From the Easy Chair

Property & Environmentalism

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 46-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161AX92

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161AX92, Property & Environmentalism from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, July the seventh, 1989, Easy Chair number 197.

This evening Otto Scott and I are going to discuss property and Environmentalism. The subject of property is a very, very important one, but a much neglected one. Very few books are written on the subject. Godfrey Dietza wrote one about 20 years ago, mainly a history of the American views beginning about the time of the first continental congress. More recently, about 15 years ago, a very fine symposium on the subject was edited by Sam Blumenfeld of our staff. That book is no longer available.

There are as many views of property as there are cultures. And the idea of property has been important in the various cultures and it is rather distressing that more attention has not been given to the subject. In many a culture very different sorts, property is tribally owned as, for example, among the highland clans of Scotland and the American Indian tribes. Property in other cultures is entirely owned by the ruler and all the people hold property as a kind of grant from the ruler.

However, the two main forms of property that we know in western civilization have been, until about a century ago, private ownership and family ownership. The biblical pattern is family ownership, a person holds property as a trustee from his forbearers for those who are to come, the generations of the future. And, as such, he cannot use it for his own advantage. It must be used as an ongoing heritage for the family. This is why when Ahab the king sought to take Naboth’s vineyard the question at stake was not that he was not ready to pay properly—in fact, he offered him a generous amount. It was that Naboth said he had no right to sell what belonged to his ancestors and to his descendants.

Well, in the past two centuries we have seen the rise of the Socialist or communist doctrine of property whereby properly belongs, supposedly to the people, but it is actually taken by the state. Property is, thus, a very important subject, a highly controversial subject. And it seems strange to me that it has not been given the attention it deserves.

We are grateful, therefore, to the two of you listeners who wrote in and asked that we discuss the subject.

Well, with that introduction, Otto, do you want to make a general statement on the subject?

[Scott] I looked up the word property in Noah Webster 1828 dictionary which is turning into one of my favorite volumes. And he quotes, of course, life, liberty and property as the basis for this government, protection of. And then he goes on to say... equate property with ownership and with man’s dominion over the earth.

[Rushdoony] Very good.

[Scott] Which, he says, is the basis of property rights in land, that the safety of property is one of the inherent and inalienable rights of this particular country, at least theoretically. And he also spoke about intellectual property.

[Rushdoony] Excellent.

[Scott] Such as literary property. And that, of course, gives rise to thoughts about software for modern computers, songs, art, sculpture and so forth. And I think we could have some interesting things to discuss in that area.

Now the whole question of ownership in property in the United States is one that is no longer accepted as complete. It is subject now to modifications and, of course, that means that the state has taken a long step toward eliminating the security of your ownership rights. I think that is one of the things that we all feel. Always, of course, in the name of the greater good.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I think one of the so-called greater goods that is being used now to tamper with ownership is environmentalism. Now the interesting thing is that the liberals act as though Environmentalism were a new discovery. Actually, the subject of Environmentalism goes back—in a healthy and a godly sense—to the Old Testament, to the respect required in war time even for the fruit trees of an enemy, that you didn’t strike at what was the source of life, food. And a great many other things in the Bible had to do with Environmentalism.

For example, we know that out of the biblical laws on theft and the respect for the environment, very early both in the Hebrew and in the Christian heritage it became illegal to do anything that would destroy the property of your neighbor. You could not, therefore—and this was a classic instance used over the centuries—set up a tannery next to a man’s house, because you would create noxious odors and you would damage his property. You would be stealing from him.

Those protections were a part of the common law of the western world until it became advantageous to legislators to attract industry into their community with the industrial revolution. And then they waved all these laws and also gave various tax breaks to industrialists to entice them to move into their area. And that was the end of centuries old biblically grounded environmental concerns. It mean that the state destroyed the environmental protection that existed in common law and now the state is destroying our property rights by coming in to govern things, possible acts, whereas previously under common law it was actual incidents.

