From the Easy Chair

Cowardness and Courage

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 21-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161AK67

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161AK67, Cowardness and Courage from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 173, July the fifth, 1988.

This evening Otto Scott and I are going to discuss the subject of cowardice. There are reasons that I will give you in a minute or so why we have decided to discuss that subject.

Yesterday in talking to John Lofton and mentioning this subject to him he said, “Well, if you want to give it a modern treatment, the thing to do is for you and Otto to begin by saying that this is a difficult subject, a very touchy subject and one must be very carefully in speaking on the subject of cowardice and the lack of moral character and courage. And after two minutes of that, 58 minutes of silence.” And he said, “You will have given it a good modern treatment.”

Well, we are going to try to give it a biblical treatment rather than that kind of treatment.

I want to begin by calling attention to something that occurred just in the past few days. Ford and Andrea Schwartz, who are very faithful friends of Chalcedon have been active in the San Jose, California area in a number of things. Most recently they put an advertisement in the San Jose Mercury News dealing with the subject of a hospital that was allowing operations of a kind that definitely were unchristian. And yet the hospital had a church relationship and bore a name that indicated a Christian character. And so in the ad they stated very plainly: Either drop the name or live up to it. Either be honest about your Christian profession and make a stand in terms of it and abandon it and abandon your name.

And then they asked for people to write in and get petitions to the board of trustees of that hospital. When they themselves were circulating it, one of the first things hey encountered was that a man, an athletic coach, a professing Christian refused to sign it. He did not feel it was wise for him to put his name on something like that. But perhaps his wife could do it for them. The wife looked at it and began to tremble and refused.

Now that is the kind of problem we face all over the country on matters that are no great matter as far as requiring moral courage. They were not going to pay a price for their signature, but they were afraid. We have a problem. And this kind of behavior marks all too many Christians when it comes to any petition that deals with any moral issue. They are afraid to sign it.

Otto, do you want to make some general remarks?

[Scott] Well, yes. As you know, I hardly ever bring anything in to quote from, but I am making an exception on this, because this ... it is a citation from an article I just wrote the other day for the Southern Partisan magazine.

“De Tocqueville’s name is often cited, but few have actually read him. If they had they wouldn’t like much of what he had to say about America and Americans. He said, for instance, ‘I know of no country where is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America, where the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion. Within those barriers an author may write what he pleases. But woe to him if he goes beyond them. Not that he is in any danger of an auto-da-fe but he is exposed to continued obloquy every sort of compensation, even that of celebrity is denied to him.’”

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now we know the truth of that.

[Rushdoony] Yes. The modern age has seen progressively a decline of faith which means a loss of a fear of God. And whenever men cease to fear God, they begin to fear men. And democracy in particular furthers the fear of man, because with democracy you have the rise to power, supreme power of the democratic majority and then the fear of that democratic majority so that people today are unwilling to speak out on issues, because they fear what people may think of them.

[Scott] Well, I think we should back up just a little. This is a real fear of a real situation. People have been ruined in this country. They have lost their jobs. They have been disgraced simply because they were labeled this or that.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] I mean today Mr. Meese resigned from Washington. He has been under investigation ever since he arrived in Washington. His nomination as attorney general took one solid year. I just got a flash on the TV news of that great wonderful person Senator Biden and his scathing comments on Meese during the nomination hearings. Senator Metzenbaum, Senator Kennedy and I have a whole no great grief for Meese. He is not one of my heroes, by any means. But to ruin somebody gratuitously because you have the authority to do it and to do it with impunity, is a disgrace to any civilization and a disgrace to the people who allow it to be done.

But lets’ get to the facts. The facts are there are private dossiers collected by various groups in this country. People are tracked. Clipping services keep track of them. Letters are sent anonymously to various editors and publications demanding that names of individuals be dropped or their columns be dropped or their articles be dropped or their jobs the taken away from them. We have an ongoing blacklist and we have head it for many years.

