From the Easy Chair

The City, Urban Life; Its Meaning, Character & Background

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 29-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161AP75

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161AP75, The City, Urban Life; Its Meaning, Character & Background from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 181, November the fourth, 1988.

Otto Scott and I are now going to discuss a subject which I think is going to be increasingly important in the years ahead, the city, urban life, its meaning, its character, its background.

And to begin I would like to call attention to a very important work written a couple of generations ago by Fustel De Coulanges, The Ancient City. And the point that Coulanges makes is the city was in antiquity a religious concept. People who were in cities having the protection of its walls were those who shared a common faith. Atonement was basic to the life of the city. If you did not share the faith of the city, you did not live within the walls. And the first suburbs were the dwellings outside the walls of people who did not have citizenship, did not share in the faith and life of the city.

So the city has a very, very long history as an area of faith. This is why not only in pagan antiquity when temples were at the center of the city, but also in the Middle Ages when the Cathedral or the parish church was at the center of the village or the city, in New England where the Puritan church was at the center of the village square, religion was seen as central to life as well as to the architectural structure of the community.

Now that began to change with the modern age. The city, instead, became a place of commerce, of industry and commercial interests now began to occupy the center of the city so much so that to demonstrate their community, as it were, with the past, banks were first built in the model of Greek temples and Otto and I can recall how before World War II all banks had a modified, but clearly Greek temple design. Only since World War II has that been abandoned.

However, a dramatic change set into the city about mid century when lighting came in. Up until that time businessmen went to work at dawn then they went home about two and had their dinner and their night life, you might say, was from three to five or six or whenever the sun went down. Once the sun went down life in the city stopped. The city was no longer a safe place to be.

Well, with the invention of street lighting and, in particular, with electricity which meant that not only the center of the city, but the whole community could have lighting at night, the city began to change its character and it became a place instead of pleasure so that there were round the clock activities. Some cities felt that this demoralized the workers so they would put in closing times for bars and other places of midnight or 2 AM or 4 AM as the case might be, but the whole life of the city shifted. It now was a place where pleasure governed urban life, where people lived in terms of what they could do after work. They worked to play. And we are in the latter days of that. At the same time we are seeing even with lights the reversion of the city to a jungle, a place of lawlessness.

Well, with those few comments, Otto, would you like to make a general statement now?

[Scott] Well, you made some of those comments, I think, at one of our breakfasts recently about the conversion and I wrote in one of my books about what electric light did in terms of destroying time. and the seasons and expanding the period in which we could be active and socialize and so on. Well, up to that point I would go with you. As a place of pleasure, I am not so sure, because the city changed its character from a place of trade—which it still is. It is today, of course, our financial centers are all in the city. Now there is no real technological reason why they should be, but there is a human reason why there is and that is because the brokers and the investors and the financial community what to be in touch with one another on the human level. It isn't simply communications and money. It is also you want to be with your fellow workers in the industry and so forth.

And the communication centers are in the cities. That is, the radio and television network headquarters and so forth, because we are in the process of moving into something entirely unprecedented where people went into the city in modern time because there you could meet other people. It was a larger society than was possible to find in a village or a town. And if you were involved in any of the arts or the sciences, you could find the most outstanding practitioners in the city and you could find a society of like minded individuals and a great many of them.

So our society is changing to this extent that it is no longer necessary artistically or intellectually to be in the city in order to be part of your community. Most of my friends, for instance, are scattered all across the United States and I am in touch with many of them on the phone. And the same is true with you. I mean, we don’t have too many people that we associate with up here in the mountains, compared to the numbers of people that we talk to in the course of a few weeks over the phone or that we visit when we travel and so on.

And I think that pattern is being repeated all across the country because the city where we ... it was only possible to be in close touch with other people in a city. We are now in touch through various means of communications no matter where we live. And then, of course, there is the thing that you talked about and that is the lack of security.

The city has now become an insecure and unsafe place and even an inconvenient place. I mean, when I go to New York if I am there a couple of days the taxi cabs will cost me at least 50, 60 dollars or maybe more, because they move at a snail’s pace. In order to get any distance in a cab you have... you are tied up in traffic. You have got all the potholes in the streets. You have a Nubian or some other strange person driving the cab who has never been in the town before. I don’t know how he go the license. I am the greatest cab driver breaker in there is. Usually I have to tell them where to go and how to get there. They have always just gotten the job.

