From the Easy Chair

Pragmatism

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 15-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161AG61

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161AG61, Pragmatism from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 165, March 10, 1988.

This evening Otto Scott and I are going to discuss Pragmatism. Now Pragmatism may sound like a philosophical concept, but Pragmatism is the reality of every day life in our world today. Pragmatism is the American form of Existentialism. The two have the same philosophical roots. According to Existentialism, which is the European form of a philosophy, nothing matters except the moment. And the truly existential man is the man who is not influenced out of anything from the past, nor anything outside of himself, certainly not by God or by the Church or by society at large, but only influenced by the biology of his being.

As a result, what he wants is the truth for him. Nietzsche who was in this line of thought held emphatically that a lie is often far more valuable for life than the truth is. He was speaking of the truth and lies as equal in society at large, regarding them.

Now in the American form this philosophy, known, as I said as Pragmatism, has had a practical orientation. It tells us that truth is what works. If a lie works, then it is the truth for us. The three great figures in American Pragmatism were, first, Charles S. Peirce who chose the name Pragmatism in 1905, William James and John Dewey. John Dewey sometimes called his form of Pragmatism Instrumentalism. But basically what we have in the United States today is a pragmatic philosophy on all sides. Because the public schools or progressive education is really pragmatic education, virtually everyone who has gone through the public schools has picked up pragmatism. As a result, truth for them is what works, what succeeds, not what God declares it to be.

The whole of the western world, the whole of the world today, in fact, is in the grips of this kind of thinking. Now this is why we are in very, very serious trouble.

Well, with that general introduction of the subject of Pragmatism, Otto, would you like to make some general statements?

[Scott] Well, yes. The ... we don’t hear the word Pragmatism so much anymore, although somebody can be described as pragmatic and that is considered an individual who is opposite of an ideologue. An ideologue in the modern parlance is somebody who is dedicated to some theory, an idea. And a pragmatist is somebody who is not so encumbered. And it really is considered, then, an encumbrance.

Then we have something else, of course. We have the argument that anyone who has a belief is by that nature intolerant, because there are unbelievers in the view of a believer that makes a believer intolerant. So we are in a rather a mess, I would say, because although we still have dictionaries and you were reading a dictionary thought apparently, the fact of the matter is the language has become simultaneously slippery and imprecise.

In 1910 or 12 I would say the average educated person had a pretty good idea of what William James and John Dewey were talking about when they talked about Pragmatism. Today I don’t think the average educated person really understands what it means. It is taken to mean somebody who will accept reality as an end in itself and who doesn’t believe in anything that is intangible, unless it affects tangible things. For instance, the modern historians will accept the idea that certain ideas in history had an influence on history only because they can trace that influenced. But if they don’t find any record of that influence it just didn’t exist.

Let’s take, for instance, the female influence in Washington, DC, which was always enormous from the days of Dolly Madison onward. And I mention it because I just happened to flick through a copy of a biography of Alice Roosevelt Longworth in which the author of the biography mentions the fact that one of the things that sank Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations was her enmity and her influence in Washington, DC in the United States Congress.

But a Pragmatist would say, “Can you prove that?” And that is evidenced by the fact that one of the leading historians of the period when asked about her influence said, “Well, her name rarely appears on anything.”

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, that brings up, since you raised the political aspect through Alice Longworth, the matter of politics.

Bill Richardson has more than once told me that the most useless thing to do in the California state senate or in any legislative body anywhere is to bring up the question of truth, of right and wrong, because what people are interested in is will it work. Will it bring the voters into our camp? Will it please the voter? At the same time the voter, he says, has a short memory, no more than 90 days. And it is because he thinks pragmatically. Truth says that things are right or wrong, true or false, yesterday, today and forever. Things don’t change. But if you are pragmatic, you don’t look at the long range. You look at the short term. You improvise.

Now as a result of Pragmatism, we have no longer a desire on the part of our ideologues for a planned society, but a planning society. This is a very interesting fact. In many ways we are more radical than the Soviet Union when it comes to thinking philosophically. The Soviet Union does not believe in good or evil, right or wrong. It does not believe in truth, but it recognizes the danger of allowing such thinking to range in the population. Therefore, although they recognize the kinship of Karl Marx, the whole line existential thought. They refuse to allow Existential philosophy in the Soviet Union. They have written against it, because they know it is so corrosive of everything. It dissolves everything in a sea of meaninglessness and they have to say that while the universe is meaningless, Communism is the truth.

