From the Easy Chair

Truth

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 48-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161AY94

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161AY94, Truth from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 193, May the second, 1989.

This evening Otto Scott and I are going to discuss the subject of truth. One of the naïve illusions we have about truth is that it means the same thing for everyone, but truth has a different meaning in every religion and in every culture. I am stressing that fact because I believe it is important for us to face up to the reality of our world.

Now I know that some of you feel rather depressed sometimes after listening to us and I think that is good. One of the problems with Christians for a long time has been that they have not looked at the world around them. They have been irrelevant to the historical trends. And one of the healthiest and most needed things for Christians to do is, first of all, to look at the world around us to understand the major motives and positions of our time and then they are better enabled to do something about it.

Now, as I said, truth has a different meaning in every culture. To cite a few examples, for the Greeks and for the Romans the idea of truth was simply that, an idea, a concept, a form out there in space, an abstract form that gave substance to this world of ours. For Christianity, there was no question as to what truth is. Truth is a person, Jesus Christ. And it is the world and the factuality of that world as understood in terms of the triune God as creator and determiner of all things.

Well, over the centuries truth has had different... differing meanings. For example, for Emmanuel Kant truth was something in the mind of man, not something out there. It was what the mind conceived to be truth. And Hegel framed it in these words, “The rational is the real.” So what your mind decides is right and true is therefore real and truth.

Under the influence, however, of the Existentialists, beginning with Kierkegaard and of Nietzsche, of Karl Marx and John Dewey, truth became instrumental. In other words, truth is what works for you. Pragmatism is one form of that existentialist point of view so that if a lie works best of all, then, as Nietzsche said, the lie is truth for you. And likes, he held, are necessary. The Marxists, of course, have adopted this position to the nth degree and truth is what will work of the cause of Marxism.

We face, therefore, a variety of very differing and conflicting doctrines of truth. And so to appeal naïvely to the truth is absurd. This is why Van Til said you cannot argue across systems. What you have to do is to challenge the presuppositions, the premises of the thinking of the opposition to show that their thinking is fallacious.

Well, with that general introduction, somewhat philosophical, we are going to go on to discuss truth in its many practical, contemporary implications. Otto, would you like to make a general statement now?

[Scott] Well, truth... Pilate said, “What is truth?” And he meant that, I believe, that we, none of us, really, will ever know the truth because the truth is something that only God knows. We can only catch pieces of it. But, of course, Pilate also took the position that truth was unimportant. And that, of course, was his great error.

We have to be guided by what we know or how ... as much as we know of the truth. If we have seen something occur, we know something to be factually valid, we have to govern ourselves accordingly. But I have had the experience of interviewing a great many people about what happened, who did it and when did it occur, how did it occur and so forth. And you get variations of the event.

One of the things that impressed me with the truth of the gospels was the variance between the accounts of the four apostles. If four men had decided to get together to tell a lie, they would have all told the same story pretty much from the same view point. But independently we see things or they saw things from four different vantages. The events that they saw they saw, but they saw them differently and they remembered each in his own turn, selected certain items as more significant than others because it stuck in their minds more than others. And, therefore, their testimony overlapped, but it did not fit precisely together. That made it, to my way of thinking, ex... very credible. I could believe it immediately. If it had all coincided, I would have dismissed it.

But I also notice, too, in the course of time that most people do not believe what they see. They believe what they read. They believe what they hear. They believe what they are told. But they don’t believe their own powers of observation. So it is a very interesting subject.

[Rushdoony] Yes. That last point, Otto, I think has more truth now than previously in our history, because we are moving into an authoritarian society and so people are less willing to trust their own observation and more ready to accept things on authority and this is why the media has so much power today. The media speaks with a voice of authority and power. Your commentators are people who read a script, but they make millions and, therefore, they are authoritative and are believed, whereas someone who may know a lot more than they do is less likely to readily believed.

[Scott] Well, you run into the question that people don't want to be inundated with details. If you start to explain a complex subject to them, their attention begins to wander. They didn't really ask for all that. What they want is a conclusion. But to accept a conclusion without knowing the background facts is to, indeed, is to trust yourself, trust the other fellow, perhaps, more than he should be trusted.

