Subversion and the United Nations

A Religious Dream; The United Nations

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Genre: Constitutional Studies

Lesson: 2 of 2

Track: #101

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

Dictation Name: RR152A2

[Rushdoony] In the last century the poet Tennyson was faced by a personal crisis, his loss of faith. Much as Tennyson tried to retain some form of Christianity and in spite of the fact that very often his poetry he did give expression to Christian sentiments, the basic fact in his life was that he could no longer believe in orthodox Christianity. The doctrine of evolution had shattered Darwin’s [I think he meant Tennyson] faith. As a result as he looked out at the world he saw not God’s world, but Darwin’s world, read {?} it tooth and claw. He saw, he wrote “this earth a stage so blued with woe, you all have sickened at the shifting scenes.” There was one reality as Tennyson saw it, to this world. That reality was mutability, change and decay, perpetual flux. Everything passes, nothing stands. And so he gave expression to this, his basic faith, as well as his problem, in a passage In Memoriam declaring “the hills are shadows and the flow from form to form, nothing stands. They melt like mist, the solid lands like clouds they shape themselves and go. Nothing stands.” This was Tennyson’s belief, and his problem.

If we believe that nothing stands we face a problem, we need as a counter-balance to change something that is in some sense eternal. There is a source of certainty, an agency of control over change. As an answer to mutability, the change and decay, man can find that source of certainty and agency of control in two directions. He will either find in a transcendental creator God, his agency of control and origin, or he will seek it in a human or natural order; but something must give him certainty and world government control. It is inescapable; it is a logical necessity of a man’s thinking. There are indeed those who have ridiculed the quest for certainty. The philosopher John Dewey spoke with contempt of the quest for certainty in his book of that title; but what John Dewey did not like was the quest for certainty in the supernatural, in God. What John Dewey did offer was the quest for certainty and the achievement for certainty in a world socialist order, what he calls the great community or the great society. The question therefore is “What is your source of certainty, God or a human order, eternity or time? “

Tennyson, because he had come to the conclusion as he surveyed the world’s scenes said because nothing stands, something must be made by men to stand, and therefore in his poem Locksley Hall he looked forward to a world where, in his words “The war drums throb no longer and the battle flags were furled in the parliament of man, the federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, and kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.” Such a fate was for Tennyson not an act of perversity but a logical necessity. Man has to have an agency of certainty and control, and he will either have it in God or a man-made order. And so it is a logical necessity to have this agency of certainty and control, not an act of perversity. Indeed we can talk about conspiracy in the realm of the UN as we can in any realm, including the churches. Conspiracy dogs every domain of the world, but conspiracy can sustain nothing, unless first of all it be in need to man. The man without God must make unto himself a God and the order that he creates like God will be man’s source of salvation, it will be a saving order. In the UN Charter in its charter begins by declaring “We the people of the United Nations determine to save and resolve to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.” It is a humanist organization dedicated to the religion of humanity, dedicated by its own profession to humanitarian principles. Thus we see that man needs an agency of certainty and control make the world change and decay and to give that world meaning. And second, that that agency that he creates is a substitute God. There will thus be a philosophy of state and the attributes of God will be ascribed to the social order. In every area that men have turned away from the supernatural faith they have created a theology of the state.

This was as true in the eighteenth century with the doctrine of the divine right of kings as it was in the days of the Roman empire, when there was not only a theology of the state but when Julius Caesar was assassinated there was for him a passion liturgy celebrating his death as an atoning fact. Dewey had a theology of the state attached to or developing in connection with the United Nations. Is it indeed beginning to develop those attributes which make it a substitute God? Now the first and basic requirement of a theology is the unity in the Godhead. A God cannot truly be God if He is at war with Himself, and therefore whatever is made God must be unified. The basic premise of all theology, whatever the religion, is the unity of the Godhead. Thus in Christian theology the doctrine of the trinity asserts three persons, on God; perfect unity without any subordination. Now in the religion of the humanity, the face of the one world order man is deified; and because man is deified and personified in this world order there can be no division, no disunity tolerated in the Godhead. As a result this means the unity of mankind is a necessity. There could be no division, no differences, no separation, no discrimination between man and man in this faith. All men must be brought together and made one, without any differences. To permit any differences is to destroy the unity of the Godhead. We will return to this in a moment

But in any such theology the basic sin becomes no longer apostasy from God, or what we would call moral evil, but disunity. And they among the churches which are infected with this kind of thinking, which have made the one world order their substitute God, and among those who are outside of the churches, the great sin is disunity. And different races, different churches, different organizations must all be brought together, and war which separates man and discrimination which separates men constitutes the real evil.

President Johnson has declared on a world-wide basis we place much hope in the United Nations. And he went on to say that the real evil of our time is not sin, but war; whose roots are poverty and ignorance, misery and disease. And in his state of the Union address last month the president declared “we are entering the century of the pursuit of American Union.” Now this a curious interpretation of American history which he gave in his State of the Union address; according to the men who fought the war of independence their purpose was to free this country from a statist invasion and from a centralist power. But according to the president their purpose was ever increasing union. Union in terms of civil rights, federal aide, the unity of man with the world he has built, the United Nations, a new immigration policy and the great society. So that the more men are unified and the more that they lose their identities and the more the people of the United States lose all racial and cultural and religious identity, the more they are merged into one homogeneous mass the close we will be to realizing that pursuit of union.