[Scott] Well, here you are... the actual purpose, I think, is the ... it is for reasons of state. The Communists, like the Nazis and the Fascists argued that the state is an enterprise that requires everyone’s loyalty and everyone’s life and property. And if anything that is... that advances or expands the state is good and anything that retards or frustrates the state or opposes the state or differs from the state is bad. Pragmatism probably is something that they live with because they operate that way. But they don't want to hear any philosophy excepting the approved version of Marxism.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] No other ideas are discussed or allowed to be discussed. I often wonder what would happen to so many of our perfetors and literati and journalists and so forth if they were just simply transported and if by some fluke God would enable them all to speak Russian and they were dropped into the enemy camp to then struggle with its restrictions. But the pragmatic argument is really what animates, for instance, business. Without the restrictions of law, the law, of course, the rules keep business operating within this certain degree of civility. There is a limit to what you can do. You can’t... don’t products below cost on the market and you can’t do this and you can’t do that. All of these laws which arose as a result of various business practices which had to be stopped.

But {?}, I think it was, who said that Capitalism would destroy itself by its own creativity, by constantly discarding old products, even proven products for newer products and so forth, a constant change. And he said this constant change presents stability and in the long run will wear everybody out and the system itself.

Now ...

[Rushdoony] The lack, I think is true if they have an overall pragmatic philosophy, because it is so totally corrosive. It is like an acid, Pragmatism is. It will destroy every area, including religion. The churches today are by and large pragmatic. And their theological thinking is pragmatic. The congregations are pragmatic. And because they are pragmatic, they don’t think in terms of truth. What is the truth? But what is in Christianity for me.

One of the most telling accounts of the early church has to do with what was barbershop and street talk in Constantinople or Byzantium during one of the great councils of the Christian Church. Even the commoners in the street were discussing aspects of the doctrine of Christ. They were doing it because this was truth and truth was basic to the life of man, but today what is basic to the life of man is getting what he wants. So the kind of preaching that prevails in the church has noting to do with truth so much as self help, psychology, what is in Christianity for you and how to find this or that through Christ. And the definitions of Christianity are increasingly man centered.

I had a very interesting letter today from a very fine person who listens to these tapes, {?} Blake... Blakie. And he asked about the definition of a Christian. He is a Christian, but with all the conflicting definitions, he wondered: Something is wrong here. Something is off center.

Well, he is very right, because we can define a Christian and be accurate by saying he is someone who has been saved by the grace of God through the atonement of Jesus Christ and, therefore, has the assurance of eternal life. We can vary that by differing stresses. But he significant fact with all our definitions of a Christian is in terms of man. Where as a Christian can be defined, if we look at things from a God centered perspective, as one whom God has chosen through Christ and appointed to serve him. Then the emphasis is on God’s purpose, not our status with regard to heaven or hell and what kind of life or fire insurance we have.

[Scott] Well, the churches here, due to our constitution which I don’t admire as most people seem to do, were thrown out into the street by the lawyers of Philadelphia who decided not to have a Christian country. They got hung up on the idea that there wasn’t supposed to be an establishment of religion and they forgot to say that this is going to be a Christian country in any sense or that Christianity would be defended in any way. They took it for granted that it would never change. But, in effect, they took all the promises of religion, the pursuit of happiness, safety, security, all kinds of things and they set up a lawyer’s paradise and the Church was disenfranchised totally.

It is true that it remained in some of the states for another generation, but, in effect, the clergy of the United States has thrown upon the mercy of the people. So therefore they began to scramble for a livelihood and you have what one of our visitors once called cafeteria religion.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Where the people shop in order to find which... which promises or which incense or whichever is most comfortable for them. And they don't come back to a church where the sermons make them feel uncomfortable about themselves and so forth. Religion, then, has lost its awe.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It has lost its power to terrify, because people are not afraid of it. They... I remember being in the storm and then the rest of {?} thinking whatever God is, he is certainly no buttercup.