The whole secret of modern propaganda is not to tell lies. That is an old pattern. A lie, after all, can be exposed. Modern propaganda is most effective because it tells the truth, but it hides or doesn’t include salient details. Therefore, by telling part of the truth they, in effect, give the impression, a false impression.

Now if you don’t have the information, there is no way that you can evaluate that particular impression. You have to accept it because the is no other and yet it is incomplete and, therefore, false. So it is, in effect, a lie. Yet their argument will be—and the propagandists’ defense always is—everything that I told you is a fact.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And that ties in, again, with the point you made earlier that I commented on. Instead of trusting to their own observation, going out, seeing something or interviewing a person, they go to a file, a newspaper file or clippings from other people or—and this I have seen in Washington—instead of listening to a hearing they will take the federal handouts.

[Scott] Well, you have gone through that.

[Rushdoony] Yes, I have.

[Scott] They will take the press release. Well, also there is a fact that the modern man, persons today, let us say, have had to accept on faith a great many matters which are beyond their comprehension. The nuclear energy business, for instance, is beyond the comprehension of most of us. We don’t know exactly how it is that these atoms are put together to create combustion and so forth. Science has carried us beyond our grandfather’s time so that the world is filled with proven mysteries, you might say. And therefore the average man has been bullied into abandoning his own powers of judgment by the presence of all these awesome specialists who speak special vocabularies and so forth.

Now, as a reporter, I discovered through trial and error that I could report any subject, even subjects of which I was totally ignorant, provided I had access to the individuals in that area, because it is obvious that if you have, let us say, 500,000 mathematicians in the United States that mathematics are not beyond the reach of a person of normal intelligence. And if you find a practitioner who can explain the matter to you, you can cross check what he has to say and you can come up with a pretty good report of the state of the art.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I want to go back to your point about buying down to the authority of experts. And the role of the first atom bomb in creating that aura of Authoritarianism as though the world now is beyond our understanding.

The first car I ever had was a 1936 V8 Ford. I know that...

[Scott] What did it cost, about 500 dollars?

[Rushdoony] Something like that. Yes. In the 30s I know the early 30s you could go out and buy a new Ford or Chevy and with 600 dollars and go home with change in your pocket and take somebody out to dinner and to fill your tank with gas.

Well, in those days the motors were so made that you could lift the hood and work on that V8 motor, which was a powerful motor with a few tools. You didn’t have to have a whole case full of tools and a different set of tools for different cars. And I had never worked on a car before, but in no time at all I was doing a thorough job on that car whenever it needed a valve job and a good many other things, because it was basically simple.

Well, what happened with the atom bomb was suddenly a mystery. Here was a strange thing. And people began to lose their self confidence at mastering the ordinary facts of their lives. Cars also at the same time had motors that were placed down where it was hard to get at them, where you needed more tools. And in one area after another things were taken out of the hand of the common man and left to experts. And that created an Authoritarianism.

[Scott] Well, there is another thing that came long in my parents’ time, but we have inherited the results. The essence of the... there are two, as far as I can say, see, two angles to the Freudian school. One was that somebody else could analyze your motives better than you knew them yourself, which is a pretty tricky thing. And the other was the fact that nothing was as it seems, that although the man might have dove into an icy river to rescue a drowning child, it wasn’t really heroism. He was showing off. Everything had a malignant motive....

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ... a selfish and material motive. So the... the selfish motive, the material motive and the idea that you didn't understand your own motivations were the two pillars, you might say, of a whole new school of thought.

[Rushdoony] And they shattered man’s confidence in himself, because now everything that your conscience... conscious mind did or thought was suspect.

[Scott] That is right.

[Rushdoony] Like...

[Scott] You couldn’t... you couldn’t trust your own mind.

[Rushdoony] {?}

[Scott] Therefore, you couldn’t use your own judgment.

[Rushdoony] Your unconscious mind was infallible.

[Scott] Yeah. Yes. Well...

[Rushdoony] That put man in a bind.

[Scott] Well, it put modern man in a bind in which he is still arguing, because the sociologists have picked up where the psychoanalyst introduced and all the other ologies have pursued the same ground. And it is very interesting that the environmental theory comes out of this.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] The blame your parents school comes out of this. I... it is really the fault of my social conditioning and my background. I am really a representative of my class. I am not a person apart from my position in the world and so forth.

