From the Easy Chair

Marxism and Communism

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 11-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161AE57

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161AE57, Marxism and Communism from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 161, January 16, 1988.

This evening Otto Scott and I are going to discuss Marxism, but, perhaps I should say, more broadly, we are going to discuss Communism. Marxism is simply one modern form of Communism, an idea which over the centuries has often appealed to people. It has a very long and ugly history. As a matter of fact, the first major manifestation of Communism goes back to the early years of the fifth century AD in Persia.

Nowadays very few people are aware of the fact that Persia was in antiquity and into the Christian era one of the great powers of the world. We have artificially selected Greece as the cradle of civilization and of a great many things when race really was by no means as important as our history books indicate. The reason why Greece was selected and not Persia, for example, or Egypt or any number of other countries was because people saw in Greece elements of the naturalistic, materialistic thinking which is so important to modern man. And because these other cultures far greater than Greece still had beliefs in the supernatural or in gods of some sort, they have been relegated to the nether world of history.

Now Persia had a great civilization in the era before Christ and a very advanced one. However, in the fifth century of this era Communist thinking began to develop in Persia, the Masdekite movement. The Masdekite movement believed in the total communization of a culture. They believed in a communism of property, the communism of money and the communism of women. When they gained power the Masdekites instituted this radical Communism. When, finally, that regime was overthrown a couple of, two, three generations later, in fact, by {?} who had survived in hiding, the country had been so gutted of its character that in not too many years, a generation or two or more, when the Turks began to move westward Persia was unable to offer resistance and it fell. This was the first great manifestation of Communism in history.

Many, many such communistic efforts have been made over the centuries. However, the second great manifestation has been in our time, Marxism: the Soviet Union and its satellite states and now Red China.

So Communism has a major role in world history, a very ugly role, devastating, totally evil in its every manifestation and yet with a lingering popularity. In fact, sometimes a phenomenal popularity with people.

At any rate, Communism is our subject tonight. Otto, would you like to make some general remarks now?

[Scott] Well, Communism today has practically dropped out of the American vocabulary. It is a very strange phenomenon. We still have a Communist Party of the USA and we still have active Communist party members. We still have a very large group of people who accept and convey Communist ideas. We keep using the term Marxism, because it seems to be now more acceptable for a professor or a scholar or some other individual to say, “I am a Marxist. He doesn’t say, “I am Communist.” If you call somebody a Communist and he is not actually a member of the Communist Party you can sue him for slander. And the Communist Party of the United States is a very ... in a very unusual position. The courts have ruled that it doesn’t have to publish or even disclose to the government its members, lest they be harassed by other people.

Now this is not true of any church and it is not true of any political organization. It is not true of any charity. It is not true of any fraternal order. It is not true of any trade union. It is not true of anybody else, only the Communist Part USA. So since the demise of Senator McCarthy, it has been considered a violation of good manners, decency, patriotism, tolerance, virtue, you name it, to even bring up the subject of Communism or Communists in the American government or Communists in the university or Communists in the Church. And yet I think the Communists of the United States are more influential today than they have ever been.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I think it is interesting, too, how some Communism very early infiltrated the academic community. A good many years ago a professor, a very brilliant if unstable man told me on one occasion why it was that professors found the Soviet Union so appealing. He said it was because after the revolution the Soviet Union did something that immediately gained a great deal of interest on the part of professors throughout Europe and the Americas. Even though the ruble was not worth much and if you had a large number of rubles there was nothing you could buy with it, what they did immediately was to put the pay scale of professors at a rate that made them markedly better paid than professors in Europe, in Britain, in the United States and Latin America.

Immediately this was publicized throughout the world in the academic community and the academicians decided that whatever things might be wrong with Communism, there was great hope for it, because they appreciated the men that should be appreciated, namely the professors. And because of that there was a belief that anyone who was an intellectual should be pro Communist, pro Soviet, because the Soviet Union appreciated the me who made civilization possible, or so they believed.