If you did something that destroyed a neighbor’s right you could be sued and you could be wiped out and that was a great protection. Now you can go ahead. You pay a fine and continue to operate.

[Scott] Well, that might have been true for up until fairly recently.

[Rushdoony] Yes. You are right.

[Scott] Up until fairly recently. It is no longer so.

Let’s go back a bit. In the West, as I understand it, in the ages of faith, the land was held more or less in common, but the baron or the prince or whatever, the count, really assumed title and allowed the people to occupy the lands and their homes upon a payment of a small rental or part of their crop, tenant farming you might say, on something like 99 year leases, very long, over generations and, in fact, up until World War II a great deal of Europe was occupied in that manner by... for people who had occupied the land for hundreds upon hundreds of years. And it was always assumed in common law, I understand, that a man’s house was his castle, that you couldn’t break into it, you couldn’t drive him out of it, you couldn’t take it away from him without due process. Now, of course, we know that this was the ideal and not always true in practice. But the common law basis was that once you paid for your house it was yours. Once you purchased the land it was yours and no one had a right to come and take it away. That no longer applies in the United States, because the government forces you to pay rent and if you are behind in your rent you will lose your home and your land...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] No matter how long your family has held it and no matter how much you paid.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, the biblical law is, of course, no taxation on the land because the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. As a result, very early the biblical requirement of no taxation on land did become adopted in various countries. I know that into the mid 70s, at least, in Greece there was still no property tax and this was in terms of biblical faith. Whether since then it has been introduced, I don’t know. In its place, of course, was the head or poll tax for all males.

To me it is very interesting that Margaret Thatcher has proposed a return to this, the abolition in Britain of the property tax and the introduction of a small head tax for every male 18 and older.

It would be wonderful if some variation of that could be introduced into the American states. You cited James Otis’ statement, “A man’s house is his castle.” That reflected the old Christian tradition. It was his castle. And even in the middle ages when very early before the medieval world began to develop the peasant farmers gave nominal title to their lands to the baron in return for protection. There were still many allodial owners, people who owned their small plot on the same basis as the baron owned his castle. So allodial ownership was still very much a part of European life and it was one of the things that legal experts held marked American ownership after the War of Independence. Before that all land, ultimately, resided in the king’s name. But after that it was allodial ownership until the Supreme Court began to alter the picture.

[Scott] Well, of course, the whole question of assessments, appraisals, you might say, by the government of the value of you land and your home has come up in a rather painful way to some people in small towns in New Jersey two or three years ago. And they were ... the governments of these small towns were approached by a group of traveling experts who said you haven’t changed your tax rates on houses in your area for 25 or 30 years. In the meantime the value of these properties have gone up. Let us reappraise all the area in your town. And they did that and they had done that and the last two or three or four or five towns. And suddenly elderly people are confronted with, were confronted with an enormous bill which they couldn’t pay or faced with the loss of their home.

Now this is perfectly legal. And, hence, the stories appeared with pictures of those involved and a description and so forth for perhaps two or three days in the newspapers in the New York and New Jersey area and then dropped out of sight.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And I have no idea of what happened to those people or what happened to that particular approach, because it is a way for these townships, a lot of the townships in certain areas and New Jersey and other areas are dying and they need revenues, of course, to put in... maintain their social programs. I mean throwing people out of homes in order to...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ... in order to support a social program which doesn’t strike them as... as being contradictory in the least. But it is an example of the tyranny of the modern state which is still waiting for the writers and the poets to describe.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Private property is virtually gone now. One of the things that marked Mussolini was his rather hard headed awareness of what the people could take. Mussolini was, first and last, a Marxist. But the Marxists hated him after he broke with them, because his thesis was that no people will buy the idea of the state owning their property. Therefore, what we have to do is to accomplish the same thing that Marx proposed by indirection. We will allow people to retain title to their property, because that is everything to them. We will call it private property. But we will tax it to the point where it is merely rented from us. We will control it. We will in every way be the actual owners while leaving title in the hands of the people. This way we can sell Socialism to them, because what we are then selling are the benefits, not the penalties.