Incidentally, this afternoon there was an interesting dialog on the... on the air on cross fire over the horrors that have been committed in Central Park, New York. And a writer from the Washington Post immediately brought up the social background of the criminals. And Pat Buchanan... it got quite fierce at points. Pat Buchanan came close to losing his temper and said to him, “Why have you never brought up the social background of the Nazis as an extenuation of their crimes?”

[Rushdoony] Very, very good.

[Scott] And the man from the Washington Post absolutely caught his breath and said, “Well, that is an obscene comparison.” And Buchanan said, “Why? The crime is the same.”

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And that is... It was an interesting point, because listening to that particular exchange, I thought, well, the man from the Post is absolutely a creature of stereotypes and clichés.

[Rushdoony] Yes. He, by definition, assumes the innocence of any criminal black.

[Scott] He could not...

[Rushdoony] Not a godly black man, but a criminal black.

[Scott] He did not believe in the reality of evil.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] Now we see evil all around. And Scott Peck wrote a book. I have... I have forgotten the name of it now. I think it is Children of Evil. The first half of the book I thought was brilliant because it is consistent only of observations of every day people whom he came in contact with. I think one of the first cases was a couple who came to him for advice. And he asked the man a question and his wife answered. He asked the man another question and his wife said, “I have already explained that to you.” And things... things went on in that vein. And the more he dealt with the two of them the more he realized that this poor man was in the hands of his enemy.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And, of course, it... it operates the other way. It operates up and down the ladder in all kinds of ways. But when it comes to the truth, when the truth is... when what has happened is regarded through different prisms, the prisms of class consciousness or situational ethics and so forth, all of this denies the truth.

[Rushdoony] Then we have to face the fact that there is an evil intent in denying an absolute truth, because that takes away God’s indictment of every man who is a sinner. If there is no truth and there is no God, then, as Dostoevsky said, “I can do as I please.”

[Scott] That’s good.

[Rushdoony] And, therefore, there is a vested interest in denying that there is an absolute truth and that God has a standard by which all men are going to be judged.

[Scott] Well, of course, we have to be judged with mercy, because without that we wouldn’t have a chance.

[Rushdoony] Well, the point is they don’t want grace or mercy. They want to be free of God and free from the truth. The tyranny of truth was an expression I encountered in one writer.

[Scott] Tyranny of truth.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well, to an extent, I think, God puts self love into us, because we cannot see ourselves plain. If we did, we would not be able to function. So we don’t have to worry about that particular aspect of our psyche, because it is implanted. It is almost like a governor in a car. You can’t go too far in your self condemnation or even in your repentance for sin, because without that particular quality you wouldn’t be able to go on. You can look at the other fellow without pity, but if you do, it is a mistake, because, that, of course, carries you into a different kind of sin.

But the whole question of the truth is something that, for instance, French criminal law gets involved in. I have heard people condemn the Napoleonic code because, for one, the criminal defendant is brought in on a criminal case into court he is already guilty. Well, of course, he wouldn’t be brought into court unless they had proven that he was guilty. He is brought into court in order to discover the extenuating circumstances, if any. In some cases there aren’t any. In some cases there are.

So the truth becomes rather complicated. And this, I think, is one of the reasons why so many people despair of this reality.

[Rushdoony] But the whole concept of justice, of criminal law would perish if we didn’t believe in a good or evil, right and wrong, truth or falsity.

[Scott] Well, we have abandoned that in the United States.

[Rushdoony] Well, we are certainly in the process of it, yes. Definitely.

[Scott] I... I think we... I think we have abandoned it. I know that the Supreme Court has turned loose men whom they know...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...to have been guilty of murder. And a murderer is an enemy of the people. And yet they have done it because the process by which he was convicted was incorrect.

[Rushdoony] I believe the paper today reported on the fact that Gacy, the man in Chicago...

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] ...who would kill 33 boys.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] His conviction has been overturned on a technicality.

[Scott] What does that mean?

[Rushdoony] It means he will have to be retried or turned loose.

[Scott] It is incredible.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well, that, of course, is unjust.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] In fact, his existence is an injustice.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] He should have been executed.