Now this fact was not publicized. I did not even known of it until this professor told me. And had a couple of drinks, at least, when he told me this. But it made sense immediately, because it explained why the academy everywhere from the very beginning, in spite of all of the monstrous horrors of the early Bolsheviks and of Stalin and now Stalin’s successors, has been ready to be soft on the Soviet Union.

[Scott] And isn’t that all.... I think that is one good explanation. I think there are some others. The one American scholar talked about the rise of the Authoritarian Socialism in the 1870s, 1880s, both in Britain and in here and, I imagine, on the continent as well. And he drew particular reference to Edward Bellamy’s book Looking Backward. Now it is very interesting. If you look at Looking Backward today, it is not ... it doesn’t seem the same as it did when it was written. It was a great best seller.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And I was written, I think, in 1887 or published in 1887 and it was about the ideal world of the year 2000 in which no Congress would be necessary, no laws would be necessary, no police would be necessary. Elections are no longer necessary.

The trusts or the monopolies of 1887 had continued to enlarge until there was just one great monopoly so everything was owned in common, you might say. And everybody had become totally harmonious. There were no disagreements. There was ... everything that was done was voluntary and everything was reasonable.

Now this is fresh in my mind because I read only a few days ago the review of the book updated in the, of all places, the New York Times book review, which you don’t generally find very many diamonds in, but nevertheless did this time. And the reviewer went on to say that Edward Bellamy was a premature Totalitarian. He wanted a world in which everything was ordered into conformity. There was no more challenge. There was no more sin. There was no more arguments. Everybody agreed with each and so forth and so on.

He didn’t foresee any of the technological changes that have actually come along, the radio and television and the automobile and so forth which has transformed the living standards of the world. He was only devoted to the political structure. And in this sense he was an authoritarian Socialist and he expressed the ideals and the dreams of Socialists of 1887 and the expectations of these people that a very, you might say, argumentative and slightly irrational world would suddenly become perfect by people behaving rationally.

Now this looked like it was idiotic assumption, but it was his and it was very fashionable. It was picked up and it was carried through the decades. That book sold... it is still in print, I believe.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I know that among some students in the 1930s when I was at Berkeley it was still having a considerable influence.

[Scott] All right. Mr. Roosevelt liked it. It had an effect on his thinking. It had an effect on Colonel House. It had an effect on Lenin and company. It had an effect around the world. And it still has the effect, even though—and the reviewer in the times was very interesting. He said, “Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward proved to us who know the future that this didn’t work.”

And it didn’t work.

[Rushdoony] Well, the interesting thing is that his vision was not unlike that of others early in the century, notably, for example, Horace Mann. Horace Mann expected the same Utopia. He felt that in a century writing roughly around 1830, I believe, say, 1930 or thereabouts, all crime would disappear. Prisons would disappear. Economic problems would disappear. All problems would be solved by one simple gimmick, the public schools.

[Scott] Universal education.

[Rushdoony] Universal education.

[Scott] Universal education.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] That ... that is what is going to take care of everything.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And I remember, it wasn’t very long ago that people were still saying, “Well, it is an educational problem.” They are saying that about AIDS right now. It is an education problem. All we have to do is to use the proper precautions.

[Rushdoony] Yes. The same stupid dream. Well, of course this was anti Christianity, because they refused to reckon with the fact of sin. And that is why one of the things which most impressed me on our trip to Britain was the report of a minister that when Mrs. Thatcher walked into his church one Sunday she was visiting with friends in the area. He was preaching a doctrinal sermon on original sin, on the depravity of man. And when it was over she came up to him and said, “You know, if we could get all the people of Britain to understand the meaning of original sin, a great many of our political problems would either fall into place or be resolved,” because she recognized immediately as a Christian and as a sound political figure that it was the refusal to confront the fact of sin and of man’s depravity that leads to so much of the foolish politics of our day.

