From the Easy Chair

Hope for Monetary Reform

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 81-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161BQ125

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161BQ125, Hope for Monetary Reform from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 77, July the 24th, 1984.

Today we have a particularly happy prospect and we are very much honored to have Lou Lehrman of New York with us and, again, John Lofton and of our Chalcedon staff Otto Scott and myself. I think you are all familiar with Lou Lehrman who came very close to upsetting the Democratic party in the race of governorship and how is no holding various offices and, I believe, the gold commission in Washington, DC.

Lou, we are very happy to have you here with us.

[Lehrman] I am equally happy to be here, Rush.

[Rushdoony] A little while ago when all of us and the rest of the staff were at breakfast, you gave a particularly important answer to a question, I think, that is of concern to people everywhere these days. You were asked about the historical precedence for a change in monetary policy, a return to a sound monetary policy without the crisis of a revolution or a major social disturbance. Your answer, I think, was particularly important for everyone to know, because too many people seem to equate such a change only with revolution or a total disaster. Do you want to tell us something about that?

[Lehrman] Yeah, surely. It is, of course, true from even the most cursory study of history that there are these two possibilities for the reestablishment of monetary order, a just currency. Any civilization which abandons one is the ... the hyper inflation or the catastrophic deflation, the occasion of war and revolution, as you mentioned upon the one hand. But there are many cases in modern history alone which show that a society, a social order can restore its health entirely by the gift of leadership, organization and a commitment to the idea of a sound currency and putting it before a democratic people.

For example, in the early 19th century was known as the {?} restoration of a gold backed pound sterling in England, appeared about 1821. The is was a debate which engaged the entire voting population of England from about 1809 until 1821 when the convertibility of the pound sterling specie payments resumption, as it was called, was restored. The bullion report, probably one of the most brilliant documents on the importance to a sound, stable and free social order of a just currency was published in 1810. Eleven years of debate ensued before England had a convertible pound.

And for 100 years, until the onset of the First World War the pound sterling governed the international commerce of the world and, but for a few moments of instability, the gold sovereign was the indisputable medium of exchange of global commerce.

In our own country, Lincoln was... felt himself required to suspend specie payments in 1862, January of 1862 as a result of the onset of the Civil War. And, of course, the Congress concurred.

It was 13 years later in the midst of a debate a decade after the end of the Civil War that the American people through the Congress decided to restore specie payments in our own country, a convertible dollar, a gold backed currency. Four years after the statute was passed in 1875 resumption occurred peacefully, quietly without any run on the gold stock of the US treasury.

From 1879 until 1971 on an international basis the United States was on some form of a convertible currency, defective as it was after 1934. Even in France it was the gold and {?} who restored the convertible franc in 1959 in much more painful circumstances than those of 1879 in our own country, 1821 in England, but it did not require a ... a revolution, a hyper inflation, a complete catastrophe to bring about the reestablishment of a ... honest money.

[Rushdoony] I think that is very important for us to know, because that is exactly what we have to work towards in this country, a peaceful restoration by means of education in the political process. And, of course, that is what you are involved in doing right now.

[Lehrman] I believe, Rush, that the next 10 years will ... will engage the American people as they have never been engaged before in this question of a free monetary order. It has always impressed me that in American history in its 200 years of the constitutional history of the republic that there have been several presidential campaigns, national campaigns waged on the money issue alone. I speak of the campaigns of Andrew Jackson and the issue of the first federal reserve system, so to speak, the second national bank which Jackson was determined to abolish and to restore a coin of the country strictly determined by its gold and silver content.

Also I think it is fair to remark that William Jennings Bryan precipitated the debate over the monetary order of our country in the context of three presidential campaigns. Thrice he campaigned against the gold standard. We do not remember as clearly as we should, because the of the liberal historians who have glorified his campaign rather than, in fact, the winners. For it must be remarked that William Jennings Bryan campaigned against the gold standard three time and lost all three times.

In this century there has yet to be national debate over an honest money and constitutional currency, a currency with a biblical basis, which, of course, is the basis of the law of the republic in the first place. And I believe that the present unstable financial circumstances are conspiring to bring about just this debate which will be the central issue of the mid and late 1980s, perhaps even the 1990s.

[Scott] Do you think that you could draw a comparison between the Jackson debate over the bank of the United States and the coming debate over the role of the federal reserve?