[Rushdoony] But, you see, the Supreme Court has no conception of any godly doctrine of truth, of good and evil, right and wrong.

[Scott] Well, then you get back to the old historic formula of a civilization in trouble. And the argument was that when a civilization reaches a certain complexity, when it gets so complicated the average man can no longer see the workings of justice, it is in deep trouble, because what? You cannot rationalize, cannot be defended. And what you cannot defend cannot be maintained.

The government of the United States is placing itself in a perilous position.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It will collapse it if it doesn’t have the faith of the people. Now right now less than half our qualified citizens vote. And there reason they don’t vote is because they see no change for the better in government. Now, of course, this means, if you look down the road a little bit, two things. It means that in a crisis the government will have no basis of mass support. And it also means, looking down the road, that the people will undertake summary justice according to their own lines.

[Rushdoony] Very few people when they deal with the fall of Rome bother to look into what happened to the courts, to the fact that people could no longer expect justice from a Roman court. There were endless delays. And then instead of things being decided in terms of good an evil, they were decided in terms of totally extraneous factors. As a result, the people of Rome no longer had any faith in their own form of government, even the non Christians, in fact, to a great extent, they were the most distrustful.

It is an ironic fact that the Christians who were being bitterly persecuted were more ready to take a naïve and trusting attitude towards the Roman government if the Roman government would stop persecuting them. They thought in terms of good and evil. They thought in terms of a state that was concerned with justice. But the pagan Roman was totally cynical. He had no belief that Rome could give him anything but injustice and more taxes.

[Scott] Well... well, that was based upon experience.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] I... I wouldn’t call that cynicism. That is... that is... that is plain common sense. If you don’t know what is going to happen to you before you go into a court, if there is no way that you can reconcile the verdict of the court with the justice of the situation, it is not cynicism to say that the court has collapsed.

[Rushdoony] Well, you see, that is the problem we face today and that is why in these Easy Chairs we have to be sometimes rather plain spoken. Christians assume that the non Christian has the same belief in right and wrong and good and evil, justice and injustice that he does.

So he is ready to trust the world to provide him with justice. He doesn't understand it. He thinks it is an exception if he gets clobbered in a court and that he got injustice. But the system he never doubts, basically.

[Scott] Well, we go back to the 17th century where the Christian ministers, reformed Ministers were hauled off before the high commission. And that situation which was very similar to a congressional hearing today, you had to swear to take an oath and answer truthfully before you know what you were going to be questioned about, was finally set back by a series of intellectual responses on the part of very brave Christian spokesmen, which I think would be worth reviewing.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Maybe you ought to write on this, Otto, sometime soon, because we do not appreciate the challenge of those pastors, those lay believers issued to the whole system of the Roman Empire.

I would like to turn the subject to a book that was published a few years ago, Otto. And I am looking now at The American Scholar, summer 1986 issue. This is the Phi Beta Kappa magazine. And there is an article in is particular issue by Roy A. Rappaport, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of a couple of books and is president—or was at the time that this was written—of the American Anthropological Association. And this article, which is quite a long one, takes up a good deal of this particular issue, something like, oh, over 30 pages, 30, 35 pages. It is about Dr. Derrick Freeman, the Australian scholar who wrote a book on Margaret Meade demonstrating that her book on Coming of Age in Samoa was fiction, not reality. Margaret Meade wanted to prove that if children were allowed to indulge themselves sexually from their early years on, it would produce a free and happy society.

Her ideas caught on.

[Scott] She must not have had much experience.

[Rushdoony] No. But she went to Samoa and sat in a room and wrote a book about a people she didn’t bother to spend time with. It was fiction from start to finish. But now the whole of the American Anthropological Association apparently regarded the book as an attack on them, because they bought the Margaret Meade thesis. And Dr. Rappaport entitles his article, “Desecrating the Holy Woman: Derrick Freeman’s attack on Margaret Meade.”

The holy woman, of course, is Margaret Meade. And the thesis very seriously advanced is that life moves in terms of myths. There is no such thing as truth, apparently, myths. And he says, “I am not applying for a special exemption for anthropology from falsification.” Although that is exactly what he is doing. What he says is that, “As against the old eugenic myth, a new myth was needed, a myth that would give freedom. Of course, the freedom it gave was for the sexual revolution, AIDS, homosexuality, abortion and so on.