[Scott] Well, that ... that is interesting that we... going back to this idea of the perfect world even if it kills you.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Went on... Now there was something else involved. Mr. Bellamy’s book had an awful lot of complaints in it about ordinary people, about the selfishness of ordinary people, what Woodrow Wilson used to call selfish interests. Woodrow Wilson felt that any man that who was out to better himself was involved in a selfish effort and he excepted himself from that description. I mean, he could be ambitious, but that was something else. Anyone else who was ambitious was somebody to be looked at with suspicion. People should not try to improve themselves in the material sense.

Now with the whole question of the utopian really breaks down to a jealousy of the other man and a refusal to let the other man have his own ideas and to let the other man do what he thinks is best for himself and an insistence that the other fellow should shut up and listen to me and I will tell you what to do and then everything will be perfect.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Of course, as Christians we must believe that we are the source of sin. I, even I have sinned and done that which is evil in thy sight, David tells us. And the interesting thing about the Communists of whatever stripe is that they are good people. They are the elite, but it is other people, particular groups and Christians, especially who are responsible for all kinds of sin.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] I recall once sitting down for hours because he was so determined to convert me was someone who had a mixture of Marxist ideas and especially Bellamy’s. To him Bellamy was the great American prophet. And the ugly fact about that young man, a very brilliant, very talented young man was overflowing with talent, was the... the... never was able to accomplish anything, because his life was one of bitterness and his parents doted on him. They saw his abilities rather than his character. So he was subsidized during the depression in a way very few people were. And yet he had nothing but hostility and contempt for them.

They more they did for him, the more he insisted they were just trying to buy him with money. And yet he demanded it.

[Scott] Yes. What else could you buy him with?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Good point.

Everyone around him had a fault. If you were doing well at the university and you were some kind of scoundrel buttering up the establishment. And if he did well it was his talent so that the whole world was perpetually damned in his sight except his kid.

[Scott] All right. Now we go back to Paul Hollander and The Political Pilgrim.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It is a very good book talking about all the intellectuals, the artists and so forth. The only omission he made in that book and it was a significant omission was that he didn’t include the businessmen. There were as many businessmen made the trip to Mecca to ... to... to the Kremlin as there were artists or poets or professors. And the business men went for the same reason, because they wanted to advance themselves in the world. They wanted to make a profit out of dealing with the Soviets. The artists and the professors wanted to be elevated in their profession to get all of the support they could. And all of them almost without exception, I would say, were the sort of people who didn’t give a damn about anyone but themselves, because to walk into a prison, I remember talking to a psychologist once who used to go to a prison. He was... he had a job where he interviewed the prisoners, classified them and graded them and so forth.

And I said, “Well, does it pay well?”

He said, “No, not particularly.”

But he said.... I said, “Are you writing a book or... or... or are you collecting information for some purpose or another?”

“No, no, not particularly, but he liked the job.”

I said, “Why?”

“Well,” he said, “It makes me feel so good when I can read.”

And that was very interesting. And I think these people who went to the Soviet had much the same feeling because they were superior. They had the passport that protected them. And they were dealing with the upper level of the upper strata of the commissars and they also came back filled with contempt for their own culture...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...civilization and religion.

[Rushdoony] They were elitists.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] And the elitist figures, if I can control society or be allied with those who are controlling the world, I don’t care what happens to those under me.

Now that is their attitude in one way or another.

[Scott] All right. If you... let me transfer this into why do the young college students in the social sciences, putting aside the effect of their professors, really look at somebody like Mao Tse Tung and Che Guevara and Castro and Danny Ortega and the others? Because they represent, those figures represent these students’ success.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] The ultimate power, the ultimate success, fame and everything that goes with it. Power real in a real sense. So Marxism today, Communism today is no longer ... is no longer the socialistic sort of utopian theory that it was in Bellamy’s day. Today it is considered the blueprint for advancement, for power over others. Now that is the lure and that is a big lure. And it also means that they know. They know about the gulag. They know about the massacres. They don’t care.

This is the real allure of evil.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Elitism is precisely that habit of separating yourself from other people and being indifferent to their status. When men who are in the professions or who are wealthy were Christian and they went to church with people from all walks of life and had some connection, some relationship with them or felt an obligation towards them, they were not indifferent.