[Rushdoony] That is right, Otto. But that isn’t anything new in history. And it is something that is very real, indeed. And I have been, you might say, two or three or four or five times in my 72 years when highly placed people in church and state have found me objectionable and have done their best to smear me and have very definitely hurt the work I have been doing. And I heard just this evening from someone who is being subjected to the same kind of smear, because people don’t like his courageous and outspoken position.

But that is a part of life. There are penalties for everything and I don’t believe we should be surprised at the fact that this kind of thing goes on.

What does surprise me is that people are so cowardly.

[Scott] Well, it doesn’t surprise me that they are. I have... think that I have been at many social gatherings in this country where if I disagreed with the host, the hostess gets real upset, comes running across the room with a cookie tray right away, wants to... wants to change the subject...

[Rushdoony] Or...

[Scott] And is afraid that I am there picking a fight with her husband over some subject or another. I am spoiling the party.

You don’t have to go very far to make waves in this country.

No. I remember at one of the first committee meetings I attended in a large corporation where the chairman had an idea and everyone liked it except me. I said, “I don’t agree. I think it is a dumb idea.” And the shock in the place was absolutely... well, it almost broke your ear drums.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] But there are real sanctions. And...

[Rushdoony] Oh, they are very real.

[Scott] And... and... and they are very real and these are real punishments.

[Rushdoony] Yes. But, you see, we cannot have a risk free world.

[Scott] That is true. But we should have a world in which the fence and some occasion defend. We should not be bereft of the kind of defenders that other civilizations developed. It isn’t enough in my opinion to defend somebody’s right to speak in the streets if you don’t do anything about a black list.

[Rushdoony] I couldn’t agree more. But, you see, we live in a fallen world. We live in an evil world. And we live in an especially evil time. And I think it is the people on our side who are creating it by their cowardice. Let me illustrate. One of the things that has been a sore point with me over the years has been the cowardice of the clergy. The clergy are kept in line in a number of ways, but an important one is the pension fund. If you break with the church, you lose your pension in many instances. Or you can only draw out what you put in. And yet, perhaps 90 percent of your pension contribution came from the church. You paid income taxes on it, but is suddenly not yours. You only get back what you paid in. And so a great many ministers are afraid to make a stand because, well, I can’t afford to lose my pension.

Now...

[Scott] That is too bad.

[Rushdoony] And if you can’t lose your pension for Christ’s sake, who went to the cross for our sake, you have got to say such people are worthless. They are too cowardly to be fit to be ministers of Christ. But that is a very common thing.

Now I am not arguing for the fact that the church is dealing properly with even those to whom it gives pensions. The treatment of ministers who are retired on inadequate pensions facing inflation, nuns on the Catholic church is a scandal, a national scandal.

[Scott] Yes, it is.

[Rushdoony] All the same, if we want the blessing of God, we have got to say, “Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me God.” And we don’t have very many who are ready to do that, in church or state and especially in the academic community.

[Scott] Well, not just there. I experienced it many, many years in the trade union movement. I have sat down at what used to be called faction meetings with four or five men to determine on a course of action and it would be agreed at the end of the faction meeting that we would propose this and propose that. And then I would have the experience of getting up and proposing it and seeing the men that agreed upon backing me turn around and vote for the opposition.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Because they didn’t think the matter was going to go over and they didn’t want to be branded with a defeatist position. And in many other respects I think moral courage is in short supply, always has been. Physical courage is something else. But on the other hand, physical courage is very odd, because a man who would rather die than be disgraced. He would step out. I remember seeing a very interesting series of photographs in World War II of an episode in Italy and one of the cities of Italy. There was a sniper. And the sniper had fired onto a balcony of an Italian building and had killed an American soldier. So the lieutenant, trying to locate the sniper, sent four more soldiers out there to be shot until they could locate where the sniper was coming from. And four men went out and were shot rather than say, “I am afraid to go.” And, of course, the discipline of war is such that you can’t say, “I am afraid to go.” You have got to go and that is it.

But what surprises me is that to stand up against the crowd, against the group requires just the kind of courage which very few seem to have.

Now I could understand that in individuals who have no faith, because they simply want to live through the situation and nothing is worth standing up for anyway, although that is not true across the board. You know that young men don’t want to be dishonored and they have faith often, but they don’t even understand.