And that is how he succeeded. And, of course, as I have said more than once as you know, Otto, Mussolini should be the patron saint of modern statists.

[Scott] Well, Hitler regarded Mussolini as their... his mentor.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And Roosevelt and every president since could say that Mussolini was his mentor because the same concept has been adopted. We are a fascist country.

[Scott] A fascist economy.

[Rushdoony] Or a fascist economy, yes.

[Scott] A fascist economy without the social aspect of Fascism under Adolf. Well, of course, great changes in the middle of the 19th century, let’s say from the 1840s to the 1890s American businessmen and industrialists and citizens, for that matter, had the greatest opportunity, I guess, the modern world has ever seen. They were confronted with tens of thousands of unoccupied rich land available for the settling and some of the big businessmen, the railroad industrialists and so forth actually handled more territory than empires of the past used to have. The Union Pacific was a magnificent example of that. In order to persuade the industrialists to build that railroad linking California and the east, the Lincoln administration gave them all kinds of breaks, tax breaks, land breaks. They... they gave them 20 mile swaths or 10 mile, I forget which, alternating all the way across the western part of the United States including the mineral rights. And it was after the railroad was built and connected that the West was settled, not before.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] The railroad build spur lines out. And wherever it built, towns appeared because all these families took the train west. The covered wagon was a relative handful.

[Rushdoony] And for a brief time.

[Scott] And for a very brief time, because it was just simply too much trouble. I mean, they went around the cape and they went up to California because of the gold rush. And most of those who took their families and went were businessmen and not looking for gold. They looked of the gold that the miners had. But there was a change in the climate beginning around the turn of the... of our century, the 20th century where all this land and all these opportunities were too good for the people. They had to be saved from the people by the government. Today the United States government owns more land in the western part of the United States than the people do.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And the people are forbidden to own it. They cannot buy it. They can’t settle it. They can’t develop it. It is being held in trust for future generations while our rates of abortion continue to go up beyond a million and a half a year. So I wonder what future they expect to utilize it. Perhaps 100 million Chinamen.

[Rushdoony] Well, there is another aspect to the issue of property, an argument that it has disappeared in this century, but was very important in Christian circles in the last century. The curious fact is that when Marx and the Socialists generally talked about Capitalism, they visualized an individual. And he was a bloated, brutal character who tyrannized over women, seduced them readily and so on. And that character, really, was filled by one person, Karl Marx in his personal life. So he was really describing himself, not the existing Capitalists who didn’t have time for the most part for the kind of thing that Marx was portraying.

But the curious fact is that the Socialists generally saw it as an individual. But some of the Christian moralists—and in this country most notably Robert Dabney—did not see anything wrong with that individual Capitalist. What they feared was the corporation, because together with limited liability which eliminated a great deal of responsibility, they saw an impersonality in the corporation which they felt made it closer to Socialism than anything else, plus the fact that individuals are moral, but corporations, they feared, would see themselves as unrelated to morality. And, of course, we see that today. What Dabney feared we see in the, what is it, 500 corporations that have offices in Moscow?

[Scott] Six hundred.

[Rushdoony] Six hundred. And the great many that have been establishing them in Beijing, China and elsewhere and who feel that morality has no connection with their operations, like Exxon in Angola.

[Scott] Well, not quite. Actually these 600 corporations have been encouraged and persuaded...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And sometimes to gently, to do business with the Soviet world and with the Chinese world.

[Rushdoony] But you have given a classic example of a man who told Washington where to go on that issue.