[Rushdoony] Yes, very good.

[Scott] But we have this ... it is coming... people here are beginning to pay the price spiritually. Somebody mentioned reading an article in a woman’s magazine. I don’t know what he was reading the woman’s magazine. Maybe he was just curious. At any rate he said the article was by this woman who said, “Why is it that I earn so much and have so little?”

And I thought, well, that could apply to a great deal more than money. Why do I work so hard and get so little? Why do so many Americans live so materially well and yet have such spiritually impoverished lives? What has happened to the largest significance of being alive, being a man or a woman or being a member of a society or a social order? Well, what has happened, of course, is that everything has been put on a pragmatic level. You have no right to be unhappy if you are wearing shoes, if you have got a decent job, if there is nothing wrong. If there is an emptiness in your life, the psychologist just tells you what you have to adjust. This is a neurosis.

[Rushdoony] A very good point. What we are seeing is that at the most prosperous levels of our society, drugs and liquor are taking over. One of our most prominent actor entertainers has said that when it is night time he is ready to try anything to get some sleep, praying, liquor, a woman, drugs. He tries them all.

[Scott] What is wrong with staying awake? I mean...

[Rushdoony] Life is miserable if you are not occupied...

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] And it represents the...

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] ... the last ...

[Scott] He can’t... he can’t spend time alone.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] He has nothing to do, nobody to be with.

[Rushdoony] Well, Pragmatism creates a consumer oriented society because it puts the emphasis on what works for you. Truth is what works for you.

Well, you have then consumer oriented religion. And some of our prominent TV preacher entertainers have shown us what that leads to. It leads to the kind of religion that is empty of everything except making you feel good. It is closely linked with Antinomianism and leads into immoralism as it has. And it does nothing to change the lives of people and of the country.

So we have a consumer oriented society because we are pragmatic in our orientation.

[Scott] Well, then we go to school for this purpose, you see...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It permeates the educational establishment where people go to school in order to acquire certain skills in order to get a profession. A profession doesn’t mean what it used to mean. They are not professing anything. They are not engaged in activities to assist society. The lawyers used to do pro bono publico. The doctor is supposed to donate part of his time for the poor and so forth. Well, you see, there weren’t very many professions. Now you hear the... I hear people say, “Well, speaking as a professional...” And then I say, “Well, what is your profession?” Well, it turns out to be all kinds of things which never have been considered professions before.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] The most of the hard sciences are not professions. They are skills. The profession is something that is much broader. But we still have the 19th century language. And I think a great deal of our difficulty even you and I discussing some of these subjects is the slipperiness of the language. The... we are now in an area which does not describe itself accurately. And that is the great impediment.

[Rushdoony] Yes. The language has become slippery, because education has become slippery and the dictionary.

[Scott] Dictionaries are terrible.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Atrocious.

[Rushdoony] They no longer try to define things correctly, but in terms of popular usage which often is incorrect, sometimes simply because a prominent person has used it incorrectly.

Now, the first half of this century the professor educators worked hard in terms of a general program which was summed up in this. They did not want to teach subjects. They were going to teach children and never answered the question: Teach children what if you are anti subject?

Previously the child had to conform to a body of knowledge. Here was the truth. Her was knowledge. This is what the child had to learn. But when the child was made the center of education and it meant the child could not be flunked, because the child was the center, not the subject, the subject flunked. It as discarded, as it were, a problem. But the child remained. And it was, as a result, the child learned only one thing that the world revolved around him or her.

[Scott] Well, the child learns something else. The child learned two things, I think. First of all these are schools of obedience, because any dissent in the modern American educational system means that you are going to flunk out. Despite all the glowing rhetoric that is the actual fact. Secondly, the child learns that there is no such thing as reward for merit. There is only reward for conformity.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] If you go along, if you... if the teacher likes you. Then you will be sent from grade to grade and you will wind up with a degree. But if the teacher doesn't like you, if you have made yourself obnoxious by asking questions or saying no when you are expected to say yes or if you are a real oddball and don’t join the crowd and would prefer to sit in the corner and read a book, then you are going to have a great deal of trouble.