This is a religious faith, it is not Christianity. It is the religion of humanity, the religion of the UN. It is the theology and ethics of this new faith in the UN, and it is not surprising that the president concluded his State of the Union address with the doxology declaring, this is the state of the union, free, restless, growing and full of hope. So it was the beginning, so it shall always be what God is willing and we are strong enough to keep the faith. But the faith that we are supposed to keep according to president Johnson is not in God, but in ourselves. The UN charter in its preamble says that its purpose is to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, and it goes on to declare in chapter one, article one, section three that it purposes to gain fundamental freedom for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; language which was echoed recently in California in the Rumford act. This is a religious standard, it is not a Christian standard, indeed it is anti-Christian. But it is religious and it declares that disunity is the greatest evil, the one great sin of man. And therefore man must be merged without discrimination as to race, sex, language, or religion.

This also means that all religions are equal, that Christianity is in effect outlawed in that it requires one to believe there is one way to salvation, Jesus Christ. That people who adhere to other faith are lost and can only be saved through Jesus Christ. They are guilty you see of discrimination. The goal is the unity and the oneness of man, without discrimination, total equality; and total equality means that there are no differences, that there are no differences. Not only as to race, sex, or language but no different than with respect to morality. Because if total equality be thoroughly applied we must insist, as many of them do; and this is a matter of sworn testimony before our committees by appearance of this face, that we cannot distinguish between moral acts. When a congressmen who is a noted champion of this face returned from Europe recently and was criticized for having spent money freely and as well having taken a couple of mistresses along as his secretaries. He told he was not setting a good example and he said he was, because he was being equal with anything and everybody; and he said “that’s what I’m preaching, equality.

In other words there’s equality between right and wrong, good and evil, between all opinions, all peoples. This is the faith of this new religion; freedom for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. And yet the greatest appearance of this faith are not in the United Nations but in private agencies, in national agencies, and especially in clergy who far surpass the UN in their zeal for world unity; and it is with them a religious dream. This is the answer to all the world’s problems, this the saving situation, the saving form. But the UN itself has dreams of this world order which is going to save men. And its immigration policies are a part and parcel of this program of world salvation. In a vast number of documents the UN has spelled out its immigration policy. For example in the future growth of world population 1958 this statement is made by the UN department of social affairs population division. A new process is about to begin, or has perhaps already been started and the first signs of that, socialization of the world which appears on the horizon, may be significant in this connection. What is this new process of world socialization? It is the immigration policy.

Now strictly speaking the UN does not have an immigration policy. Rather it proposes that in this document that the elements of immigration policy and made a deduction that states that no attempt is made to propose solutions for the problems stated. The present study is not to regard as an argument in favor of immigration or against it. It simply presents elements for an immigration policy in case anyone is considering an immigration policy. None the less this document is very, very important. A number of agencies of the UN worked cooperatively to prepare it. The international Aide for {?}office, The Food and Agricultural Organization, The UNESCO, the World Health organization, the social welfare division and the population division of the Department of Economic Affairs of the United Nations and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Now as we read this statement of the elements of population policy we find some very strange paragraphs catching the eye, and the more one reads them and considers their implication the more disturbing these passages become. Consider for example this paragraph, and notice as I read that it indicates the population, the peoples do not move – they are moved. The passive verb is used in each reference to the population. I quote “a point which may count in favor of immigration when the total cost of settlement is considered lies in the avoidance of duplication of overhead cattle. In the case of transfer of local population to developing areas the service and housing already provided in the areas of out-migration might be left unutilized or underutilized; thus causing wasteful duplication. In the case of immigration such waste is avoided since the local population will continue to utilize the services provided for them. Equally of course waste could be avoided if at the same time the local population was transferred immigrants were moved in to take the place of the transferred global population and to utilize the housing and services already provided for them. In that case immigrants could be settled to take the place of the transferred population without undue cost of settlement. Whereas the receiving country is undeveloped however the provision of general services in the areas of out-migration will often be insufficient to begin with.”

This is a curious statement. Since when are populations move rather than move themselves? And since when has the {?} elements of population policy be considered moving one segment of population out of an area and immediately transfer another into their homes and places? If these are the elements of population, what are we to say of the policy itself? Does it not recall the policy of ancient Babylon and Assyria where in order to internationalize their empires and break down local loyalty, and national loyalties, racial loyalties, loyalties of language, people were systematically moved and scattered throughout the length and breadth of those empires in order to destroy every loyalty possible. But let us read another paragraph, I quote.

“A distinction must be made between the settlement of new land and the placing of new farmers on land already cultivated. Where agricultural immigration is encouraged as a part of the program for re-organization or diversification of agriculture involving the transfer of land already under cultivation to the hands of immigrant farmers, the methods of affecting the change need to be planned in such a way as to produce the least possible disruption of agricultural operations as well as the minimum of social disturbance {?} . Schemes may have to be devised to enable the population formally engaged in the discontinued sites of agricultural activity to be absorbed in the new forms of agriculture in conjunction with the immigrants.”

