From the Easy Chair

Foreign Policy

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 40-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161AU86

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161AU86, Foreign Policy from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 195, May 20, 1989.

This early evening Otto Scott and I have with us Howard Philips. Howard Philips is head of the Conservative Caucus and very important in the molding of conservative public opinion in this country. I regard Howard as particularly important because unlike others, he is not politically oriented. That is he is not a pragmatist. He is not interested in espousing issues because this is what the people back will give money for. He is ready to fight on issues that other people are unwilling to advocate more than briefly.

One of the areas where Howard has had a very powerful impact has been on molding public opinion with regard to foreign policy. I think we can say that on foreign policy the majority of the people in this country do have a generally sound perspective, although Washington goes in the opposite direction. And among the issues that Howard has been very effective on have been South Africa, Panama and the southern African situation, in particular working very closely with Jonas {?}.

With that general statement, Otto, is there anything you would like to add and then to lead off with a question?

[Scott] Well, I think Howard has been a very valiant fighter in one of the most dispiriting series of foreign policy misadventures of the United States has ever undertaken. The whole background of the Panama situation has been incredible. We determined under President Carter that to turn control of the Panama Canal over to the Panamanians would make a great many friends for us in Latin America. And I need only ask where they are today. And, of course, I wrote a book about South Africa some years back and called it The Other End of the Lifeboat because I consider our destiny inextricably entwined with that of the South Africans.

Now Howie has been one of the few people in Washington, persons of influence and stature, who have agreed with that estimate and who have not only agreed with that estimate but has undertaken many, many visits, trips, efforts, articles, speeches and so forth about that whole situation. I think this has been an historic effort on his part. Future generations are going to read what he had to say and wonder why more people haven’t... didn’t listen.

I will say that he has educated a great many, but not enough. And, Howie, how would you say ... what would you say would be the reason why you are... all your efforts ran into so much... so much resistance in the highest levels?

[Philips] Well, in terms of the Reagan administration we have a situation in which President Reagan by and large removed himself from even the most broad type of decision making. He delegated decision making with respect to southern Africa to the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Chester Crocker. Crocker’s policy was one publicly characterized as a policy of constructive engagement, a policy designed supposedly to work cooperatively with the South African government as a means of achieving reform. But, in fact, consistently Crocker’s policy was one which tended to work in favor of Communist objectives in southern Africa. To the degree we accept the formulation that the ... the debate about South Africa is strictly a debate about Apartheid, we are falling into grave error. I believe that Apartheid is morally wrong. I think whenever you say to someone that at the moment of birth he is deprived of the opportunity to become your friend, your colleague and your co believer, you have made a tremendous mistake.

But the fact is that Apartheid is shrinking and Communism is spreading. And Crocker’s policy was one of aiding the fortunes of Marxism in Zimbabwe, some 400 million dollars in U. S. taxpayer assistance went to that country during the Reagan administration at Crocker’s direction. He fought to get military aid for the Communists in Mozambique in opposition to the anti Communist {?} forces. Through the efforts of Senator Helms, my organization and others there were restrictions placed on our ability to provide military aid directly to the Communists, but he arranged with the British foreign office to see that they got it anyway. And tens of millions of dollars have gone from U. S. taxpayers to support the Communists in that country, nonetheless.

In South Africa itself U. S. tax dollars have been used to support non profit groups which have been allied with the most radical anti government entities in that country, including the United Democratic Front and the Soviet controlled African National Congress.

In Angola the U. S. government through the export import bank provided in excess of 277 million dollars to American companies that were operating in that country in ... through credits and loan guarantees in a manner that redounded to the benefit of the Communist regime.

To put the best face on it, you could say that the state department’s policy during the Reagan years was commercially driven rather than geo strategically driven under the argument that there were big powerful commercial interests that had a stake in promoting the stability in Mozambique, in reaping the rewards of cooperation with the Communists in Angola and Mugabe in Zimbabwe. But, in fact, I would say that the effect was a pro Soviet effect.

Now it is interesting with respect to Reagan that when he did get personally involved, he in one important case did make the right decision. In the summer of 1985 I was in liberated Angola meeting with Jonas {?} for whom I have a very high regard and I emphasized to him the degree to which Reagan tended to personalize his politics. And I suggested that it would be very valuable for {?} to come to the United States and to meet personally with Reagan. And this was at a point right after the Clarke amendment had been repealed over the opposition of the U. S. state department. Crocker was vehemently opposed to the idea of even trying to repeal the Clark amendment which had blocked U. S. aid to the anti Communist forces beginning in 1975 when the Cubans started arriving.