And so, he says, “Coming of age in Samoa stands up to the test.”

[Scott] It is a myth.

[Rushdoony] It is a good myth. Therefore it is an important scientific work. So mythology now constitutes good science.

[Scott] Well, and it always has, but that is the first time that I have heard of anyone admitting it.

[Rushdoony] Well, listen to what he says. “A pioneering work and... in culture and personality, Meade’s study was sensitive and filled with insight even if unidimensional. Not so much incorrect as thin and in need of enrichment. It did make a modest contribution to Samoa ethnography. The main lessons Meade drew from her ethnography for American society or even for humanity as a whole have borne up better.”

So she says.... or he says, “Her position was and remains better science than her predecessors and better myth. Matters might not have been so clear in the first decades of the century. But the results are in now and from the end of the century we can see where both myths led,” and so on.

This is the concluding paragraph. “It is work being done. Meade’s Samoan revelation and her exegesis of it are fading from the American mythos. It will be replaced by other texts, of course. The world is always full of candidates for canonization and the choice, if choice there is, for any individual or society is not between myth and no myth, but among accounts contending for mythic status. We will be well served if those we choose are as humane and liberating as the text Meade gave us,” end of quote.

So a lie is liberating. Falsification of scientific data is liberating. Now that is the paths we have come to in our society when this passes for science and is in the Phi Beta Kappa magazine.

[Scott] Well, you know, we wonder if he wouldn’t have enjoyed the myth as much if somebody spoke about his mother as totally liberated.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes.

[Scott] But this... these are people who ... I ... I... I have ... I get that particular magazine. I don’t... journal. I don’t read it thoroughly all the time, just from time to time. Just... as you know, the Phi Beta Kappa is a sort of a academic Mensa society.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And they take themselves, very, very seriously. They really believe that they are among the intellectual nobility. And the whole academia is... is suffuse with this sort of sophistical nonsense.

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes.

[Scott] Margaret Meade we knew casually in New York and she looked like everybody’s Aunt Liz, but didn’t behave that way. And she was as intolerant as any liberal I have ever run across. She ... she ran a film once in Saint Louis where we were attending which is in Greenwich village. She ran a film and she showed a Japanese family in a hot tub. They had a different name for it, the bath or whatever. And she contrasted that with a Canadian family that was exchanging presents at Christmas. And she commented on the fact the Canadians were all dressed and...

[Rushdoony] That is a sin?

[Scott] And... and... well, she felt that it showed the lack of warmth as compared to the great intimate warmth and ... and so forth of the Japanese. And I thought, well, it is a good thing she doesn’t know any Japanese, because I have crossed the Japanese and we didn’t find them to be very, very warm, particularly, except out of the bath that is.

And there is an awful lot of nonsense that goes parading around and it gets us back to where we started, is that the average person has been shut up. He has been absolutely gagged by the argument that you have no right to pass judgments on these matters unless you have an advanced degree in a subject.

[Rushdoony] And if you are Freeman and have an advanced degree and a better one, it... you are still not acceptable if you contradict the majority.

[Scott] Well, in effect we are talking about brain washing. And we are talking about the imposition of certain standards upon the people. Now this began... you did a very good job. I have... I have always liked The Messianic Character of American Education when you talked about the beginnings of the imposition of doctrinaire ideas on the American mind in the 1830s. But, you know, if you want to pursue the subject, it would be very interesting, Rush, because in the 1860s, the late 1860s going on into the 70s the effort of the abolitionists in their reconstruction, their occupation of the South, they used the Freedman’s Bureau as a means to bring in blacks and whites together and they forced them to attend together and they imposed upon them a new curriculum all together which was also imposed in the North in which many of these ideas were pressed upon them. The whole being, they felt, that if everyone learned and was taught, if everyone was taught the same thing, everyone would come out with the same ideas.

Now we have gone farther along in that path than anyone has ever admitted openly, to such an extent that if you take a different view of a popularly accepted subject, people will look at you as though you have suddenly grown a horn in the middle of your head. You are a social menace. You are either stupid, you don’t know any better. You didn’t go to school. They didn’t tell you what was right or else you are trying to start a fight.

