From the Easy Chair

The Put Down

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 66-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161BG110

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161BG110, The Put Down from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 218, May 14, 1990.

This evening Otto Scott and I are going to discuss a subject which I think is especially important in this day and age, the put down. Otto, why don’t you introduce the subject?

[Scott] Well, the put down is generally associated with comedy, if we could use the word in such a context, but really what we are planning to talk about is the low opinion that so many people have developed and expressed of other people or people in general. And I suppose that to a great extent this is the result of seeing so many private lives exposed, of seeing so many scandals highlighted, of seeing a press that devotes so much attention to crime and to divorce and to various misdeeds and various humiliations and failures and calamities and so on, all the emphasis upon bigotry and prejudice and ethnic dissension and so forth with which we are inundated day in and day out. And the natural consequence seems to be that people are growing up and that grown ups go around with a great deal of contempt for the American society of which they are a part and a very low opinion of the IQ and the ability and the character of people whom they don’t know, but whom they have vague opinions about.

Now, as a writer, I ran into this repeatedly through the years. I would present a piece of copy when was in advertising and I ranged the gamut from humor to serious work and time and again I would be told, “Well, I like this very much, Otto, but I really don’t think that the public would get it.” As though I was writing something very profound when I was writing something really quite average aimed at the average person. Considering myself a fairly average man and the man making this comment was an average man. But he seemed to feel that he was surrounded by a sea of imbeciles who wouldn’t understand anything at all. And I said, “Look at him. And think why... how could you really believe that that many people are dumber than you are?”

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, one of my most vivid recollections is of a meeting in New York City a good many years ago, maybe 20 or more years ago hearing George Skyler. Do you remember who he was?

[Scott] Oh, a black scholar and a very good one.

[Rushdoony] Yes. A very gracious gentleman. And George Skyler had had his share of mistreatment and abuse, but he also had a great deal of knowledge of the past and of the world as it has been and is now elsewhere. And the point he made emphatically with a great deal of humor was this. No society in history has ever been more tolerant than the United States, that you can go to a great many places that are counted as ideal cultures and you will not find a fraction of the toleration and ready acceptance that any person of any race or culture will find routinely in the United States, that the majority of the people in this country are ready to be understanding, helpful, sympathetic as no one else Or, as one writer, Robert Christopher, has written more recently the WASP has been the most readily accommodating group in all of history. And, in fact, the term no longer means anything except whoever is successful in contemporary society, because the WASPs have absorbed all kinds of groups and peoples into their numbers.

[Scott] Well, that is true. I have... I have... I consider the core Americans to be those who accept the traditions of this country and this culture...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...irrespective of their ethnic background and their race and their religion. But what you and I know to be true and what George Skyler knew to be true is something that I think younger people have difficulty in believing, because their entire education and the entire atmosphere in which they live and work is drenched with denigration of this culture. And it rubs off. Every night the comedians come on television with their series of sardonic put downs, making fun. The ordeal that Vice President Quayle has been subjected to is obnoxious beyond belief.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And the people who maintain it are the ones who scream the loudest about that fact that Bush and company was supposed to have run a negative campaign. But Quayle is not the only victim. We have a long string of men who have been hounded out of public life because they told a bad joke or because somebody has decided to target them for one reason or another. Reputations have been ruined. All kinds of careers have been blasted and children are being taught that everybody is a possible menace.

I remember years ago I used to get off the buss in San Francisco and go to my home in the sunset district and I was away out at the end of the line. And in the summer time, you own, it would still be light. And there was a little girl in some house there behind the fence and as I went by I would wave at her and she would wave back. One day her mother saw her and ran out and got that little kid and took her into the house and I thought, gee, we have come a long way. What a way we have come where children are taught never to speak to anybody. And I realized that it is true. We have a dangerous society. But on the other hand, there are whole areas of decent civility. People are amazed. I remember when I was a boy and was out of the country they would... one of the questions I was most often asked in Brazil was if I had ever been to Chicago, because Chicago was known around the world for its gang murders. And now the gang murders of the 20s and early 30s in Chicago which are so famous then have been exceeded by the murders in Washington, DC, New York...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...Los Angeles, San Francisco, all across the country. But still there are immense areas. People come here and they are surprised to see serene suburbs and so forth.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, you mentioned comedy today as being reduced to a very vicious kind of put down. One of the things that marks the change that took World War II ... about 1960 the change was underway, was the shift from an affectionate comedy to a vicious type of comedy.