{?} gave me a letter which I delivered to Pat Buchanan which he delivered to Don Regan which Don Regan delivered to Ronald Reagan and that tended ... the was a contributing factor in the invitation which followed for {?} to come. Reagan liked {?} and as a result a push was made for aid to {?}.

But to get back to your basic question, I know this has been a long answer. There have been commercial forces working against {?}. You have to look at the fact—perhaps it is coincidence, but I don’t think so—that Michael {?} the under secretary of state for political affairs who held up aid to {?} of which Reagan himself had approved for ... for some time, was the brother of a man Samuel {?} the former head of the Bank of America who was on the Chevron board. You had Carla Hills, very prominent in Republican administrations who was also on the Chevron board, Chevron being a company that was very active in Angola and part of a group of companies which last year in the aggregate generated two and a half billion dollars worth of oil revenues for the Communists there. She had all of these factors being brought to bear.

And it is ironic that it was Reagan, not the congress who first imposed sanctions on South Africa. First of all, he continued the international military boycott gratuitously which had begun under Carter. He continued U. S. policy of adherence to Andrew Young’s Resolution 435 for {?} and the.... the whole gist of.... of Reagan policy had the effect, after he signed the sanctions... the sanctions executive order in 1985 of contributing to the idea that sanctions were a legitimate focus on South Africa. Then sanctions were enacted over Reagan’s veto in 86 and South Africa has been badly weakened and under state department pressure they yielded to this latest deal which in all likelihood will make their neighbor Namibia over the next several years a Soviet asset.

[Scott] Well, now. Chester Crocker is not a Communist. Or is he?

[Philips] I don’t know if he is. His wife is from Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia. His wife’s father was the attorney for one of the Communist factions in Rhodesia led by Joshua {?}. I don’t know whether he is a Communist.

[Scott] Well, here we have the involvement of American businessmen, of American business corporations with revolutionary groups around the country predates World War I. Prior even to even World War I our businessmen placed money on various revolutionary groups in various countries, for instance, Mexico and other parts on the theory that they could do business with the horse that won the race. Right now I understand there are 600 firms that have offices in Moscow trying to do business with the commissars. And at no case do I know of any of these firms ever recognizing the harm that they have done to the free enterprise system or to the principles of the United States in these kind of operations. They seem to be totally blind to the significance of their activities.

[Philips] Otto, I have began the practice of attending annual shareholder meetings of corporations which are either active in ways that advance Soviet geo strategic objectives or which are on the verge of undertaking such activities. And recently I have attended stockholder meetings of R. J. R. Nabisco, Chevron, Texaco and Eastman Kodak and there will be more. And the Conservative Caucus Foundation has been using some of its reserve funds to purchase stock in these companies so that we can introduce stockholder resolutions and have no trouble getting onto the floor, et cetera. And to corroborate your point, when I make arguments of the sort you would expect, the rejoinder is frequently, well, the government doesn’t object to what we are doing or the government is cooperating with what we are doing. They have no notion that as American citizens it ought to be repugnant to them to be aiding a regime which has missiles targeted at their wives and children.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I have seen in my travels in the past year several editorials aimed against introducing morality into politics, except basically for one issue, Racism. That is about the only moral issue that they will ever recognize.

[Philips] Sexism.

[Scott] Well...

[Rushdoony] Yes, sexism.

[Philips] {?} qualifies as a second. But, you know, we are... we are really at an historic turning point because the decision is being made this year as to whether America will pay for perestroika. We are in the midst of the latest and the most carefully crafted in a long series of Soviet peace offenses. And the objective of that peace offensive is to get the West to give the Soviet Union enough in the way of hard currency revenues so it can avoid the hard choice of either reducing the size of its military or the growth of its military on the one hand or failing to meet the growing demand for consumer goods as a result of the failure of the socialist system on the other hand.