But more and more I find in American life less and less honest expression of opinions. In fact, it is hardly worthwhile asking a man what his opinion is, because he will chew up the editorials and spit them out at you. He will tell you exactly what the TV news said the night before. He has no opinion. If he does, he is not going to tell you what it is.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now what is the... what is the solution to this?

[Rushdoony] Without faith, without the fear of God, men are going to be afraid of man. And it is the fear of man that governs our world today. Very few people are afraid of God. And the results are devastating.

I recall some years ago, in fact I was, I think, a junior in high school, reading H. G. Wells and for a time there all I read was H. G. Wells.

[Scott] He was all right, but he was depressing.

[Rushdoony] I read everything he wrote. I would do that with writers. I would read one and then read everything. And it wasn’t that I liked Wells, but I found him interesting. And I believe it was in his novel Mr. Britling Sees it Through. There was a sentence on, about page 15, 16, 17, something along there and it was this. “Brave men are men who do the things they are afraid to do.”

And I believe that men have to confront their fears.

[Scott] Well, very many of them I don’t think know how.

[Rushdoony] But you have to confront your fears and line them up against your responsibilities and then act.

[Scott] I went through this health examination when I was about 40 to 41. And it was a period of considerable change in my life. I had fallen out of bed and I had to reorder and reorganize everything and I had to face up to various weaknesses and mistakes and errors in my whole pattern. And I thought, well, I will have to start... stop equivocating. I am going to have to be a lot more honest. And then, of course, the question arose: how do you become more honest? And I thought, well, let’s put it this way. I don’t have to volunteer everything I think and I don’t have to answer every question that is put to me. But if I choose to answer, I will answer honestly.

And every night for a long time I examined myself before I went to bed to see how I had conducted myself according to that yardstick in the course of the day. And a very strange set of things began to happen. First of all, I had more eyeball to eyeball confrontations then I had ever had in all my previous life put together. I never had so many arguments with so many people on so many issues and yet the strangest thing was that I never made so many friends.

And the whole course of my life took a different direction.

[Rushdoony] I think one of the problems today is that there are so many bland people all around us, incapable of making a stand. And therefore not having any character, because character comes from making a stand. And when someone starts making stands, then their character is manifest and they begin to draw people to them, because people like to lean on a strong person. They like to be in the proximity of a strong person.

[Scott] Well, I think they like people whose yes means yes and whose no means no. one of the things, by the way, when I began to tell the truth that is a little bit shocking to me was that I didn’t believe all the noble things that I had previously been saying. And I ... I mean, you know, this business of all men are brothers. I suggest, well, so were Cain and Abel. And what followed from that? In what way does brotherhood change the relationship of your role with other men? And I had to give up a lot of noble nonsense, noble sounding nonsense.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...in order to express what I actually thought. And in some cases I didn’t know that I had thought that.

So you stop acting and you begin to live.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now I think...

[Rushdoony] Good point.

[Scott] ... I think that... I think there is an awful lot of people who grow up in the United States who are never taught to talk, who are never taught to live, who are taught, don’t say that, because of the neighbors. What will the neighbors think? You can’t do this. You are going to school to get a mark. You are not going to argue with the professor. They are sending them to obedience school and they wonder why they come out so strange, because, of course, they don’t know the lessons they are getting in the schools. The lessons are go along lessons.

And the arguments in business school, for instance, are how to be a courtier.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And not how to be a man, not how to be a leader, not how to be a woman. These are spiritual qualities. And it is rather difficult to beat up on these individuals who are so benighted and so ignorant, who are absolutely blindfolded by the American system. It is a good system in many respects but because we grow up speaking in euphemisms, lest we offend, a great many people grow up without the ability to speak straight at all. There is an awful lot of people I know if you put a gun to their head and said, “Tell me the truth in the next 10 minutes or I will shoot you,” would not be able to speak at all.

Well, of course we can say this is cowardice, but it is also something beyond cowardice. It is absolutely the result of conditioning. This country has been conditioned for a Totalitarianism.