[Scott] They couldn’t be.

[Rushdoony] No, you couldn’t be. Religiously you had a responsibility. But the minute Christianity began to recede from the world of these people, then they separated themselves. Then they could be elitists and they could regard these people as persons to be used.

[Scott] Part of the herd.

[Rushdoony] Part of the herd. Yes.

[Scott] Well, let’s go on to the whole business in ... when Lenin got his 50 million gold marks from the ... from the Germans, according to Joel Carmichael’s biography of Tolstoy, the first thing that Lenin and Tolstoy did with that money was to buy 37 newspapers, first. And after that they bought guns and uniforms and all the rest and... and subsidized the army that they subsidized, because there was only 3500 to 4000 Bolsheviks in all of Russia, not enough to overthrow even the palace.

[Rushdoony] And the people at the top were the easiest to buy, because they were the most de Christianized. So it was easier to buy the men with the newspapers and the newspapermen than it was the peasant.

[Scott] Oh, sure. You had to convince the peasants.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] But you could buy the journalists.

Well, from that time onward Adam Lewan, the specialist, as you know, on the Soviet Union....

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...said that if forced by any combination of circumstances, the Soviet Union and its leaders would give up anything, territory, position, arguments, whatever, but never their propaganda, because they believed that they would conquer the world through propaganda.

Now this is almost like the devil and his false gospels.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Because this is the way to change the world through men’s minds. I mean, the guns are there and they are moving and they have the... they use the power once they get the power. But before they get the power, they use propaganda.

Now if you look at Communist propaganda, it has changed from what it was when McCarthy was talking about it. McCarthy was talking, Senator McCarthy was talking about spies. He was talking about double agents. He was talking about people in official positions who were falsely a trust. And he was right. There were spies. There were double agents. They were positions who were... you know, people who were false to their trust.

McCarthy was brought down by the argument that he was accusing innocent people, but they had not produced any people who were innocent. Nevertheless, the press turned on McCarthy, destroyed McCarthy and when McCarthy was destroyed, every politician in the country got the lesson and that is: Anti Communism will lead to your destruction. And from that day to this Communism has ceased to be an issue in the public dialog of the United States.

But now we have the new kid of Communist tactic which changed with the takeover of Czechoslovakia. And I can say this because I have recently been looking into it. Czechoslovakia, a highly, most highly industrialized country in central Europe, probably more concentrated that Germany with less peasants. It had the great [?] munitions works and all of the rest. And they thought after World War II that they could set up a democracy, continue a democracy once free of the Nazis by allowing the Communists into their government. So they had a coalition government and the Communists infiltrated the parliament and infiltrated the offices of the Czechoslovakian government until they were finally able to take it over totally. And from that day onward the Communist tactic has been to use parliamentary means which formerly they said was ridiculous and foolish and so forth and they are using ... they... they... they insinuate themselves into the parliament of the country they are trying to take over, notably Italy, Mexico, the Latin American countries and the United States.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] We have Communists now sitting in Congress.

[Rushdoony] Yes and the power of the idea is enormous, because it is propagated from a variety of sources. You mentioned propaganda.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Lynn T. White, an historian, said that one of the keys to Mussolini’s success was state control of education. Then we have to add to that, because, well, to back up a moment. State control of education was early seen as the key to power by Horace Mann.

[Scott] You mentioned that.

[Rushdoony] And his associates.

[Scott] ...in you book.

[Rushdoony] Yes. They saw it as an engine to sway the people according to James Carter, the means whereby they, the Humanists could take over the United States and control it and dechristianize it.

Otto, a few minutes ago you mentioned propaganda and I started out by citing the fact of state control of education which Mussolini felt was very important. There are reasons for believing that the kind of thing we have had in Fascism and Communism would never have worked in the last century because now you have state control of education everywhere, plus the radio and television as well as the press.

[Scott] And movies.