[Scott] Oh, you are talking about Russell De Young?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Yes. Well, Russell was heads of Goodyear Tire and Rubber at the time, largest rubber industry, largest rubber company. That was under Lyndon Johnson and Dean Rusk, I believe, was secretary of state. And they were in the process of trying to wean, if you can believe this, Romania, that horrible place, away from the Communist world. And they proposed to have one of the big rubber companies set up a synthetic rubber plant in Romania, because synthetic rubber, as you know, uses petroleum. And they went to the two companies that had the most advanced synthetic rubber, Goodyear and Firestone.

Well, Russell De Young listened to it. In fact, he when to Moscow together with some other men from Akron and they wanted in the worst way to have this done, but they wanted it done on credit. They wanted, in other words, the United States to pay for the price of putting up the plant and then turn the plant over to... to them.

And Russell said he didn't think it was in the best interest of the United States and turned it down.

Well Raymond Firestone, whom I also talked to on this question, said that he would do it. And I said, “Why did you say so?”

He said, “Well, after all, if the president and the secretary of state ask you to do it,” he said, “why would I protest? Of course,” he said, “I will... I will go along with my government.”

Well, the Young Americans for Freedom heard about this and they began to agitate against it and they even had plans—at that time Firestone was big in the 500 race, the Indy. They were going to rent a plane and they were going to fly it over the race with a big banner saying, “Firestone for slave labor.” And the Goodyear salesmen began to put these articles in their sales kits and, believe it or not, people began to switch from Firestone to Goodyear tires, although there is really not much difference between them, but they just didn’t like the idea.

The New York Times was very upset and said that this is an example of fanatics interfering with foreign policy and the New York Daily News at that time was very much on the side of Goodyear. So it even became a newspaper fight.

Well, in the end, the heat was too much for Raymond to take and he... he dropped the project. So it is all came to naught which is just as well. And about two years after that I was at an industry convention and I ran into De Young and I said, “By the way, what ever happened to you in your dealings with Washington as a result of your stand on that synthetic rubber plant?”

Well, he said, “That is very interesting.” He said, “Of course, I the first place we don’t live off Washington.” He said, “Only maybe 15 percent of our revenues were from government business.” Although that is not an inconsiderable percentage, he didn’t think it was overwhelming. He said, “After that, believe it not,” he said, “They rolled out the red carpet every time we went to town.”

And after I thought about it I thought, well, yes, of course, they would. I mean, a government that caves into every pressure group would certainly cave in to anybody else that stands up.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And it is still ...

[Rushdoony] Especially.

[Scott] ... it sticks in my memory as an unusual thing, because Russell was a very unusual man.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I wish there were more like him. Well, we are facing a time when we need more men like him and you mentioned helping all these countries. Tonight’s paper said that Bush is planning to forgive the foreign debt of some of the African countries.

[Scott] I am sure they will be very grateful.

[Rushdoony] Well, I wouldn’t wait for their expression of gratitude. They will probably be at the window demanding more money.

[Scott] Of course, now that their slate is going to be wiped clean, why not?

[Rushdoony] It is.

[Scott] Their credit will be good.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Strange they don’t treat the American people the same way.

[Scott] We wouldn’t need loans if they had. We would be all much more prosperous.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

Otto, I would like to take our discussion of property into another area, one in which I feel property is being very seriously threatened, one, of course, and I will let you deal with it, because you have done quite a bit of reading on it, the seizure of property before a man is convicted. The other is seizing boats, automobiles, money, anything if a slight amount of drugs shows up on the testing. As a matter of fact, less than an ounce of marijuana or less than a gram of cocaine can lead to confiscation.

Now the fact is they can, by testing, find us all guilty of drug charges, because there is scarcely any money floating around in the United States that does not have drug traces on it.

[Scott] Is that so?

[Rushdoony] Yes. So that all they have to do is to arrest you and put your money through a drug test and it will show traces of one drug or another.

Well, planes have been seized. Boats have been seized. Cars have been seized without any conviction, just by finding a trace on them. And what is to prevent someone from planting an ounce of marijuana or a gram of cocaine on your property or in your car?