Now how often do farmers leave operating farms and go to another part of the world and their farms turned over immediately, in order to maintain operation, to other farmers throughout some other part of the world? Immigration is usually promoted by tyranny in the home country and people fleeing from it, or religious persecution, or such a breakdown of economic conditions that it’s no longer possible to make a living there. But this contemplates the transfer of already existing farms from people who are moved on, to other people who are moved in. Again these are disturbing elements of an immigration policy. We are further told in this same document that there will be considerable tension as these populations are transferred, but these problems will be taken care of in the second generation as a result of intermarriage. The older generation will be prejudiced, but the younger generation will intermarry and the tension will end. Now the great agency, it is state in this document, of bringing about these intermarriages will be the schools. The schools will be used it is stated, to integrate the children.

It is interesting to note that in the current New Yorker for February 13, 1965, there is an article on page twenty-four rather satirically written on organization of which very prominent, if not leading, member is the Reverend Robert L. Pearson, an Episcopal church even, who is the son-in-law of Governor Rob Bellam {?}. and this group originally titled The Peace Policy to Exchange Plantation instituted in 1962 a policy of drumming up support for a program of exchanging millions of people between the United States and the Soviet Union in order to help preserve peace. “Today we bring tidings” quoting from the New Yorker “that the Peace Hostage Exchange Foundation has peacefully evolved into an organization called The Citizen Exchange Corp whose members have continued the policy of drumming up support for a program of exchanging millions of people between the USA and the USSR with the {?} of facilitating matters logistically by utilizing ships of the maritime administration reserve fleet. This then is a program seriously considered not only in the elements of immigration policy but by a foundation established in this country.” If these are the elements of immigration policy is being outlined, where is the policy itself taking shape?

On October 2, 1964, President Johnson in proclamation 3620 declared 1965 to be international cooperation year, dedicated to international cooperation and strengthening world organization. The Kennedy- Johnson bill to take care of this international cooperation by means of immigration has been introduced to the senate by Harvard1932 {?} and in the house by Seller HR7700 to repeal the McCarran-Walter immigration act of 1952. This new immigration bill which is quite likely, as far as present indications are concerned, to pass unless a storm of protest arises with respect to it, has three central aspects. First, Senator Javits has referred to this bill as being the civil rights legislation for the world. Now I didn’t say that, Senator Javits did. When he calls it a civil rights legislation for the world he means now that immigration will no longer be, if this bill passes, a privilege we extend to peoples of the world if we find them congenial to us and physically and spiritually congenial and healthy, a privilege we extend to them to come into our country. On the contrary it will be the right of the people of the world to claim immigration as their privilege. It will be the civil rights legislation for the world, it will put forth interests above American interests. The idea of an American culture, and American heritage and identity, is seen as wrong. A world culture alone is valid, and hence this new immigration bill would seek to destroy anything that would be conducive to our identity.

Second, immigration control would be transferred from the legislative branch to the executive branch. Third the law would be secondary to the president’s wishes. It really would be no law, but a blank check to the administration already of course there has been loss of control as far as our immigration policy is concerned. In 1963 Pastor {?} was given the privilege of designating 50% of the migrants to the United States when he demanded it, the state department agreed. The purpose of these immigration policies is of course the unity of the godhead, to unite the world, to make mankind one and his premise is not economic because we certainly do not need immigrants. His purpose is religious, to unify mankind in terms of this goal of the United Nations.

A second basic requirement of an effective theology is the omnipotence of the Godhead. A god is not God if he is not all powerful. Sovereignty and creative power must reside in the source of certainty and agency of control. Omnipotence has for years all power total sovereignty been steadily transferred from God to the state, and it is now going upward from the states of the world to the world state. Similarly a third aspect of any doctrine of thought is that God be all knowing, omniscient, that he have total knowledge; because total knowledge is necessary to total sovereignty and total government. God is not truly god if can shut out our minds, if we can say that “yes God exists in the outside world but in my heart, in my mind I am completely free from God, I can think what I think and he doesn’t know a thing. Then I would be god in the inner world. So that if a god is not all knowing, he is not god. No god therefore can be truly God if he does not control the mind of man. And his sovereignty transferred from the God of Christianity to the UN; power if flowing more and more from God to the state and from the state to the total state. John Bell in his report of December 25, 1964 refers to this, calling it the hateful paradise. And I quote “Followers of Christ know one thing though we try to turn our backs to the fact, God knows our every thought, our every action. He knows all about the past, present, and future. Though he looks no more on the past which has been erased by the blood; we have an intermediary to defeat our transgressions of the present and He is able to keep His own for all future. But He is our Creator, we are His slaves, and He knows our very thoughts before we even think them and we cannot hide from God.”

“ I know that Thou canst do everything and that no thought can be withholden from Thee” said Jonah. “Shall not God search this out? For He knows the secrets of the heart” says he. “The eyes of the Lord are on every place beholding the evil and the good. Hell and destruction are before the Lord, knowledge more than the hearts than the children men,” that’s Psalms. The Lord told Jeremiah “I the Lord search the heart. I try the reins even to give every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doing.” Paul was very definite “for the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword piercing even the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

If we look to Christ Jesus as our Savior and redeemer then we know what is best the truth, that we are slaves to Christ. That He knows all and everything about us, this is his right. Now let’s reverse the point, if we look to the state as our keeper then the state was every right to know all, there is no balance. We cannot serve two masters and we accept gifts or aide from state then we must serve state by letting state become the discerner of our very thought. We must allow the state to substitute the {?} for the book of life, and we must confess to state all our sins and shortcomings, our strengths and our weaknesses, of thoughts and intents of our hearts. We cannot have it two ways. Either we must accept Christ or state as master. We must answer to God or the god of the empire. We must have a name written in heaven or a number punched on a card at a data processing center. We can have one of two big brothers, Jesus or {?} we cannot serve both else we will hate one.”