[Rushdoony] And movies. And the Soviet Union promoted radio and television among the people long before they had some of the most simple amenities of life. To this day they don’t have toilet paper without standing in line by the hour to get some. And it is pretty hard to get, but you do have television, because it is a means of propagandizing people. So they use television, the movies, the press and radio very, very heavily in the Marxist countries.

[Scott] Well, what about here? I understand that...

[Rushdoony] Oh, of course.

[Scott] ... a high school education today is mostly watching films. And we know that our young people accept the films and television as realistic.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Dr. W. David Gamble has written this about the NEA, the National Education Association. And it is in an article about the NEA in The People’s Daily World, the US Communist Party’s paper. And the article lists the perfect seven positions taken by the NEA: support for affirmative action, opposition to nuclear weapons, support for the ratification of SALT II, opposition to Apartheid, opposition to US aid to the Contras, condemnation of Lyndon LaRouche (an amusing one) and a cal for reordering budget priorities, especially the military budget in order to meet the people’s needs.

[Scott] Well, that is the program of the Communist party and that is also the program of the Democratic party.

[Rushdoony] And of the NEA and of a great many organizations in this country.

[Scott] The Wall Street Journal today had a long story on the left hand column of the front page regarding the military and the Democratic candidates in which they were asked recently, en masse, under what circumstances they would recommend the United States use of force. And non of them were able to answer that. They all took refuge in flights of rhetoric about peace, about disarmament, about negotiations, about last resorts and so forth. None of them are in favor of the United States using force at all.

[Rushdoony] Yes. So you have a thorough disintegration of the mind across the board in the United States. And a good deal of it, I would say, goes back to Horace Mann. The only counter trend you have is the Christian school movement and you can understand why there is such a hostility to it.

[Scott] I wonder if the Christian school movement includes a study of Communism in its courses.

[Rushdoony] A great many do. A great many.

[Scott] Because I think the average journalist in the United States wouldn’t recognize a Communist if one shot him dead.

[Rushdoony] Which may happen.

[Scott] Which may happen. Solzhenitsyn said, you know, when he came here, “You are where we were in 1905. If you want to know your future, look at our past.” And he said, “The Americans will not know what has happened to them until they are told to put their hands behind their back and start walking.”

Now when I said before we have Communists in Congress, I meant it. We do.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And the figure varies according to the specialists that I talk to, but 35 is the minimum. Now... and it goes as high as 75. Now here we have the focus. We might have a distillation of a revolutionary group seated in our parliament which unlike the revolutionary group of France in the 1780s has now got access to enormous power outside the country which will support it in every way. And very influential power inside the country which is supporting these people in every way, the peace in Nicaragua. Not a word about the Soviets in Nicaragua, not a word as there was not a word about the Soviets in Vietnam or the Soviets in Cuba or the Soviets in the Philippines. And they ... the Communist propaganda here is reflected in the general media, not just The People’s Daily World.

[Rushdoony] I would add this, Otto. When I look back at the university and the Marxists I knew then, the fact that came through loud and clear to me was that these men, some of whom were very active in Communist party matters knew less than I did about Marxism and about the writings of Karl Marx. The party in those days, maybe they still do, required of most members, say, a longshoreman and I am thinking very specifically of someone here, who decides that he believes in Communism and wants to join the party. He has to sit down and read volumes of Marx and pass written and oral examinations in them. This is the way it was and probably still is. So that he wound up very knowledgeable about Marxism.

But if you were somebody important like a professor you didn’t have to do that. Your position got you in. And what those people represented was a kind of pragmatism. They liked power. They gravitated to power. They were like weathervanes. They reflected the shifts of opinion more rapidly than anyone else, because they were interested in power, in being in favor.

Now I think in the business world and in the world of politics, one would be hard put to find a doctrinaire, an intellectually knowledgeable Marxist.

[Scott] Yeah.

[Rushdoony] But they are there by the car load as far as being pragmatists who are going to go along with whoever is in power, in control or whoever is setting the temper.

[Scott] Well, what we are really talking about here is second raters who want first rate positions.