[Lehrman] Yes, Otto, I do. I think that there is as precise an analogy as one can wish in the laboratory of history between Jackson’s campaign to disestablish this first corporate state monopoly bank and to restore constitutional money and the campaign presently being waged to reconsider the... the monopoly characteristics of the federal reserve system.

[Rushdoony] One of the things that I found intensely interesting when I studied history, American history, was that in its various addresses Andrew Jackson was a teacher. He went into the reason why he opposed the US bank. He was explaining to the people the economic significance of the bank, what it meant in terms of the principles on which this country was founded. And I thought of that when I got little smatterings, sometimes clippings sent to me from New York by people on my mailing list of your own campaign because what you have been trying to do is exactly the same thing, to educate people on the fundamental issues.

And a story you told us yesterday I do want everyone to hear because I think your education went much further than the immediate political scene. I would appreciate it if you would tell us again the story of your vacation with your children and the reporters who followed you around, their reaction to your children and why your children are what they are. Would you tell us that?

[Lehrman] The story I ... I told Rush yesterday had very much to do with my family which is very much the ... the largest part of my life. I made a commitment with Louise, my wife, that I no way would the family be disrupted, daily activities, its schooling, its customary way of life by my decision to run for governor of New York as a private citizen, never having run a political campaign before. And I stuck to that decision. I began my campaign in the Spring of 81 and it lasted for 18 months.

The children campaigned with me one week out of their summer holidays. We had a Winnebago and we campaigned upstate New York. And during these seven days we went from Albany to Utica, to Syracuse to Rochester to Buffalo. At that time my campaign was just emerging from the obscurity of what one reporter called Lou who. And ...and it... it ... it was entitled to a small entourage of journalists from different New York newspapers who followed us from town to town. We went from the Syracuse state fair to a ball game in Rochester, those types of events.

At the end of the trip a couple of reporters came up to me and said, “Lou, you have just go to tell us the answer to a question which we have all been debating and we will keep it off the record.”

Of course, I had a pretty doubtful inward reaction to that comment, but I nevertheless was prepared to respond. The question was: Lou, on the first day we followed you and your family and your ... your children were extremely well behaved and we decided this is a very careful politician who quite properly briefed his children on their conduct. On the second day your children, all five of your children, indeed, your very youngest who is only three and your next who is seven were equally well behaved. And we decided that they were extremely well briefed the second day as well. Now at the end of seven days we have observed seven days with your children and their conduct has really been extraordinary and we have decided we had not been put on and you... you must explain to us how it is that you raise children in this day and age whose conduct will be so well disciplined for seven days under the most painfully straining circumstances of a wide open political campaign.

I wanted to give an honest and fitting answer so I hesitated and I said, “Because my children still believe in hell fire.”

[Rushdoony] That is one of the finest answers I have ever heard. You know, George Orwell, while he was still a Leftist wrote an article in which he said very discerningly that he saw no future in politics until men figured out what in the liberal world view could replace hell in the scheme of things, because when you took hell out of the picture you took justice out. And so he said, “We will get nowhere until we have an answer to this problem.”

John, you have been very silent.

[Lofton] Well, I am ... I am interested as to whether or not Lou thinks significant monetary reform can come about peacefully in this country or... or do you think even though you may be for it that it ... that there may have to be a catastrophic event.

[Lehrman] I would... as... as you imply, John, I would prefer to see the American people at the four year interval, the point of the presidential elections, endorse a platform which calls for a restoration of honest money, a gold or silver backed currency. On the other hand, in the absence of a successful resolution of this issue through the democratic process, I am convinced that a free monetary order will be established in this country come what may and it could, by virtue of default of political leadership, come as a result of a catastrophic event, either hyper inflation or a ... a compelling deflationary economic environment. It could occur as a result of ... of a war, which could precipitate our own involvement, the aftermath of which would lead to a debate over the kind of economic institutions we should reestablish after, one prays, a successful outcome of such a war.

My instinct is to believe that the next 10 year, the next two or three presidential campaigns will begin to focus on the monetary issue. I believe this is true based on the evidence. For example, consider that Jack Kemp may very well be leading presidential candidate in 1987-88. It is a fact that Jack Kemp has made the monetary issue one of the principle elements of his own claim to public service and it has been a distinguished career as a... probably the most prominent congressman in our House of Representatives.

So when you just think of the available candidates for 1988 in the Republican party and you think about the youth and the force of the new generation in the Republican party which will be contending for primacy, you think about the fact that men like Bill Armstrong, Senator Armstrong of Denver, of Colorado and Jack Kemp of ... of New York take very seriously this monetary issue. It is hard for me to imagine that 1988 itself will not be one year in which this is a possibility even if not the principle issue.

