From the Easy Chair

Presuppositions for Education

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 24-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161AL70

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161AL70, Presuppositions for Education from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 176, July 18, 1988.

Again we have Sam Blumenfeld with Otto and Gary Mose and myself. And we are going to continue our discussion of education but from a somewhat different angle.

Education will be governed by what a person believes and it makes all the difference in the world whether or not you believe in God or have evolution. If you believe in God, you believe that law, power, morality and life come from above, come from God. But if you believe that all things have evolved out of a primeval chaos, then all law and morality, everything comes from below. And you have what Dr. Cornelius Van Til called integration downward into the void. He said, “Man is then understood in terms of the child, the child in terms of the unconscious and the human being in terms of the animal, the animal in terms of ancient primeval drives and so on.” Integration downward into the void.

Now some years ago there was a very telling observation made by the then editor of The New Republic. This was in the post World War I era. Kenneth Burke in Permanence and Change predicted that by the middle of the century the United States would perhaps see a major revival of Occultism and Satanism. He wasn’t sure of the timing, but he knew it was coming, because, he said, “Men need grace. And if they don’t seek grace from God, they are going to seek demonic grace.”

Well, this means that a Christian school is going to look for power and law and morality from God, from above, but a state school that is based on evolution is going to seek it from below.

So with that lesson from the discussion, who would like to go first? Sam, would you like to?

[Blumenfeld] Yeah, I... you are right about the... the... what evolution does in having the child look downward, because, you know, we often talk about the... the link, the missing link, the... the evolutionists are always talking of the missing link and in evolution the child link is downward towards the animal kingdom, while in a Christian school the child’s link is toward heaven, toward God and it is upward. So you have the upward reach versus the downward plunge. And... and, you know, there is no end to how far down you can go once you get on the path towards depravity. And since man is sinful by nature to appeal to that.. that sinful nature, to actually encourage it, I think, by having the... the youngsters emulate the animal kingdom, only aggravates things and... and really puts the child in... in terrible danger and at terrible risk of damnation.

So we are actually... when we are teaching evolution in the schools and telling children that they are little animals and that their connection is downward to the animal kingdom, we are relegating them to hell. We are damning them.

[Scott] Well, actually they are... they are teaching a confused set of ideas. For instance, the environmental movement is up in arms to save the snail darter or the black footed ferret or et cetera. Now why should an evolutionist be against the extinction of a species?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Since evolution is based on the fact that species become extinct and are replaced by a more complex and better equipped organisms. Then there is the idea that all the forms of life that are in existence are equally sacred, which is Animism. And what you are really talking about once you put together the Animism and once you put together the worship of animals which is what is involved or the idea that everything is a sentient being, the trees have spirits, a la, the Greeks, the flowers, the grass and whatever is that you have the rise of ancient forms of religion that were well known in the Middle East and well known in the time of Jesus. They mysteries, the ... the orgies...

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Scott] ... the idea of the sex cults and the belief in astrology, plus the kinship with the animals, plus the idea that sex is sacred.

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Scott] And... and the whole thing. So what you are ... you are... you are... what the kids are getting is everything that Christianity at one time overcame. So you push Christianity off the board first and all the rest of this comes out.

[Blumenfeld] Yeah, you... you... you revert to pre Christian Paganism. But another thing that is wrong with evolution is that in its... it is a... it is a false doctrine. In the first place it preaches that you can get something out of nothing, that the earth came out of nowhere. They don’t know where. They...

[Scott] By accident.

[Blumenfeld] Yes, by accident. Then they tell us that living matter came out of non living matter.

[Scott] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] Evolved or emerged and Pasteur proved that that can’t happen. I mean, the whole germ theory is based on ... on that. And then they tell us that one species can develop or evolve into another species. They have never been able to demonstrate that in a laboratory.

[Scott] No.

[Blumenfeld] For example, they have been experimenting with ... with fruit flies for years, because fruit flies, you know, just have... and they tried everything.

[multiple voices]

[Scott] ...with radium and everything else...

[Blumenfeld] Right, to develop into another species. But they keep becoming more fruit flies.

[Scott] {?}

[Blumenfeld] And, you know, and so because they haven’t found the missing link and... and they have millions of fossils in museums and they haven’t found the missing link, so now they call it some sort of... what is the term that they ... that they now... punctuated equilibrium that suddenly new species appear and that is a result of punctuated equilibrium. So they know or even believe in evolution, but they preach it, despite the fact that ... that it hasn’t been proved in the laboratory or through fossils or... or through any other means.

[Scott] I know, but when it was ... when it appeared in 1859 and Origin of the Species, it was accepted as proof that God did not exist. And it is still the belief of the school teachers that it proves that God does not exist.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And it is their ... it is their rationale for keeping God out of education.

[Blumenfeld] Ah, but you...

[Rushdoony] That is its appeal.

[Blumenfeld] Rush, maybe you can answer this question. But there are Christians who say, “Well, maybe that was God’s method.” You have... have you ever...

[Rushdoony] Oh, boy.