[Rushdoony] We have had state education, state schools turning out cookie cutter people. And at one time when in much of the West, for example, not too long ago if you were outside the cities it was home schooling, because there were no roads that were worth anything so that people could go to a school. And as a result a strong person was developed. He was trained in relationship to his parents and their faith, not in terms of the peer pressure of a large group of young people or children his age, not in terms of the pressure of teachers.

Today, because we have the cookie cutter type of education, peer pressure and group dynamics are the basic factors in the lives of most people.

[Scott] Well, we go back a long way. Now that citation I gave you from de Tocqueville is from the 1830s. The 1830s. And the reason that de Tocqueville made that observation was that he was an aristocrat and he had an aristocratic view of society and he looked at democracy for its faults. And one of the faults that he saw was its lack of creativity and its lack of individual expression. He was looking at a country with no aristocracy.

Of course, if we compare 1830 with 1990, 1988, the level of literacy is almost incomparable and we are astonished to find that he had so such a low opinion of the American people.

[Rushdoony] Well, men like Frederick Jackson Turner with his frontier thesis have been very much criticized in recent years, but all the same, they did have a point. What made America different was that although, let us say it, De Tocqueville’s time, the Atlantic seaboard had a mold and had gelled. There was a constant pressure westward where the old norms no longer mattered, where people were going out on their own and this kept the American society an open society, a changing society. Then when the frontier ended the Pacific coast had been reached, then the Jell-O mold that prevailed in the East caught up with the western movement and now we have ea problem breaking out from that.

I don’t believe it can be done short of an overpowering Christian faith which will take priority in man’s lives above the people, around them and above the norms dictated by the state.

[Scott] Well, de Tocqueville did say at one point and I paraphrase, because I don’t have it precisely in front me, that is that America is a great country because it is a good country. And he was talking about Christian ... Christianity in the United States. And he said America will remain great as long as it is good.

Now this is a country that has lost a great deal of its faith. Now it didn’t lose its faith entirely without some assistance.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] This country has endured the most terrible campaign mounted from within our own society by an intellectual group that hates the American people, hates the American history, hates the American tradition and hates the Christian religion. And everything that that particular elite describes or judges or promotes is from the position of hatred for the rest of us.

Now the result, of course, is that the same as if you and I were to be exposed to somebody who hates us and who were to spend 24 hours a day for the next 20 years telling us in great detail all our faults. It will drive us crazy.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And, of course, the result, the consequences of what we are leading towards are very, very sinister.

[Rushdoony] I take back what I said that, yes, that it will drive us crazy. I think with you and with me, Otto, it will drive us to battle. Do them in.

[Scott] No question. Absolutely no question.

[Rushdoony] Well, we do have a ... a very grim fact in the moral cowardice of people here and the world over. And it is due to the decline of Christian faith and, hence, the inability of people to make a stand for the fear of man.

Nothing is going to change that without a total reordering of the priorities of people when people call themselves Christian. We will say, “As for me and for my house, we will serve the Lord.” When the fear of God will govern their lives.

I think we may not be too far from that day. I think there are signs in the horizon that the American people are growing weary of the kind of leadership we have had and the kind of performance they themselves have been guilty of.

[Scott] I remember that Elmer Davis began a book once and I always look at the beginning of a book and his opening line was, “Don’t let the bastards scare you.”

[Rushdoony] That was a good opening line, not that I ever cared much for Elmer Davis, but that was excellent.

Well, I think we need to recognize that we are today in one of the most volatile eras of all history and therefore changes are going to come and they are going to be explosive.

Otto, I would like to go on to something else now, something that is very curious, because in the films that have been made since World War II we have seen a great many changes, not necessarily for the better by any means, some very deplorable ones. But there has been a curious one. A type of character depicted on the screen very unrealistic, but all courage of an incredible sort. John Wayne was superman in that respect in what he could do, but he was nothing compared to Rambo and the Rambo films and all their imitators and what is it? Arnold Schwarzenegger. So we are getting depictions of macho men with an incredible amount of courage who are like superman who cannot be stopped and this is immensely popular. And it is quite a contrast between what is the average man is and the kind of film that has become so popular in recent years.

Have you any comments on that?