[Lofton] Let me ask you a brief follow up question. My understanding is that certainly President Reagan has given speeches where he appears to be a supporter of the idea of the gold standard. If you agree that that is true, why has there been ... I think it is accurate to say almost no push, maybe no push at all, from this administration for the gold standard?

[Lehrman] The are several reasons among many others, I am sure. First is I... is a reason which I think has escaped too many historians and political observers. If an issue is not the stuff of a presidential campaign which is the choice, then that issue is very unlikely to become a principle element of the legislative program. It was almost like attempting to imagine the 14th Amendment, the abolition of slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation without Mr. Lincoln and the 1858 debates with Senator Douglas.

The fact that the president or, I should say Governor Reagan in 1980 or the Republican party did not make the monetary issue even in the midst of the worst inflation in American history the principle issue or one of the principle issues of the campaign while it is an ... not a sufficient explanation, it is certainly one of the necessary explanations for it, its absence as part of our legislative program, the second reason is the advisors to the president are ... are split about nine to one against. Would that it were an even split and the issue would have a chance of getting through to the president and forcing him to focus on that...

[Lofton] Well, who doesn’t want it?

[Scott] The suspense is killing me.

[Lehrman] I believe that... of course, I... the ratio is nine to one. There are... there is more than one person. At the very center of the White House today there is a receptiveness to considering convertibility of the currency by Jim Baker, by Dick Darman, not because they have searched its basis in biblical law or they have searched its basis in our constitutional documents or even in the history of money in occidental civilization, but because they have seen the total bankruptcy of the Keynesian formulation of monetary policy and the utter collapse of the monetarist formulation of monetary policy. There are only three monetary policies in a more or less free society: a counter cyclical credit policy in this ear known as Keynesian credit policy; the quantity theory of money, which in this era is known as monetarist, or free money monetary policy; and the classical monetary policy, which, of course, is a convertible currency. The third alternative is the only that has not been tried since the domestic suspension of 1934 and the international suspension of 1971. So by default it is becoming an issue serious to advisors like Jim Baker and Dick Darman who are very close to the president.

[Scott] Well, don’t you think that part of the reason for the avoidance of this issue on the part of Republicans has been that there has been a shift in the manner in which economic issues are regarded by the politicians. For instance, in the Jackson days President Jackson and his supporters went against the bank of the United States representing Liberalism, representing more freedom for the people. But he present day liberal who claims to represent more freedom for the people is on the side of authoritarian Socialism and is on the side of the federal reserve and is on the side of a controlled economy so that anyone who goes against the controlled economy is labeled as a conservative, a conservative who presumably is against the people as we heard at the last Democratic convention, against the poor. He is against giving the poor free money.

[Lehrman] That is one of the great ironies of our era is the misappropriation of the word liberal by those who wish to give a license to government when, I suppose, what you could say of the modern liberal is that he believes in the freedom, indeed, the license of government to do as it pleases without constraint and all of those constraints formerly applied by the constitution and customary common law to the government are now imposed upon a free people by a government with a license to do so. And I suppose that change in our vocabulary has even made it more difficult to make the monetary issue a ... a ... a principled political issue for it... it has been identified...

[Scott] That is it.

[Lehrman] The monetary issue or, I should say, a free monetary order, a gold backed currency, has been identified with what is .... the historians have called the collapse of the American economy under the Republican party of Coolidge and Hoover. And it has taken virtually two generations for the collective mind of a nation to more or less have forgotten that period with which the gold standard is improperly identified so that we can now sort of speak as with a tabula rasa, we consider what is the appropriate monetary constitution of the country.

I... in fact, I ... I have come more and more to believe than I did when I was an aspiring young historian at teaching school that the nation almost has to escape the historians and historiographers.

[Rushdoony] He has.

[Lehrman] ... of the period in which it grows up before it is able to escape the evils which certain types of politicians impose on every generation.

[Scott] Well, you take the rationalizations of Schlesinger, for instance, on this action administration. He completely misrepresented that period. And he got prizes for it and it was a best seller.