What most Americans don't realize is that the total Soviet hard currency revenues are something like a fourth of the gross revenues of the General Motors corporation. They are not a productive or a successful country. They get their hard currency by marketing gold, oil, gas and guns. And it isn’t enough to pay their bills. They have a lot of credit from the West and they want more. And if we are fools enough to provide it, it means they will be able to move forward on the present basis which is one in which they are increasing their military expenditures by three percent or more per year and they are devoting 25 to 30 percent of their GNP to their warm machine.

And Chevron, for example, is part of something called the American trade consortium along with R. J. R. Nabisco, Eastman Kodak, Johnson and Johnson, Archer Daniels Midland. Ford Motors dropped out of it because of the technology transfer implications. And Chevron is going to go in and help the Soviets drill for oil in the Caspian Sea and they are also looking at Siberia and Sakhalin and the Brent Sea, introducing technologies and capabilities which are beyond the present capabilities of the Soviets, generating what some people expect will be additional billions of dollars per year for the Soviets and they know no shame any more than they demonstrate any shame for the fact that their presence in Angola has permitted the Soviets to become the dominant military force on the African sub continent with a 10 billion dollar investment in tanks, helicopter gun ships, attack radar, jet fighters, et cetera, plus 80,000 Cuban troops and North Koreans and East Germans, et cetera.

[Rushdoony] I heard Cubans are still there in Angola.

[Philips] Yes. The Cubans are still there. One of the interesting things about the deal which has been struck is that the South Africans were persuaded to completely leave Angola prior to September 1, 1988, to seal the border between liberated Angola, {?} territory and Namibia which had been controlled by South Africa by December 22, 1988 to without prior notice completely cut off Jonas {?} on that date, depriving him of what had been about 80 million dollars a year in South African support.

They agreed to a scenario wherein they would withdraw completely by November 1 of this year the South African defense forces from South Africa which had been in the tens of thousands. There by the beginning of July they reduced down to 1500 confined to base. It was a magnificent black army called the southwest African territorial force that they had began to develop into the 70s which they were required to demobilize and dismantle. And they agreed to a scenario wherein the United Nations which has treated South Africa in the most reprehensible manner possible as if they were the very scum of the earth, to let the United Nations come in and supervise the elections in Namibia with 6150 U. N. forces from such bastions of democracy as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, et cetera, come in and supposedly lead Namibia to independence.

And in return for all of this they got the promise that by July 1, 1991 50,000 of what {?} claims is 80,000 Cubans would leave Angola. And those in South Africa who acknowledge that this was a very bad deal indeed, say that, well, we have no choice. If we want to get our loans turned over, if we want to avoid an all out confrontation with the Soviets and the Cubans, which we might win militarily, but which would be at very high cost, we have no ... no alternative but to strike the best deal we can at this time. And under extraordinary pressure from the Reagan administration and the Bush administration they agreed to stop paying rent for friendly neighbor and to permit a terrorist to move in on their doorstep.

[Scott] I understand that some Cuban troops have been transferred from Angola to Panama.

[Philips] There is no question, Otto, there are Cubans in Panama. I don’t know if... if it has been a direct move, but Castro himself, as reported in the foreign broadcast information service documents published by the U. S. government has indicated that he hoped that some of the Cubans would go to Armenia to help the Soviets there. He said this on the record. And he hoped the some of them would go to Nicaragua and I have no doubt that Panama is another preferred destination. It is a fact that Soviet arms and Cuban trained military personnel have been moving into Panama.

If we are to change the subject a little bit, I don’t know what will be the situation when this tape arrives in people’s mail boxes, but the fact is that in my view one of the reasons there is such determination on the part of the government of the United States to get rid of Noriega now is to save the Panama Canal treaties.

[Scott] Well...

[Rushdoony] In order to sell us out.

[Philips] That is right. Noriega was a ... a thug and a drug pusher and we... and one who dealt with our enemies. In 1978 when we turned over ... when we adopted the treaties that turned over eventually the canal to ... to Rios and to Noriega, he is the same man that he is today. But he has become so obviously disreputable that the administration fears that if he is still in power later this year they will be unable to secure senate confirmation of a Panamanian administrator to run the canal. Under the terms of the treaties the president is supposed to designate a non American chosen by the Panamanian government and the senate is supposed to confirm that person to run the canal. If the senate refuses to take that act it could abrogate the treaty. So obviously they hope that Noriega would be gone and that in gratitude for someone coming in who is no Noriega, the senate without objection will ... will confirm the person to... to do that. And our opportunity to prevent eventual Communist control over the canal will be much less.

