From the Easy Chair

Great Britain & its Place in the World Today

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 82-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161BQ126

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161BQ126, Great Britain & its Place in the World Today from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 229, November 9, 1990.

During the past two weeks Otto Scott and I were in Great Britain for the International Christian Reconstruction Conference held at London. Besides that, I spoke at a couple of churches, at the missions house and on BBC. So it was a busy time, but a very interesting one.

This evening we are going to discuss not our trip there, but Great Britain and its place in the world today. One of the interesting things to me is that Otto and I have been there three time in recent years in 1987, 1989 and, of course, this year. Each time it was about the same time of the year, October or November. On each of our trips we have found the situation very similar in that if you turned down the television set or the radio it appeared as though Britain were in a major crisis and Margaret Thatcher was likely to go any time. At least that was the feeling in the media. Of course, she is still there.

Now the significance of Great Britain in our time is this. We may disagree with Margaret Thatcher on a number of points. Her foreign policy, for example, is not to my liking. But basically in a world that is racing towards destruction, racing to what Bush and Gorbachev and Mitterrand and others call a new world order, there is one person who is a head of state who is resisting this trend to a considerable degree. That is Mrs. Thatcher. As a result, what takes place in Britain is of importance to all of us.

Now, of course, the media and the intellectuals by and large feel that the future awaits as a glorious future and while they may differ with the versions of that new social order, as presented by Bush and others, they are agreed on the necessity of that new world order. And Mrs. Thatcher, while paying lip service to it has been resisting and, hence, the importance of what she is doing.

Well, with that general statement, Otto, would you like to expand on it or disagree with it or give an alternate statement?

[ Scott ] No. I would like to agree with it and expand on it. The first time were there, do you recall, there was a big {?} in the British press about an educational reform act.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And as it turned out, the educational reform act, which, incidentally, passed, eliminated tenure in the British universities amongst other things. It also mandated the further expanded instruction in Christianity in the English schools and it also gave parents a chance to pull out of the neighborhood school if a number of them agreed to do so and enable them to choose another school which they felt would be better for their children.

Now all three of those steps—the abolition of tenure, the teaching of Christianity and the restoration of parental rights—are steps which should long ago have been taken in the United States and have yet to be taken and, in fact, most people are absolutely shocked at the idea of eliminating tenure.

When we came back in 1987 I called a friend of mine in Washington and I suggested the abolition of tenure and he said, “Oh, I don’t know. That is pretty radical.”

I said, “Well, they are doing it in England. They have already done it.”

Well, he said, “If they have done it in England, that is different.”

In other words, we are no longer the first people to take a step.

And on the second occasion that we went over there one of Margaret Thatcher’s... her finance minister, the chancellor of the exchequer had resigned and the press went into a shrieking fit and said this was a grave constitutional crisis and that Mrs. Thatcher would, of course, have to step down.

Well, she didn’t and the crisis passed. On this occasion another minister was sacked, I believe. And, of course, this was another...

[ Rushdoony ] He resigned.

[ Scott ] He resigned.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Oh, yes.

[ Rushdoony ] In disagreement over her policy.

[ Scott ] Over her refusal to merge the ... the pound into the common market currency.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] She said that was an abdication of sovereignty, that she would not go along with. And the English press or the British press behaved as though that was the most ridiculous position conceivable. They seem to think that Britain should melt into a stew, a European stew and waste no further time in doing so. It is astonishing, astonishing. But it is familiar to us in a sense, because we also have a press that is a political party in its own right that takes positions opposite what most of the country believes and over there, though, the press is, I think, more print oriented than it is here. We had a choice of something like six or seven newspapers in London ranging from tabloids all the way up to the Times. And, of course, we don’t have that range in variety here anymore.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, you mentioned this Internationalism, Europa, that everyone wants the common market to develop into. This is an amazing fact, this Internationalism. Without defending Nationalism of necessity, because I favor the concept of Christendom as against Nationalism and Internationalism, the simple fact is that the drive towards Internationalism is reviving Nationalism on a massive scale. And people are digging in their heels, whether it is the Basques in Spain, the Bretons in France, the Welsh, the North Irish, the Scots in Great Britain. There are all kinds of independence movements.

Now Great Britain, of course, has Wales, Scotland, North Ireland and England as component parts of Great Britain. And the tensions between those four groups are very real. And yet they have a common faith, a common language, a common culture.

Now if there are problems amongst them and tension, how much more so if you try to combine the Austrians, the Germans, the French, the Spaniards, the Italians, the English and others, possibly the Turks, possibly the Hungarians? What is to hold them together? The presupposition is that economic concerns will bring them together. But you already have, what is it, 14 to 15,000 bureaucrats in Belgium for the common market issuing regulations. No one is really happy with those regulations. Each country is striving to get the best advantage for its production and for its agriculture and resentful at what the other is getting. On top of that there is no common culture. They don’t share a common Christian faith. Most have abandoned it.

So we have the illusion today which our state department shares that economics will do what nothing else has succeeded in doing before, making very different people work together and love each other. And I think it is a terrible illusion and a very dangerous one.