[Blumenfeld] ...heard of Christians who say, “Yes, I accept evolution because, well, maybe that was God’s way of creation”?

[multiple voices]

[Rushdoony] A good many of the Christian colleges teach theistic evolution. Well, one scientists, a man who had won nine, 10, 11 international prizes in genetics told me that scientifically it was more credible to have special creation in six days than to try to mix two alien concepts of chance, variations in evolution with God somehow behind the whole thing. He said it just didn’t gel. They were two alien ideas. And I believe that the was right philosophically. It doesn't hold.

[Mose] Well, this phrase that Rush used at the beginning, integration downward into chaos, I believe it was.

[Rushdoony] Into the void.

[Mose] Into the void, no? It reminds me of part of your formal discussion which I heard recently, Sam, when you were talking about the growth of death education seems to me that that relates to that concept of integration downward into the void. Maybe you can share with the tape audience what is happening in death education these days.

[Blumenfeld] Well, death education is the... is the new... the newest of the great fads in public education that is part of the affective domain. They are teaching children or to write their own obituaries, to plan their own funerals, to choose the music for their funerals. They take children to funeral parlors on field trips. Some of the kids try out the coffins. One mother told me that her daughter actually watched a mortician embalm a course.

[Mose] Really?

[Blumenfeld] Oh yes.

[Rushdoony] Oh yes.

[Blumenfeld] This is going on all over the United States. As a matter of fact, the editor of a conservative, very conservative journal sent his child to a public school. And I warned him. You had better be careful. These things are going on. I suppose he didn’t believe me, but that child came home in the second grade with an arithmetic problem based on the reading of an obituary. And after one lecture a young man came up to me. It was a young adult and he told me that when he was in high school his math teacher took them to a cemetery, took the class to a cemetery and he said that that particular experience had left a black spot in his heart that he could not get rid of.

[Scott] Well, yes.

[Blumenfeld] And, you know, that was something that remained permanent. And so this... this playing with death is a very dangerous business.

[Scott] What is their purpose?

[Rushdoony] They are equating death and life as equally valid. They are, in effect, teaching them that a life is not worth living. And to me it is an appalling fact that parents are not breaking down the doors of the schools to protest. Fifty years ago they could not have done that sort of thing.

[Scott] Oh, they wouldn’t dare.

[Rushdoony] They wouldn’t have dared.

[Blumenfeld] Now they are getting away with it and it gets... it gets more morbid all the time. I have seen these manuals...

[Scott] What have they developed a slave population?

[Blumenfeld] I think what...

[Rushdoony] This is the world over this is happening.

[Blumenfeld] Yes. But, you know, as ... as Rush has pointed out and according to the Scripture it says they who hate me love death.

[Scott] Well, yes.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] And the schools hate Jesus Christ and they love death.

[Scott] Well, they hate God.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Mose] And at the very same time communities can’t figure out why we have this tremendous increase in teenage suicide.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] And it is a result of the fact that they are teaching two lethal things. They are teaching the children to hate life and love death.

[Rushdoony] And the editorial writers of the newspapers as they comment about the rising tide of suicide and call for studies, never tell the readers they were educated for this goal.

[Blumenfeld] Right?

[multiple voices]

[Scott] Well, this explains the... the... the plunge into drugs.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] Sure.

[Rushdoony] It is a way of dying.

[Scott] Well, it is... it is...

[Rushdoony] Sometimes.

[Scott] It is temporary oblivion. It is... it is a release from worry. You know, life has its pains. And if you are alive and sober you feel things. I ...

[Blumenfeld] You know, there was a ... a... there is a high school at west of Boston where they have had a whole spate of suicides and I decided to visit that high school and find out why the kids were killing themselves. And I walked into the principal’s office and I asked him, “Why are so many of your kids committing suicide?” And he said, “We don’t know. We just don’t know.”

Well, then I asked, “Do you teach death education?”

He said, “Oh, yes.”

I said, “How long?”

He said, “Oh, for about 12 years.”

So I said, “Well, who teaches death education?”

And he told me, “Our health education teacher.”

So I said, “Well, can I interview him?”

And he said, “Sure, why not?”

And so he called down the health education teacher, a young man in his early 40s, I suppose. And we went up to the school library. He gave his class some... some make work and I asked the... the man. I said, “Why are the kids committing suicide in your school?”

He said, “We just don’t know.”

I said, “Well, what books... what textbook do you use for your... for your death education?”

And he showed me this Random House textbook that had a very big chapter on death education with a big thing on suicide. And I asked him, “Isn’t it possible that some youngsters are, you know, react poorly to this sort of thing? That some youngsters may be allergic to death education?”

He said, “Oh, no. Oh, no. Death education does not have ... can’t possibly have a bad effect on children.”

Now how could he have known that? You see, he couldn’t have known it, but he had to say that, because if he admitted that even one child committed suicide because of something they were teaching in the class, he would... they would have to stop it.

Well, then I asked him, “Are things going to get better or worse?”

And he answered, “Well, what do you mean by better or worse?”