[Scott] Well, nothing. Only the pure in heart believe that every person in the law enforcement industry is perfectly honest.

[Rushdoony] And the evidence seems to indicate that we have some of our worst people in the drug enforcement business precisely because of the power they have.

[Scott] Well, power is one element, of course. The enormous amounts of money floating around in that black market are another. But the most serious thing is the point that you brought up and that is the seizure of assets before trial, let alone before conviction.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] In some cases before the charge.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Go ahead.

[Scott] Well, I remember saying at one point, I think in a Chalcedon Report fairly recently, when James VI of Scotland was going to England to become James I and assume the crown, he stopped in some small town in northern England and a pickpocket was found working the crowd. And they told James and James said, “Hang him,” and the did. And I think it was sir James Harrington who wrote in a letter, “I hear that our new king has hanged a man before trial. If that... if the wind blows that way,” he said, “Why not hang him before the crime?”

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well, this is very close to that. Now that was 400 years ago.

[Rushdoony] Yes, exactly.

[Scott] And we are supposed to be advanced.

[Rushdoony] Well, let me read something from about four months ago in the Insight for March 27, 1989 page 22.

“The customs service and the coat guard are modifying a year old zero tolerance policy of seizing boats on which small amounts of illegal drugs are found. Under a new set of guidelines announced by both agencies in February, commercial fishing vessels in operation are enroute to or from fishing areas will not be seized if drugs are found in personal use quantities, that is, an amount generally defined as less than one ounce of marijuana or one gram of cocaine. Instead, the vessel’s operations will be issued a summons to appear before customs at the end of the fishing trip.

“The new procedure responds to the complaints of fishermen who contend that the zero tolerance policy threatens their livelihood, that is, the owners of the boats.”

[Scott] What is less than a gram?

[Rushdoony] Not much.

[Scott] I... I didn't know that it was even measurable.

[Rushdoony] All right.

“The old criteria which called for immediate seizure of any vessel on which even trace amounts of illicit drugs are found will continue to be applied to recreational boats and yachts, says Judy Turnbach, the zero tolerance ombudsman for the customs service.”

[Scott] Where are the judges and where is the constitution? Incidentally, the Supreme Court ruled not long ago, this insane court that we have now, it ruled that the RICO act which also involves seizing assets includes the right of the district attorneys to seize legal fees. Now that first came to my attention when recently in San Jose the district attorney ordered the lawyers for various defendants to sequester the fees that they received, because, he said, if the defendants are convicted he will order those fees confiscated.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I think that was Stockton.

[Scott] Stockton.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] All right. Now the... apparently this had been applied elsewhere because the case came to the Supreme Court not long after, a different case on similar grounds. And the court ruled that Congress in its wisdom had not made any exception for legal fees when it comes to seizing the assets of criminal defendants. And it went on to say that the rights under the Sixth Amendment to counsel, et cetera, of your own choice, was not involved because the defendant had access to a public defender.

Well, with all due respect to public defenders, some of whom I am sure are capable and honest, they do not have the funds to investigate to the extent that the district attorney’s office can and, therefore, the kind of defense they can present is limited and, in any event, I doubt if a public defender who consistently defeats the government would keep his job indefinitely.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, there are indications now that in some parts of the country the drug control people are virtually on a bounty basis. So there is an inducement to find people guilty.

[Scott] Well, I have seen television shows—and they are pretty horrifying. I only saw one—which presumably followed an actual drug investigation group in somewhere in Florida. They broke down building... they broke down the door. They rushed in. They had guns leveled. They forced the occupants of the building to lie down on their stomach and then they handcuffed them with their arms behind their back and they hauled them up and hustled them out.

Now obviously their argument is that if they don't do this, that the defendants or the suspects will throw the drugs down the toilet or do this or do that or do the other thing. But it seems to me that when you are holding a gun two inches from a man’s nose that it is hardly necessary to put him down on the floor and put your foot on the small of his back.