[Scott] Now...

[Rushdoony] And the likelihood of a good man following Noriega is virtually nil, isn’t it?

[Philips] Well, it is possible that a good man could get in, in the near term, but here is one scenario that troubles me. Let’s say they get rid of Noriega and someone comes in who mouths pleasant utterances about the United States and goes through a democratic procedure and so forth and then let’s say that in 1992 a Jimmy Carter, Mike Dukakis style liberal Democrat becomes president of the United States and there is instability in Panama, the Cubans and the Soviets and the Sandinistas seek to exploit their advantages and they incrementally in salami slice fashion build up their position. By the year 2000 it will be gone and it will be a pure and complete Soviet asset.

And one of the worst things that was done recently was the Bushy administration announced that years before we are required to do so under the treaty, even if one assumes that the treaty is valid, which I do not. I don’t think it was ever validly placed in force, they are gratuitously withdrawing our military forces even as a couple of years ago they, in effect, eliminated he canal zone.

[Scott] Can I...?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] The presence of the Cubans in Panama is only part of the situation as I see it. The major part is that Noriega is backed by the Soviet Union and by Cuba, Cuba being, of course, simply a puppet of the Soviet Union and that Gorbachev is, at present, been given a gift of Noriega by the fact that a federal prosecutor in the United States decided to indict him which means that if Noriega leaves Panama he will be arrested by American authorities, brought here and sent to prison. Now I don’t think that is a very smart way to negotiate his departure.

[Philips] Although it is the case that the Bush administration has offered to drop those charges and to give him safe harbor in Spain or in some other country.

[Scott] Can he rely upon the promise of the United States?

[Philips] Well, if history is any precedent, I think not.

[Scott] Well, but the thing that really interests me is that none of the networks and none of the newspaper or magazine journalists have ever brought up the question of the Soviet Union visa vie the Panama Canal, nor has the President of the United States, nor has any official spokesman of our state department and I asked you before on the question of South Africa, this iron wall that you ran into, erected from on top, which you unanswered in terms of the personalities involved who are really just the instruments of our government. And we have another iron wall up against the realities of the Panamanian situation. And do you have any... any thought as to whether or not the bureaucracy which apparently in the United States steers the president and steers congress, has been invaded to such an extent that we are not ever going to be able to have a control of American foreign policy?

[Philips] I think a president with the wit and the will can control the foreign policy of the United States if he desires to do so. But a geo strategic thought that seldom entered the mind or escaped the lips of Ronald Reagan. And we look... we have looked at the situation in Granada, for example, in terms of rescuing medical students. We discussed the situation in Nicaragua in terms of promoting negotiations and in terms of promoting democracy, but those are not valid premises for action. A valid premise for action is the defense of the nation’s vital interests and the prevention of a consolidated Soviet base on the Central American mainland.

I think that it is clear that the premise of what George Bush is selling is that we don’t have an enemy and that the ... and that you can’t talk in... you can’t... in... in... you can’t tell the truth.

[Scott] Said that about...

[Philips] ... This... about the geo politics of this, about the fact that we no longer have a two ocean navy and that if we lose the Panama Canal our military capabilities are much diminished unless we spend additional tens of billions of dollars to build more ships that it affects our commercial status. It affects the future of the Caribbean. It puts the Soviets in the position of the surrounding us.

It is very interesting that George Bush in a speech that he gave in May at Texas A & M University congratulated all of his predecessors dating back to Truman on the success of their foreign policy and let me just quote one sentence. He said, “Wise men, Truman and Eisenhower, Vandenberg and Rayburn, Marshal, Atchison and Kennan, crafted the strategy of containment. They believed that the Soviet Union denied the easy course of expansion, would turn inward and address the contradictions of its inefficient, repressive and inhumane system.” And he goes on to say containment worked.

Now he may not have noticed, but the Soviet Union has not been denied the easy course of expansion. They have, in fact, been expanding wildly in Indo China, Central America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Africa, the Indian Ocean and elsewhere. And I think that Bush is the quintessential example of establishment, multinational corporation, international bank perspective on the status of the world.