[Rushdoony] Right.

[Scott] Now second raters are easily manipulated, because they can be manipulated by their emotions and their passions and their desires. I wouldn’t say that the black caucus, for instance, is educated in terms of Marxism.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] But the black caucus serves Marxist purposes.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Because for 70 years, well 60 years, the Communists have been trying to organize the black people of the United States. In 1928, for instance, they had a proposition for a black nation. They thought all the blacks should have a certain territory in the South like the Armenians have a territory in Soviet or the Georgians or the Ukrainians and so forth. They were putting a Soviet template over the American population and thinking in terms of various home lands here.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well, that didn’t get them anywhere. What actually moved it forward was the civil rights program. The civil rights program, which we might call the black rights program and I am not against black rights. I think that they deserve them and should have had them. But, nevertheless, that program fed up a system of block racial voting in the South, block voting, group voting, because they eliminated the educational tests and they eliminated all of the qualifications which had formerly narrowed down to those who could vote in the South.

Today you vote in the South no matter what. They have practically no examination, no qualifications, no check.

Now we do have certain barriers against felons and so forth and so on, but I don’t believe those are applied anymore in the South. I don’t believe the South is allowed to apply them. So what we have is a phenomenon of black ... black voting where in Philadelphia and Chicago, for instance, the black mayors are elected with 95 percent of the black vote. And we have people like Justice Bork of Judge Bork destroyed by the mere accusation of Racism which hath no foundation but was sufficient to turn all of our people in the United States against him.

Now nothing more divisive could ever have been created. The black caucus, imagine, we have a group of men inside our congress who call... identify themselves by race at a time when to even mention the existence of a white race is to label yourself a racist.

So there has... our thinking has been fragmented.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And this, of course, is the result of years of effort, years of propaganda which have taken very good soil, you might say, very good seed. So when I talk or I am talking here or when I look at Communists in Congress, Communists in the staffs of Congress, Communists in the judiciary, Communists in governmental agencies and I see the shift in voting into racial and ethnic blocks where the very word American is no longer accepted and people are Italian American or Irish Americans.

I said to one of these fellows, “When were you last in Ireland?”

“Oh,” he said, “I have never been there.”

But then I said, “You are not Irish.” There is no way you can be Irish without being in Ireland.

Well, I think we are at the stage where Spain was in, say, 1932. We are... we are at a very late stage in the communization of the country.

[Rushdoony] Well, one of the things that I often think about is Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s statement in his book The Christian Future. He spoke of John Dewey’s thinking as the chinafication of the United States. Now in old China there was no concept of truth. There was only that which was fitting for the moment which pragmatically worked. The yang and yin philosophy held that at different times different things are fitting, so you can change your direction totally or your idea totally. You can be exactly the opposite one year from what you were the last, because now this works better.

Well, that is very deeply embedded in the United States, because of our progressive education. Back in the early 60s when I was with the Volker Fund the president, H. L. Luno, as a corporate head, had a great many visitors who were prominent corporate heads across the United States. And I saw how pragmatic they were in their outlook in some of the sessions where I was. And after one session when the men left, when we were having some refreshments together, Hal Luno said that he had confronted these men with the direction their own work was taking them. They were responsible for making the Soviet Union work. They were selling things to the Soviet Union and so on.

[Scott] Right.

[Rushdoony] And he said, “Are you not afraid that in not too many years they could take us over? Then where will you be?”

And their response was, “Doesn’t bother us in the slightest. They will need us.”

[Scott] Oh, ...

[Rushdoony] And we will be heading up the works.

[Scott] Factories and so forth.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Yes. I heard that, too.

[Rushdoony] Now, they were purely yang and yin men. They were products of John Dewey. For them there was no truth and they would get annoyed with Hal Luno when he tried to talk about right and wrong.