But this is a very inconvenient and dangerous place, the city. Yet there are certain professions, finance, communications, I don’t know what others, to whom the city is very important.

So the pleasure aspects, the pleasure aspect I feel bitter about that, because when I was... Anne and I were living in New York in the early 60s and I remember her mother came from San Diego and I took them out to a play. Well, we took a cab from Brooklyn Heights to midtown and we had dinner and we went to the play and a cab back and it cost—and this is about 61—so it cost 100 dollars. And I thought this is ridiculous.

Well, today the tickets are 50 dollars each and midtown restaurants you can’t get into during the pre theater period or the immediate post theater period, but you are surrounded by darkness. You are not surrounded by light anymore and the side streets are murderous. So you take your life in your hands going into the theater district.

And there is not much pleasure in that sort of an atmosphere, because pleasure means that you can forget yourself and you cannot really enjoy yourself when you can’t forget yourself.

So some very odd and unprecedented things are occurring regarding the city in our times. We are breaking with almost all of the classical patterns excepting the decline of the city in Rome when the streets were unsafe and the wealthy had to move out. And that we are seeing. At the same time we are seeing places like San Palo, Brazil or Cairo... Cairo actually has a population of about 12 million and Mexico City, I think it is even more. And Mexico City, I don’t know if you have been there recently, the last time I was there it ... they had fire eaters entertaining the automobiles at... at the traffic lights, a fellow eating fire and asking for money. And miles and miles as far as you can see of houses that are barely.. barely houses, put together with old tin cans and gosh knows what.

Poverty, endless. It is... and the downtown district, the luxury hotels very expensive, very crowded.

[Rushdoony] Well, let me get a little specific. In the second half of the 30s I lived in San Francisco. It was the best period in the history of San Francisco during the Depression, because the Barbary Coast was gone. The city was more law abiding and safer than it was ever before or since. And I have always enjoyed walking and those days I thought nothing of walking four or five miles so that I would night after night walk to this or that museum, to the library. And since I was able to get through a very close friend free tickets to all the symphonies and ballets and operas, if there were any seats that were not sold, I was going there sometimes a couple of nights a week.

So the city was, for me, very much a place of entertainment and play as well as of study. That is less and less true now. It is much too expensive, as you pointed out, and if you are going to go to some of these museums you go during the day time or not at all. Some of them don’t open at night anymore.

So we have had a dramatic shift in the whole character of the city. The people work and then go home. They do not go out at night.

[Scott] No, the streets are empty at night.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And a friend of mine, one of the major eastern cities walked across the street to an all night market to pick up something because he had been at meetings all day and he was tired and he thought he would pick up a little snack. He went in there and found a police officer was stationed there, because there were so many robberies. And the officer went to the door to watch him go across the street back to the hotel.

[Scott] Yes, to see that he was safe.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And said that most of the people came to the door in cars and he would watch them go back to the car.

[Scott] Right.

[Rushdoony] Now this is the kind of thing that is happening. So the city is breaking down. Any kind of moral revival will see certain changes, because we have shattered a good many of the precedents that marked the life of the city. Business now or industry goes out to industrial parks. I was in Pennsylvania and saw a steel plant and a block and a half away a three story stone house where I stayed had originally been the residence of the president and founder of that steel mill. He wanted to be...

[Scott] Sure. He wanted to be near.

[Rushdoony] He wanted to be near. He would walk back and forth for coffee or for lunch. And this was once commonplace.

[Scott] Yes, well in Europe there were homes inside the industrial complex, in the factory grounds and such, actual palaces, miniature. Where today they will take you and entertain you.

In the Pirelli plant in Milan, there is a 14th century villa and that is where they bring you as a guest and you have lunch. You are served lunch there and it is... it is very, very nice, murals on the wall and so forth, regular renaissance residence. And the factory was built around it.

Well, we have here something that came up in one of our recent tapes, or, no, it came up in our conversation before we started. We were talking about the Russian Empire and you mentioned James {?} saying that a crumbling empire is conquering the world.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well… and I mentioned to you once before Toynbee’s observation that civilization’s decay at the core while the periphery’s are still dynamic.