[Scott] Hate.

[Rushdoony] Hateful.

[Scott] A lot of hate.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And I think the epitome of the old comedy in the 30s which was so popular and still is with men, was Laurel and Hardy. Now the thing about Laurel and Hardy was that they were a couple of chronic bumblers. They were every man’s nightmare of what you might sometimes do inadvertently. And, therefore, it was an affectionate thing and nobody felt anything but an affectionate kind of laughter at what Laurel and Hardy represented. And that has since disappeared.

[Scott] Well, I remember there was a night club comedian in New York I knew in the 60s and he played in little places in Long Island and what not and he bugged me all the time to write a script for him, an act. And I finally decided, all right, I will. And I sat down and I thought about humor. And I ... this was in the 60s which is now 30 years ago and ... or almost. Let’s say 25 or so. I thought, well, I thought about Bert Larr coming out dressed as a woodsman with an axe and that paper mache tree on a stage...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ... in which he cried at the thought of hitting the tree with the axe and what not. It was really hilarious. And I didn’t think of Laurel and Hardy, but a number of others, Jack Benny with his your money or your life routine, you know.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] You know, I am... I am thinking. And several others. And I decided that the real thing that made it a great comic was that he was a loser, but he was a loser... every one else felt superior to him, because they could laugh at his losing what they, you know, could handle. And Charlie Chaplin, you know, never had a decent suit of clothes and was always hungry and so on.

So I had him put on an act in which he imitated, really he stole all these routines because he was discussing essence of humor. And I thought it was a way that he ... you know, we... we could steal from everybody and... and make out. I gave it to him.

Well, he was very, very angry. He didn’t like it at all. He said, “I am not a loser. I am a winner.”

And I said, “Well, have it your own way.”

And I haven't heard from him. He fell into a well someplace, but he was a winner. And we have a whole string of them now.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Who are... they are all winners. They come on. They are going to make fun of their wife.

[Rushdoony] Take my wife, please.

[Scott] ...or their husband or their neighbors or their boss or their fellow citizens or their race or somebody else’s race or whatever. But they don’t last. They are almost like matches. You... they come on. They make a great light and they burn out.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And... and somebody else takes their place.

[Rushdoony] Well, the older comedians lasted their lifetime successful, always appreciated. The newer ones are quickly out of the lime light. They catch the eye briefly and then are gone. There is one who has been in the papers the past week who is apparently so vicious that even television won’t tolerate him any longer.

[Scott] Well, I find Don Rickles anything but funny. He... he scares me.

[Rushdoony] He is mild compared to the newer ones.

[Scott] Well, there is a hostility. There is an animosity.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now the animosity comes through the edges in many different ways. We have now large corporations have had to set up policies and they have training courses inside the company on how men are supposed to behave with women so that they don’t offend.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] They don’t make sexist remarks. They don’t upset women in their conversation or in their general behavior. Now this comes under the category of a new style of manners. And, of course, the purpose is not courtesy. The purpose is to save the company from lawsuits and to keep peace in the building.

[Rushdoony] Well, you are familiar with the case of the Harvard Law School where a visiting professor of law made a remark, “What is sauce of the goose is sauce for the gander,” and he was accused of sexism.

[Scott] Well, this is what we are talking about. Now there is a... there is a sort of bureaucratic impersonality involved here. which is interesting to contemplate because it means that spontaneous behavior is now ruled out of bounds.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Waitresses, I notice, in some of the places I go for a quick snack or something still call me honey and dear. Should I... should I file a lawsuit against the restaurant chain?

[Rushdoony] No. Write a letter of thanks.

[Scott] Darn right. Absolutely. It doesn’t happen too often.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] But there is an undercurrent of dislike for others which is at the bottom of this. The Feminist movement is taking an attitude towards men which women have never taken. I mean, moments of anger, yes, but as a permanent attitude, this is something which goes against the grain. It is perverse and it is not called perversity, but it is, of course. And, of course, also it is hatred. I think the whole business of seeing drivers losing their temper and shaking their fist and so forth is a sign of the great tension and animosity that is growing up between people which no longer... which didn't exist before. It doesn’t exist in other countries, believe it or not. This is the only country I know that has had a steady of contempt for itself.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And it is having an effect upon the people. It is almost like dealing with a child. If the child is constantly criticized the child will lose self respect and then the child will turn into a hating child or a hostile child.