[Lehrman] The liberal historians, I should say the social democratic, Socialist historians, Marxist historians of the period extending all the way from the Progressive period, let us say, the 1910 to the 1930 all the way up until the present day, the liberal historians who dominate all of our elite universities and the faculties of the social sciences and the humanities have written history with a view to altering the Constitution of our country. And, as a result, it is the most profound act of liberation on behalf of the American people taking their intellectual life into their own hands to reconfigure the issues which they will make the centerpiece of their national campaigns. And that is what I see happening right now. The American people emerging from this immense intellectual and fraudulent cloud spread above them by the media, journalistic, academic elites of the nation of the last 50 years, largely growing out of the mythology which surrounds the ... the Great Depression, the Roosevelt hegemony, the Kennedy and Johnson periods.

The Reagan presidency is a fore runner, a fore warning, a premonition of possibility and for that reason I am very hopeful.

[Rushdoony] In our schools today history is no longer taught. Social studies or social science is taught instead. And very few people appreciate the difference. History attempts to deal honestly and faithfully with the record of the past. But social studies is the science of the control and redirection of man and society. And so history, as social studies deals with it, is a manipulated account, a doctored account in order to redirect the thinking of the younger generation into the desired channels, not to give them any sense of the past.

[Scott] Well, it is especially important not to teach them about the past, because you can’t repeat errors that everyone recognizes as errors unless you pretend they had never occurred.

[Lehrman] Yes. I am in ... speaking of the manipulated past by the liberal social scientists and historians who govern our national patrimony today, I am reminded of a wonderful new book on President Coolidge which you may have seen by ... published by the North Carolina Press by a young man by the name of Silver, a professor Silver. This book examines a Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger’s rendition of the Coolidge presidency in which he sets the state for the epiphany of Roosevelt and all of his liberal progeny. Professor Silver shows in a very short, but powerful monograph, a scholarly piece of work that Arthur Schlesinger in many cases fraudulently misrepresents Calvin Coolidge’s exact quotation. In other words, in order to prove in the first volume of the coming of the New Deal Schlesinger’s large work on the Roosevelt years, in order to prove that Coolidge was a fool, an idiot, an antediluvian, almost anti American, he tales quotations from speeches, documents, official documents, leaves out a word here, leaves out a word there and actually manipulates Coolidge’s own record of is beliefs and commitments in order to ... that is Schlesinger, in order to falsify the Coolidge record in order to put the Roosevelt record in a more positive light as the ... as the inevitable future of our American history.

It... it is the beginning of... not the beginning, for it has been going on a while, but it is a ... the Silver book on Coolidge is in a very important event in the revisionism of the liberal historiography what we... we should call it the liberal hagiography.

[Scott] Yes.

[Lehrman] We...

[Scott] We should call it corrections of the record rather than...

[Lehrman] Yes.

[Scott] ... provisions.

[Lehrman] But it is a very important event, I believe, in... in...

[Rushdoony] What was his first name and the publisher?

[Lehrman] Thomas.

[Rushdoony] Thomas Silver.

[Lehrman] And the University of North Carolina Press put it out. It is a little blue hardback of about 150 pages, marvelously well written.

[Rushdoony] That is a book that I will have to get, because I have always felt that the Coolidge has been very unkindly and savagely, in fact, dealt with by historians.

[Scott] A lot... Paul Johnson’s Modern Times does a lot to refurbish Coolidge.

[Rushdoony] Yes. That is an excellent study. Are you familiar with that?

[Lehrman] I certainly am. I have not completed it, but I have read pieces of it.

[Rushdoony] That was a delight to read.

[Lofton] I kind of think as we sit here, Lou, is that do you know the Democrats have already met in their convention. Does their platform say anything at all about monetary reform? Are they attempting to in any way perhaps seize this issue?

[Lehrman] I have only read a summary of the Democratic platform. I have not read the document itself. I ... to the best of my recollection a phrase everyone has to use after Watergate...

[Lofton] At this point in time you have to add.

[Scott] Although you are not under oath here.

[Lehrman] As best I can remember, there is absolutely not a single mention of the monetary issue in the Democratic platform.

[Scott] And yet every family in the United States is worried about money.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] How they will hold it if they have any and how they can get it if they haven’t.

[Rushdoony] You may recall when R. E. McMaster was here he told us that a survey indicated that six million American adults owned gold and another 30 million wanted to and planned to.

Now that is a considerable number when you realize that in any survey a lot of people wouldn’t admit that the owned gold. So it indicates that the people are interested in the monetary issue.

[Scott] So is the government. The government is almost {?} them. They want now to have a record of how much gold you have. And, of course, this is the government that once made the only... the private ownership of gold illegal.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Only recently have we gotten that right back.

[Rushdoony] Well, that was the private ownership of gold bullion, not of gold coins. Those could always be held, that is American coins and foreign coins prior to, I believe, 1932.