[Scott] Yes, well, first of all, these are caricatures.

[Rushdoony] Of course.

[Scott] They are... they are cartoons which used to be in comic books for dull boys to read. And I never as a comic book reader when I was a boy. I was never that stupid. And I read books. I read regular books.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now the old protagonist, the old hero was somebody who was reasonably fit, who would then find himself up against a villain and the villain would force him inch by inch and step by step to stand up and defend himself. And it was in the emergence of this character that you received a certain amount of hope and, for that matter, model of behavior.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] No nobody is... is built like ... hardly anybody is built like Arnold Schwarzenegger whose biceps are larger than my thighs. And... and I mean he doesn’t look human. It is this tree trunk walking around and Stallone, of course and all the rest. And this is... they actually... I don’t particularly see this as a good development, because it puts matters in the category of pagan demigods.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And it not in human terms in... in fighting against one’s own weakness.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Moreover, it creates the false image of man, the macho man. And it is unrealistic about the moral issues because the answer is always rage and ...

[Scott] That is right.

[Rushdoony] ...doing in people.

[Scott] Well...

[Rushdoony] ...never dealing with the basic moral issue.

[Scott] You remember Burkhart’s comment at the end of the Renaissance. He said, “All honor was lost except vengeance.”

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And every one of these are lynchings. First of al, the hero is put upon and beaten up and ground into the mud and then he comes up like superman and levels everybody. And, of course, there is a dehumanization of the enemy.

There is an awful lot of Americans go around thinking that the... the Soviet Union is governed by stupid red necks. Nothing could be farther from the fact. We are up against probably the subtlest, most intelligent world power that has yet emerged, most ruthless and unscrupulous and subtle and dangerous. And to underestimate the enemy is the beginning of defeat. To underestimate another man is to give him a chance to outwit you. To assume that the other guy is dumber than you are is a dangerous assumption. I prefer men to think that I am dumber than I am, because, of course, I can disillusion them, but I can’t do anything if they think I am smarter than I am. They are bound to be disillusioned.

No, I think your... to look at the movies as educational vehicles which is really what they are. And what are they teaching? They are teaching unbridled sex. You know, it isn’t enough to carry them to the bedroom door. You have to carry them into the bed and under the bed. And it gets to be a reptilian sort of thing. Who... who cares?

The... the lack of morals, the lack of true courage and the lack of true challenge.

Now I understand they brought out a movie The Hanoi Hilton. I haven't seen it, about the sufferings of our prisoners of war in the hand of the North Vietnamese. The distributors refuse to handle it. They said it was inflammatory. These are the same people who had put out Schwarzenegger.

[Rushdoony] Well, very few people realize that the drama in Shakespeare’s day was full of blood and sex. It was like Hollywood movies today with supermen striding across the stage who were really unbelievable.

[Scott] Oh, I disagree. I know you don’t like Shakespeare. And I do.

[Rushdoony] Well, I am not talking about Shakespeare. I am talking about Shakespeare’s day.

[Scott] Oh, Shakespeare’s day.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Oh, that is a bit different.

[Rushdoony] For example, Chapman...

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] His Bussy D'Ambois.

[Scott] That is right.

[Rushdoony] Bussy D'Ambois at the conclusion when he is stabbed and dies is shocked and indignant to find that he can bleed and that he is human and that he can die. And in one play after another you have inhuman men, immoral men and a total contempt for life and for morality so that the age of Shakespeare which in many respects could have been better titled the age of Ben Johnson, because he better characterized it...

[Scott] Well...

[Rushdoony] ...ended up in immoralism.

[Scott] I wrote about it, as you know, in the... in the book on James. And you have to remember some of the things that they witnessed. They witnessed England going from Catholicism to Protestantism, back to Catholicism, back to Protestantism. And they saw the most outstanding people in the country switching this way, that way, this way and that way all in one lifetime all bending.

[Rushdoony] Right.

[Scott] I remember Sir James Melville’s advice to young courtier in Scotland. Cringe low, he said. And there was a lot of cringing and there were a lot of, you know, the tower of London was nothing to laugh at.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] They had the rack. They had the headman’s sword. They had the gibbet. They were drawn and quartered. Their intestines were pulled out and set on fire before they were killed. And it was such a terrible period.