[Rushdoony] Well, I thought it was very interesting that a prominent Feminist a few years ago, as she was coming closer and closer by the year to the menopause decided she wanted a child before it was too late, but did not want to owe anything to a man or to marry him or to have him in any relationship to that child. And she found herself thoroughly avoided by men. Never did have her child and with good reason.

[Scott] Well, Gypsy Rose Lee, the strip tease dancer did have a child that way. She selected the husband... the... the father. She selected Otto Preminger. And then, of course, told him nothing and had the child had nothing to do with him. And it is not uncommon now. And, of course, this strikes at the very heart of everything that life means.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] We... one of the... one of the great tragic elements of abortion outside of the fact... obvious fact that any campaign that could persuade women to kill their own children is almost unprecedented. Abortions, of course, have always existed, but never before have women been proud of them. And in the whole process men are dismissed as no more than stud animals, as absolutely creatures with no human feelings and yet families came from men, not from women alone. It was a man who decided to protect the woman and the child. Here we have no rights of fatherhood whatever. In fact, it is even regarded as a subject that is a non subject, as though men are not completely human.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, insults are so readily given now and people will call you Fascist, a Nazi, sexist, almost anything without provocation and if you respond in any way, then...

[Scott] Then you prove the charge.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Because you are guilty by being a man and when you open your mouth you have doubly proven their case.

[Scott] Well, it is ... masculinity as a subject has just about dropped out of sight. It is a subject that my father used to bring up from time to time. The Latins, as everyone knows, have a profile of masculinity. And, of course, there has been a lot written against the macho which is simply the Latin for the masculine. Now it doesn’t make much sense to write against the masculine especially in the country that doesn’t remember any longer what masculinity consists of and that is it is spiritual combination of values just as the feminine is a spiritual compound. We have women who are not very womanly and who believe that because nature has taken {?} that they don’t have to behave as women. And we have men who don’t know how to be men. And we also have, of course, a culture which is rapidly reaching the point where it doesn't believe in men or in women. It believes in some sort of an androgynous mixture.

[Rushdoony] Well, the result is a kind of insanity. One of my vivid recollections of that was speaking at a major university some years ago and this woman professor, very emphatically a feminist, decided that I was unfit to speak there because my perspective was Christian and it was conservative. And she simply stood up and started to scream, literally to scream at me at the top of her voice and insist that the meeting had to end. It was outrageous that any such person should be allowed on the premises of the university.

I subsequently understood from some who apologized that this was routine for her and the administration had never done anything about it, because they were men and did not dare tackle her.

[Scott] Isn’t that interesting?

[Rushdoony] Yes. I really enraged her because I continued to answer her.

[Scott] I had the worst heckling I received was at Stanford Law School and there was a young woman who sat with bare fee crossed over the tops of the chairs in front of her who led the chorus. And I ... they did do the courtesy of letting me finish my talk. And then in the question and answer period the heckling began and I put up with it for a little while and I remember one person went on at some length and I said, “You are making a speech.” He said, “Well, you made a speech.” I said, “Yes, but I was invited to do so. You were not.” And finally, of course, I walked off the stage.

And the young men who invited me were very apologetic. And, of course, I accepted their apology and we parted and so fort, but I thought afterwards that when I was a young man, I would have risen to protect my guest.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] I would not have allowed him to be abused. But it never occurred to these young men, because none of them had ever been told, apparently, how to behave.

[Rushdoony] Also I... I have been through that kind of experience at universities. They are afraid of reprisals. They are students or they are professors and they feel vulnerable and they are cowards so they are afraid to do anything.

[Scott] What a commentary.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes.

[Scott] I mean, you know, how would you like to have your life defended by a man who was afraid of his boss?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, the modern university is full of cowards. They are very good as members of a mob. They are totally unfit when it is man to man.

[Scott] Well...

[Rushdoony] Or man to woman for that matter.