[Rushdoony] Are those esoteric words?

[multiple voices]

[Blumenfeld] Yes, I said, “Well, by better I mean fewer suicides or an end to the suicides.”

And his reply was, “Well, that is a matter of opinion if that is better or worse.”

Well, I left that school. I was just shocked. But then I began to understand what he meant. You see, they are teaching the children that suicide is a viable alternative to your problems.

[Scott] Yes. A solution.

[Blumenfeld] And if some kids are committing suicide, that means they are learning the lesson.

[Rushdoony] You remember Saturday, Otto, we were discussing on our way to San Jose and back, the fact the Islamic world went into a decline as it went into drugs.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] And at first some rulers fought the drug culture, but little by little they came to accept it because it created a docile population. Not a problem free population, but a population that was not rebelling, not overthrowing the authorities.

Well, today we are creating a drug culture that is incapable of any organized activity, only to destroy itself.

[Scott] Well, yes. And do something to get the money to get the drugs. And what, of course, I have been puzzled about what I would... have been calling myself the growing cowardice of the American people, the lack of courage, lack of expression. That doesn’t mean lack of hostility, it doesn’t mean lack of crime, but there are fantastic amounts of crime being committed against defenseless women. And the men aren’t doing anything about it. And the police are not doing anything about it.

[Blumenfeld] But do you know what has happened? The American people have become impotent, neutralized. You see, what happens when you keep bombarding people with conflicting stimuli like Pavlov dogs...

[Scott] T\hey get so they are free...

[Blumenfeld] Yeah, they can’t do anything, because if they go to the left that is undesirable. If they go to the right that is undesirable, so better to do nothing. That is why the American public no longer reacts. Have you noticed how you can do anything now and there is no reaction? I mean, anything goes.

[Scott] Well, if you go to a movie, if you have been to the movies lately the audience is scary.

[Blumenfeld] Yeah.

[Scott] It laughs at the wrong places.

[Blumenfeld] Yes. Do you also notice that the Soviet Union is now importing this rock music?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] To pacify the young people. And pretty soon I am sure they are going to even encourage drugging the young kids, because, as you say, it... it creates a docile population and they are running out of ways to handle...

[Scott] This is what Strangler called the {?}. And the age of the magi, you remember?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And here we have a shaman appearing, televangelists. They are really shamans. These are types that arise in the age of ... of the masses. They ... they are sort of magicians. They are not theologians. They are not Christian. I mean, I... I listened to Jimmy Swaggert several times for almost five minutes and I ...

[Rushdoony] Oh.

[Scott] ...had to fall back. I couldn’t stand it.

[Blumenfeld] Well...

[Scott] And... and we have got these types that are emerging. They don’t make any sense.

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Scott] But great music. And, of course, they have a combination of immorality and great spiritual potentials.

[Blumenfeld] Well, I know Rush the other day was talking about this star system that has developed among ministers in the United States that has been detrimental to Christianity because it ... the... the Christians have become passive, a passive audience responding to a ... a ... to these great stars up there, these great figures who then, of course, turn out to have clay feet as... as usually happens.

[Mose] Yeah. Educators are the same type.

[Blumenfeld] Yeah. But getting back to ... to education to the evolution in education, there is so much from the process that is based on evolution. For example, the aim of psychology is all derived from the theory of evolution and it permeates every aspect of the public school curriculum. Then you have eugenics which is also derived from evolution, the idea that you can create a super race of better people through genetic engineering. And one of the reason why blacks are getting such an inferior education in the United States is because the progressives relegated the blacks to vocational education. They said they simply didn’t have the intellectual capacity for an academic education so that we might as well turn them into, you know, servants and manual laborers ...

[Scott] In this age of integration?

[Blumenfeld] Oh, no. This happened.... this happened early in the century when eugenics was very big.

[Scott] Oh, yes. I see.

[Blumenfeld] You remember?

[Scott] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] But those policies were set then.

[Scott] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] And they are still...

[Scott] Still used.

[Blumenfeld] Still used, but nobody knows where they came from. They assume that that is the way things are done. And the use of Pavlovian techniques is also very much in the schools. For example, the look say method depends on Pavlovian repetition, conditioning techniques in teaching reading.

So the... the... the ... the theory of evolution is so totally within the system, it is not something that is simply taught in biology, Rush.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] It just... it is ... permeates the entire system.

[Rushdoony] It is the religion of public education.

[Scott] It is one of the reasons that history has been brushed off the table.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Because the theory being if it is old, it isn’t as good as what is new. Therefore, history means part of the past. It is of new value.

[Rushdoony] It was more than 25 years ago that Stanford relegated, for example, Roman history to the Latin department. It was not a part of the history department, per se.

[Scott] It was about the same time that Columbia University cut off the Middle Ages. It went from Rome to 1660 and... and... and dropped everything in between.