So... but the... the abolition of merit, I think, takes many different forms. I have had ... I have had fellows... when I was younger, I remember some outstanding crime would be committed. And I would say, “Well, how could a fellow do that?” Well, you would do the same if you had the chance.

[Rushdoony] Yes. When you break down truth, you break down inhibition. You break down restraints. And then conformity prevails to the mob, to the crowd.

[Scott] It is conformity downward.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I recall very, very vividly in the 50s a very dear friend of mine who was horrified when her boy who was a good boy brought home a note that she was to go and see the teacher, because of very serious problems, social deviancy.

[Scott] Oh, boy.

[Rushdoony] And the mother was horrified. What kind of perversion was her boy, unknown to her, involved in?

Well, the social deviancy was that during the playground time, recess, he preferred to sit and read a serious book. That made him a social deviant.

[Scott] Well, of course. Of course I will never forget ... you will forgive me for relating it again, the seaman that always came over, interrupted me when I was reading a book and one day he caught me at a very... well, a passage I was yearning to finish and I put the book down and I said to him, “How is it every time I read you interrupt me?”

“Well,” he said, “I think you are lonely.”

[Rushdoony] Yes, I ... {?}

[multiple voices]

[Scott] He was a very nice man. I close the book then and talked to him. But... but, of course, if he had been a school teacher, I guess I would have gotten a bad mark.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well...

[Scott] Well...

[Rushdoony] Yeah, go ahead.

[Scott] Well, this loss of merit is a very, very important subject, because once a society reaches this stage where you cannot advance through merit, where merit is looked upon as a form of stupidity, because you ... to get along you have to go along. You have to go the Lyndon Johnson way.

Now Lyndon Johnson is still in the history books as the President of the United States and he was a great thief and liar. And this is a very bad example. It is an example just as bad for our society as Lenin was an Mau Tse Tung was as Fidel Castro, you succeed through murder. You succeed through swindling. You succeed through all these things. And the Pragmatist would say, “That is not the point.” The point is they won.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes. When you deny to the validity of truth, when you say, “Truth is what works...”

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Then you abolish any standard, whether it is merit or civility or anything.

[Scott] Right.

[Rushdoony] The only thing that then remains is did he succeed.

[Scott] Well, all right. Now this is the historical problem. And many historians fall into that the party that won is proven right by the fact that they won.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] They always write as though history was inevitable. All the winners were doomed to win, fated to win. But this is nonsense.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Because in some cases the victory is a prurient victor for the society just as it is for the individual. How many men have been destroyed by success in modern times?

[Rushdoony] yes.

[Scott] Legions.

[Rushdoony] Well, we have seen what historians have done not only with the past, but with the last decade, the last two decades as you mentioned Johnson then Nixon. Nixon’s offense was a very minor thing.

[Scott] Nixon’s offense was to be loyal to men who had broken the law although he had not told them to do so.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And Johnson...

[Scott] Johnson stole. He took bribes when he was vice president. He has ... he was implicated in some murders. It is hard to think of things that Johnson didn’t do. And he remains the favorite president of his ilk.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, and {?} first volume on the life of Johnson has not altered matters in the slightest.

[Scott] His reputation remains right up there.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Or the book on Martin Luther King. That book hasn’t shaken people’s admiration...

[Scott] Well, that is because they didn’t think too much of either man to begin with in the moral sense.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] They knew what they were admiring.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Actually very few people are fooled on these matters. There are really no great secrets in the world.

[Rushdoony] No. Well, when Pragmatism prevails I do believe a society, scientists don't {?} want, because if the difference between a truth and a lie makes no difference for you, then you are in trouble.

[Scott] Well, just think of everyone who has to deal with you.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] This is a subject that seldom arises.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] I mean, have you ever run into people who say, “I don't seem to be able to make any friends”? And you look at them and you say, “Either...” You don't say it, but you say to yourself, “I am not surprised.”

[Rushdoony] One of the most powerful influences for Pragmatism in this country has been not John Dewey, but Oliver Wendell Holmes. As a professor of law as well as a Supreme Court judge, he made Pragmatism basic to American life.

During World War I in a letter he said, and I quote, “When I say a thing is true, I mean that I can’t help believing it and nothing more,” unquote. He also said, and I quote, “When I was young I used to define the truth as the majority vote of that nation that can lick all the others. So we may define the present wars an inquiry concerning truth,” unquote.