[Rushdoony] You mentioned the Freedman’s Bureau. That is a classic example of how evil is furthered in a way that makes it difficult to criticize, because what they did with the Freedman’s Bureau, which was to help the newly freed slaves establish themselves in a pattern of freedom, was to bring in a great many New England women who were dedicated humanitarians who were ready to work long hours trying to help and also people who were going to remake the United States in terms of their doctrinaire and alien ideas.

[Scott] And who did it.

[Rushdoony] And who did. But how could you criticize these wonderful, hard working women, because that was what was put forward as the work of the Freedman’s Bureau.

[Scott] Well, you are very familiar with the argument. If ... if you criticize the welfare system which gives a job to 15 college graduates who are all working very diligently to give a crumb to somebody on the receiving end, if you criticize that system, you are against helping the poor.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And that whole type of argument and bringing together a little bit of good and a great deal of evil began in this country, I think, with the Freedman’s Bureau.

[Scott] And it did the same damage to the North that it did to the South.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Because it was the beginning of the expansion of the public school system across the country. Up until then, the states still had control of their own schools. Some of the southern states had very good schools, by the way.

Well, now, of course, we have the idea of uniformity. And the truth then... I was talking not too long ago to one of our Chalcedon associates who agreed that by the time his sons get out of the university they will know only one side of every subject and will not listen to any other.

I said, “I wonder how long they will be able to maintain that position.”

He said, “Well, I understand that it takes about 10 years for the average person to settle down after they get out.”

[Rushdoony] Yes. And the insidious fact, which I have seen again and again, is that a student who is well informed, has a strong family background goes to the college or university and he fights against the ideas and he gets clobbered if he is open by it.

But little by little he will give an inch here and an inch there to be reasonable so that by the time he is graduated he has given a great deal of ground.

[Scott] Well, it is almost inevitable. And there is, of course, the weight of all this time and all these experts upon you. When you are young you main desire is to catch up, to find out where the world is and in order... and fit in with where it is going and it takes quite a long time. I am appalled, really appalled at how long it has taken me to realize some very obvious things. We should really live longer. It isn’t fair. We just begin to get smart and we are toothless and old.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, Otto, well, that is what wives are for, to help you catch up.

[Scott] They are there to correct you.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well, but it is... it is more difficult, I would say today to discern the truth, because your self confidence has been shaken by some very powerful and very clever and subtle groups. Secondly, there is a diminishing audience for the truth. I have lost my New York publisher because I understand now that Athenian will no longer publish corporate histories unless they take an assaultive position against the company that they want to write about. If it isn’t an attack, they are not interested.

Now this is a firm that I have dealt with for some time who is having lost their founder have taken a different path. So we can say that New York publishing now is almost completely ideologically motivated.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well, ideology is the enemy of truth.

[Rushdoony] Yes. That is a... a very important point. I think it was in the summer of 1962 when I was lecturing at a student’s special seminar at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California. Someone else who gave a lecture there, very able man and a friend of many years, Dr. Leo {?} gave an analysis of the meaning of ideology. And an ideology is not something that is true, but it is a prevailing myth or concept, a handle with which to control society. So today ideologies are what govern us. And...

[Scott] Ideologies... ideologies, are they not a form of religion?

[Rushdoony] Yes, but they don’t have any interest in truth and religion usually has an interest in truth, most religions. And what happens when an ideology is advanced is that everyone who varies from the pattern is going to be treated with scorn and with ridicule, because they are challenging the ideology.

[Scott] Well, anyone who contradicts a liberal ideology is, you know, a Fascist, because they are doing it for racial reasons. That is cut and dried.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] You must be a bigot.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ... if you are not a liberal. And I think it was Sydney Hook who said, “Liberals don't seem to be aware of the fact that Liberalism is an ideology. It is an ideology that has no floor under it, though, because it is... well, that old definition of the fanatic, somebody who repeats a failed experiment in the expectation it will succeed.”

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Results seem to have no effect upon that ideology, upon Socialist ideology, upon any ideology. They none of them seem to go by results.

[Rushdoony] Well, we live in an ideological age, which has no concern with truth and which is more concerned with power. And, as a result, Pilate’s comment which you began with, what is truth, and as Bacon said, “He did not wait for an answer.” That is the attitude that prevails today.