Now New York and Boston—I don't know if you have been to Boston recently...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...but it is like lower Slobovia with big buildings. The buildings get bigger and the people get smaller and darker and more slovenly looking and although they are coming back in terms of clothing, I know, just recently. Just recently I went to Sacramento’s public library and I drove in because there was some reference books that I couldn’t think of getting anywhere else. And I found to my astonishment that the central library in Sacramento, which I assume, since it is the state capital, is a central library for the capital, the library system for the whole state, the buildings are vacant. They had moved. And it took me the better part of an hour to find out where they had moved. They had moved into a shopping mall and they had a space about that equivalent of the size of a Walden books and that is the central library of the state of California. And, of course, it just has a token number of books there.

[Rushdoony] Is that the state library or the city?

[Scott] Well, it is probably the city library.

[Rushdoony] Yes. The state library is different.

[Scott] Yes. So I said, “When do you expect to move into your new building?”

And the woman said, “Two years.”

Two years. In the meantime you can do without books if you are a poor person. And I remember when I was a poor young man and I did my reading in libraries. This would have been a catastrophe.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, to get back to the Fustel De Coulanges, the fact that the city, as it began was a community in terms of a particular religious faith meant the city had peace, because it was united in a common belief. And the modern city is a place of warfare because there is nothing that holds people together. People don’t know their neighbor’s name or... and prefer not to know him.

[Scott] Well, I remember when I was a boy in New York it was a rule in the better apartment buildings not to speak to the other people in the building. It was something like shipboard. There is a rule that even though you have been on the same vessel with somebody and talked with them during the trip, you did not continue that ashore, because it was taking advantage of a forced association on ship board. And one of the reasons I think that cities were like that when I was a boy is that a lot of people were like my parents who deliberately chose to live in the city to get away from the small town exposure and wanted the anonymity of the city. A city is a place where you can lead several different lives.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] You can be anonymous when you leave the office, anonymous when you leave the apartment building in which you live and so forth. But now, of course, the atmosphere is different, because New York in those days was safe. You could sleep in Central Park and some people did in the summer. The poor people slept on the fire escape, put a mattress out there. The city never went to sleep. And it was an neighborhood city. And no mater what group you were with, there was a neighborhood in which you would find your compatriots or... whatever type.

Today they call that segregation. But it was in those days involuntary. It was done by the people, by a sort of natural association. Now we have city managers in forms of judges, federal judges who have decided that those kinds of choices are no longer part of our constitutional rights. So we are going to be associates wily nilly according to sociological decrees. And I think the experiment that has just been mandated in Yonkers, for instance, was a very interesting one.

[Rushdoony] Well, there is no basis now for unity in the city. Politics is trying to create a new unity in terms of a political faith.

[Scott] All right.

[Rushdoony] But you cannot unite people in terms of something artificial, because the state is the most artificial construct in human history. It has less roots in anything basic to man. And if you take any modern state, you find it is made up of very differing and often hostile groups.

[Scott] Well, yes. Almost all of the historians talk about the latter 19th century in Europe and in the United States. In both areas, which is, you might say, the West, people left the land and went into the cities. They abandoned the old church that their family had attended for generations and they became united intellectually by reading the same newspapers or attending the same political rallies or going to the theater. The ... the idea of community ceased to be physical and became intellectual and the city became a place of intellectual communities. The newspapers united people much as television...

Do you remember when television first started here? People would have long conversations about the programs.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] They would describe the ... it... God help you if you said you hadn't seen it, because you would hear the whole thing from beginning to end whether you liked it or not. Well that doesn’t happen much anymore, but that happened, I think, in the newspapers, the commonality of everybody being ... having their attention directed in the same place.

Well, that is breaking down.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And as a consequence today, one of the main functions in some areas of some churches is to provide community for people.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] And a great many people will crowd into a church who don’t agree with a word that is preached from the pulpit for no other reason than they want to meet somebody.

[Scott] That is right.

[Rushdoony] And there are some churches that succeed precisely because there is nothing too specific in their preaching. You don’t know whether they are really evangelical or whether they are liberal or modernist, because they hue to a kind of vague middle ground where there is no clear cut commitment to anything.

[Scott] But they have a lot of activities.

[Rushdoony] Yes, a lot of activities.

[Scott] A word that I really have to smile over.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And it is because community is gone out of urban life. And where it was once provided in terms of the faith, it is now provided in terms of activities.

[Scott] Well, now...

[Rushdoony] Things to do.