[Scott] Well, we have be operating for a long time on what Rush called in one of his books the politics of guilt and pity. We have accepted guilt for all the evils of the world as our duty to recompense and the idea that every American has been placed on earth in order to support and work to support other peoples in other parts of the world. And then we have also picked up Woodrow Wilson’s idea that any man who operates in his own interest is being selfish as though a man should operate in anyone else’s interest, instead.

But actually, the thing that really gets me the most about both the southern African and the Panamanian situation is the lack of information that has been provided to the American people.

[Philips] You know, one of the interesting little tidbits was that in mid May when the Organization of American States met to discuss the organization’s policy with respect to Noriega, there were several countries which abstained. There were two countries that opposed the American position. They were Panama and Nicaragua. But the were several countries that abstained and one of them was Grenada. And to me that was a very telling point, because it showed that even this little country whose government we had in fact installed several years ago did not feel it was safe to identify itself as a friend of the United States.

[Rushdoony] I would like to call attention to a point of interest, two points. First when I was a student some years ago Dr. Otto J. Kerner, an outstanding scholar, called attention to the fact that control of the world depended on control of the key trade routes, the Panama, Gibraltar and Suez, but then most important of all, the Dardanelles which controlled central Europe and that for any great power to begin to dominate these areas would men world power. Well, the kid of geo politics that Dr. Kerner was teaching is now forgotten and is no longer taught. Geography is no longer taught. In fact, the knowledge of geography is disappearing amongst students today.

My brother, who is a professor of geography tells me that throughout the western world and most of the world, students get very little geography and therefore cannot place the most obvious countries and cities on a map. Canada in the free world excels by considerable margin in the teaching of geography, but is a league behind the Soviet Union. Their geo politics and geographical studies are basic to their educational system. And it is something we have forgotten. We act as though we live in the world alone and, therefore, very important aspects of foreign policy, our men in the state department and in the senate have no knowledge of, are unaware of the implications of the steps they take.

[Philips] Well, perhaps the Soviet Union’s education in geography relates to the fact that education is very often goal oriented and they have geographic goals.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Philips] And we don’t teach it because we have no goals, either defensive or offensive, tragically. With respect to the point you made about the key choke points and ... and sea lanes, let me say that one of the worst aspects of the Panama situation is that even if a person with the best of intentions and the highest character were to temporarily assume control of the Panamanian government, it... that government is simply not strong enough without the support of the great power like the United States to effectively, over a sustained period of time withstand the inevitable pressure from criminals, drug kingpins, Communists, bankers and others who have objectives not necessarily coincident with our own.

[Rushdoony] Lately even some conservative or modestly conservative publications have been saying that that the Panama Canal is no longer as important as it once was and it is not a matter to be exercised over. Do you want to comment on that?

[Philips] Well, I have chatted with Admiral Moore, the former head of the joint chiefs of staffs... staff and there was an interesting article recently by Elmo Zumwalt, former chief of naval operations and if I recall correctly their points the innovation is that in a sense the canal is more important today than it was when the treaties were ratified in 1978 in the sense that it would be more difficult for us to achieve the naval capabilities today that would be required in the absence of the canal than it would have been in 1978. Our naval requirements would be far greater.

Harking back to another point that Otto made, I think we should decry the fact that so many of our politicians are saying, well, even though the treaties may be null and void, even though the Panamanian government never accepted the treaties in accordance with the terms on which they were proffered, in other words, Tereos explicitly rejected the Diconcini amendment asserting America’s right to unilaterally intervene for the defense of the canal. We should nonetheless abide by this mythological, illegal treaty in terms of international law because to do otherwise would offend Panamanian public opinion.

And we all ... we have gotten to the point where we are almost a... a caricature of ourselves. We talk about our objectives in Vietnam and in Nicaragua not in terms of our vital interests, but in terms of dissuading our adversary to negotiate with us, persuading our adversary to initiate Democratic procedures so that there would be the forms of liberty without the substance of it and that we can then continue to hide our head in the sand and pretend that we have lost nothing.

Because we are afraid to spill blood and act in terms of our own interests, we create these illusions and these straw men.

Harking back, again, to {?}, I have ... I have always remembered something I heard him say in a speech to his people in liberated Angola. He said we will not be the slaves of the Cubans. We will not be the slaves of slaves. The Cubans are the slaves of the Russians. And he said the reason why we will prevail is that we are willing to die for what we believe and our enemies are not willing to risk everything they have in order to defeat us.