I wonder what is happening in this country. We seem to be taking our rules from television and from the movies where... where Sam Spade, you remember, breaks the door down and throws a person up against the wall or throws him out the window.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And all this kind of nonsense.

[Rushdoony] Well, I am very much against drugs, but given what our drug control people have become, I think it is better to have the drugs than to have the kind of enforcement we are getting, because it is a threat to the liberty of all of us. There is no part of the country where they are not operating and they don't get much of the publicity. In fact, if you happen to be in a car innocently with someone who may have a small amount of drugs in the car, you are in trouble. And it will take you everything you have to get yourself out of that trouble.

[Scott] Well of course, you won’t have much if your assets are seized.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] And what this means... to seize assets before trial just strikes me, no matter what the cause...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...strikes me as inconsistent with the constitution that was created in Philadelphia.

[Rushdoony] Well, the Marcos case is a classic example.

[Scott] Well, yes. Mrs. Marcos, Imelda Marcos and her husband had all their American assets frozen. She had to appear in court in New York and the judge in New York gave her a one million dollar bond knowing that all her assets were frozen and would have put her into the New York house of detention which is a... one of the most nauseating snake pits, I guess, in the country and Doris Duke came to her rescue with a million dollars bond.

Now Ferdinand Marcos is dying a very protracted sort of death. And apparently the government plans to proceed against this estate and his wife. In the meantime their assets are frozen. Now in the future, what leader of what government is going to rely upon the United States? The Marcos were wined and toasted by Eisenhower, by every president up to and including Mr. Reagan. The Philippines under the Marcos, whether they were corrupt or not was an ally of this country. If they are going to treat the deposed leaders of allied countries in that manner, how are we going to treat our enemies? Well, of course, like Gorbachev. We are going to roll out the red carpet. His violations of human rights do not offend the New York Times.

[Rushdoony] No. Well, we are in a very, very trying period, because we are seeing in the name of dealing with ostensible tyrants or dealing with drug dealers, property rights being steadily destroyed.

[Scott] Well, these are very strange property rights. They are property rights, as you have described to a fascist economy. Now one of the things that is happening, of course, is the use of the environmental movement to stop manufacturing and oil exploration and various and sundry other industrial activities. Now I had a friend when I lived in San Diego who had some desert land and there was no use for it and I don’t know why he ever bought it in the first place, but it was sitting there and he had to pay taxes on it, so he finally decided to turn it into an off the road vehicle park where motorcycle nuts and various and sundry others could go wheeling around in the dust and enjoy themselves. And he was told by the authorities that he first had to have an environmental impact report which would cost 40,000 dollars. Well, he couldn’t afford it, so that was the end of that particular idea.

[Rushdoony] Well, the last attempt in this state or in the West, I believe, to build a new refinery was in the 70s and they were going to build it out in the desert somewhere towards Blythe, way out in the desert so it would have no impact on any living person. But a particular type of lizard that is common to all of California was going to be endangered and so it was killed.

[Scott] Well, I just finished a book on the Arch Mineral Corporation and they were starting a plant in a coal mine rather in Wyoming and somebody on the site saw a black footed ferret, which apparently is quite rare. So the government ordered all operations to halt until they found whether or not the ferret was by itself. A friend of mine said, “Ah, it had to find two of them to have any problems.”

And several months went by. Everything was suspended. Finally, not finding any more ferrets, they allowed the company to continue. In the meantime the price of coal had increased by eight dollars a ton so it cost the consumer’s that much.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And I couldn’t help but reflect on the contradiction involved when evolutionists, most environmentalists are evolutionists, when evolutionists would protest the extinction of a species. It seems contradictory, doesn’t it?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, of course, in this area we have an ongoing problem because the mountain lion are increasing. In fact, they are in the valley now and each mountain lion has to have a few miles territory and they have actually found one in the city limits, a young one, of Stockton, a city of, what is it, 200,000? And yet they keep insisting it is endangered. And there is a court case to prevent the thinning out of the mountain lion in order to protect the farming and urban areas.