[Rushdoony] Well, the dramatists did not make it better, because they were too ready to express their contempt of everything that would have counteracted it.

[Scott] Well, I don’t know. I think the characterizations... some of Shakespeare’s characterizations of power in office were dead on target.

[Rushdoony] Well, Shakespeare’s characterizations usually had depth. Those of the others did not.

[Scott] What I know of The Jew of Malta and some of those other horrors.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I would say the only play that really he had some value of a major sort other than Shakespeare’s was Ben Johnson’s Volpone, a very cynical view of human nature, but well done.

[Scott] I’ll.... I’ll say it was. Yes, well, I saw Jackie Gleason... Jackie Gleason playing an updated version of that, you know.

[Rushdoony] Oh.

[Scott] ...in San Diego and it was terribly well done. And he carried it off very well, too. And then I think before the run in San Diego was over he got sick and was rushed to the hospital. You know, he was enormous.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And had three wardrobes for his different sizes.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And... and they rushed him into the hospital and the doctor came out and said, “This is astonishing.” He said, “This man doesn’t know he is human.” He couldn’t believe that he was sick. He thought it was some sort of a mistake.

Well, of course, he is gone now.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] But it was a very good piece of casting.

[Rushdoony] But the point I was going to make was that there is an analogy between that era and our won.

[Scott] Oh, yes.

[Rushdoony] In that the violence that the Renaissance exalted in, violence of violence sake is again with us.

[Scott] Yes. Well, we have the concentration camps, which they had then. They had the galley slaves. They had the spies, the double and triple and quadruple agents and they had all these elaborate conspiracies and combinations and recombinations. They had an ideological war between not only the Protestants and the papacy, but the divisions of Protestantism with its ... within itself and the divisions within the Church at the same time.

[Rushdoony] Well, I think in the face of all that, one of the most impressive facts is the triumph of Puritanism. Numerically they were not as strong as other religious groups within the country. They did not have the highly placed connections that some other groups did. But what they did have was moral courage. And they were ready to die for their faith. They were ready for anything and they did not flinch.

As a result, they were the group that triumphed.

[Scott] Well, this is shrewd... shrewd, sad. When matters of great issue are involved, men will not accept the results of a vote.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] That... if there are 10 men determined on one side not to live any further in a lie and wiling to risk their lives and 20 men on the other that will cast their vote against it, but will not risk their skin, the 10 will give the law to the 20.

Now America has forgotten that.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Because when it comes right down to buttons that is what it is all about. If you are not willing to stand up and die, you are not able to live.

[Rushdoony] And today men are not willing to put their name on a petition.

[Scott] Well, they are afraid of losing their job and losing a job can be a very exhilarating thing. I have lost lots of them.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, I have lost some, too. But in this case it was a petition to the board of a church related hospital. Imagine.

[Scott] Ridiculous. Ridiculous.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And they were afraid.

[Scott] Well, I don’t know what they were afraid of really. With all that I said about the blacklists and all the rest of it. The average individual is too obscure to be the target of any great enemies. I remember reading in the New York Times and I think I have brought it up before because it impressed me. Some priest of a very large parish in a fairly respectable district of New York—and they still have a few, I suppose. This was 20 years ago anyway—asked about the people who attended his church, very large, well attended church. He said they are very good people. He said these are middle class, lower middle class, middle middle class people. He said they worked and they paid their taxes and they pay their bills and they come to church.

And the reporter said, “Well, is it... have any great problems?”

Well, he said, “The greatest problem that I have in dealing with these people is to convince them that they are living in a state of grace.” He said, “They all seem to be oppressed with a sense of guilt.” And yet he said none of them are doing anything wrong. And that is true of the whole United States.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] These people that had a burdened of guilt placed on them which is absolutely insane.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now some of my forbearers were general merchants on the Island of Jamaica. And you know what a general merchant in the Island of Jamaica handled. The handled rum, sugar and blacks. I didn’t. I didn’t. The establishment was gone long before I arrived. No guilt of mine.