[Lehrman] This monetary issue to many of our American friends and ... and political opponents has ... is often thought to be overdrawn by those of us who believe it is the ... the central issue of our times. And that is because I... I believe they do not understand or see the monetary issue as a metaphor in politics for the debate over the kind of social order America shall be. It is not yet grasped by the opposition to those of us who believe the monetary issue so important either in the Republican or the Democratic party that the monetary standard is not only an issue of merit in its own right, but it is... it is a metaphor for the depreciation of the standards throughout American life, just as we observe the depreciation of the monetary standard, the dollar in the last two generations to a fraction of its original value.

So precisely at the same part, going hand in hand was observed the depreciation of every objective standard of value, whether it be standards of justice in our courts, standards, high standards of equality in our... of education in our schools, standards of decency in our streets, standards of civil conduct which is commanded of American citizens who take their inspiration from the constitutional character of the republic and the biblical origins of our common law, so that when we begin now to bring the monetary issue to the front of a presidential campaign as the central issue in a national campaign over the next 10 years, it is ... it is in this larger context that I think we have to cast the debate beyond the monetary issue and I think if we do so, we are going to win and I believe that we can win a total victory.

[Rushdoony] It is a moral crisis we are in and that is why we have a monetary problem, because the kind of money we have now represents... well, it is fiat money. Therefore it is an immoral concept. It is the state playing God and saying, “We will establish value I the monetary sphere and now in the moral sphere.” We have had in one area after another the reign of the fiat, the state created value.

[Scott] Well, that fits in with the sort of rhetoric that we heard last week. If we ever reach the stage where men who publicly state what is publicly known to be incorrect, cease to have respectful treatment from the public, then we will be on the beginning of a real reformation.

Last week we heard a series of speakers get up and make a series of statements that were pure and simple lies. And neither the networks nor anyone else challenged them or called people’s attention to the fact that these were {?} that these were lies. What the press and the networks did do was to admire the smoothness with which the lies were pronounced.

[Lehrman] Yes, the... the speeches of that convention were a public scandal.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Lehrman] And, Otto, you remarked yesterday and I... I paid very close attention that there was not even among the leadership of the Republican power, the moral courage and the sense of utter outrage publicly to deny these scandalous lies that were told not only about president Reagan, the Republican party, but about those parts of the tradition of our country which President Reagan has come to represent to many even if not perfectly, better than any president in my lifetime.

[Scott] Yes. A man who I recall it was said by McCauley about Oliver Goldsmith he said, “There is something wrong with Goldsmith. When he is insulted he doesn't express indignation. And,” he said, “A man who has no sense of justice about himself is not likely to have a sense of justice about others.”

[Lehrman] That is very good. I ... I ... you know, in my rookie run for public office in New York I had all kinds of people offering advice and I... and I have not really reflected on one school of advice which was that when insulted, when offended, when callumnied, when accused falsely, do not ... do not overreact. This is the advice of that school of political counselors which wants you to be cool, wants you to be unresponsive, wants you to be...

[Scott] Yes.

[Lehrman] ...impacted, sort of... What the Lord Chesterfield school of politics.

[Lofton] Don’t react at all.

[Scott] {?}

[multiple voices]

[Scott] Wipe the spittle from your cheek.

[Lehrman] That is right.

[Scott] Pretend it didn’t happen.

[Lofton] Where from does this whole idea stem when one reflects upon it?

[Scott] From the public relations groups in advising corporations. They advise the businessmen under constant attack during the New Deal and since, not to respond on the old theory that you can’t win a contest with a skunk. And... and... and we recall now just what this steady decline of businessmen’s influence in this political arena in order to evaluate the value of that...

[Lofton] Well, I... at the same time we have watched the ascendency of the skunks. Really and this is really the... the... advice from the skunk’s aids. I remember back when Spiro T. Agnew was being accused of being a crook. And, of course, I liked Mr. Agnew very much and perhaps my mother liked him even more. And I talked to her one night by telephone down in Miami and I was telling her the latest that had happened in the... in the news as regards this event and my mother interrupted me and she said, “I have just... I have just got to tell you that I am very worried by the fact that he never denies these things.”

You know, and she sighed like she really didn’t want to say this, but in her guts this really bothered her. And I remember it wasn’t... it was several days later or several weeks later that many of us had one on one meetings with Mr. Agnew, very close, where we could look him right into his eyes and I told him what my mother had said. And he didn’t really react to it even then. He didn’t even tell me anything to tell my mother or he didn’t even really deny it to me in that one on one meeting. And I subsequently found out he did not deny it with others. It was just a case of well, there are things going on here which I cannot tell you about for years and you have just got to trust me.