[Scott] It is amazing that Oliver Wendell Holmes is held aloft by so many for so long when he was really a bad social influence. He is the one who said the law... the constitution is what the courts says it is.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] He... he believed that. And I am not ... I think, actually, it was part of his generation, because it was the same generation that promoted Pragmatism, that promoted Dewey and he was part of that New England coterie which promoted any means for abolition. The war was a good thing. All the great social crusades which has led us into this swamp that we now flounder around in...

[Rushdoony] Sons of Emerson.

[Scott] Every one. And he ... he is... he is the one who said free speech does not include the right to holler fire in a crowded theater. He was a ... he expressed the common places of his time and therefore had a reputation for being brilliant.

[Rushdoony] When he died a book was published, I believe in the 50s, titled A Yankee From Olympus.

[Scott] I will never forget it.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[multiple voices]

[Scott] Yes, exactly. Yes. Well...

[Rushdoony] I have read the opinions of Oliver Wendell Holmes, his lectures and papers. He was as shallow a man as you could hope to find.

[Scott] That is true.

[Rushdoony] And yet he has shaped our legal system.

[Scott] Well, in the interim, while we were changing from one side of the tape to the other, I think a comment was made here that situation ethics that we are talking about.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And that is the new word for Pragmatism.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] I think that... that comes closer to it. Holmes really believed that anything that helped him was good. And anything that hurt him was bad. And this is what he ... well, I wouldn’t say the average man, I don’t know the average man. Everyone I know is either above or below average. But this is what a great many people believe. If it is good for me it is good. Or if it is good for my people, it is good. If it is good for whatever, it is good. That ain’t necessarily so.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And situation ethics being pragmatic says it is true if it works.

[Scott] Ah, it is true if it did work.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And that is why the definition in a UCLA class that we were discussing a little while ago off tape when adultery was defined as getting caught. If you are not caught, it is all right.

[Scott] Well, that is like the seamen used you say, “Don't paint where they can’t see.” And you notice that this is true in all modern furniture. You look at the under side of the table or the chair. Now there was a time when furniture was properly made.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And properly painted, when the craftsman didn’t turn anything out that he couldn’t stand behind and he wasn’t proud of. But that is no longer so. The same thing. This situational ethics as applied to work, as applied to products.

[Rushdoony] I recall years ago when I was a student reading something about the decline of craftsmanship in the later Middle Ages, how earlier if there were a bit of sculpture high up on a cathedral’s side the work would be finished all the way around, even though no one as ever going to see it.

[Scott] Then they also carved the underside of the pews.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] With more malicious things.

[Rushdoony] Yes. But...

[Scott] So you have dark and light.

[Rushdoony] Yes. But when things changed, they no longer were concerned with doing things right where no man would see it.

[Scott] Well, as you know, Russell Kirk, not one of my favorites.

[Rushdoony] Nor mine.

[Scott] But a very prolific writer wrote a book called Enemy is a Permanent Thing. And I like the title. It wasn’t a very good book. I read it. But the title was very good, because once you destroy the ideas of permanence, once you lose the idea of the eternal, let me say, then the idea of the permanence ceases to have any meaning. We could long since have created all the artifacts that our society needs that would enable people to use them for life. And then turned our minds to other matters. But it has never once occurred to our system to do that. We instead have a constant flood of relatively minor objects that are all obsolete fairly soon, so that we have to keep buying the same things throughout our lives. And this is a real waste of time, effort, technology and everything else. There is something wrong with this. And it is mainly, I think, because we don't think in permanent terms.

My father, I remember, pointing out to me when I was young in Latin America how the houses were built of stone. And he said the United States they build their houses of wood. And he said, “I don’t understand how they could do that, how they could pay so little attention to what they were doing.” He said, “A stone house will last for generations. It is here forever. And in old parts of the world, North Africa, the Middle East, Italy and so forth, you see houses made of stone.” It was the idea that you were permanently rooted and you had a permanent society.

Now the whole idea of permanence is gone and this is, I think, one of the results of situation ethics, because it is the situation that is important and not the ethic.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And the heart of the situation is the person who is his own God and everything must revolve around him.