[Scott] Well, we do know from history and we know from the Bible that whenever men or groups of men or nations or empires embark upon these particular fallacies that they are in for a difficult time. But never does everyone fall with the empire. The individual who holds on to his values will outlive all the outlaws. And I think that is very important.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And there is a justice in the world.

One of the interesting thing some years ago I was concerned about the life of Samuel Insull. Insull, during World War I had been ... he was a major propagandists against Germany and in promoting all the myths that were applied to the Germans, the Huns who massacred children and cut the breasts off of women and that sort of thing, things had happened in a particular place in Africa amongst some savage tribes were taken, the specific episodes, and applied systematically to the Germans.

Durkheim led off with this in France, this Sociologist, Emil Durkheim. And Samuel Insull picked it up, knowing it was a lie and propagated it across the United States.

Well, Insull became the target of a similar mind campaign.

[Scott] Against himself.

[Rushdoony] Against himself and when he was doing something for the good of the country he became the target of a similar attack. And this is what happens when you deny the validity of truth.

[Scott] Well...

[Rushdoony] Sooner or later you pay a price.

[Scott] You pay a proportional price and you pay in kind. And this is very biblical.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And unerring. If you recall the secret six...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...looking into the six abolitionists where Emerson said, “I want to be a transparent eyeball,” early on in his career. And at the end of his life had aphasia. He couldn’t remember one word after another. And he became, in fact, incapable of speech, incapable of writing. But the was still healthy. He could still walk around. All he could do was to see, to look. He became a transparent eyeball. It was uncanny. Every one of the six paid a ... an appropriate price at the end of his life for his attitudes. And I am sorry to say that in a way, sorry, in a way not.

We all pay proportionately and appropriately.

[Rushdoony] I think the remark about Emerson by Melville that I quoted to you the other day is good. He said that Emerson was a model {?} although he did believe that if he had been present at the creation things would have been done better.

[Scott] I think I have the distinction of being the first American writer to throw a stone at Emerson. Since then I have seen a small rain of stones begin. No credit, but nevertheless, it is interesting to watch.

[Rushdoony] Well, I threw a pebble at him about 1970 or a little earlier.

[Scott] Well, then you are ahead of me.

[Rushdoony] And it created a furor because it upset a man of very remarkable strength and weakness, Robert Welch.

[Scott] Oh, yes. He worshipped Emerson.

[Rushdoony] Yes. That was a tremendous blind spot on his part.

Well, we have only about five minutes, Otto. I think we are seeing the death of the lie in our time. It is...

[Scott] I do, too. I think the courts are beginning to collapse, but, you know, they are not going to leave a vacuum. What they will lead to is different judges.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And... and courts operating on a different level.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] A lot of these myths are falling. Margaret Meade, don’t forget, just a few years ago was the holy woman.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And now she has dropped out of sight, as it were.

[Scott] {?}

[Rushdoony] But they no longer ...

[Scott] They don’t quote her any more.

[Rushdoony] No. No.

[Scott] No. I mean despite the defense.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] The case was lost.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And this is true almost across the board. I mean this whole awakening that is taking place. There is a good reason why Christian spokesmen aren’t given the same platform that Dan Rather is given.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] But the time will come when we will see them on those platforms.

[Rushdoony] And the interest is growing. They are afraid of us. They know that our ideas are seeping into all kinds of areas. God’s truth is beginning to make an impact.

So I think we have a very hopeful prospect fro the future, precisely because God is smashing the lie of our time.

[Scott] Well, if you look at the ambient that the Renaissance emerged from, it emerged... that the Reformation emerged from, it emerged from the Renaissance. It emerged from this cesspool of money which is what we have now, a very luxurious cesspool.

Without the Renaissance there wouldn’t have been a Reformation. There wouldn’t have been a need for a Reformation. Without this particular societal dishevelment and incoherence today there would be no need for efforts like our own.

[Rushdoony] The worst thing God could do for our generation is to allow it to continue exactly as it is.

[Scott] Well, we are lucky in living at the time when it is waning.

[Rushdoony] W e are going to see the end of the present order. It is going to be difficult to see, because we are attached to it. We are a part of it, but it is our hope for the future.

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.