The state today is speaking this total knowledge, and the United Nations is setting up agencies towards that end. It speaks that total knowledge in three ways. One, by control of all education as there are few schools that have been missed by UNESCO; second it seeks this total knowledge through mental health programs. Third it seeks this knowledge, this total knowledge of us, by control over our privacy. But to continue, every god also requires worship and sacrifice, and if you want to know what you really worship- examine what it is you really sacrifice for and what you sacrifice to. That is your cause. Today we are increasing compelled to tithe and to sacrifice to the state and the one world order. A tithe of our money goes around the world better than a tithe to provide for this one world order. And today God is getting only the lesser {?} of most people. Moreover this one world order already has developed its list of powers. It’s sayings, and the references to them are definitely religious; Omerscold {?} and others as well and certainly of late, John F. Kennedy.

In a book published recently, a collection of poems by various modern poets in honor of Kennedy’s was entitled Poetry and Power, his death is seen as a sacrifice for the world of tomorrow, this brave new world. To quote just a few sentences from the poems in this books to give you an idea of its character. Kennedy is spoken of as a man, but more. Another poet repeats over and over again in one long poem this sentence “the man is gone on a Friday” The world you see has a new Good Friday. He is called by another poet, an Apollo, a Caesar, young god without wound {?} Then the poet goes on to speak of him as being killed by the hate filled priests of the old religion. He is also spoken of us an incarnation of democracy who lives to be concentrated to demos. And another poet says he was nailed on the cross of a rifle site. There’s one sentence however in the book which I thoroughly liked, the only sentence indeed in what was otherwise a rather distressing and painful book, and it was this “we are stained by his blood.” And I thought, indeed yes. Our Christian faith says that we are cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ, but all of the inheritance of this new religion can say was they present this young god nailed on the cross of a rifle site, that we are stained by his blood. This religion cannot cleanse.

Moreover to continue our analyses of our doctrines of the Godhead which are applied to the UN, a god must be the source of law. God is not under law, He is law. Law is the expression of His being, and wherever our higher law stops, our Supreme Court, there we have our God. Once the constitution was written, it was definitely written according to Corah Went {?} who is a liberal, under the thesis that there is a higher law above and beyond the constitution, the law of God. This doctrine has disappeared in our courts. We no longer have a higher law above and beyond the courts. The courts themselves now represent the highest law and the world court is seen as the world law and the UN charter as the source of the world law. Law stops therefore with the one world order. The one world order, this religion of humanity, becomes the source of law. It has affected even laws in California which have been ruled constitutional or unconstitutional in terms of it. The new god therefore is the one world order, and the economics of this new order again reflect the belief that this order is god.

An economics in which man a creature and God the creator is an economics of scarcity. Man is limited to his God given portion; whereas an economics resting on the divinity of man and his order you have an economics of abundance because the world state as god is able to create out of nothing. Therefore the basic problem in such an economics is not supply, but distribution, the order to create. Therefore the only problem is to gain total power and then distribution, because it is a creative force. Again basic to any doctrine of God is the doctrine of the transcendence and incomprehensibility of God. We as Christians believe that God is incomprehensible beyond mans imagining, and yet truly knowable because he reveals himself. So that we can truly know God, but we can never comprehend him. He is to great, to beyond us, it would take the mind that is equal to God to comprehend God. Thus the word “Incomprehensibility” has historically been a theological word, attached to the doctrine of the Godhead. In recent years it has been coming down, being applied to men. Thus Robert E. Sherwood in his book Roosevelt and Hopkins spoke of Roosevelt’s incomprehensible power. Recently Eric Sabreed {?} called President Johnson a complex character, compared him to Julius Caesar, and others have hinted of Johnson’s incomprehensibility. Similarly the United Nations is spoken of in similar terms, and we are continually told that we are judging foolishly, we are unable to comprehend the profundity and the wisdom and the great ramifications of every activity of the United Nations so that we judge rashly when presume to pass judgment upon its deep and incomprehensible workings.

This then, to bring this matter to a conclusion is a religious faith. The United Nations is a religious dream. Its origin is in the apostasy of Western man from Christianity. His creation of another god, a golden calf; when for men there is no certainty, and as for Tennyson “Nothing stands but the very hills are shadows, and they flow from form to form.” Man a religious creature makes himself a god. And the United Nations is that new god being shaped. It’s easy to point to the absurdities of the United Nations, and at its appearance. For example recently according to an anthropological journal, a UNO delegate to New Guinea going over a territory which only in the past few years has been weaned from head hunting and which is completely backward and primitive, and these missionaries have just barely established a semblance of respect for order, the UNO delegate inquired quickly why no university had yet been put up.