[Scott] Well said.

[Rushdoony] Well, we have a world, thus, that is very deeply involved in Pragmatism or situation ethics or Existentialism. And it affects every area including the arts. Do you want to comment on that sphere?

[Scott] Well, yes. We have originally, let’s say, by the latter part of the 19th century a world of art that ... let’s say, painting and music, architecture, which was the inheritor of all developments of the ages, had rediscovered perspective in paintings during the renaissance and so forth. And were outstripping anything of the classical era. Then we had rebels in art. We had two kinds of rebels. We had cultural rebels who were rebelling against entire civilization and all its traditions and mores and we had artists who needed to break in who didn’t have the talent.

So a whole new art world was created consisting of networks of dealers of shops of critics of reviewers of, you might say, of café society and artists, dilettantes, beginning in Vienna and spreading to Berlin and spreading to Paris. It took a long time to get here. It didn’t get here until 1913 and not really until after World War II, which made a concerted, determined effort to destroy the entire tradition of Christian art in music, in dance, in painting, in everything. And with all the instruments of modern communication they created a market for anti art and anti music and anti dance and anti thought, anti beauty.

[Rushdoony] Yes. You may recall, Otto, last year the Wall Street Journal had a long front page story about the fact that all this modern art in the museums and in private collections is no disintegrating. Because these artists...

[Scott] Thank the Lord.

[Rushdoony] ...refused to learn anything from the past, they don’t know the basic disciplines with regard to materials. And for that reason the paint, the materials they work on are all shoddy and they disintegrate. Some things that are less than 50 years old have had to be restored two or three times and are still in process of disintegration and the end is in sight for them.

[Scott] Well, look at music. We are still playing 19th and 18th century music, because we have no music of the 20th century worth playing. Future centuries are going to look back at the 20th century as an era of devastation, one of the worst steps backwards in the long history of mankind and suicide of the civilization, if you call it that. The only thing that saved the ballet was the fact that the commissar had a ballerina as a mistress and he decided that the masters deserve the ballet. Otherwise it would have been wiped out everywhere, because here is this czarist remainder, so to speak, still performing. Modern dance has never quite been able to catch on, to catch up with it.

Music, the whole thing, but it is beginning to fall apart. And when you think of artists like Jackson Pollock, the drift painter, you know, he drips paint at random on the canvas, different colors, how widely touted. His paintings are still being sold in very special circles to very special people. But the great mass of the world has turned on them... turned away.

Situation ethics... and you ... if you... if you talk this way in New York they will say, “But it sells. People buy it.” These are wealthy artists. Picasso got progressively worse the richer he got.

[Rushdoony] Yes. One of the things about Picasso, I think, is interesting. Whenever he had a new mistress whom he was very much drawn to, he would paint her in the classical style. When he began to hate her and want to get rid of her, the girl could usually tell. He would begin to paint her in the Picasso style.

[Scott] He would give her three eyes.

[Rushdoony] And she got the message that way. Well...

[Scott] Now, you see, many people can’t believe this, because there is a market for modern art and there are schools of modern art and there are modern artists and modern critics and so forth. I remember being in New York on one occasion, New York City when Wyeth was holding an exhibition. The was an exhibition of Wyeth paintings and there was a crowd of people three blocks long waiting to see them. And the Candy, the art critic of the New York Times was infuriated and he wrote a column against Fascism in art.

[Rushdoony] The sad fact is that Wyeth is not the painter his father was, because he had been infected by the modern temper and his is a lonely barren world.

[Scott] Well, you haven't seen the Helga pictures. They are not so lonely or barren.

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes. But his father’s...

[Scott] His father’s were very good.

[Rushdoony] ...pictures were full of life.

[Scott] That is true.

[Rushdoony] ...and vitality.

[Scott] That is true.

[Rushdoony] So even with Wyeth one of the very best, you use the decline.

[Scott] Well...

[Rushdoony] Technically he is very able.

[Scott] Tremendous. And I remember hat Jamie Wyeth at that point, somebody wanted to say he was in town when Candy’s column came out and wanted to quote him on what he thought of the column. But Jamie was in the Belleview morgue drawing cadavers, studying them.