And what is this ancestral guilt or ethnic guilt...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Or social guilt or class guilt. And I think people are just literally scared out of their senses.

And the labels that are thrown around. I went back to Mr. Meese on the nominating thing. Tonight on the telecast it quoted the head of the NAACP as saying that Meese was a dyed in the wool racist.

Now that is nonsense, absolute, utter insanity.

[Rushdoony] And Meese probably won’t have the gumption to take them to court for that.

[Scott] He didn’t. He didn’t. He didn’t then and that was when he was the at the nominating hearing.

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes. That is right.

[Scott] And nobody takes people to court for this kind of slander.

[Rushdoony] Apparently because the Supreme Court no longer considers slander a problem. But also because people don’t want to bother.

[Scott] Well, of course the courts ought to stop sentencing people of contempt of the judges, then. If none of the rest of us can be slandered, why is a judge immune?

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes. And it is pretty hard not to have anything but contempt for a good many of the judges on the bench. And I say that very seriously.

[Scott] Well, there was a move some time back to keep track of the judges and to monitor their decisions. And I think it sort of faded away. But it was a very good idea.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And it really should be done, because I read in the paper of some outrageous decision and the judge is never named.

[Rushdoony] Yes and virtually every trial except sensational murder trials is held in an empty courtroom.

[Scott] Well, the people don’t believe there is any justice and they are not going to be bothered watching it.

[Rushdoony] Apparently. And there should be monitors in those court rooms, because the judges having no one there become less and less restrained and more and more arrogant. I told you some time ago of a very serious religious liberty trial in a Virginia courtroom, newly built. And there were two rows of seats for spectators in the back.

[Scott] Two.

[Rushdoony] Enough for 24 people. So what was being done was step by step with a newer courtrooms as they are constructed.

[Scott] Pushing the people out.

[Rushdoony] Pushing the people out. And nobody is alarmed by it. Now that fact I have mentioned again and again to various people and I don’t get any reaction to it.

[Scott] Well, I noticed is a long time ago. When I was running the rubber book the head of the rubber manufacturer’s association had to defend the term manufacturers. Now tires have become so safe that the police have stopped recording the state of the tire when there was an accident. And then Ralph Nader, who while he was on Rubicoff’s payroll wrote his book on Safe at Any Speed and against the safety of tires amongst other things. So a big {?} began about safe tiers. And the reaction of the rubber manufacturers and the tire manufacturers was that they would set up testing labs of their own to prove that that tires were tested and standardized and safe. And I remember Mr. Ormsby took me to lunch at the Union League club and told me this idea, because I was the editor of the trade book and said, “What do you think?”

And I said, “Well, I think it comes pretty close to checking yourself into jail so you won’t be fined.” I said, “Why don’t you just go to court and say Ralph Nader and the rest of these people are insane and you are traducing some honest manufacturers and we are going to break you of this nonsense.”

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well, he said, “Nobody would put up the money for that.”

[Rushdoony] All one has to do is to recall the 30s and how tires were blowing out on you all the time for no excuse.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Just... they blow out on you.

[Scott] They were cheap... cheaply made.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And that rarely happens now.

[Scott] Well, the whole idea of fighting. Now that was the tire industry. That was the rubber industry. The next industry to come under the gun was the oil industry that I was involved with. And then, of course, now we have the defense industry which is under the gun. In none of these instances do any of the other industries pay any attention. It is as though each business and each industry believes that he is living in a vacuum. It is not me. It is the tire guy.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] I am... I am not in oil. I am in something else.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] So divide and conquer by the government. And in the meantime nobody stands up.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] Even the clergy doesn’t stand up.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] It doesn’t stand up against people who get up and condemn the Church. The Catholic Church never responds.

[Rushdoony] The churches Catholic and Protestant today lack moral courage because they are weak in the faith. They no longer have a strong sense of doctrine. They no longer are afraid of God. If they were, they would behave differently.

[Scott] Well, a good fight is always interesting to see. And if you remember your fighting days, once you get involved in a fight, your blood gets up and there is a certain amount of pleasure involved. I ... I don’t really mind an argument. It... it doesn’t make an enemy out of me for life if a fellow says he doesn’t agree. He might even convince me if he has got good reasons.