[Scott] Well, then we have this...

[Rushdoony] Person to person.

[Scott] So, of course, groups of that sort have a genuine contempt for one another, because they all know that... what was it Shakespeare said? The fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings...

[Rushdoony] That we are underlings, yes.

Well, when I did a lot of speaking on campus I found that the brazen and bold ones when it came to putting down a speaker were foreign students who felt that they were beyond criticism, that you were a racist if you criticized them and women, girls.

[Scott] Well, of course, women have lost a lot of that protectiveness. I recall when I was a boy that we grew up to feel very protective about a woman. And I came to the conclusion at one point that there is a psychological break inside man, a monitor, so to speak, which prevents him from using his full force and that you could grade the extent of masculinity by that respect and the less masculine individual is not as inhibited until you come down the scale to the wife beater and then below that the fellow who competes with a woman. But I am not sure that that scale which I devised mentally some years ago applies today, because to a great extent, I think, individuals are products of their time and their environment. I think the scientists in this area would put it at a 50-50 thing that about 50 percent your heredity and the other 50 percent environment and training, culture. Our culture is becoming very strange. If I meet somebody who is extremely courteous to me I realize immediately that they are trying to sell me something, because business manners are about the only part of our society in which manners are retained.

[Rushdoony] Well, because of the demand for equality, you see, even in children’s leagues, sport leagues, that girls are admitted.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] And the result is rather sad, because, for example, in a soccer game the boy who has been brought up in a good family to be a gentleman, to treat his sister and other girls as they should be treated is the one who is at a disadvantage. If he and a girl are both charging to kick the ball, he will hold back and, as a result, the girl has the advantage in the game. And I don’t think this is emotionally healthy.

[Scott] Well, it is bizarre. It is bizarre. We are undertaking a series of experiments in this country that have never worked in the history of the world. Now that is a long time. And it takes an awful lot of arrogance to fly in the face of the history of all humanity and say we are going to do something that has never been done before. We are going to make all people believe that race, ethnicity, class, background, size and all other differences are going to be totally irrelevant.

[Rushdoony] Well, a minor point. It has been tried on a very small scale. Some of the Greek city states and Aristophanes ridiculed the whole idea and Lysistrata and other of his plays. But it has never worked.

[Scott] It has never worked. Sparta tried it.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And it didn’t work.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] Well, it is true that the Greeks tried that in Sparta and other places, but the Greeks never tried to have a society in which they brought the Persians in and the Chinese and the Africans and said, “Everybody is the same here.” Now we have a noble experiment underway, but there is a certain amount of time that is required for any kind of experiment to be given a fair chance. What seems to be underway here is the idea that brotherly love can be accomplished by force. It is an old American idea. It is under... it undergirded the abolitionist effort. Social compulsion is being applied. And people are not being given a chance to get accustomed to great changes of the rules that have taken place in the last generation.

[Rushdoony] Some years back one scholar studied the question of racial equality in antiquity, in particular in the Roman Empire. And his conclusion was that it had never worked except where a group by its own efforts raised itself to the level of the others.

[Scott] And wanted to join them.

[Rushdoony] And then he said there was no preventing integration, because then they shared the same...

[multiple voices]

[Rushdoony] ... and status, the same religious beliefs, the same cultural characteristics. They were identical and they very quickly would merge, but no pressure could compel it. It had to be a natural thing.

[Scott] Well, Christianity did this.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Christianity took tribes that had been at one another’s throats from time immemorial and allowed them to live in peace alongside each other. There were intermittent wars in Europe, but as long as Europe was Christian the aristocracy felt that everyone else was their brother. And so were the common people.

[Rushdoony] Even in the liturgy of the early church as well as in the statements of its enemies the Christians were spoken of as the Christian race.

[Scott] Yes. And they were.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Although they had different colors, although they had different backgrounds, different languages. Latin put them all together.

Now that could happen here and should happen here because a majority of the people of this country are Christians. And, of course, to be a Christian means that there are certain things you do not say to and about other people. And I saw in one of the writings of that horrible scoundrel Norman Mahler, a reference one day to what he called a sickening... a sickly sweetness of the Christian. And I thought, brother, you ought to be thankful that we have decided to be sweet to you, because nobody would be easier to kick in the ass.