[Blumenfeld] You know, it is interesting, Rush, how science today is... is based on evolution, creationism is kept out of the schools. And yet our great scientists, Newton, for example, was a... not only a great Christian, but he also realized that science provided us the means to understand God’s order, because he saw an order in the universe and the early Christian scientists saw in all of the universe and now we are told that we have a chaotic universe. Let me just prove what Newton said about the planets. He said, “This most beautiful system of sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the council and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. This being governed all things, not as the soul of the world, but as the Lord over all.” Now that was said by, you know, by Isaac Newton, the scientist.

[Scott] Well, you know, the last 50 years of his life all of his writings are in the British museum in Latin and have never been translated, because he concentrated on the Bible and especially on the Old Testament feeling that that was the repository of all scientific knowledge. And has never been translated because it has been assumed every since his death that he wasted his time.

[Rushdoony] They actually say sometimes that he was a bit dotty and that is why he confined himself increasingly to that kind of writing.

[Blumenfeld] But, of course, he wasn’t the only one. Leibniz said, “It is especially in sciences that we see the wonders of God, his power, wisdom and goodness.” So, you know, Leibniz. I could go on. There is Kepler. There are others.

[Mose] Edward {?}

[Blumenfeld] Capernaum, Copernicus.

[Scott] Right.

[Blumenfeld] All of these great scientists believed that they were having a view. They were seeing the great order, the great ... the glory that... that God had created. And yet today we are... we are... we tell children that it is chaos. That there is ... it is all accident. That they are the product of accidents and that is why we have abortion. I believe abortion is also a part of the whole...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] ...system based on evolution that bodies are just...

[Scott] That is really an off shoot of genetics.

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Scott] They are catching the amniotic fluid for any imperfections. In that case there will be an abortion, determine the sex of the child in advance and so forth.

[Blumenfeld] Well, that is because...

[Scott] Genetic disorders.

[Blumenfeld] Yeah, right. Thorndike and the others viewed evil as being of genetic origin. In other words, if you had the right genes, you were ok, that evil came out of the bad genes. So just get rid of genetically...

[Scott] That was an offshoot of {?} and some of the others.

[Blumenfeld] Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Scott] ... who felt bad heredity was responsible for certain diseases.

[Blumenfeld] Right, right. Yes.

[Mose] Is there a connection between evolution... the teaching of evolution of these many years in public schools and the rise of what is now called values clarification teaching for? They have... I don’t know they added the word clarification if you want to teach values. I don’t know what the clarification is supposed to mean, but is there a connection between...

[Blumenfeld] Oh, yes...

[Mose] ...teaching... and...

[Blumenfeld] You are ... you are teaching that morals are relative. You see, there are no absolutes. There are no absolutes in... in... in the evolution... in the world of evolution there are no absolutes...

[Mose] Excepting for Hitler.

[Blumenfeld] Right. No moral absolutes and so you have what is known as situational ethics. And values change with civilizations and you have your values. You parents have their values and... and, as you know, the ... the psychologists created these hierarchy of... of values, Kohlberg and ... and... and the others, Maslow’s hierarchy of ... of values and they simply... what they try to do is remove religion from every aspect of life. And so they have got to substitute it with something and they say that Maslow was a very moral person. I mean, you know, that he believed in morality, but he had to find a non divine, a non religious base for it. And so he invented his hierarchy of... of values and, of ours, he says that this is something that you develop and Colbert came out with a... with a ... a varied view of values clarification that is that you have decided what your values were. If you were, for example, you turned out that you are a homosexual, that was your value and so then you ... you went ahead and you could... you affirmed your ... your value publicly. That is why we have gay pride parades these days.

Why do you have, you know, 200,000 homosexuals marching in... in San Francisco these days? Because it is part of values clarification.

[Scott] It is not just to annoy.

[Blumenfeld] No, no. They learned it all in public school, you see.

[Rushdoony] Well, you have to say they learned something public school.

[Blumenfeld] Yeah. But is insidious and it is destructive and it has destroyed our... our civilization.

[Scott] It is killing us all.

[Blumenfeld] Yeah. But the... there... you know, the 10 Commandments are what... were the basis of this country.

[Scott] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] You cannot maintain this civilization on... on the shifting sands of... of moral relativism. You... you... and values clarification.

[Mose] I think the values clarification programs and courses arose out of a necessity or more out of reaction to charges by Christians that...

[Blumenfeld] No, no. They arose out of a deliberate attempt to undermine Christian values.

[Scott] They are an alterative.

[Blumenfeld] Yes. Well, when you read Dewey and the Humanists you discover that they made a concerted effort that this is all preplanned.

[Scott] They knew what they were doing.’

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] That this is not accidental. It is not haphazard, that these are decisions, these are value decisions that were made in the early part of the century by the educators whose intention it was to get religion out of the schools, out of the people and to substitute Capitalism, Individualism and Christianity with Socialism, Collectivism and Atheism or Humanism.

[Scott] Andrew White’s two volumes, the warfare of science against Christianity.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] The history of the warfare of science against Christianity in which he gloated over the fact that that clergy had finally been thrown out of the administration of all the universities.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And that was before the turn of the century.