But this ... you can’t... this idea that you cannot over estimate the dangers of... of not denying a lie.

[Rushdoony] Well, I would like to make a comment about this situation. What we have been doing in this country is to shift our cultural foundations. Now after World War II a group of sociologists, Riceman and others, produced a study entitled, “The lonely crowd,” pointing out that from being a conscience inner directed people we were becoming group oriented and group directed.

When that happens it leads a people, step by step, into a face culture in which appearance is everything. An do you don’t answer a lie because you don’t want to break face with anyone. You protect the façade always, because the façade has replaced truth. And the unwillingness to attack people is a part of this. It is the ultimate sin to say the wrong thing, not to do the wrong thing.

Consider the number of people who like James Watt have had to leave office in recent years because of something the press thought was a terrible statement for them to make. But how many have had to leave office because of downright corruption? Very, very few in the past generation. It is saying the wrong thing, breaking the surface. Face is everything.

[Lofton] Well, you know, an example of how this is so true, you know, 1974 a group of 12 journalists, including myself went to the Soviet Union on a trip, myself and Alan Riskin of Human Events was the other conservative. And throughout the 16 day trip in a variety of ways Alan and I tried to raise the question with our various Communist hosts and guides: Where are the death camps? Where are these psychiatric hospitals where you inject the drugs and fry people’s brains and turn them into zombies? When do we see those?

And the liberals in our group were more upset with our raising the question of death camps than they were the fact that we were in a country with death camps. Because they would take us aside and say, “Look. I totally agree with you and this is a horrible thing, but you guys are being very obnoxious and ... and we are their guests and they are the hosts.” And it was just absolutely appalling.’

[multiple voices]

[Scott] If they...

[Rushdoony] Who was the chairman of the delegation?

[Lofton] The chairman of the delegation was Hotting Carter, III who was Mr. Jimmy Carter’s state department spokesman and he is now the host of a public television show, another example of your tax dollars at work.

[Scott] If they had been on a tour of Hitler’s Germany you should not have brought up the question of the Jews. It would have been bad manners.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And, in fact...

[Lofton] Indeed it was.

[Scott] That is what occurred.

[Lofton] Yes, it was. That is right.

[Scott] That is what occurred.

[multiple voices]

[Scott] And that is why it occurred.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] It is in part why it occurred.

[Lofton] Oh, I remember we had one bus ride where the in tourist Communist guide, the woman was taking us through some part of town and these... these numbers are not correct, but the ratios are approximately correct. She said, “Here in Moscow there used to be a thousand churches. Now there are 12.” And she went on to something quickly and I yelled out from the back of the bus, “What happened to the rest?”

And there was silence. And ... and she was very flustered and that the... the... she flipped through her guide book and ... and tried to do something which in the Soviet Union for an average person is almost impossible. She tried to actually think and answer a question that she had not been programmed to answer and what she said was that she wasn’t sure exactly what had happened to the churches, but she did say that in our country not as many people practice God as they used to. And ....

[Voice] It is true. It is really true.

[Lofton] But even I think that is a lie. Probably more people practice God in that country...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Lofton] ... every day than... than the previous day. What I... what I later learned or perhaps knew at the time was that what happened to many, if not most of the churches that were no longer churches, is that they had been turned into museums of Atheism. The Communists are always as insulting as possible to the faith. They wouldn’t just leave the building the vacant. They would turn it into a museum of Atheism.

[Scott] Well, the Russians are turning to God because they have become better acquainted with the devil.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Lehrman] I read a description of a visit by a World Council of Churches delegation to the Soviet Union.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Lofton] You may know this story better than I, for I do not remember the ... the provenance of the story, but the description went like this and it was very recently that I read it. This World Council of Churches delegation almost entirely, of course, liberationists in their theology and liberal in their political views, was taken on this trip through the Soviet Union several months ago and they went to these churches where they were shown worshippers sort of peacefully practicing their religion, except for a couple of occasions when they went into certain churches and a Baptist would stand up and really an inspired Baptist. I mean in one case a woman who... with a sign and saying, “They will not let us practice our religion as we want. The Soviets are oppressing us who are truly trying to believe and profess the faith.”