And the tragedy today is that the United States believes that everything is negotiable, everything is brokable, brokerable. We have leaders who do not understand that there are vital interests which once surrendered cannot be recovered easily.

[Rushdoony] That is a very important point and I think it goes back to the fact that as Al Knight once told me, when he tried to state the moral issues to some men in the state department they ridiculed what he had to say as the devil theory of politics. In other words, that there is a good and evil. And, therefore, you must choose. You cannot embrace everyone.

Now I... I think when you lose that perspective it becomes an insane world with insane people. To give you a far out example of the insanity that prevails today, just before I came I picked up today’s paper and read something about this woman. I won’t mention her name, who was sent to prison recently. She hired a man to kill her husband. He pumped his gun into him and the man was still alive so he got his car and ran over him. At that point someone who saw what was happening was able to rescue the man and call the police and the killer was arrested and confessed.

Well, this wife is in prison now and the husband has recovered and is up and around and the wife is distressed. He hasn’t visited her or called on her.

[multiple voices]

[Philips] Well, we have come to believe that there are no consequences.

[Rushdoony] And no good and evil.

[Philips] Yes.

[Rushdoony] And anything can be forgiven.

[Philips] Of course, Reagan was the perfect example. He went from saying that the Soviet Union was the evil empire to saying that Gorbachev was a new kind of Soviet leader. And, of course, there was no evidence for this whatsoever. Once again, going back to my favorite quote source, Jonas {?}, he said to me in Angola if the obvious fact that if Gorbachev were not a Communist, if he were not a believing Marxist, Leninist, why then would they have elected him to be General Secretary of the Communist Part of the Soviet Union?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well...

[Philips] I can understand that in the bush, but not in Washington, D. C.

[Scott] Well, the Hitler was an evil man. But apparently the only one and the last one. And I am reminded of an episode in Gibbon in his Decline of the Roman Empire, Galenius, one of the emperors whom Gibbon described as a man who had very many talents. He was an excellent gardener and cook, poet and several other things. But he said a most contemptible prince, prince being used as it is today as the word for ruler. He was ruler at a time when a large piece of Egypt declared its independence of the Roman Empire. And Galenius decided not to do anything about it. He said, “Well, what is of importance there to us?”

And somebody said, “Linen.”

And he said, “And do you mean to say that we can’t get along without linen from Egypt?”

And they went around the court repeating that as though it was a witticism. But Gibbon said it was a very important moment in Roman history because it marked the first time that the Romans had lost territory and had not made any effort to recover it.

Now we have been in the process of retreat. We have given up under Lyndon Johnson several hundred miles of our border to Mexico. We are in the process now of negotiating off shore islands with off Alaska between Alaska and Russia which are strategically very important. The Russians have already occupied those islands in advance of receiving them officially. We are all...

[Philips] {?} basin. We are... we are considering he possibility of changing the boundary lines in a manner that will be beneficial to the Soviets as well.

[Rushdoony] You are an expert on that, so when Otto is through, please tell us more about it. Excuse me, Otto.

[Scott] We also have given up Nicaragua. And anyone who thinks that we haven’t ceded Nicaragua is foolish. That was a deliberate surrender of a strategic territory. When the Panama Canal treaty was first being proposed, part of the discussion was we didn’t have to worry about enemies taking over the Panama Canal because Nicaragua was a staging ground from which the canal could be protected. So we then turned around and gave up Nicaragua. We are now in the process of giving up Panama.

Now I would say this. As a part of the generation of World War II, that I noticed in the course of that war that there are a great many men that would not fight automatically for their country. The Belgians didn’t fight. The Dutch didn’t fight. The Swedes didn’t fight. The Norwegians didn’t fight. The French did not fight, which is the reason that Hitler won with smaller forces than France had. We cannot expect the men of the United States who so far have not defended their women or their children from indiscriminate crime from one end of this country to the other, to defend this nation if the Soviets move north from Panama after they take it, because without leaders men will not fight. And at this point I would say we have a governing class, but we have no leaders.

[Philips] Well, the world is discovering the dirty secret that America lacks the will, the moral will to defend itself. The ratification of the Panama Canal treaties was a sign not of generosity, but a sign of weakness to the world which was followed a year later by the turn over, the deliberate turn over of Nicaragua to the Communists, even to the point where the Israelis were prevented from supplying Somoza with additional bullets for his guns to hold off the Sandinista attacks.