[Rushdoony] Well, Otto, we have gone into the lack of moral courage, the prevailing cowardice. I think we ought to touch on what is beginning to happen, because I think there are signs of something else taking place.

I was very much delighted to learn recently in the past week or so that when in Mexico at their museum of modern art an art exhibit depicted Mexico’s most revered image of the virgin Mary, the virgin of Guadeloupe as Marilyn Monroe and the baby Jesus as soccer ball. The exhibit had to close because the people stormed the museum in anger.

Now that is good.

[Scott] That is more like it.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And, again, to cite something else. Archbishop Raymond Hudhausen in Seattle has long been a problem with his left wing proclivities and his readiness to be indulgent of a great many things.

Well, recently one woman on a local TV talk show said a priest in her parish was a pedophile, a child molester. And immediately, because of the reaction it created Archbishop Hudhausen had to do something about it. And he invited people to come forward and name any other priests.

Now the priest that he did suspend... well, he didn’t suspend him, but at least he named him as guilty, has been active for 20 years. Then in Milwaukee, a diocese was being sued because of some child molesters. And when Archbishop Weakland charged that some adolescent victims are sexually very active and aggressive and are responsible for the problem, the Catholic women of the community rose up in protest and really ticked them off.

Then we find that one or two pastors have been jailed for their actions, their protests against abortion clinics that he council of Chalcedon has urged under the editorship of David Kudrum that police refuse to arrest picketers at abortion clinics. And one policeman not only refused, but resigned after some years on the force rather than submit to that kind of requirement.

In another community two policemen also refused to make such arrests. In other words, we are beginning to see examples of moral courage among Christians, Catholics and Protestants from coast to coast. And many, many more incidents could be cited.

I get accounts of them regularly sent in by someone or other. And it is a delight to know that this is happening. And it is not great names who are doing this.

[Scott] It never is.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] It never is because you don’t get a great name if you behave that way. That is the note we started on.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Exactly.

[Scott] And even... everything is denied, said de Tocqueville, including even celebrity. But I see where a writer received—you talk about clergymen—you know, and I think about writers. A writer received 150,000 dollar advance from a very big publisher, I think Random House. I am not sure. To do a book on Senator Kennedy’s cover up of the Chappaquiddick tragedy. And after he turned the book in with all kinds of documentation and so forth, because apparently Kennedy’s cousin Gargan...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...has been talking. The publisher backed out of the contract and demanded the 150,000 advance back and got it back. And now {?}, not my favorite publisher has republished the book. So that is going to come out.

Now the Kennedys are still very powerful people, because they were able to get Random House or whoever it was to kill the book.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And this is no coincidence.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And now the book is going to come out. Of course, it is going to come out from a publishing house that is outlawed, who... whose books are never stocked in any book store from one end of the United States to the other.

[Rushdoony] That is right.

[Scott] From one end of the United States to the other, that company has been black listed.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] From many, many years.

[Rushdoony] Any independent publisher including our Ross House books...

[Scott] Yes. But at least the book is coming out.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And I look forward to getting a copy and I will have something to say about Mr. Kennedy after that ... after I see that documentation.

[Rushdoony] Well, we have just about a minute and a half left. Is there anything further that you would like to add, Otto?

[Scott] Well, be of good cheer. This is an awfully big country, 240 odd million people.

[Rushdoony] Very odd.

[Scott] It is hard to characterize that many people. There is a great many people in this country that are just too busy with their own affairs to look around. They don’t feel any particular challenge. They don’t feel any particular need. And therefore the ship of state is drifting into a swamp.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Those who are aware are alert.

[Rushdoony] And I believe the number of those who are alert and who are manifesting moral courage is growing.

I am excited by the number of people who do not back down when they are faced with prison for having a home school or a Christian school or a day care center. It is really exciting to see that numerous people across the country are saying, “Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me God.”

We live in a marvelous time of opportunity and there are some Christians in spite of the moral cowards who are making a stand. And the future is governed not by majorities, but by God’s minorities.

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

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