And, of course, this created quite a stir. The other Soviet citizens did not get indignant at this profession of faith and protest by the lone Baptist willing to make the protest, nor did the World Council of Churches Americans on the delegation show any indignation for the removal... forcible removal by the police of this protesting Baptist. On the contrary, this World Council of delegation group, as you were suggesting, Rush, were offended by the indecent interruption of this marvelous façade.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Lofton] ...of group pleasantry shown them in a survival and relic of Soviet church.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Lofton] That a ... an authentic believer should be willing to stand up, protest and disturb sort of the equanimity of the Soviet leadership and their American World Council of Churches representatives who are having such a wonderful trip to the Soviet Union seeing how much the Soviet Union was converging in its way of life on the American way of life.

[Rushdoony] My favorite story which I have told Otto and John—they will have to bear with me—goes back to the 30s and Sherwood Eddy, one of the liberal gurus of the day whom John is now studying devoutly.

[Lofton] I threw it in the garbage can last night, the book.

[Rushdoony] You did?

[Lofton] I did. I threw it away.

[Rushdoony] Oh, well, pull it out. I will keep it as a horrible example of...

[Lofton] Oh, ok.

[Rushdoony] At any rate, Sherwood Eddy in the early 30s made a trip to the Soviet Union and in the process he recognized that there was the mass starvation of the Kulaks and there were probably six to seven million victims which was what the Soviets owned up to. Others said double that figure.

But he said this sort of thing has to be done when you are building a paradise. Those who are obstructions have to be dealt with. Point after point he vindicated Stalin and is regime. But at one point he was moved to indignation and he wrote a letter to Stalin and felt the issue was so important he included the letter to Stalin in his book. He told Comrade Stalin that people like himself were coming there who were friends of the Soviet Union who shared the great dream, but the Soviet Union was creating a problem for them which seriously impeded better relationships.

And the problem was this. There was no toilet paper in their hotel rooms.

Now that is a perspective, is it not?

[Lofton] Well, you know, my trip to the Soviet Union, even though it is a decade ago now showed me rather quickly in just a day or two into the trip that here is a country that we don’t have very much in common with, to put it mildly, because what I wanted... what I wanted to talk about and what most of the delegation sympathized with even if they did not speak out, were the questions of human freedom, liberty, how many people did you really kill in the Ukraine. And they wanted to tell us how cement production had tripled in Moldavia.

Now I have got a pretty quick mouth, but I don’t know how you bridge that gap, I mean, the point is that is what they really care about. We sat after... we sat in speech after speech. A factory head had to... just wanted to tell us at length about more cement and there is not much in common with these folks.

[Scott] Well, how can you explain, if you can, the people who worship are abolitionists and who look with equanimity at these new slave societies?

[Lofton] Well, I am... apart from Russia’s explanation—which I... which I do like and which I think is true—and that is that there is no longer a ... a concern on the part of many people with what is true, that they are interested what this façade with the form and the style and the... rather than the substance.

[Scott] Wouldn’t you be more inclined to think that what is happening is a guiding of the people in the West toward a Totalitarian structure, toward a structure in which you say the right thing and it doesn’t matter what happens? Isn't this really the essence? You know that Solzhenitsyn said at one occasion that one of the worst features of life when you are living in the Soviet is a Soviet subject is the forced cheerfulness. You have to smile. You have to come to work cheerfully, because if you go around with a long face you are suspected of disagreeing with the way things are going.

[Lofton] {?}

[Scott] And you might be put away.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that is true. And not only so—and this I can tell you from comments by people who have been in Soviet Armenia and are friends and relatives, not even music, classics of the past which has a note of sadness is permitted, only jolly gay music can be composed. Only music with a happy note from the past can be sung or used or played by an orchestra. The minor key, no.

[Lofton] Well, I will tell you. I didn't see any... much forced

[Scott] You didn’t...

[Lofton] Cheerful... Well, they weren’t very cheery around me ,but then maybe I had something to do with that.

[Scott] Well, you are a pretty upsetting presence. You kept bringing up...

[multiple voices]

[Lofton] Well, like the way I am in my own country. But... I... I think that... that one of the reasons of for the lack of indignation among the more liberal members of our group and among that National Council of Churches delegation that you spoke of is that on the big issues of what the role of the state is, they are in no fundamental disagreement with the Soviet slave masters.

Oh, they would be quick to jump on me for that. Oh, that would be a low blow and a cheap shot, John, and you do go too far. But on the basic question of the role of the government, I don’t think there is any disagreement between the liberals that were in our group and the people who were in the Kremlin.