[Scott] Well, you really have to have the wisdom of God to interfere in the life chain and to make it better than it actually is if you leave it alone. The environmental thing is now that Mr. Bush has come forward with a new environmental program, I think the whole question is getting to be very interesting, because under Mr. Carter, if you recall, there was a considerable effort to put out synthetic fuels to replace petroleum. I have forgotten now the exact... oh, yes. In 1980 Carter signed a synthetic fuels bill which created a special government corporation capitalized with 20 billion dollars with another 68 billion available of the following seven years subject to congressional appropriation. This was designed to produce the equivalent of 500,000 barrels a day by 1987, two million barrels a day by 1992 from alternative sources. Coal would be turned into gasoline and oil would be extracted from shale. It also created a solar energy bank and authorized a 1.45 billion dollar alcohol fuel production plant. We haven’t seen anything about that recently, because they seem to have forgotten.

But what happened a little bit later to that program was that an oil glut developed which reduced oil and gas prices. And by 1985 the synthetic ... the... the there was a 2.1 billion dollar gold gasification plant near Beulah, North Dakota. It became productive in 1984 and it produced 137 million cubic feet of natural gas to Middle West consumers, but an oil glut developed. So by 1985 the synthetic gas produced there cost three times as much as natural gas. And the five company consortium asked for federal subsidies of 720 million in price supports. But in July 1985 the energy secretary refused to approve these price supports and the next day the House of Representatives cut off the funds of the synthetic fuels and as a result it was abandoned. So much for Mr. Carter’s program.

[Rushdoony] Yes. You were quoting from your new book. Why don’t you give the title and publisher and price and we will try to carry that as soon as it is possible to get copies.

[Scott] Well, it is an advance copy. It is called The Buried Treasure: The Story of Arch Mineral. It is ... I don’t know what the price is. Nobody... they forgot to tell me. It is put out by Braddock Communications, Incorporated. It is the story of the management of a coal company which is only 20 years old so, of course, environment... environmental issues thread in and out of the whole narrative.

Right now, for instance, the Bush program is talking about methanol which is a pollutant.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It is another pollutant. And it can be made, they say, from various agricultural products and, of course, this is about the farmers of the Midwest just like that was, the Carter program was. But what they are not saying is that methanol can be made from natural gas. And natural gas is being flared by Saudi Arabia as a waste fuel. So all they have to do is to put up huge plant to produce methanol with their natural gas and they can ship it in here and undercut any price that we could possibly achieve here in the United States. So what we are really talking about is making ourselves more dependent, again, on the Arabs in the name of a clean environment.

[Rushdoony] Well, when greater absurdities will be invented, Washington will do it.

[Scott] It is amazing, isn’t it?

[Rushdoony] Yes. And meanwhile our property rights are being eroded every day.

[Scott] Well, what can you say about property rights when we cannot mine or extract the wealth from under the earth without going through a gauntlet of opposition.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now all the wealth in the world comes from the earth: the gold, the coal, the oil, everything. The Africans walk and are still walking across one of the great treasure houses of the world. When the white man went into black Africa they didn’t have the wheel. They were living off whatever came naturally. They couldn’t extract the treasures from under the surface of the earth and process them because they lacked the knowledge. The Indians of North America were, as you know, semi starving most of the time because they walked across all these resources and didn’t know what to do with them. If we were to listen to the environmentalists, I am sorry to say, the only plot of land that individuals could occupy and meet their objections would be a cemetery.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes. Well, meanwhile every year we own our properties a little less because the taxes go up and the controls increase. Every time you are going to do something you run into problems.

[Scott] You can’t put up a house. You can’t add a room to your house. You can’t change anything on your property. You can’t cut a tree.