[Scott] This is more true, I think, of the Christian community than it is of any other.

[Rushdoony] Oh yes.

[Scott] It is the Christian community that has been atomized. The Jewish community is still a community. But I don’t think the Christian community by and large—speaking now in sweeping generalities—is as united.

[Rushdoony] Well, the Jewish community is falling apart, too, because I learned today that someone said that he had been discussing a meeting at the church and one of the men listening, a businessman was Jewish and he said, “It sounds so interesting. I am going to come.”

[Scott] Really.

[Rushdoony] Yes. He said, “You know, there is nothing duller than a service at the synagogue.”

[Scott] Really.

[Rushdoony] And the church sounds interesting. Well, he will get a Calvinistic sermon in this case. But the thing that struck me quite forcefully was precisely the fact that here were a group of people who enjoyed each other and enjoyed hearing something that they found stimulating.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Well, I think the Church has an unprecedented opportunity in the days ahead, because when disaster strikes, it will be more than boredom that will push people to saying, “I have got to find some meaning.”

[Scott] Well, no question. I was asked when I was at Ashland by one of the young men what provisions I had personally made in the event of all the difficulties that had been so often predicted. What advice did I have for him? And I think he was thinking in terms of investment. And I said I really didn’t know of any investment that I could suggest, but, I said, “Make it a point not to be caught alone when times get tough.”

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes. I think that is a particularly important point and I think right now it is more important than ever before, because we have an... an increasing number of lonely people out there who are able to get by because they still have affluence. They are able to fill a void in their loneliness by a tremendous number of activities they take part in. And the time is coming when they won’t be able to do that. I am talking about people who can afford to go, say, skiing, can afford to go to the beach or go on a cruise and so on.

[Scott] Activity.

[Rushdoony] Activities where they meet a great many people.

[Scott] But it is very lonesome in the crowds.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And they have no lasting associations, just a great many fleeting associations. And when the economic and other disasters begin to strike they will find it very difficult to survive emotionally.

[Scott] Well, even... even physically.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Even economically.

[Rushdoony] Otto, I would like to start on now with an aspect of {?} that has been of very great concern to me. Since a sizable chunk of my early years through high school were spent on a farm here in California, weather has always been important to me. I have seen what can happen when you have no rain and when the water table drops. I saw one of my relatives lose a beautiful farm because there was no longer any water that could be pumped up, no irrigation water, no rain water. And all the vines died and they tried to keep the place going. They were hauling in water for drinking and going elsewhere to bathe, but finally they just had to walk away and leave the place.

And that sort of thing is happening right now all over... but people in urban communities have no awareness of the seriousness and importance of the weather.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] They are protected from the reality of life and this is a very serious matter. One of the things that I was taught back in the 30s was that while for some generations American life had become urban, most of the people were in the cities. It still depended on the rural and small town areas under 5000 for population. That was where—up until 30, apparently, 1930—the birth rate was very high. Whereas in the urban areas, the birthrate tended to be lower. They had modern ideas. They believed in one or two children and that sort of thing.

So city life still had a sense of reality, because people came into the city, came out of the ...

[Scott] The rural atmosphere.

[Rushdoony] ...small town and the countryside.

[Scott] Right.

[Rushdoony] I saw the implications of that because through the 30s the people in this country who were in the cities sill knew something about food in terms of their background. They knew how to buy fruit, for example and vegetables.

[Scott] Right.

[Rushdoony] Not in terms of appearances. For example, best selling pear, most widely grown, apparently, is the Bartlett, because it is the most beautiful and therefore has the most appeal, but it is not the tastiest pear. Whereas the little Sickle pear which is about a fifth the size of a Bartlett you only find occasionally now in gourmet shops of the handful of people who appreciate its taste. Or the Muscat grape, the old fashioned Muscat and not the present variety. Only a few vines left here and there in family gardens, the best eating grape of all. But because the bunch is stringy, not attractive or full, it went out. People wouldn’t buy it, because they didn't appreciate it.

Well, this has meant that they have lost touch with the soil. They have lost touch with the realities of living. And we are now in the beginning of what may be, according to some authorities a time of draught for several years which could radically alter the character of life the world over. And people have no awareness of these realities, because urban life has become a way of insulating them from reality.