[Rushdoony] I would like to continue by reading a sentence from Sigmund Freud in a letter to an associate on the 22nd of December, 1897, because this is very essentially tied in to the whole subject of evolution and where you seek you power and your inspiration. And Freud wrote this with a great deal of excitement and delight. And I quote.

“I can scarcely detail for you all the things that resolve themselves into—excrement for me (a new Midas!),” unquote. In other words, even as Midas turned everything into gold with his touch, Freud saw everything turning into excrement at his touch and was excited about it because that was the area of true meaning now.

Well, that, I think, we are seeing in education from the early years on up through graduate school. They have this new Midas touch ala Freud. Everything they touch turns to excrement.

[Blumenfeld] And. ... and the journals of education are full of it. You know...

[Mose] Is this what they mean by B S degree?

[Blumenfeld] Yes. You know, Rush, the graduate schools of education turn out thousands of doctors of education every year and they have become just one great part of the parasitic class in our ... they do nothing, nothing productive. They... they add nothing to our gross national product. They ... they do nothing creative, but they have got to have jobs. They have got to be supported. And I suppose it is like shoveling. But then they fill these journals of education with this worthless drivel.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] That nobody reads, but just fill the stacks of these libraries. You know, have you been through...?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] I am sure, Rush, recently you have been through in a university library and looked a the journals of education. And every month of them more of them and more of them with articles that are not worth reading.

[Rushdoony] Well, in every offbeat field you are getting proliferation of journals. The journals in black studies, the journals in women’s studies. They are increasing at a phenomenal rate and a good many universities seem to feel that they have lost any right to consideration and respect if they don’t have a journal of women’s studies.

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Scott] Well, it has had the same effect, though, in the world of journals, scholarly journals. And now moving into books, that took place in magazines. The business with the magazines was started by McGraw of McGraw Hill who decided that the old fashioned industrial magazine which covered everything in an industry from management to the unions, including the stock’s movement, the stocks and everything else and the leading characters and what not, was more easily promoted if it was broken into the professional categories inside. So you had a magazine for chemists and a magazine for rubber chemists and so forth and so on. So now you have this magazine all splintered all across the board and there is hardly any general publications and those that continue to exist Atlantic, Harpers and what not, only do so under subsidy. They can’t really make a living in the commercial market anymore, because we have now a population that feels that general reading is a waste of time. You have to have... you spend your time reading on something that is going to help you on the job.

Well, you extend this into the university level, into the journals. Everything becomes splintered and you have monographs and so forth. And now it is that way in publishing. If you take a manuscript to a New York publisher he calls in the marketing department and the marketing department wants to know what segment of the market will the book appeal to.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And unless it can be affixed to a particular segment of the market....

[Rushdoony] Exactly.

[Scott] They are not going to publish.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Pat Knopf said to me, “You know, the trouble with your writing, Otto,” he said, “It is not pedantic,” he said, “It is not covered with all those footprints from the academy. On the other hand,” he said, “It isn’t what you would call low brow popular.”

[Blumenfeld] That is right.

[Scott] He said, “You are in between.”

I said, “Well, that is where most people are.”

But he doesn’t publish most people.

[Rushdoony] Yes. The book by James Nichol on God and mathematics was read with considerable interest by a number of publishers who found it exciting reading as you did. But they said it is not tailored to a specific market. They didn’t question...

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] ... the fact that its content was unique, that it was a ground breaking book, but it was not tailored to a specific market and therefore they said regretfully we must say we cannot publish it.

[Scott] Editors do not decide anymore. Marketing men do.

[Blumenfeld] But I see a market for it. I see home schoolers.

[Rushdoony] Oh, of course.

[Blumenfeld] ...who are interested in math.

[Scott] Absolutely.

[Blumenfeld] And... and religion and want to see the connection between the two. I think it is going to be an enormously popular book among home schoolers and Christian schools who have long been seeking some affirmation that mathematics has something to do with... with God’s world.

[Scott] Sure.

[Rushdoony] Otto and I know a very prominent publishers of one of the bigger publishing firms in the United States who is governed by what his salesmen say about a book. The fact that he who is the sole owner of the firm may like a book cuts no ice. He is afraid to say, “Go ahead and publish this book,” if his salesmen say, “We don’t like it.” He doesn’t want to offend them.

[Blumenfeld] Yes. Well, you know, that... that used to be the prerogative of the gentleman publisher of New York who published what he liked. He was usually wealthy and, of course, he considered authors as a sort of stable race horses and you hoped that tone of them would win a race, would become a best seller and would make you a lot of money, but there aren’t too many of those publishers any... any longer. As a matter of fat, they are all gone. What we do have today are a lot of small little publishers that are trying to specialize. But, of course, they can’t get their books into book stores, because the large chains like Walden books and B. Dalton will only handle the accounts of the books of the large firms like Simon and Shuster, or Random House. They don’t deal with these small publishers of which there are many now all over the United States of ... and... and it is... and... it has done an awful job in trying to get the word out to people. That is why there is so much mail order publishing these days.