[Rushdoony] Well, one of the writings that Mahler which was really the only good thing he ever wrote was an essay in the late 50s, I believe, in which he spoke about the negrofication of American culture. And he said that what he could see coming was the imitation of the, oh, street black by the white community as the ideal and that this would be the ideal on the part of white youth and high schools, colleges, everywhere. And, of course, what he predicted did come to pass.

[Scott] To an extent.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] To an extent.

[Rushdoony] He also wrote a book and the title escapes me, but the thesis was that the conflict was between Christians and barbarians.

[Scott] That is right.

[Rushdoony] And he was on the side of the barbarians.

[Scott] Well, you didn’t have to tell us that. We know that.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] We know that. It glares out and it is obvious. Well, of course, talking about Negro manners coming from the bottom have been promoted by the top. This has not been a natural sequence. I notice today listen to the jingles on the air that they are all Negro voices. They are almost all. And I wonder what ever happened. They are 10 percent of the population and a very fine 10 percent... 99... well, let’s say 90 percent of the 10 percent is fine. Ten percent of the rest give us a great deal of trouble in themselves. But the manners that come across here do not strike me as being so much black manners as simply manners from different cultures.

You know, the elaborate courtesies of Europe somehow are dropped here because Europeans have actually been told that Americans like to be insulted. They like to be told that they don’t seem like Americans. And I had a Hindu guest once who actually talked to me about discrimination. And I got very testy with him and said, “How dare you, coming from a land of the caste system mention discrimination in this house?” And he was astonished. He said, “No other American has spoken to me that way.” And I said, “Well, I have got news for you.”

[Rushdoony] Yes. No other American had spoken to him that way because most Americans are courteous.

[Scott] That is true. That is true, but just felt that it was too much to put up with.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, I think you did him a courtesy in speaking.

[Scott] Well, we do get this from foreigners are the time.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And our literature also goes in this direction. How many stories have you read about gauche Americans abroad?

[Rushdoony] Well, I think very often foreigners from any country who travel are that way. The worst behavior I ever saw in a public place was by a group of Frenchmen who just landed in Los Angeles and were on their way to a hotel. We were in the same, oh, hotel bus. It was amazing how course and crude they were.

[Scott] Really.

[Rushdoony] I don’t think that is typical of Frenchmen.

[Scott] No.

[Rushdoony] But I think they somehow feel that when they are abroad they are superior to the people there the natives and they can act with radical unconcern for their feelings.

[Scott] Well, it could be. Of course, when people are transplanted they look different. And... but I was a bit upset not too many years ago, two or three years ago, to be told by a German that we are called, Americans are called in West Germany today or at that time, people of the rule. And I said, “What do you mean?”

Well, he said, “Americans will come into the hotel and some other place and they will say, ‘Well, what are the rules here?’ And when we tell them, they will obey them.”

And that was new for me.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Very interesting.

[Scott] And I think that because we have so much self criticism there is a myth around in the world that Americans like to be criticized and put down because they are put down all the time at home.

[Rushdoony] Well, I think television is a prime offender here. It is very difficult to watch most of television, in fact, I don’t. We watch very, very little, because it is a studied insult to the viewer.

[Scott] To the intelligence...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And to the character. And I was going to say that, too. I thought about when you mentioned it earlier that according to Ben Stein’s The View from Hollywood Boulevard...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Was that the name of it?

[Rushdoony] Excellent or Sunset Boulevard.

[Scott] Sunset Boulevard, yes. He said there were only about 100 or so script writers and they all knew one another and they came from the same milieu and they had the same vision of America. A small town was a Fascist headquarters, that somewhere in the country there is a group of WASP bankers sitting in a cellar that governed everything and so forth, all these fantasies.

[Rushdoony] One script writer who is a Christian doesn’t work too much, although he is fairly successful told me you can understand why the scripts are the way they are if you realize that most of them are on drugs when they are writing.

[Scott] Well, that is... that is a good excuse. It is better than none. I hope they are on drugs. I hope these aren’t sober productions. But they are, as you say, hard to put up with. And the reactions that they portray people has having are reactions that I have never seen anywhere in the world in the... and certainly not in the American culture. They do not reflect the way Americans behave.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Scott] I mean how often have you seen a fellow coming in wise cracking, insulting a girl and having her fall in love with him? I have never seen it. And I never expect to see it. And yet it happens all the time in these stupid scripts.

