you being on the premise that it is right to steal, that you have the right to coerce other people into surrendering their property or rights pertaining to their property to you, then no matter what kind of faith you affirm, you are going to wind up in the same camp. Thus, they may be very, very conservative Catholics who come together to form a Christian labor union, or they may be ultra-conservative Christian Reformed Dutchmen, or ultra-conservative German Lutherans, and you have all these groups forming unions and many others. They end up in the same camp as Karl Marx, and Lenin and Stalin and Kosygin and Brezhnev, as thieves, and whether it be a great corporation or a small one, it is going to use legislation to coerce others into a monopolistic privilege for themselves. They end up again in the same camp as thieves.

The fact that a worker is poor gives him no more right to steal than an employer’s power gives him a right to defraud. Theft is not a privilege or a right pertaining to any class of men. The word of God is emphatic and it speaks to every man. Thou shalt not steal. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that the world is under thy law, and that thou in thy wisdom shall bring to thy court all workers of iniquity, thieves in government, thieves in capital, thieves in labor, thieves in churches and in schools. O Lord, thy law is sure, and thy justice infallible, and so Lord, we appeal from the decisions of men unto thy decision, from the laws of men to thy law, rejoicing, our Father, that thou shalt undertake for us. In Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now, with respect to our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. This would take a long time to go into it, but perhaps I can give you one reference. There are about eight or ten books now that are building up quite a body of evidence, but the classical statement of this, published in 1963, is Gabrielle Kolko. The Triumph of Conservatism, a Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916. Gabrielle Kolko, a very important work. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] It is the work that contracts the debt, not the status of the person. Thus, the employer should pay in terms of the work, not is the person married, or single, male or female, has a lot of children, or has signed a note for a relative and is in the hole financially. Now, if someone is working for you and they are a valued employee, then you can reward them for very valuable services in terms of appreciating their personal problems. That’s a different matter, but you hire in terms of the work. Thus, if a single girl is doing the same work as a married man with a family, that single girl is entitled to as much. This is simple justice. In other words, it’s the work that contracts the debt. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. A strike is an attempt to coerce an employer into giving the desired wage. A notice is negotiation. You’re saying, “If you appreciate my services, give me more, otherwise I’m leaving.” That’s an honest way of operation, and it’s entirely different.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Surely.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] That’s right. It depends on the position, and the type of the work, and the type of relationship as contracted. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right, but supposing you have a job. Let’s say you’re a contractor, and you have to get it done at a certain time. You need ten men, say, for half a day or you’re not going to fulfill your contract in time. If you can get those ten men, and they may be hard to get, their wage per hour is worth more to you than those who’ve been working right along, so you’re entitled, because it’s your property, your job, to say, “Alright, will you come and work for me because I want to meet my contractual obligation, and I’ll pay you more if you come and work for me.”

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] If he chose, yes, but this doesn’t give him the right to say, “I will pay less to someone because they don’t need it,” you see. The debt is contracted by the work. The rest is charity. If you have an employee with a large family, and you love him, you value him, you’re entitled to do extra things for him, but today, the differential comes about because of government interference and labor union interferences, and so on, so they set up a scale, and I know in school districts, this used to be the case. I don’t know whether it still is because I haven’t had any contact with a school board for years. I once had the misfortune of being a board member, and the policy was, “Well, here is a single girl, and here is a single young man. We’re going to pay them less and we’re going to look for such teachers, and we’re going to take a dim view on their getting married, because then we’ll feel we have to pay them more,” and so they establish a scale like this and they make it routine for the entire county or, in my particular case, it was an entire state, and so, it’s a monopolistic situation. If you’re going to teach in that state, and you have a certificate in terms of that state, then you have to go along with it. If you’re a single girl, you’re limited to so much, and you may be a better teacher than the married man. Now, that is not justice, you see. Yes?

[Audience] {?} overtime {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, again you have an artificial situation that is the product of government and union interference into the situation. So, it’s a totally artificial question. It’s a product of an artificial situation. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, because government, civil government, is not a monopoly, properly, in terms of scripture. Now a government is trying to become a monopoly and it’s making certain forms of capital, and certain forms of labor, the unions, monopolies also, but let’s go back to what government meant in the Colonial and Early American period. At that time, if you said “government,” nobody would think you were talking about Washington, or the statehouse, or any such thing. Government meant the self-government of the Christian man, that’s what government meant. It was personal. Then government was the family. You governed your family. Then, government meant your business, the church, the school, each of which was independent. When you spoke of the state, you said, “civil government.” If you go back to any of the old documents, you will find that every time they talk about the state or the federal, or the local areas of government, they say “civil government.” John Locke’s classic, for example, A Treatise on Civil Government, because then government was basically personal. It meant the self-government of the Christian man. Now today, government is trying to, the state or the federal government is trying to create a monopoly on government. It says, “We have the right to govern all education, all business, all labor, all family, every vocation. We’re going to give you cradle-to-grave security. That is, we’re going to govern you. So it is working towards a monopoly on government, but it is not, in terms of scripture, entitled to any monopoly.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] They are all feeling the impact of violating God’s law. Thus, the Soviet Union, which you cited was, the Ukraine alone was the bread basket of Europe, it fed Europe. Today, it cannot feed its own country. They are perpetual buyers of food. This is an amazing fact, that one of the greatest natural agricultural areas in the world cannot feed itself any longer. Now, wherever you have socialism, it is parasitic. It can only survive by feeding on a free economy. This is why the Soviet Union, of nature, must be imperialistic. It must take in other countries in order to gut them to continue its existence, or else borrow from other healthy countries. Today, the bulk of the world is feeding on the rest of us who still have a measure of freedom. When all of that is destroyed, God’s law being operative, everything goes down the drain. It’s inescapable. Man cannot steal. He pays the price for it, ultimately. Yes?

[Audience] Why are we {?} sensitivity training?

[Rushdoony] Because sensitivity training replaces God’s moral law with a radical, humanistic awareness of everybody and all factuality is equal. The point of sensitivity is to make you accept the equal rights of all things, to be sensitive to the fact that everybody has equal rights. This is basically it, and every kind of perversion, every kind of idea has equal rights. When you have this then, you’ve got to deny God’s moral law. Last week, incidentally, we were dealing with eminent domain. Yesterday’s paper indicated that a woman now has a right to have an abortion if she chooses. She has, we are told, an inalienable right. Remember we said anarchistic eminent domain says the individual has a right to overturn every law in terms of his inherent eminent domain, as against the state’s eminent domain. So today, we have to kinds of power, over all law; the individual’s and the state’s. Ultimately they will destroy one another. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The reason why we have an ever-increasing welfare role is because of the minimum wage law. The person who, because of his or her abilities, is not capable of earning more than too much, today, goes on welfare, because they can make as much by drawing welfare, or more, than going out and working. As a result, why not steal? Why not draw welfare? Well, our time is really up now.

End of tape