Again at the beginning of this month the IDA, the Institute for Defense Analysis in its report declared that intelligence gather is a hostile act. Therefore we as Americans in having spies throughout the world are guilty of hostility. And therefore since hostile acts are wrong we should demonstrate that we believe in a one world order and in world brotherhood by opening our intelligence files to the Soviets by giving them in fact the privilege at any time of asking our submarines to surface wherever they are in the world and identify themselves, we will thereby prove that we are friendly. Absurdities of this sort can be numbered without end. It is easy to ridicule the United Nations. It is easy to point out all that it is planning to do, and all that it is doing. But you cannot destroy mans faith in it very readily because it is a religious faith. They have to have an area of certainty and an agency of control because they do not have the living God. It is a religious creation and logical one. And because man is inescapably religious and order and meaning are necessary who cannot live by bread alone he will either have God be his God or he will create a God and worship Him.

In the last century capitalism and industrialism gave man a life of remarkable material comfort and ease. But because our culture became secular, irreligious, it left man wide open to the command of new and demonic religious forces. The conspiracies indeed are real, but more basic is mans religious need, and these dreams of a world state meet mans religious need for certainty and an agency of control. The UN therefore meets apostate’s man religious hunger for more than bread, and the dream of the United Nations will not abate until men surrender themselves and their every hope in institution and order to the sovereignty of the triune and only God. What we are confronted with is religious warfare between a world order which has become God on earth, and the living God. And in this battle if God be for us, who can be against us? We have the assurance of victory, but we cannot have it unless we stand and fight in terms of our faith. Thank you.

[Applause]

[Announcer] Has consented to answer any questions as you may have and I’ll turn the floor back to Mr. Rushdoony and you may stand and ask your questions.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] The numbers bill? It is in the senate as S1932 and in the house as HR7700, and it’s called the Kennedy-Johnson bill. Now there are other bills I understand being put in the hopper which are compromised bills, and I think the thing to do is not only to express your opposition to these bills but to any change of the McCarran-Walter act because this is a strategy that is so often worked, and I will be speaking, I think it’s tomorrow in this area, on the strategy of subversion. Hit the people with something that’s far out. You don’t think you’ll get it, but if you do, fine. But it’s so extreme that people are then ready to settle for a compromise which will give you far more than you hope to win in the beginning. This is a regular technique. Call-word Civil Rights Bill or any kind of bill that is extreme, if you get it good, but settle for a compromise which is far more than you expected in the first place. And time and again we have seen a radical surrender on the part of many, many conservatives and many congressmen and senators to something that they never would of favored to begin with because they are so glad to compromise as a means of getting away from the fearful alternative.

[Audience member] In the list that you read in {?} or is there a reason why the National Bank of Reconstruction was in there?

[Rushdoony] It’s going to be expensive to move around. Somebody’s got to finance it, and this mad movement of peoples that is suggested as an element of population couldn’t be done without some kind of extensive financial operation. Because when people move themselves they finance themselves, but if they are moved, somebody’s putting up the finances.

[Audience member] What is the connection or matter of {?} information between the many powers and the National Bank of Reconstruction?

[Rushdoony] That’s an interesting question because the Federal Reserve System is owned by private banking concerns. We don’t have a list of them, the names of the share holders are not released, it’s a private organization and we don’t know who they are. Many people have guesses. Nevertheless it is owned by national and international bankers. Now, the international monetary fund is a curious thing and there’s a great deal of controversies behind the scenes right now because the international monetary fund as it was set up was a kind of international Federal Reserve. But the world powers have reserved unto themselves the major share of the stock. I believe the US government share of the stock is something like 27% so that you have the world politicians saying “we’re going to control the IMF.” Whereas you have the Federal Reserve and all the other similar agencies in the various country held by these private bankers, and so there appears to be now a tremendous conflict between these private and the governmental powers. And we don’t stand much chance from either of them frankly, but they are quarreling between themselves.

[Audience member] Was {?} telling us the other day Friday I believe it was, it was in the Saturday papers, that we should throw patriotism for our country of America out of the window when he was telling that everybody should forget about nationalism? Was that right?

[Rushdoony] That is a part a of this program you see, of destroying everything in favor of the unity of the Godhead, the one world order. Of course it’s wrong, unquestionably wrong. But if you hold to this religion you’re going to hold to it. A Christian however believes that these orders are God given, that we have a duty under God to respect our heritage. But this is now despised, it seems wrong; and the erosive effects of this is far more than you realize. Most conservatives for example believe that they are very conservative and good staunch people in these matters in that they fight for the integrity of the United States. But to consider one area where we see this erosion of heritage has penetrated very deeply, and that’s the matter of family.

For example, it was quite common place 75 and 100 years ago for people to know not only who their fathers and mothers are, but their grandparents and their great-grandparents and to be able to open the family Bible if they needed to and trace back their family for any number of generations. This was just a matter of course, and people could do this because it was important to them. They took pride in their families heritage. My father for example could rattle off the names of his parents and grandparents back fifteen generations, and this was not uncommon once. It’s gone today; private family means nothing. And I know that in some parts of this country where, before the first World War, I visited it was an old fashioned rural area it was not unusual for people to say that before they married their folks wanted to know who’s the girls family was, and who the grandparents, and the great grandparents. IN other words you had to have a family tree, are they good people? They’re lucky now if they know the girl.