[Rushdoony] Well, we have had since I have been here a great many television productions filmed here in the mountains and films and the like. A few of them I have seen. No resemblance between what the people are here and the characters that are shown.

[Scott] No. They show country people as absolute morons.

[Rushdoony] And all evil...

[Scott] Oh.

[Rushdoony] ...ruled by a very wicked sheriff or somebody like that.

[Scott] Well, A Handmaid’s Tale.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] You ... you showed me that article from a London newspaper in which the Reconstructionist movement was connected to that sort of a fantasy.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now really that is very pretty evil. That is deliberate hatred.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And this is really what we are talking about. We are not really talking about the bad opinion that Americans are encouraged to have about one another so much as we are talking about the effects of deliberate campaign of hatred against the people.

[Rushdoony] Yes. This is an age which talks more about love than any other.

[Scott] The greatest...

[Rushdoony] And...

[Scott] The greatest age of hypocrisy yet.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And it is full of hatred.

[Scott] It is full of... it is just brimming.

[Rushdoony] Well, some years ago a friend of mine told me about a run in with somebody who was one of these love babies. And the man attacked John savagely, viciously, venomously as a hate monger, as somebody who hated the Jews, although the Jews were never in the conversation. He just decided that he had to be an anti Semite. He hated the blacks and I forget the whole catalog of sins he ascribed. And a man went on to say how evil it was that people like him were running around filling the world with hatred. All the man had done was to state that he was a Christian and he took the Bible and his faith seriously and liberally. And that is what caused the explosion.

And when the man finally paused to catch his breath John said, “Since you have such a heart full of love, can’t you find a little bit in it for me and what I represent?”

The man turned around and stomped off angrily. The man was a very prominent person, too. He was someone who felt that he represented the best in this country.

[Scott] He had a perfect right to denounce another man’s religion and to ascribe opinions to him that he had never expressed.

[Rushdoony] Exactly. Exactly.

[Scott] And that is pretty common.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes.

[Scott] That is pretty common. In fact, that is one of the great unmentioned aspects of American life is that Christians are insulted constantly and are not expected to respond.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And I regard this as a very dangerous thing, because there are tens of millions of Christians in this country. The majority of the people are Christian and the fact that so much in ... has been presented without response does not necessarily mean that it is accepted.

[Rushdoony] I don’t think people are going to forget that President Bush signed an anti hate bill and celebrated it by inviting homosexuals and lesbians into the White House to celebrate it with him.

[Scott] Well, I read recently that a judge is being sued by the ACLU because he says a prayer before he opens his court.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ...in the morning. And the attorneys of the court claim that they are offended because they are... feel that they should bow their heads and they find this very disturbing. And the poem... the prayer is printed, a very innocuous sort of statement referring only to God. And I have to wonder at the mentality of people who find the sight of somebody else praying offensive. It seems to me a very strange attitude to take and in the long run a very foolish attitude to take, because I happen to have a great deal of fear of great masses of angry people. It doesn’t do to dare the world. I have been on most of the waterfronts of the world and I never saw a fellow looking for a fight who didn’t find more than he wanted.

[Rushdoony] Yes. They in the name of tolerance are very intolerant and they are creating an explosive situation.

[Scott] Fundamentally, yes ,because you cannot bait a nation endlessly and forever. And our ... there has been a shift. The press has always been unjust. Despite all the things that are said about journalism and its undoubted virtues, the fact of the matter is that the press is put together by very imperfect people and, therefore it is an imperfect instrument and it has always been tilted one way or the other. It has always been a partisan outlet, because it is written in the heat of the moment and so forth. But it was always competitively partisan. It has never before all been unanimously partisan. Today we have a press that is all titled in one direction.

Now not a... the Russians had to do this by compulsion, but it is being done here because all the journalists seem to have gone to the same school and merge with the same opinion. And newspapers have diverged like to a slight extent Christian Science Monitor drops out of the fashion. The Oklahoma Star Journal... let’s see the Oklahoman.

[Rushdoony] Oklahoman, yes.