[Scott] From certain realities. Well...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] The... this is what some observers believe is responsible at bottom for some of the stupidities of the Soviets when they took over. Lenin and the others were urban intellectuals. And they had no appreciation of agricultural realities.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And therefore they sought to impose upon the peasants all the usual nonsense, fixed prices... as you know the Soviet agriculture has been a disaster area ever since and it doesn't show very many signs of improving.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Richard Peeps in Russia Under the Old Regime dealt with that fact and pointed out that Russian agriculture under the czars had always been a fragile thing. Most of the soil was subsistence soil only. You could not get wealthy farming. Only a few areas where you had a rich soil. And at the same time, under the illusion that land would be their future, under the czars and especially under the Soviets, they stripped... the rich land. But the lands have only been fit for forests and their growing seasons are short. They have dreamed of opening up Siberia to farming the same way, cutting down the forests. But Siberia is not productive so that the civilization there now that is urban in character is destroying the land base of the country.

[Rushdoony] Well, yes. I have heard somebody talk, a Texan at one point. He said, “At one time we were totally self sufficient.” He said, “All we needed was the land to grow the crops. We had the animals and,” he said, “we could provide everything that we had to... had to have. Now,” he said, “we are interdependent and we are all vulnerable...

There is no such thing as an independent entity, an independent farm, an independent office or anything else.

I remember walking down Park Avenue in New York and looking at all the glass hung sky scrapers that have replaced the old homes that used to be there and I felt we were living in a series of vertical green houses.

The most vulnerable architecture, I guess, that has ever been created. We have assumed, apparently that we will never again see a war.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And it has been pointed out again and again there is no place in the world that is earthquake proof. The only difference is that the Pacific rim and the Mediterranean have shallow faults which trigger... have deep faults which trigger 150, 400 years apart.

Well, if some of these modern glass constructed cities should have a disastrous earthquake, people in the streets will perish with all of that falling glass.

[Scott] Well, yes. You can... they are air-conditioned and so that if the air conditioning... if the power is cut off... now power station... we live on the power stations. We live on electrical power today. I don’t even have a manual typewriter. I have got these two computers and a word processor all dependent upon... city are dependent upon electrical power, electrical motors. When you cut that power off you would not be habitable beyond the third floor.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] There is now way to get up. The elevators, of course, wouldn’t run, but even if they... even if you climbed up the stairs, you wouldn’t be able to breathe, because the windows are sealed.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] You can’t open the windows. And we could go on this. You read, I am sure, recently about the computer work that to into the Pentagon and got into all kinds of places. Tens of thousands of computers have been infiltrated by what some idiot set loose. It is another subject, of course. What would you do with a perpetuator if you found him? I mean, I think, perhaps he could be shot. But I know that wouldn’t fit the modern temper.

I mean anyone who is that irresponsible really doesn't belong in a society...

...cities... cities are now not only unsafe, but they are unsafe, but they are unsafe in ways that they have never been unsafe before.

[Rushdoony] A book was written about, oh, 10, 12, 14 years ago in the 70s, mid 70s, perhaps by an Italian, an engineer who said that the new dark ages would begin with the collapse of the modern city. And his scenario was something like this. And he wrote not too long after that New York blackout.

With the increasing taxation, with so many things that the tax payer’s money is going to, the modern city is not able to renew itself, to rebuild its ... services, its sewer lines and so on. And he said one of these days they will start breaking down with increasing facility.

[Scott] Well....

[Rushdoony] The subways will collapse. Everything will start to go and there will be no money to renovate and rebuild from scratch.

[Scott] Yesterday there was gridlock in San Francisco. All the roads leading into San Francisco were blocked by traffic accidents and people were in their cars, trapped in their cars for three and four hours.

The subway system in New York has been in a state of advanced decay since World War II, since the end of World War II. They used to use Irish immigrants who used to keep the subway system going and... and under repair and what not, but, of course, they won’t let them in now anymore from Ireland. ... a lot of north European groups. And the docks and the peers. New York City was once one of the great seaports of the United States. They let the piers and the docks decay so that as a port it is a port of the past.

[Rushdoony] The same is true of San Francisco.