Now all this is part and parcel of the same pattern. If you’re going to despise your family, if you’re going to despise your country, eventually you’re going to say that inheritance, heritage, is nothing. And this is precisely what is being done. So most conservatives they are just hanging on to loyalty to the United States and have given up loyalty to place, loyalty to family, loyalty to all these traditional values, and I have found in checking with various groups when I’ve been sitting with some after a meeting, that very few people can name their great grandparents, very few. That’s a new thing in the United States, a very new thing.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes I have. I think it’s very good and very, very important for this reason. According to the constitution at the adoption back, this was one of the great controversies because as it was written it was intended to eliminate everything but hard money, gold and silver, and copper coins of course. And in some states there were some easy money men who got up and said they objected to the outlawing of paper money. But the constitution outlawed paper money. Now we’ve gotten paper money, what does it mean? Look at the bills in your pocket and they read “Federal Reserve Notes” the one dollar and five dollar silver certificate are virtually gone. A five dollar silver certificate is a rarity now, if you get one hang on to it as a souvenir, there are not many of them around. The ones are also beginning to become less frequent. Now that Federal Reserve note reads, well that this is an issue of the Federal Reserve. Now it does not read that you can get gold or silver in exchange. It represents not gold or silver, but debt. When the United States runs into the red, as it did this last year I believe to the tune of something like ten billion dollars, what do they do? Well they call out the Federal Reserve Bank and say “well June 31 is so many months away and we’re already in the red and we’re going to go into the red we estimate ten billion. We need that much money to make ends meet this year.” What happens? The Federal Reserve then says “fine, print up ten billion in bonds, and send them over to us.” Then the Federal Reserve will call up the US Bureau of engraving and say “Print up ten billion dollars and turn them over to your treasurer.” Now the day those ten billion dollars are printed up and circulate and end up in your pocket negates the ten dollar that the ten dollar bill reads to retire itself. SO it takes each bill, its face value to retire itself, plus interest.

Now only six percent of our money today is hard money, and that goes for gold as well. So if there were no debt in the United States there would be no money; and that statement was made by the chairmen of the Federal reserve Lord Marriner Eccles, the end of the four weeks during what is known as the McCarthy error. He was before a committee where they were asking some blunt, hard questions, and he admitted if there were no debt in the United States there would be no money. As a result money no longer represents wealth. Since 1913 increasingly and today past the point of even break even, it represents total debt. Now when a county’s money is not well, the mortgage, that country is very far gone. So you have to remove the Federal Reserve, it’s the only question of sanity because every day we are paying untold millions in interest to the bankers who operate the Federal Reserve; simply because our money represents debt now.

[Audience member] Do you think there’s any possibility of that being done?

[Rushdoony] I question frankly that there is. I think the attempt has to be made, and I think it has to be made with all the effort possible for the simple reason that these things will slow them down and give conservatives a time for growth and for strength. Ultimately this debt economy is going to have to crack up, it’s reached the point I believe where there’s any way of going out of it without the biggest economic disaster the world has yet seen.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?} If you start back it seems to me we could say the same things you have said about world government you could say about {?} and you could drop the act if you wanted to and say it was about {?} government, in each case you have the government which is larger dividing law and order for the lower governments and is controlled by the community, the community by the economy, the economy by the state, the state by the national. Why do you feel that the national is the point where government will stop?

[Rushdoony] A good question. First of all a nation represents a heritage and a unity in of itself; whereas there is no international unity culturally, or religiously, or racially. You have very differing conceptions of what constitutes law. Now law is an expression of a faith, it’s an expression of a morality. When we say that it’s a crime to murder we’re passing a judgment. It’s a moral law and all law expresses morality or else a procedure whereby a morality is expedited. Now you have very differing moralities in the world because you have very differing faiths, and you cannot for example take a law structure that a Mohammedan country believes in and put it together with the law structure of a country that is basically Christian in its outlook. Nor can you take a Buddhist heritage and its law structure and unify it with a law structure that is basically, say, Shintoist unless it has become a fusion of the two, then it becomes a third thing. Now what these attempts to create a one world order imply is that all these law structures and all the religions represented in them have to give way to a new law structure and a new world religion and faith, and we can’t agree to this as Christians. Now, moreover what this order implies is that the central power is to be at the top.

We do believe in the federal union, but for us as Americans if we have any regard for our historic American citizen {?} and I deal with it in one of my books, This Independent Republic, the basic area of government in The United States historically is not been the federal union, and hasn’t been the states, it’s been the counties. Consider for a moment, your criminal law is basically county law. You are arrested by police who represent the county or a district thereof. You’re arrested by them and you are tried by a judge who is elected again by the county, or the municipality. If you’re involved in a civil suit again it is county law; the county court. Every state, your basic law is on the county level in the United States; and it’s only now that the federal government is trying to again invade these areas. The invasion by the federal government of the states is not nearly great as the counties. Both the state government and the federal government are declaring war on the basic unit of American government, which is the county. And that’s why for a long time, for the first hundred years in the United States, the voting requirement, and this is still true in many states, the voting requirement was most strict on the county level, least strict on the federal level. IN some states in this union, and I’ve lived in one of them, when you enter the state you can vote in any federal election, and you can also vote in any state election. But you can only vote in certain county elections if you are a property owner. It’s the most important kind of voting, and the county controls the most basic tax in the United States, the property tax.