[Rushdoony] And if you are going to build, you are required to pay all kinds of special assessments to give the politicians more money.

[Scott] Don’t forget the intellectual property rights.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now as a... as a writer, I have something to say on that score. When we sign a publishing contract generally speaking with a commercial publisher in New York City, he takes our rights to our progeny away in return for publishing. For the next 28 years the publisher owns the rights to your book.

[Rushdoony] Unless you retain copyright.

[Scott] Unless you retain... well, even if you retain copyright your... your contract will assign the rights to him.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] In order to get the rights back you have to have ... he has to agree to give them back to you, because I recall when I broke with the New York Times book company that the lawyer I used said, “You are very fortunate that Tom Lipscomb is a decent man and gave you back the rights, because,” he said, “one way publishers kill a book forever is to just publish a few copies and then sit on the rights for 28 years without ever publishing again.”

[Rushdoony] Yes. That is why so many are going to smaller publishers.

[Scott] I remember this case. Do you remember when the case of the thin man came out? Do you remember? That was a Dashiell Hammett characterization in one of his novels.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And somebody started a television series based on the thin man. And I am not sure whether Hammett was still alive or not, but somebody sued. I think probably it was that terrible woman Lillian Hellman.

[Rushdoony] Hellman, yes.

[Scott] She sued. She was great for suing and she is sizzling somewhere I am sure now. At any rate she argued that they didn’t have the right to use the character that he had ... that Hammett had created. And the case went to court and it went to quite a... on several levels before the court finally ruled that an author’s creations were intellectual property and could no be used by anybody. The other side argued that they had entered the public domain.

[Rushdoony] Well, we are today a little better in that respect in that the United States this year signed the Burn Convention which gives writers more rights before and after death.

[Scott] That is interesting.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] I would like to know more about that.

[Rushdoony] We were one of the last modern countries to enter into the Burn Convention. So that was a ... a great boon for writers.

[Scott] That is very good.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Even if someone holds your copyright, you have not signed away certain rights. You cannot.

[Scott] You cannot. It is like an inalienable right.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well, that is very interesting, because when I investigated the U. S. patent office on one occasion, because of a very interesting patent suit in the rubber industry, I discovered to my horror that the patent office had been penetrated.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] That act... patents that had been issued were withdrawn and canceled later by individuals inside the patent office and the patent office no longer believes that an inventor should have a monopoly for 28 years over his own invention. They insist that an inventor must license other people to use his invention.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And live on a royalty, which mean that you live on the other fellow’s decency unless you have got an unlimited amount of money to pursue every violation of your patent.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Or to demand a proper accounting of the royalties that you license.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] The patent office doesn't believe in patents.

[Rushdoony] No. No. The patent office is certainly among the very worst branches of the federal government.

[Scott] There is no branch of the government which believes in private property.

[Rushdoony] No. They believe in federal powers in every sphere.

[Scott] State, local and county also.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] I see no difference in the bureaucrats no matter what the level. It is amazing.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It is... it is really ... what is the sin that covers the desire to have power? Because it becomes a sin in certain people.

[Rushdoony] At the moment I can’t think of it.

[Scott] Yes. But I... I... I ... I was thinking again of that terrible shamey Jamie, James I of England. “I govern,” he said, “not according to the common will but the commonweal.” And, of course, he did neither.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And that, the commonweal, or welfare...

[Scott] The same thing.

[Rushdoony] The same thing. It is the excuse used by the federal government and the Supreme Court every time it extends the power of the state over us.

Well, our time is almost up. The subject of property is a very, very important one. Perhaps sometime in the future we should do a symposium on this.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Because it is a very important subject.

[Scott] It would be well worth doing.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, let’s keep that in the back of our mind, Otto, and start thinking of people who could contribute to the subject.

[Scott] That is very interesting. Yes, I will.

[Rushdoony] Well, thank you all for listening and God bless you.

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