Now I don’t know how many modern artists study or are encouraged to study.

[Rushdoony] They are encouraged to be themselves.

[Scott] Well, I want to be better than that.

[Rushdoony] I used to know a young woman with a great deal of talent. And some of her paintings were jewels. But she felt she needed an art school and it totally destroyed her.

[Scott] Well, she didn’t have the strength of character to withstand...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ... the professor’s push into the modern away from your style into somebody else’s style.

[Rushdoony] She was never able to recover of the very real talent she had.

[Scott] That is a sad story, but it has been multiplied, I think, many, many times. The average child, I would say, four years old is avidly drawn and gets into the average school and at the end of two or three years stops drawing, stops singing.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Stops a lot of things. They have been stamped out.

[Rushdoony] Yes. That is a very interesting point, Otto. Before World War II one of the most commonplace things when a group were in a car was to start singing if they were taking a trip of any distance.

[Scott] That is right. In the bus even.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And it wasn’t that you didn’t have a radio in the car.

[Scott] Oh, yes.

[Rushdoony] It was because you enjoyed it.

[Scott] That is right. Singing on the way home from parties.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And so forth, singing around the piano.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] We sang in school all the time, beautiful songs.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Or after a football game singing on the way home.

[Scott] I don't think I have heard people sing in 20 years.

[Rushdoony] No. Let’s go home.

[Scott] Well, that is the pragmatic world, isn’t it?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] What good is it? The only... what you do here is that you hear the young men on street corners training to become the Beatles, singing in harmony together or trying to become, you know, I don’t understand these rock musicians anyway. Why do they all look so murderous? Why ... why... why do they look so evil? I have never quite made the connection between that and... and any kind of music, you know?

[Rushdoony] Maybe they look that way because they either come from the gutter or are headed there.

[Scott] Well, it is just a thought in passing, but a lot of joy certainly has vanished.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] So what did the absence of the permanent bring to us? It brought the impermanent. It... it brought the insubstantial. It brought the dangers, because if you are not sure of what is going to be next Thursday, how can you be relaxed? How can you create?

I remember that the period in which I did no writing were periods in which I had a great many problems and I couldn’t rid my mind of the problems long enough to do any decent writing. It isn't true that artists flourish in adversity. Adversity destroys art, because art is an expression of joy and it is very hard to be joyful when things are terrible. And we are not creating the atmosphere for art to flourish, even though I think we do have, on occasion, remarkable demonstrations of what somebody said the fact that some of the most beautiful flowers appear in gun hills. As you know, declining periods of civilization often produce marvelous works of art. It is a paradox. Nobody can quite explain. But by and large we don’t have the number of people who play instruments. We don’t have the people who sing. We don't have the people who rally indulge in art. It has become a sort of a sub cult.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And one aspect of this Pragmatism has been Functionalism in architecture. So you have all these steel and glass monsters.

[Scott] Oh, that is Tom Wolfe’s from our house to... from the bell house to our house.

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] So, of course, when you have an earthquake or in one city recently where they had strong wind during the night, the city street was full of glass the next day, which if it had happened when there was considerable amount of foot traffic would have killed a number of people. But one aspect of this which is very destructive of art and Frank Lloyd Wright and others have a tremendous burden of guilt here in their corruption of American society, it is this. Some years ago I knew a young artist who believed in creating a Christian art, church art. He felt, for example, that church doors should be carved and should be beautiful, that a cross should be carved and should be a think of beauty and majesty. He took very seriously what the Bible says that the things in the tabernacle and the temple were to be for beauty and for glory. And they were to be carved. And there were all kinds of things that were carved for the tabernacle and temple by God’s command.

And he got nowhere with it. His work was marvelous, but no one was interested. Now even churches that could afford it...

[Scott] Weren’t modern enough, wasn’t...?

[Rushdoony] What was the need for it? A door is a door. And a cross is a cross. They were ready to put vast sums of money into a structure with anything like that that would be a work of art and turns of very entrance of the church into a thing of beauty. They weren’t interested in paying extra for it. It was not for lack of funds.