[Rushdoony] Absolutely.

[Blumenfeld] And that is why you have... you... you have to do it yourself, just as, Rush, you do with Ross House. You have got to take matters into your own hands, because you could spend months, years trying to get a book published by a commercial publisher and then even if they publish it, they won’t sell it.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, today the bookstores, of course, con the publisher and the publisher cons the author.

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Rushdoony] He knows that the author cannot afford to sue him. Then the bookstore tells the publisher, “We can’t sell this book. Shall we return the boxes that we took on consignment?” knowing that that the publisher is going to say, “No, keep them. Just send us a nominal sum.” And you can go into major book stores today and see tables of new books marked down.

[Scott] Oh, yes, yes.

[Blumenfeld] That is their... the remainder operation also which is...

[multiple voices]

[Rushdoony] These are not remainders.

[Blumenfeld] Not remainders.

[Rushdoony] Newly published books.

[Scott] The author doesn’t get any money from remainders.

[Blumenfeld] That is true. That is true. Incidentally, what we have in the United States now is really a kind of two ... a two cultures. You have a Christian culture and your secular culture. Your secular book stores generally don’t handle the books that the Christian book stores handle. You have got your magazine rack in your Walden... Walden books and your B. Dalton. You don’t

see any Christian magazines there. They may have a dozen magazines on crocheting and a dozen magazines on wrestling, but they won’t have a single Christian magazine on the stand so that you really have two distribution systems...

[Scott] Well, we have got...

[Blumenfeld] Two coaches.

[multiple voices]

[Scott] ... the largest Christian ghetto in the world which is occupied by the majority of Americans and they have been put in that ghetto into actual ghetto, literary ghetto and so forth, cultural ghetto by the minority.

[Blumenfeld] That is true. It is because the minority controls the distribution system. It is as simple as that.

[Scott] And it is quite an accomplishment.

[Blumenfeld] Yes. I did want to bring up a point on the... on... on the matter of evolution and the arguments that were used by the Supreme Court to... to turn away or to reject the Louisiana creation science law and the... the ... according to the court, the intent of the 1981 Louisiana law was, quote, “Clearly to advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind,” unquote. And therefore the law violates the First Amendments prohibition on a government establishment of religion.

Now is it an establishment of religion, Rush, to simply bring to one’s attention that the world was created by a supernatural?

[Rushdoony] What they are doing is to establish a religion, Humanism.

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Rushdoony] And say that only Humanism has a legal standing in the United States.

[Blumenfeld] But if that is an establishment of religion, then it equally is unconstitutional.

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes.

[Blumenfeld] Is it not?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] Well, then how do they get away with it?

[Rushdoony] Because they control the courts.

[Blumenfeld] It is as simple as that.

[Scott] Yeah and you ... you don’t have an alternative court.

[Blumenfeld] You mean to say that our Supreme Court is not a mutual arbiter? You mean they are prejudiced?

[Scott] FDR’s book on Pieces of Eight pointed out that one attorney who had the temerity to bring the sound money issue to court four times in a row was disbarred for it.

[Blumenfeld] I see.

[Scott] Now what the founders meant with the establishment of religion was a national church.

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Scott] And the establishment of a religion clause has been stretched now to include a four letter nursery... a four word… sentence nursery prayer, nailing the 10 Commandments to the wall of the classroom. That is establishing a religion.

Now you know that grown men know better than this.

[Blumenfeld] Yes. Of course, they do.

[Scott] And you know that what they are expressing is prejudice. And you know that they are out to deliberately destroy all Christianity in the United States.

[Blumenfeld] Yes. And, you know, that is beautifully demonstrated in Rhode Island where the schools... I forget who it was, but somebody wanted the children in the schools to recite the preamble to the constitution of Rhode Island. And the ... the... what is the ACLU had gone to the court to protest it because the preamble talks about God, the creator. So you can’t even recite the preamble of the Rhode Island constitution in the schools, because now that constitutes an establishment of religion. How far can this go?

[Scott] Well, it can go to the point of total suppression. And that is where it is heading.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] Are we going to get off the in God we trust off the coins?

[Scott] Yes, I am sure. And also the state coats of arms. Some of the states have a cross on the coat of arms and religious statements in Latin.

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Rushdoony] In one county of New Mexico the state... the county seal which had a seal has been abolished by the courts.

[Blumenfeld] I know that in the Pennsylvania Supreme court in the capital at Harrisburg they have a painting over the judge’s seat and the painting is of the Decalogue, of Moses receiving the 10 Commandments. It will be pretty difficult... of course, you can always paint over that, you know.

[Scott] You can paint over that.

[Blumenfeld] And they may very well do that. I mean... I guess I shouldn’t say that, because they are liable to....

[Scott] Right next door to us, Mexico abolished Christianity...

[Blumenfeld] Oh, yeah.

[Scott] ... in its constitution.

[Blumenfeld] Sure.

[Scott] In 1936 Lazaro Cardenas...