Of course, what you say about Alaska is perfectly true. Indeed, in a recent statement I think it was in connection with Baker’s forthcoming trip to Moscow they bragged about the fact that the general terms they were negotiating these boundary disputes and they were placing this on a level with regional disputes.

Of course, so many of the people in our diplomatic service or perhaps it is not unique to the American diplomatic service, believe that process is an end in itself and that it is... and that ... they... they have carried it to an extreme the notion that {?} is better than war, war. But sometimes war, war is better than {?}. And their ... and there has to come a time when your enemy knows that beyond this point they cannot go without paying a price. And we haven’t drawn the line. We haven’t said you must stop there. There seems to be no limit to what we are prepared to tolerate and we are now preoccupied with the notion that if we pay protection to the Soviets, that if we give them subsidized grain, that if we make them eligible for most favored nation status and membership in the general agreement on tariffs and trade and membership in the international monetary fund and ... and world bank and overseas private investment corporation assistance and U. S. export import loans, that somehow that that transfer of money is going to wean them away from their basic beliefs and cause them to cease being our enemy.

How absurd it is for our leaders to argue, as Reagan and Bush have both argued, that it is a sign of the progress of free enterprise dogma for Communists to accept obligatory tax payer subsidies from the West for their state enterprises, that that is a sign that we are weaning them away.

[Scott] Do you see any parallel, Rush, between our foreign policy and Constantinople paying tribute to the tribes?

[Rushdoony] I... in the time of Byzantium.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Yes. A number of things happened in Constantinople that coincided. They left their historic policy of hard money, gold. They left their policy of making a stand, too. And with that they went down hill very rapidly.

[Scott] How long did it take them to go down hill?

[Rushdoony] Well, they lasted longer than most, perhaps a couple of centuries. But they had no great power until the Turkish Empire finally consolidated its forces and moved against them.

[Philips] I don’t believe in worshipping the people or ascribing to the people heroic qualities which don’t exist, but I will say that I think the people are better than their leaders in some respects. And I think the people have more courage than the leadership has. I think the people are closer to the real world than the governing elites of the United States are. And I believe that there is great hope that this thing can be turned around and taken back. And that was something that we discussed earlier this afternoon.

[Scott] Well, you can... you, of course, have been out on the front lines in the field practically that are affected by the policy decisions made in Washington. Now I remember talking to a fellow from the state department who reminded me that he had to win a competitive examination and I said it wasn’t an examination, it was a screen. They screened out everybody that had any common sense.

[Philips] I have a friend who just went through the foreign service exam and what you say is precisely correct. The tests are organized in such a manner that if you have firm moral convictions there is not a chance in the world you will be approved unless you disguise them.

[Scott] Isn’t that interesting?

[Rushdoony] Yes. One person who left the state department said you could be into Occultism, Satanism, drugs, into wife swapping, anything except to be a Christian. That was intolerable.

[Philips] If you believed to the point of being prepared to defend your beliefs and argue for them and fight for them, you are not a proper social animal, I guess.

[Rushdoony] Well, I think {?} spoke of the hopeful aspects and I think we ought to, in the remaining minutes, say a little more on that. One of the things that I think we need to do is this. Twenty years ago the number of evangelical believers in this country was about 40 million. As of 1988 they were 91 million, more than doubled, a phenomenal growth there and this is why, of course, there is the consistent hostility to the Christian right. But it hasn’t really expressed itself yet or come to grips with the issues. But I think there is a tremendous potential there and I think we have not seen anything of its potential thus far.

[Philips] Well, in a sense, some things have had to be gotten past. It is ... it is fair and proper that at the... on the first occasion we should give people the benefit of the doubt. If people say they are going to help us and advance our principles and so forth, we should give them the opportunity to act honorably. But at a certain point if they fail to deliver then we become fools if we continue to assume that ... that they mean what they say. And I believe that it is very important for people to critically evaluate not just the promises of their political leaders, but their actual performance. And there has been a great lack of that in the conservative movement generally among the Christian right, et cetera.