[Scott] No I understand the...

[Lofton] Yeah.

[Scott] ... Soviets argue that there is freedom of religion in the Soviet Union, because you are free to believe. You are just not free to say it.

[Rushdoony] And that is what stays between your two ears.

[Lofton] Isn't that what Ed Meese once told you?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Lofton] That we believe in these... I don’t know if there is time to tell that story quickly. But the principles in the abstract are ok, but the problem came when you tried to practice them.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And...

[multiple voices]:

[Lofton] They always do.

[Rushdoony] He made it clear that they already had total power over the churches and that it was one of the merits of the administration that they didn't choose at this time to exercise those powers. That was Ed Meese.

[Lofton] This was in the context of what, the Bob Jones...?

[Rushdoony] No, no. This was before the Bob Jones case.

[Lofton] Before.

[Rushdoony] This was, I believe, January of 82 when Reagan introduced his bill to control the Christian schools and churches which was defeated. Meese laughed when we said we would create a storm of letters that would defeat the bill.

[Lofton] I will say that although it was a very distressing trip and I don’t think I would go back, that I think it is very important for every American, if he or she has the opportunity, to travel to the Soviet Union and to see it first hand.

[Scott] I agree, because...

[Lofton] ... because it cannot be described. It just cannot and, of course, this is one of the great things hat has that has frustrated Solzhenitsyn, he has continually asked the rhetorical question whether it is possible to come from the belly of the dragon and explain that to people who have not only never seen a dragon’s belly, but don’t really know what a dragon looks like.

And I think Solzhenitsyn has concluded—and I think I would disagree with him on this—that it is not possible and I think that is why he has pretty much become a hermit. He has just said, “Well, I tried to tell them. I... they did not only listen, they tried to beat my brains out so I am just going to go write and go off in the hills somewhere.”

[Scott] Well, I talked to his ... one of his translators and he said that Solzhenitsyn is involved in writing what amounts to one book which goes from 1914 to today. He is obsessed with the idea of correcting the record regarding the revolution. And everything that has been printed so far has been excerpts from that one great work, Lenin in Zurich, the gulag, et cetera. And he is in his 60s and he feels that he cannot afford to waste time. So he is hard at work. They have had to put new people, more people in the post office near the little village where he lives. His mail sacks are bulging every day. Despite what the newspapers say, the America people are inundating Solzhenitsyn with communications and he has had to hire special people to screen the mail, summarize it for him and so forth.

[Lofton] Well, he is a great man. And I would like to see him be back into the fray in a very visible way.

[Scott] So would I. I think he is probably the number one literary figure of our century.

[Lofton] Sure.

[Rushdoony] I think his comment was very, very distressingly true when he said, “In the Soviet Union there is no longer anyone who believes in Communism. In the United States there are all too many.”

[Lofton] I remember another... another line of his where he was asked, I believe, to sum up on one sentence what had gone wrong in his country and what had happened to his people. And he said, “They forgot God.”

[Scott] He quoted a peasant saying that.

[Lofton] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Lofton] What a line. How true.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Lofton] Our country would do well to remember that.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Lehrman] The great... the great and hopeful aspect of our own country even in a godless condition would, some, I think correctly suggest lies at the source of our own problems is that we do have the capacity to renew our culture, to renew our national well springs of... of power and freedom and ... and life... We... we can... we have it within our own hands and within the possibilities of our political process no matter how difficult it appears to be at the moment in disappointing the present results, we have renewal and rebirth in our ... in our own hands.

[Scott] There is also a considerable revival underway.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I believe we are in one of the greatest eras of history when more will take place than every before in the way of Reconstruction. The family is in its greatest strength, I believe, for untold generations. There is a revival of family life even as outside the faith there is a dramatic disintegration of family life. There is also this tremendous revival. You have the Christian school movement. You have a tremendous forces at work in the black community, a great revival there and there are signs that the Latin community in this country is going to change dramatically. So I feel that we are living I an exciting day when great things are going to take place.

[Scott] Well, I count among that Lou’s campaign.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Lofton] Here, here.

[Scott] And his observations and his hopes upon how the issues are going to be posed toward the end of this decade.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, our time is virtually up. It has been good to have you with us, Lou, a very great privilege for us and we thank you for coming. And we look forward to hearing more about your ongoing work to redirect and re-educate the American people so that we can see it in the political sphere, Reconstruction on a dramatic level. Thank you.

[Lehrman] Thank you, Rush.

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