[Scott] Yes. And the whole... the plant, you might say, the infrastructure, the physical infrastructure of the city, the sewer system, the power available for lights and air conditioning actually they persuaded the New Yorkers, the environmentalists persuaded the New Yorkers to protest against the creation of a power plant in the Adirondacks...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] .... to supply New York City, because they said it would mar the scenic beauty...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ... of the area. And there is a big nuclear plant on Long Island that Governor Cuomo has condemned to death, because he is against nuclear power which means that black outs and brown outs and increase cost of electrical power in New York City is going to be calamitous within the next very few years.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] But here... when you were talking about the separation of the urban dweller from agricultural realities, we are talking about all realities.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] All reality. They are living in a child’s world of fantasy, sustained by efforts of people whom they disdain, whom they don’t understand. I was living in New York when we had the blackout. As a matter of fact, I was on a plane parked at LaGuardia airport on my way to Akron, Ohio when the blackout occurred. And our first thought was that the war had started, that the Soviets were responsible. But one of the men on the plane had a transistor radio and he turned it on and we heard that it was a black out. So then we had time to go into the hangar and get on the phone and called Anne and said, “It is a blackout and I am proceeding on to Akron.”

And she had candles or something and was all right. It was the first time in either of our experience that there had been a black out in the United States. And I recall as the plane went up looking down and there was nothing but a black hole down there. And I felt terrible. I was leaving my wife and little kid in that jungle with no lights. And we had an apartment at the time and in the middle of Greenwich Village which is not the best place to be.

But at any rate, my understanding is, or I read the papers when I came back. She saved them for me. The general attitude of New York City residents at that point was one of indignation. How could such a thing have occurred and whose fault was it?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And they came pretty close to demanding that a law be passed forbidding a repetition.

[Rushdoony] Oh, I heard people say during the 71 earthquake in Los Angeles in a check out stand, “The government should do something about it.”

Well, ancient Rome grew as a center of power and trade. Then it ceased to be either when it became a center of welfare {?}...

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Created by Roman policies.

[Scott] Right.

[Rushdoony] So that the emperors held their court elsewhere.

[Scott] Well yes. Who was it? Hadrian was the first to move out of the city.

[Rushdoony] So this is beginning to happen to the modern city.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] It is less and less a center of production and more and more a center of welfare and mobs.

[Scott] Well, the welfare mobs and also the financiers. Now the ... and it is high and low. It is the very rich and the {?}.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And I remember when John Shaheen was alive. He took me to his apartment on Park. He had a third floor, I think, in his building, the whole floor. And he had a chauffer and he had a limousine and we drove up there and it was in the... it was raining, I remember. And in order to get into the building we had to walk halfway down the block and make a circle around the mound of garbage bags that were piled up and it... it... it is... on lower park. And we took the elevator to the third floor. When the elevator doors opened, it was a steel door into his floor, all steel. It was like going into a vault of a bank.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And he had a special key that he used to let us in. And I remember thinking at that time that this wasn’t the best way for a wealthy oil operator to... to live in my opinion.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It was a poor choice of residence in my opinion.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now since then a great many people have left the cities. There is a sort of a movement into the countryside. This happened in England, too, in the 19th century after 1850. The more substantial and better... better off people began to move out of London into the country. Before that, the country was a place where you owned land and you just visited the city. But city people began to move into the country. And to this day to have a place in the country is the biggest thing in the ... in the career of a businessman in London as it is for the Soviet officials to have a dacha in the country.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] To get out of the terrible atmosphere of the city, out... and even... I understand that Moscow is a much better city because it has more goods brought in than any of the other cities in Russia.

[Rushdoony] Well, in the last century and up until Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, New York City had the highest per capita poor people of any place in the United States or perhaps any place in the world, because it was where the immigrants landed. So it was flooded constantly with a stream of immigrants. But those immigrants came and went to work.

[Scott] Oh, yes.

[Rushdoony] And they paid taxes.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] So New York was able to build, to expand, to develop its subway system.

[Scott] Oh, yes.

[Rushdoony] To create all kinds of things. But today with the kind of population you have—and weedy is New York—but this is true of any city, great and small in the United States. You cannot renew the city.

[Scott] Well, the point was that I recall when they began the propaganda in New York against the privately owned subway lines. Now New York City subways were the most... one of the marvels of the modern world. They transported millions of people more efficiently and quicker...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] At a... at five cents each, one nickel. And the big argument appeared in the press and there was all kinds of editorials about how much money the subway companies were making and how wonderful it would be if the city took over the management of these systems and they did. And we see now this... the fare is a dollar. Many of the tunnels have been blocked off. The trains are a nightmare. And I wouldn’t dream of going into the subway in New York. I ... it hasn’t been safe for many years and I just won’t do it.