[Scott] Well, here we have a population—I have said this before—highly skilled, most highly skilled, I guess, the world has ever produced, but a population that doesn’t like to think and doesn’t like to add things up and doesn’t like to be reminded of the score, men who work hard all week and watch football games all weekend. And once you take the conversation away from the job, away form the corporation, away from how the car runs, they are annoyed, because this is not fun. They don’t want to add anything up, because they don’t believe that there is a score to anything.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] But look at where we are in terms of the revolution, Rush. The revolution we now know in modern times began... is really masterminded from the parliament. Once the revolution gets control of the parliament it has control of the country. Now in the case of the French and the German and the Russian and other revolutions, they had a weak executive which they overcame. Well, let us assume—and, of course, we have a weak executive now and we have an increasingly radical Congress, a Congress which refuses to recognize constitutional limits is basically a radical group.

Now each election makes Congress more radical. And even if we elect a strong president the next time, a very radical Congress will drive a strong president out of his authority. So this is where we are. In Spain they drove the king out. Then they drove the dictator out, Primo de Rivera and then they went increasingly left until they decided what to take over.

Well, they took over the church. They took over the lands of the Catholic Church in Spain and then they began to murder the priests and the nuns and that is what started the civil war. Right now at the ... in December 23rd, that famous omnibus bill where Congress threw in everything in the dead of the night that they wanted to have done and then gave Mr. Reagan a confrontation. You either sign this or else the government will close down and we will have a constitutional crisis. And he caved in.

Well, one of the bills that they slipped in, H.R. 2942 by Congressmen Pickle and Schulze.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Forbids religious and charitable organizations from even commenting on any issue of the day. You cannot even recommend that people go out to vote, because that is considered lobbying. And that took effect December 31st, 1987, the last day of last year.

Now we have moved a long way. We have moved an awfully long way.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Without the word Communist being used in ordinary conversation in the country.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well you know, as I do, California state senator Bill Richardson.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] And Bill once told me a few years back that contrary to popular opinion, most of the men who are in state legislatures and in the federal level in the Congress are of a high level of intelligence. But because of the kind of training and faith they have, they cannot think 90 days ahead. He said they automatically turn you off if you talk about the effect of something 90 days ahead. And he said there are very few of the voters out there who can think of consequences more than 90 days ahead. In other words, this is a part of the education of our times, on sense of causality, no sense of the future of as having a direct relationship to the past and the present.

[multiple voices]

[Rushdoony] ... a logical cause.

[Scott] Well, they don’t... how many people ask where the deficit came from?

[Rushdoony] Yes. If... someone told me in one of my travels they were trying to explain some very simple fact that given certain things, certain things were going to follow. Didn’t they understand that? They explained it very carefully saying this is the way things are. Now this is what is going to happen. And when they were all through the person responded, “Well, that is a matter of opinion.”

[Scott] No, everything is a matter of opinion.

[Rushdoony] Yes. No causality in the world.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Well, when there is no causality, how can any man govern his future or govern the world? This is why one of the most interesting things in the history of Marxism is that Karl Marx was a total unbeliever in everything, in everything. Annihilist and yet the man he turned against most savagely was Max Sterner who wrote The Ego and his Own. Max Sterner was a logical anarchist. And Max Sterner believed that there was nothing that you could believe in. He railed against the Atheists of his day, because he said they were all closet Christians, beaus they were still morally practicing Christianity. He said, “Which of these people who boast of their Atheism will sleep with their daughter or sister or mother?” And he said, “They are all closet Christians.”

Well, Marx wrote two volumes against him of the most passionate intense writing he did, because his point was, in effect, though it was never this baldly stated: If we throw everything overboard, then nothing can work, because nobody will believe anything and we have got to have the people believe in Communism.

[Scott] Ok.

[Rushdoony] So we cannot be total cynics.

Now this is why books were written against Existentialism by Marxists. They were in agreement with the fundamental premises of Existentialism, its total belief in only the moment.

[Scott] Well...

[Rushdoony] That pragmatically they had to oppose it and did.

[Scott] Well, and we know that in the Soviet Union as in Hitler’s Germany for reasons of state every life should be dedicated to the greater good and the state will determine what that good is.