Anytime the county loses control over the property tax you have communism or socialism in America. And that’s why today there is a move to take away power from county insisters {?} Sacramento. Because this is what gives the county its power - that it is the only body that can vote a tax against the property of the residents and therefore it’s responsible immediately to the community and it’s under the control of the community. Now this is a very radically different pattern of government then you have on the world level in the UN, and that you have for example in Europe. The European states have not been able to resist this drift into Socialism and centralism precisely because everything is controlled from the top, whereas for us it is controlled on the county level and hence the resistance here has been strong.

Did you have any other questions?

[Audience member] Is there any reason though that we can’t meet on county grounds. For instance at the Nuremberg trial there was no question in anyone’s mind of what genocide was recognized as wrong, everywhere by everyone. And to go back to your point about no higher law, it was actually written into these trials that we did recognize a higher law than the mere fact that an officer told some German Nazi to put the gas into a chamber and annihilate a number of Jewish people.

[Rushdoony] First of all I think you picked the worst possible example. Because the Nuremberg trials represent lynch law, and we set the worst possible legal precedent we could because we said that without any law you could execute, and there was no law for the Nuremberg trial. It means that after the next war anybody can lynch anybody, and probably will. The victors will kill without excuse. Here fore we have said that where there is no law there can be no ex post facto performance. But you had no legal precedent for the Nuremberg trials.

[Audience member] You think the Genocide was justified?

[Rushdoony] I didn’t say that.

[Audience member] You say there’s no crime if there’s no law.

[Rushdoony] As far as a court of law is concerned the only way you can have order is first to have legal jurisdiction and then to proceed with a criminal offense, and a trial, a hearing. The minute you break the processes of law you create anarchy instead of justice; and we went in there with lynch law in mind. We weren’t concerned with evidence because, of that matter we didn’t go after those we felt were guilty but those that were designated. Now I suggest you read extensively on the Nuremberg and find out what happened. The background of the Nuremberg trials was Temerin, {?} and in Temerin Stalin said that when we took Germany the thing to do was to go in there and liquidate fifty thousand of their top men. Churchill objected. You’ll find this by the way in Elliot Roosevelt As I Saw It, his book by his {?}. And then Roosevelt proposed a compromise he said by way of a joke “well why don’t we compromise between you Churchill and Stalin and settle for 49,500” The real compromise came later when they decided to hold the trials and just eliminate those whom they wanted to eliminate. The purpose was not justice, it was vengeance.

Then on top of that Stalin felt so contemptuous of the USA and the British empire that at the Nuremberg trials he ridiculed them and he introduced deliberately nonsensical things. For example he ordered the Russian prosecutors to file charges against the Germans for the Katyn forest massacres knowing full way that he was guilty of them, and that the British and the Americans knew that he was. Now these were the charges against the men at Nuremberg, that’s not the kind of legal situation I believe in. The trials a farce, a thorough going farce; and I believe the trial of Eichmann was similarly a farce. I wouldn’t of blamed anyone who suffered him to go out and kill him. He’d take the law into his hands, but to pretend that the lynch law is law is a different thing. I don’t believe in it.

[Audience member] {?} The top state papers some time last year where the UN has {?} in Mississippi and has one of their services down there, do you have any idea why?

[Rushdoony] Well I don’t know about that but I do know that the UN charters specifically claims total jurisdiction over every country whether or not they are members. Every country whether it is a member of the UN or not is under the jurisdiction according to the charters. Second, every bill, act, resolution, declaration, law of the United Nations applies to every country whether or not they ratify that convention or law or treaty or resolution. Thus the universal declaration of human rights, the genocide convention, and other things which the United States has not ratified are still a part of the UN law and therefore do apply to the United States. Now the only reason these things are not forced onto us is that we have the Connally reservation and we are too strong for them to force it upon us. But if and when the United Nations become strong enough and we weaken enough, it will make no difference what we think. Any action of the UN will be binding upon us.

[Audience member] {?} Is it possible as is now being attempted, at least by a small group in the bay area, to withhold the payment of taxes in rebellion against us by placing taxes in trust to keep them from foreclosing that relationship, but if a great enough number of people would show their rebellion by refusing to pay property taxes, is the scheme then undefeatable or is it beating your head against the wall?

[Rushdoony] I don’t think I’m competent to answer that question because that’s really a legal question, and I think in something like it’s for a lawyer if he knows the situation to analyze the question and answer it.

[Audience Member] I was thinking not necessarily the legal aspect but just in an economic aspect, would such effect of state be enough, for instance the state of California, to bring enough pressure to bear to do any good?

[Rushdoony] Well of course it would have an effect on your counties where your property tax is concerned. Well there have been successful tax revolts in the past, quite a number. I don’t know the details of this plan well enough to comment on it but it has worked in the past to have a tax revolt; and certainly they had one in Los Angeles not too long ago which had some results, not too much, but it helped.

Yes?

[Audience Member] I’ve heard it said that the United Nations violated its own charter when it {?} hangs up situations. Do you care to comment on that operation?