[Scott] Well, that is too bad. Tom Wolf, you know, has done more than any other reporter, journalist, he is a great journalist, the situation of our times. I mean, he took the hide off modern art in his book The Painted Word.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And he also killed them with the ... these terrible glass hung monstrosities when he wrote from the bell house to our house. Now his book The Bonfire of the Vanities is a very interesting book. It has broken many taboos. It has portrayed minority members in New York City as terrible hate filled people. Nobody comes out well in the book, which is maybe the only reason he did get away with it. I think it sold 600,000 copies in the first three and a half months. But it is a book without faith and a book without hope and there is no catharsis in the book. Nobody ever really improves and the thing that marks a great novelist is, of course, the fact that he stands against fate. He stands against the tide. He is ... God helps him and he rises up. In is book nobody rises up. And it is a book in which everyone reasons pragmatically. The assisting district attorney is reasoning how their case can help his career and the district attorney is trying to reason who the case will help his political ambitions, because they have in the protagonist of the novel a wealthy white man who is accused of a crime against two poor black youths. So, of course, it immediately becomes the focus of a racial and class scandal. And the various people who come and go in this—there are some good ones, of course—throw a light on that terrible city as it is today.

But there is no hope in it, because apparently Tom Wolf has no faith. So God is absent from the book. And when God is absent from the author’s mind, the book ceases to have any eternal value.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And it is amazing because the characters in the book, the characters in the book are already being cited in editorials and articles as stereotypes of people whom we know in our society, much as Sinclair Lewis once did when he portrayed Arrowsmith or Baggets or so forth, Elmer Gantry and so on. This ... Wolfe has, therefore, succeeded remarkably and at the same time signally failed.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And that is an important fact, because situation ethics, Pragmatism, Existentialism, whatever name you want to give it, is failing. It is creating a world of death. And into that world we as Christians must step and exercise dominion. Certainly the Humanists cannot do it. I cited earlier this very, very prominent entertainer whose fortune is one of the greatest who nonetheless said that an evening he was always looking for something that would work, a prayer, liquor, drugs or a woman, anything because life was unbearable.

Now for us instead of being unbearable, it is a privilege and a joy.

[Scott] It is a wonderful thing to be alive.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Scripture speaks of the grace of life.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] For us it is a grace.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] It is a gift from God.

[Scott] It is.

[Rushdoony] And we have a magnificent future, because we know that we have all eternity to develop and work and to serve God. And there there will be no curse, no sin, no problem to hinder us in our work.

So although these people are very powerful around us, they are losers. And they can never be anything else unless they turn to the Lord.

[Scott] I thought of that once. I ... I may do it again. I wrote a brief piece which was never published called “The Sour Smell of American Success.”

[Rushdoony] A very good title. “The Sour Smell of American Success.” Now you have got to use that title again.

[Scott] Ok, I will.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, we who are Christians have our share of problems, because it is an evil world and it is particularly an evil generation. But life is good for us. And all its promises in Christ are yea and amen. So we can face the Pragmatism of this era because the truth is what sets us free and gives us a future.

[Scott] It is very interesting that Sinclair Lewis’ last novel was called Hotel. And Lewis by that time had learned a lot since he wrote Elmer Gantry and so forth. The last novel was not a critical success. It was about a man who wanted to be... who wanted to have and operate a good decent hotel. That was his ambition. And after many tribulations he finally got a small place of his own and he was standing behind the desk. It was facing the street and there was a big picture window. And he looked stern because life had left its stamp on his face, but he was actually very happy when his younger brother who had gone the other way, came up... traffic light in a white roadster with a blonde next to him, both of them miserable in the midst of a terrible argument and looked in and the woman in the roadster looked in and saw the one behind the desk and said, “Oh, he is a failure,” and drove on. And that was the end of the book. And it was a great little book that Sinclair Lewis wrote.

[Rushdoony] You can see why it failed.

[Scott] Yes. And what he had learned about success.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes. Very good. Well, are there any other closing remarks you would like to make, Otto? Our time is beginning to run out.

[Scott] Well, ethics are larger than the situation.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Very good.

And the world is bigger than this generation and they are but a small speck in the face of time and eternity. So we should not be unduly disturbed at their insanities. They are going to pass away. Their art is disintegrating already. Their boats will be in the trash heap and what is of the Lord will endure.

Well, thank you all for listening and God bless you.

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