Now we have reached the point, we have reached the point where the Communist Party for the first time practically ever has decided not to run any candidates for federal office. They are backing Jesse Jackson, but they will be satisfied with any Democratic candidate out of the seven that are on the landscape now and they have so said and so stated. And if you put their platform together with the Democratic platform you can do the same as you did with the NEA. You will find that it is parallel. The Communists don’t have to put up their on candidate anymore, because they are the intellectual mentors of the Democratic Party. And it is amazing, absolutely astonishing. You know, it is not new. Earl Brower had an office in the White House when Roosevelt was president. You remember that. But this has now reached a state where the control is virtually open and official.

[Rushdoony] When people do not believe in God, in Christ, they are going to be rudderless and any strong wind that blows is going to carry them. And that is our problem today.

[Scott] Well...

[Rushdoony] And no education... and this is where conservative groups are very, very foolish, because they think presenting the facts is going to save the country. But as long as people do not have a faith, they are going to be governed by the prevailing wind, the prevailing current of the times.

[Scott] Well, the conservatives aren’t presenting the facts. They will not get up and present the facts. They ... they will listen to a treasonous speech without saying a word. They talk to themselves. They don’t talk to anybody else.

[Rushdoony] No. And they are, at heart, too often Humanists. So they are closer to the liberals and to the Communists than they are to the Christians.

[Scott] Well, they are not defending Christianity.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] That is for sure.

[Rushdoony] That is for sure.

[Scott] You know that this year is supposed to be the 1000 anniversary of Christianity in Russia. Now look at the situation. Not a single church, not a single Christian group in the West is talking about the situation and condition of Christianity in Russia today, 1000 years after its inception.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And we know that it is an estimated 60 percent... the Soviet government today thinks that 60 percent of its population is Christian, 60 percent. They have no voice. They have no rights. It is a felony to teach the faith to anyone below the age of 18. The clergy is KGB. It is a fraudulent clergy. And here the West sits.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And we have a clergy here that is practically compliant with the same sort of developments. Look at all the... all the people who are taking in false refugees.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And if you mention to those who profess to be Bible believing the necessity of facing up to the growing persecution of Christianity here, most of them will get nervous.

[Scott] Well, that is what I refer to. Now, in effect, Congress has thrown down the gauntlet. We know that this restriction, this heightened restrictions against political expression on the part of the religious people in the United States will not be applied against Jesse Jackson who will continue to campaign inside black churches and collect money at the end of every speech. Nobody is going to do ... say a word about that. But the religious right is on the target.

And yet the religious right is the only actual anti revolutionary force in the country.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And this measure by Congressman Pickle from LBJ’s old district is intended to silence...

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] ... that segment of the population.

[Scott] Yes, it is. Yes, it is, very deliberately.

[Rushdoony] Well, we are living in very, very difficult times and most people are not even aware of the basic problems.

[Scott] Well, this has always been true. Here we have a new form of keeping people uninformed, deafening them by noise, by extremist noise that doesn’t mean anything, by scandals, real and invented, by entertainments of various sorts. Politics which is really the government is covered as though it is a form of entertainment, a race. Who is ahead? Who is behind? Who got in the polls today? The foreign policy of the United States is now considered what Reagan is trying to do, not what the president is trying to do, not the official policy, but the policy attached to an individual which means that you don’t have to go along with it if you don’t like the man. The semantic tricks, the echo chamber, the diversions, the sports.

I am amazed when I turn on television news at the solemnity with which sports are reported. You would really think that these were important events.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

Well, our time is about over. Thank you all for listening. Do take to heart what Otto reported on with regard to the Pickle committee and their work. If your church is not aware of this fact, they had better be. Not to be silent, but to protest against such illegal activities on the part of Congress. Your congressman should be aware that these things are happening and be made accountable for his part in such a thin and your senator as well.

Thank you for listening. God bless you all.

[Voice] Authorized by the Chalcedon Foundation. Archived by the Mount Olive Tape Library. Digitized by ChristRules.com.