[Scott] Is... is treated as though it doesn’t exist, although it covers an immense territory and it is a very big newspaper. {?} newspapers up in New England...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ... are always treated as outlaws, never, never picked on at all. The rest of the press all sounds as though it has been written by one person. This is uncanny. This is stupid, because most of the opinions expressed are against what the most of the American people think.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, the put down of Christianity in the press on television and in films is a militant and organized kind of thing. And I think it is interesting that Don Wildman who has been fighting this for some time is finding a growing receptivity of people to what he has to say. And it has begun to have an impact so that some of the corporations are beginning to feel the pressure in terms of their products not selling as well.

[Scott] Well, AT&T had to stop sponsoring Planned Parenthood.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And I believe Clorox had to pull back on some things.

[Scott] Well, in other words, what we are talking about is the denigration of a nation.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And... and certain people in the nation, of course, or I keep running into from time to time not too much, but once in a while, people who literally take all their ideas from the media. And it is useless to talk to them because in D. H. Lawrence’s phrase, they chew up editorials and spit them at you. I... I said to one one day. “Well, I read that in the paper.”

He said, “Well, I happen to agree with it.”

But, you know, if you... if you can agree with our press I think you are in a strange situation.

[Rushdoony] Yes, you hear a great deal of, by the way, about Will Rogers having said, “All I know is what I read in the papers.”

[Scott] But he was making fun of people like that.

[Rushdoony] Yes. He also said, “All I know is what I never read in the papers.”

[Scott] Oh, he was... he was playing the country bumpkin when he made that comment.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

Well, the put down, I think, ends up with the people who do it being put down by almighty God.

[Scott] Well, that is true. That is true. There is a great deal of cruelty in the put down. I remember listening to some men talking about the down fall of a very prominent fellow that we all knew and it was very interesting to me. All they remembered were his put downs. And I realized then with great force that men never forget an insult. They forget compliments. You can tell them many times that they do a good job, but the first time you say, “That was a stupid thing to do,” they never forget it.

[Rushdoony] Well, it is interesting to me that H. L. Mencken who was so prone to vicious put downs all his life now after death is being subjected to the same unfair kind of put down. Ironic.

[Scott] He put down everybody.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] But some of the people he put down don’t believe that it is fair. Now look at what he said about the Bible belt. Look at what he said about the Christians of the South.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Look what he said about...

[Rushdoony] ... the middle class.

[Scott] ...all the people of the South, what did he say about the middle class, what he said about practically every prominent person. And you know that he and Clarence Darrow combined to destroy William Jennings Bryan.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] He died. He died humiliated. That was one of the most savage campaigns I have... has ever been conducted. And never has anyone pointed out that it was a dirty, vicious thing to do. In fact, they put a play on celebrating it all over again.

[Rushdoony] When you read the text of the trial, which I did once, Bryan was at his best in what he had to say and said it with humility. But he was very telling. But all they did was to ridicule him.

[Scott] ... in the press.

[Rushdoony] In the press.

[Scott] He won the case before the jury.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And his remarks were superb.

[Scott] All you hear is the witticisms of Darrow and the ... I have forgotten the name of the play, but it was on Broadway for quite a while.

[Rushdoony] Well, I have a book that I have been reading. It is a biography of Nancy Astor, Lady Astor. While there are some things I don’t care about, I was surprised at how remarkable a person she was. But the press decided they didn't like her and they never missed a chance to do her in. After the war when she came to the States she spoke to the graduates of her black school and she said how much she had learned that stayed with her from the black mammy who cared for her and the black aunties and uncles she had known. But they had a faith that was very great and a humility. And this had been a decisive influence in her life. And so she told these young people, “Don't despise this aspect of your heritage.”

The press went after her for that speech with an amazing savagery.

[Scott] Well, they probably called it pro slavery. I have actually had people who read The Secret Six ask me if I was pro slavery.

[Rushdoony] Well, our time is about up. Any last comment, Otto, before we wind it up?

[Scott] Well, it is a pleasure always to be with a Christian group, because of the civility of the decent manners.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ... that we enjoy. It isn’t necessary for us to have strident arguments with one another to get along.

[Rushdoony] And they are there because they want to learn something, not to sit in judgment.

[Scott] That is a very big point.

[Rushdoony] Yes. 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.