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Scott] Had thousands of priests and nuns massacred in Mexico and nobody in the United States ever heard about it.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Blumenfeld] Oh, it was... you know, the School and Society magazine published by {?} reported on what was going on in Mexico.

[Scott] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] Very objectively.

[Scott] Did they?

[Blumenfeld] Yes. He doesn't comment on it, only went through this report that the Christian schools had been closed, the Catholic schools and that religion was forbidden in the Mexican schools. And I suppose they... they use that as a model for what was to come in the United States.

[Scott] The first Communist constitution in the western hemisphere.

[Blumenfeld] Yeah.

[Scott] Was Mexico. And yet most Americans right next door don’t even know is.

[Blumenfeld] Yes. But wouldn’t you say, Rush, that that is all the more reason why Christians should withdraw their children from the public schools? That it is so obviously anti Christian...

[Rushdoony] If they don’t, God will judge them.

[Blumenfeld] I believe that. Absolutely.

[Rushdoony] I don’t enjoy saying that. But I don’t see how you can say anything else.

[Blumenfeld] Yes. Well, what is the percentage of Christian school... or Christian children who are still in the public schools? Would you say that it is over 50 percent?

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes. Oh, yes. However, the good news is that 35 percent of the children of this country are in home schools and Christian schools. 45:12]

[Blumenfeld] Thirty percent?

[Rushdoony] Thirty-five.

[Blumenfeld] Thirty five percent?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] That is amazing.

[Rushdoony] I estimated it is somewhere between 25 and 33, but when Bill Moyer was out here and I was discussing that with him, he said, “I have been authoritatively told it is 35 percent.”

[Scott] They are sitting on that.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] Well, of course, you know there are many Christian families that will not register with the state.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] In other words, they are keeping a low profile. And see...

[multiple voices]

[Scott] Not register the kids?

[Blumenfeld] No. In other words, they don’t ... you see, in many states home schoolers are required to register with the board of education or with the superintendent of education ... of schools. For example in Michigan they estimate that there are between 5000 and 10,000 Christian families that are educating their children at home and only about 400 have actually registered with the state. So...

[Rushdoony] There is another factor. A growing number of Catholic and Protestant parents and a handful of parents who are libertarian are having their babies at home with a midwife and they are not registering the birth of the child. Therefore, the child is legally non existent. Now this is a growing factor.

[Scott] {?} believers.

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And the people who are doing this are amazing. Now some are...

[Scott] Illegal, of course.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It is illegal. Are you supposed to get...

[Blumenfeld] Social security... {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes.

[multiple voices]

[Scott] The IRS gets very involved.

[Rushdoony] Yes, except that the child is not legally alive unless his birth has been registered. So there are ways around it. However, while some of them are very militant people, a great many of them are mild mannered. It is simply their way of saying, “I am not going to join them. I am going to go my way.”

[Scott] Yes. Isn’t it strange?

[Rushdoony] And they are home schooling their children.

[Blumenfeld] Yes, this is a vast grass roots movement.... movement. This is not something that is happening from the top down. It is happening from the bottom up, the rebellion against the whole Humanist public school system and the system in general is coming from the bottom up. That is the amazing thing about it.

[Scott] Well, it is very encouraging. I will... I will withdraw my comment about American slaves.

[Blumenfeld] Oh, well, yeah, you still have the boob tube watchers that... and the so-called couch potatoes...

[Scott] Right.

[Blumenfeld] ...in America, but...

[Rushdoony] You met some of these parents and children.

[Blumenfeld] Sure.

[Rushdoony] You didn't know it, because they don’t carry a flag identifying themselves, but they are non existent people.

[Blumenfeld] Yeah. And they are strongly Christian.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] And they resent this Satanic public school system that wants to force them to hand their children over.

[Scott] Right.

[Blumenfeld] So when they have the combination of satanic schools and government force behind them, you get rebellion like you have never had it before in this country. That is why this Christian grass roots rebellion is something which has not been experienced yet. And I think the NEA and the educators and the bureaucrats are going to be quite surprised when they try to round up these people and try to force them to do things which they ...

[Mose] That is sad.. There is no difference between the way the Christian school movement grow and the home school movement. The Christian schools are obviously visible.

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Mose] And it was easy to identify them or fairly easy and so there was a ... a frontal attack against the Christian schools. The home school movement has grown so quietly and so rapidly and in such massive numbers that... that it reached, I afraid, you used, Sam, the other day was critical mass.

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Mose] It reached that state before anyone has tunneled out of the fact that it is there. And so I don’t think you are going to see the same kind of frontal assault against home schools that you did against Christian schools, but there probably will be a back door attack and I think our have started to see it now in the child because laws.

[Blumenfeld] Oh, yes.

[Mose] Against child abuse laws.

[Blumenfeld] Well, that is one of the reasons why I have... I have organized with some colleagues a national organization called Parents for Inalienable Rights in Education with the acronym PURE.

[Rushdoony] PURE.