[Rushdoony] Well the UN claims that, or says that domestic matters are not its concerns. In that sense you might say that it has violated its charter by entering into a domestic situation. On the other hand it has defined what constitutes an international situation very much as the federal government has defined interstate commerce. And so it has concerned itself for example with treatment of Negro’s in the Union of South Africa, it has concerned itself with the internal affairs of many, many a state. So while you can quote one section of the UN charter against another I don’t think it works to well say it was illegal as some have. Simply because there are clauses which do provided for virtually [audience noise interruption] jurisdiction; comparable to our interstate commerce.

I was interested some few years ago, on visiting on an Indian reservation in Nevada where they had hunting and fishing rights as a part of their treaty. And at the beginning of the 50’s they lost their right to hunt ducks because the government said the ducks don’t fall within your hunting rights since the fly from state to state.

Yes?

[Audience Member] {?} I’m curious what this subversive attempt that control who try to treat the mentally ill, I don’t follow the connection here.

[Rushdoony] Will you rephrase your question I didn’t get…

[Audience Member] I believe you mentioned something about one of the methods of gaining control was through these programs for the mentally ill. I’ve been curious about this since I’ve heard this also said by other speakers. What is this subversive effect of trying to treat the mentally ill?

[Rushdoony] Very good question and with the indulgence of the rest I’ll take just a few minutes to try and explain that and this will be the last question but I do want to go into this.

Now, what is mental health? This in itself is a highly debatable subject. There are those who question the validity of the concept. Those most recently to deal with the subject is a psychiatrist, Dr. Thomas Steven Szase who is neither a conservative nor a Christian so he can’t be accused of being on my side of the fence. But Doctor Szase in two books, the first The Myth of Mental Illness and the second and even more important Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry has derided the whole conception of mental sickness as a myth. And he has said that the concept is very dangerous to liberty. Now I refer you to him for an examination in depth from the psychiatric approach to this problem.

But to continue with what I’d like to say about it, what is mental health but a substitute term for sin? Mental sickness is a very difficult and nebulous term to define. And the mentally sick, and I differentiate here from those who for fiscal reason are not mentally capable, either through paresis as a result of VD or through senility, or through some kind of autistical disorder. But those who are mentally sick, what is their basic problem? Well according to Sigmund Freud and to virtually person in the field the basic problem is one of guilt. Now here is where the difference is and the varying schools enter in. What is guilt, and how are you going to deal with it?

Now this of course is getting into the area of religion. Christianity maintains that the reason for guilt is the fact of sin, and the answer to sin is salvation. Now, those who believe in the mental health concept say “well we do not accept this as a valid answer and therefore we say the question of guilt, or mental sickness, must be dealt with by our program of mental health. And the psychiatry, psychoanalysts, and the psychologists of the mental health schools are, as Dr. Mauer at the University of Illinois has {?} a new priesthood. Therefore they are offering a new plan of salvation, and this plan of salvation is the control of mans mind by their context {?}. Now for virtually all these men the answer to the problem of guilt is to accept a relativistic faith. You acknowledge that there is nothing really wrong with you but that you have a number of problems as a result of your background and training.

Now the problems that arise out of the Id, according to Freud, cannot be dealt with except by time and evolution. Those in the ego can with certain extent be dealt with. But the superego represents conscious, the problem there can easily be eliminated in that they are a product of the religious and parental teaching all the “Thou shalt not’s” that you hear. By destroying these you see you make possible a measure of mental health. The problems of the Id which are rooted in your anthropological past, your primitive evolutionary inheritance won’t be. So you will retain residual guilt in your Id, which will reflect itself in your ego. But, the sense of guilt that you have in your super-ego will be eliminated by this acceptance of relativism. So that you have two rival doctrines of salvation, relativism, it isn’t a sin so it’s alright; or the belief that it is a sin and you are guilty and God can, through Jesus Christ give you the power to become a new creature.

Now in the one instance you submit yourself to God and say “God will be my savior.” In the other instance you submit yourself to man, or usually the state and state order, and say “man over the state will be my savior and I will put myself into the control of these people and their concepts.” To me the whole thing is invalid, it is very dangerous. It is definitely anti-Christian, and therefore I do not believe a Christian can hold to it. Now many Christians do, because for them this kind of mental health has become a new substitute program of salvation. They want to be save, where are they going to go for it? To Christ? No, they go to mental health programs; now that briefly why I cannot accept it, I do not trust men because the Bible prohibits me from doing so. If I were to have to put my life religiously in the hands of men who claim that they are God on earth, even though they say “we are Christians” I would say “No, I cannot do it.” And if they say they represent the state or a private system of belief I must again say no to them. I think it’s a dangerous thing to place yourself into the hands of men and into the hands of a manmade program of salvation.

I have a book on Freud which will be out later this spring in which I analyze this whole thing. Freud is a very great man, a very, very profound thinker, but he was not a Christian of course. He thinks the problem logically, he was a brilliant thinker he saw the logical conclusion, it had to be a program of salvation. One way or another you had to answer to problem of guilt, and his answer today is the reigning answer. Now there are variations in how this can be done through psychoanalytic or personal therapy, or through chemical therapy or through electro-shock therapy but in any of these alternatives you place yourself into the hands of a man and say that “this is my plan of salvation.”

If there is any who wanted to ask further questions why we can do it after we are adjourned.