The same thing is true of all the other infrastructure and instead of the people, the poor people having to go to work as they did then, you either went to work or you didn't eat.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] There was private charity. There were missions and there were soup kitchens and all that sort of thing, but there really... you couldn’t live well that way. If you were going to eat regularly, you had ... you were better of going to work. And there was all kinds of jobs, of course. Welfare ate up the money of New York City. The welfare establishment ... and, of course, you know, when I say welfare, I am not talking about the recipient alone. I am talking about the eight or nine people who handle the money before it reaches that recipient.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And you have to classify our foreign aid as another form of welfare.

[Scott] Well, that is international welfare.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] So all the money was... and ... and welfare is... is like water. It is like a windmill. It leaves no results. The people are still there. You kept them from starving, yes. But nothing else has been produced. So the whole city became and I always look at the New York Times where I used to know a great many fellows that worked there. And I used to compare the New York Times to the Roman Catholic Church, because they had parish priests. They had bishops. They had cardinals. They had a hierarchy that you wouldn’t believe and never ... there were people who worked on the Times for a 20, 30 years who didn’t know who the other people on the paper were.

And at any rate, the New York Times watched the decay. It is situated, you know, just off 42nd Street. The building is on 41st Street, right just off Times Square. They sat in the heart of the city as it sank deeper and deeper and deeper and never saw a story in it.

[Rushdoony] No. That would be dealing with the reality of life around them.

[Scott] They were telling the rest of the country how to think.

[Rushdoony] Nothing real for them but ideas as Phil Spielman said. So no evidence is required.

[Scott] You know that Tom Wolfe’s book The Bonfire of the Vanities is the first Swiftian novel of our time. And in really the whole... it is a... it is a Jeremiah.

[Rushdoony] You should write to Wolfe and ask for part of his royalties, because I am surprised how many people have read it since you discussed it one of the Easy Chairs.

[Scott] Is that so?

[Rushdoony] Or maybe it was in one of your articles, but it... Quite a few people said they enjoyed it immensely as a result of your mention of it.

[Scott] He said what... what is unsayable. And I remember someone who complained about New York and was told, well, this is because it is such a big city. Perhaps you are not used to a city as big as this. And he said, “I have been in lots of big cities. But New York is the only big city I know in which I always had the feeling that somebody is pushing me.”

[Rushdoony] Well, an interesting thing that deserves study by Americans and Englishmen and others is what happened when the dole was ended, I think, around 1840 or 1835, 40. I could be wrong on the date, but generally, first half of the last century in London in England. And it was destroying the city and Britain. So they finally cut it off.

It didn't take long for those people to become gainfully employed.

[Scott] I will bet not.

[Rushdoony] It didn’t mean that problems ended.

[Scott] No.

[Rushdoony] But you also had at the same time men like General William Booth arising soon to try to minister to needs which had been there before.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] But had been lessened. So one way or another Welfarism either must go or the city is going to become a jungle which will decay and will become a place of death.

And the key aspect in this change will have to be the Church. The Church will have to wake up to its responsibility and say, “We have a mission to reclaim the city for Christ.”

[Scott] Well, then it will... can not be done side by side with the existing welfare state.

[Rushdoony] No. They are going to have to change things politically, religiously...

[Scott] There you are talking. Now that is... you see, because as long as the welfare state is in position, then...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...there is now way. I remember the Bowery Mission people who were having a great deal of trouble and I must have been 20 years ago that I visited them to do an article, because the city was constantly finding violations of one sort or another and trying to push them off the face of the landscape.

[Rushdoony] They are doing that more than ever with such missions today. The city fathers from coast to coast are determined to eliminate to that.

Well, with regard to New York, it was exciting for me last month to find a congregation in Brooklyn and pastor Steve Schlissel determined to reconquer New York. They are not going to do it tomorrow or a few years, but I believe it is going to be done. And I believe they and others like them who have the vision are going to begin changing the face of this country.

[Scott] Well, I certainly hope so, because more people are being murdered in our cities than anywhere else on earth outside of the slave camps.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] We have killed... more people have been murdered in Detroit alone than were killed in all the years of the Inquisition in Europe.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, our time is up. 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.