[Blumenfeld] The purpose of the organization is to mobilize parents in defense of parental rights so they can fight this business of child abuse laws and the public school establishment and the state education and educators and bureaucrats. And this has to be done. You have got to organize resistance on the nationwide basis. And they have got to understand that they do have inalienable rights. Our... our Declaration of Independence speaks of inalienable rights.

[Rushdoony] Do you want to tell those who are listening how they can join PURE?

[Blumenfeld] Well, yes.

[Rushdoony] Give them the address and information?

[Blumenfeld] The address is in ... in Amarillo. But the simplest way for them to get in touch with PURE at this time, really is to write or call my publisher in Idaho. I don’t have the address of PURE right in front of me, but if they write to PO Box 45161, Boise, Idaho, 83711, and ask for information about PURE, we will make sure that they...

[Rushdoony] To whom do they write the letter?

[Blumenfeld] Well, they can write to ... to the paradigm company.

[Rushdoony] All right.

[Blumenfeld] The paradigm company. At Po Box 45161, Boise, Idaho, 83711.

Let me give the phone number in case...

[Rushdoony] {?}

[Blumenfeld] ... save themselves the time. They can call 208 322 4440. That is 208 322 4440.

[Rushdoony] Why not say a word about your most recent book, because I think they should also be informed abut that?

[Blumenfeld] Oh, The New Illiterate.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] Which has been... which has been put back in the print by the paradigm company. I wrote The New Illiterates back in 1973 to bring up to date the literacy situation. You know, Rudolph {?} wrote his book in 1955 and Jean Schall wrote her book in the 1960s and so by the 70s we still had a reading problem and I wanted to find out why we still had it and so I wrote the book, The New Illiterates. And, of course, things have gotten much worse today. By 1988 the situation is much worse than it was in 1973 and so we have reissued the book with a... with an additional preface to it bringing it up to date. There is one thing in the book, though, that will interest many readers and that is I include a full reprint of the first critique ever written concerning the look say method. And it was written by one of the Boston school masters back in the 1840s which shows you how far back this business goes.

[Mose] Yeah, yeah.

[Blumenfeld] Horace Mann.

[Mose] That was the period.

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Scott] Horace Manna and Charles Sumner and that whole crowd.

[Blumenfeld] Yeah and they introduced the whole word method in the schools of Boston and it was such a disaster that the Boston school masters rebelled against it and they wrote this lengthy critique on why you cannot teach children to read English as if it were Chinese.

And we have the very same situation today.

[Rushdoony] Yes, as ideographs or pictographs.

[Blumenfeld] Right.

[Rushdoony] Well, we have about four or five minutes. Do you have something you would like to say by way of conclusion, Gary?

[Mose] On this last point about the look say method, you mentioned that it is a... an ideographic method. I think you said that at one time it was originally developed as a method to teach deaf children to read?

[Blumenfeld] Yes, yes. It was invented by Thomas H. Gallaudet. Reverent Gallaudet was the director of the Hartford Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb. And he taught the deaf to read by a sight method that is juxtaposing pictures and words because they couldn’t hear sounds. And so he thought that, well, maybe normal kids could be taught to read this way and save them the pain of learning the alphabet and the sounds of the letters. And he created a little primer, the first look say primer in the United States called the mother’s primer. And the first line of that primer is, “Frank had a dog. It’s name was spot.”

Believe it or not. And that primer was adopted by Horace Mann and the Boston public schools and it turned out to produce such disastrous results that they then went back to a phonetic method of teaching. But it took the Boston masters to write quite a critique of it before if they were able to convince the public that this new method of teaching was horrible. And so the method was relegated to the dust bin until the turn of the century when the progressives dug it up, brought it back and then applied to it the methods that they had perfected in their laboratories with animals with behavioral psychologists and then it came back as Dick and Jane or the MacMillan readers and it has caused millions and millions of youngsters to become functionally illiterate.

As a matter of fact, there was an article in the Los Angeles Times not too long ago about a man, a 50 year old man who spent 18 year teaching in the high schools of Oceanside, California and he was illiterate. He had been taught to read by the look say method and, of course, he became a functional illiterate and he spent years deceiving everybody. Only his wife knew that he was illiterate. He managed to get through graduate school and to get a job teaching social studies.

[Scott] Well, of course.

[Blumenfeld] ... in a high school.

[Scott] That doesn't surprise me in the least.

[Blumenfeld] And he was illiterate. And recently he went to an adult literacy center to learn how to read. And they are teaching him now how to read by phonics. And he is learning.

You can imagine the suffering this man has gone through because...

[Rushdoony] And his students.

[Blumenfeld] ... of the way... and his students.

[Rushdoony] Have also suffered.

[Blumenfeld] Yes.

[Scott] Well, you are really fighting to save this civilization. And I can see when the authorities really begin to realize what they are up against with the home schooling and the lack of registration and all the rest of it, a considerable collision, which itself is going to serve as a catalyst of change.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Blumenfeld] Oh, yes.

[Rushdoony] Well, our time is up. Thank you all for listening and thank you, Sam. It is always a pleasure when you are here with us. Good night, all, and God bless you.

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