During the Reagan years, instead of holding their leadership accountable or their elective officials accountable to the values and the principles which we all profess to believe, all too many of us permitted Reagan to define the outer boundaries of what was legitimate conservative thought and action. And if Reagan said something was ok, even if it was in conflict with our views, also many of us said, “Well, he must be right and we must be wrong.” And ... and if he said something was wrong, on the other side of the coin, then... then we concluded that he must be right and we must be wrong.

I think we have to get back to the point where we have enough self confidence, first of all, to recognize that elected officials are not better than we are, are not more honorable than we are, are not more knowledgeable than we are necessarily in a way that counts. Values count for more than credentials. And if they are not acting in conformance with our values we have to rebuke them and then if they fail to conform, we have to fire them. And the second point is that there comes a time when you can no longer delegate fighting wars and holding offices to others. You have to take up the battle yourself.

[Scott] In other words, we cannot simply fund others to do the fighting as Reagan promised an easy way out of difficult situations. We would put up the contras. We would put up {?}. Other people could do the fighting and the dying while we could watch television and take things easy.

[Philips] That is right. We would let others fight and die for our supposed principles so that we could then have a negotiation with our enemies and betray them and at the same time at home many conservatives, many Christians have been lazy and they have said, “Well, we have other things to do and this fellow sounds like a nice fellow. We will let him do it for us.” And we have never bothered to check in and see if that was actually being done.

[Scott] Well, there is another point, too. I think the Christian community that Rush spoke about and it is ... has expanded. There has been a great revival, tremendous revival. But it is a revival that has almost ghettoized itself in terms of the condition of the world. There is a great many new Christians and old Christians who seem to think that Christianity is something that belongs in church and not in the world.

[Philips] The great contribution of Dr. Rushdoony and the Chalcedon Foundation has been to remind us of the lesson that the Bible governs all areas of life and not just school prayer and abortion and pornography and that it is a ... a total error to accept the ghettoization of ... of the role we ought to be playing.

[Scott] Well, do you notice the reaction to the proposal to raise the pay of congress? And ... and...

[Rushdoony] That sounds marvelous.

[Scott] And... and... and the horror and shock of the Congress to discover the contempt that the people hold for its performance.

Now if this same sort of response were to rain upon Washington regarding this ceding and the surrender of the American position around the world, what do you suppose would happen?

[Philips] You know what happened there, Otto, on the pay raise was that the illusion of its inevitability was shattered.

[Scott] Yes.

[Philips] There was a time everyone said, “Of course it is going to go through. It can’t be stopped.” But enough momentum was developed so the illusion of inevitability was shattered and once that happened it was gone. There are other illusions we must shatter.

[Rushdoony] It was the radio talk shows that were largely responsible and I think that would be a group that it would be worthwhile cultivating.

We have just a few minutes and, Howard, I would like to have you explain something to our listeners who may not be familiar with our work, although most are, with your work, what Conservative Caucus is, how they can be of help and what your address is.

[Philips] Let me give the address first, because that is the easiest part to answer. It is 450 Maple Avenue East, Vienna, Virginia. The Conservative Caucus was organized in 1974 in consequence of conclusions that I reached while I was in the federal government for five years and we had a particular strategy which we pursued from 1974 to 1980 and another strategy we pursued from 1981 until the present day. There isn’t time to go into that in great detail. We are still involved in some elements of that strategy fighting particular battles relating to whether we should pay for perestroika, something we oppose, the future of the Panama Canal, the future of Nicaragua, the future of southern Africa. But in a nutshell, our goal is to convert our principles into governing policy. Our goal is to change in the political arena the direction of the United States of America. And we are in the process of developing some new strategies to make the conservative movement much more effective than it has been in recent years.

Especially since the election of Reagan in 1981 the conservative movement has become weakened and increasingly relevant, operating at the ... at the margins. We have to go back to the center and we have to contest not just for influence, but power. We must establish ourselves as the opposition, as the alternative and then as the government. We must spell out not just what is practically possible, but what ought to be done and then implement a plan for making what ought to be what is.

[Rushdoony] Very good. Do you have a last statement?

[Scott] No, I... I ... I certainly wouldn’t add anything to that.

[Rushdoony] Well, I urge our listeners to write and get on the Conservative Caucus mailing list and to send a gift when they write in.

Thank you all for listening and thank you, Howard. It is a pleasure to have you with us, again.

[Philips] Rush, it is an honor to be with you and with Otto.

[Rushdoony] Thank you.

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