[ Scott ] Well, it is a chimera which has appeared again and again, the idea of one world parliament of man and all that. I come from an international family. My father was very international and so was his brother and even farther back than that. But they were international merchants, you might say, international business. And they grew up and were formed and shaped in a world where national boundaries really didn’t impede the interchange of money and goods. There was a common capitalist system which was in existence, of course, before World War I when they went to school and which was maintained, more or less, through the 20s and the 30s, although it didn’t prosper so much in the 30s, it was still in place. A lot of people seem to forget that. The British Empire was still the British Empire in the 30s and so forth. But their brand of Internationalism was expansion. It expanded liberty and it expanded commerce. It expanded the flow of goods and it expanded interchange on a private level. I recall that on one occasion he took me the offices of {?} and company in Wall Street and we stopped in the lobby and looked at the board which lists the number companies in the building.

And he said, “Now most of the men who work in those companies don’t know it, but every one of the companies in this building is owned, lock, stock and barrel by {?}. And {?} was a Dutch construction firm with investments around the world.

And he was checking on an individual and they said, “How much time do we have to check on him?”

And he said, “Well, you can have, say, a week.”

They said, “Oh, we need a week. Give us three days.”

We went back three days later to the credit department. The manager of the credit department of {?} and they said, “This is a gentleman who has changed his name three times.”

And I said, “How did you find that out?”

They said, “Everyone pays a light bill. We traced him through his utilities.” And that is... that was something that even the police can’t do. I don’t believe they have even learned how to do it to this day.

But the Internationalism that Mrs. Thatcher is struggling against is a constricting Internationalism.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] It is not an expanding one. It is not connected with liberty. It is connected with the bureaucracy and the real theory here is that the bureaucrats will make one world and they will lay down broad scale roles for all of us. And they will be less and less room for business or religion or anything else outside the bureaucracy.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, the Internationalism that prevailed was an Internationalism made possible in the last century and in the earlier years of this century. It was made possible, as you said, by the free markets and also by Christianity.

[ Scott ] Oh, yes.

[ Rushdoony ] There was a common character. Now it was not too many years ago when you and I, doing a great deal of traveling, never had to have our baggage inspected or x-rayed when we got on a plane.

[ Scott ] [affirmative response]

[ Rushdoony ] But now that is a necessity, because otherwise planes would be blown up. It used to be that passports were not required. In fact, they were non existent except in one or two tyrannies, but now even to register at a hotel we have to produce our passport so that the number can be taken. And one reason is, of course, the tremendous floating population of terrorists and criminals, characters that need to be controlled. So we are all controlled in the hopes of catching some of these.

So we are talking more about Internationalism than ever before, when the precondition of any kind of interchange of ideas, of populations, of goods is gone, namely the moral character to make it possible.

[ Scott ] Well, that is true. There are ... there is... there is one point I will correct you on, that is that the European common market countries are plotting now to eliminate passports within Europe and also to eliminate work permits within Europe so that you can go... a person can go from Turkey to any other part of Europe and go to work, cross back and forth across the borders and so on. The English don’t know what is going to hit them.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Once they really get into the common market and have the tunnel open, they are going to see immigration on the... on the level... on an American level. Right now they are choking because they have got a couple of million immigrants out of a nation of 60 million. Wait till they get 40 or 50 million immigrants.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Wait till they find themselves on the verge of being outnumbered.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, there are a couple of things, to get back to Britain today, that I think are very revealing. A book written at the end of the of the 70s making certain predictions about the 80s spoke of Great Britain as no longer the source of trends that dominated the world, but only of fads. And, of course, a great many things like the Beatles and hard rock and much more in the way of fads emanating from Great Britain were cited by this writer. But its ability to establish the trends, to determine the course of western civilization had apparently ended.

Well, the interesting thing is that while fads still come unhappily from Great Britain into the United States and throughout Europe, trends are beginning to be set here and there by Mrs. Thatcher and her regime. Now she is bucking the international trend in that, but for the first time in some years Great Britain is setting a trend that many people are happy with and hoping that it will catch on more.

Then there is another fact. When you and I were growing up, British goods were regarded as the quality products the world over. Then after the war they became a synonym for junk. And they were spoken of very contemptuously. I was more than once started when the post war younger element, those who were born around 1940 would speak contemptuously of British goods as junk, because it went against the grain. I was used to associating anything British with quality. But quality has come back steadily throughout the 80s and a number of the unhappy aspects of British life, such as the dole, Welfarism on a massive scale, have been set back because Mrs. Thatcher had the minimum wage law eliminated and the welfare received is not enough to keep it going. You have to work. It is a stop gap thing.

So there has been a restoration that, I think, too many people in Great Britain do not appreciate.

[ Scott ] Well, I don’t disagree with that at all. I think one of the really important reforms that she instituted was to eliminate the land tax.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And to substitute for it a poll tax. Now if most people in the United States would have homes would lose that tax, I know that my tax is pretty considerable.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... that it would become highly favored here just as the end of tenure would be highly favored if the people knew about it. Both in Britain and the United States the people are prevented from learning about these developments by a press which is against them.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Warren Brooks the columnist made a speech recently in Baltimore that I listened to and it was very interesting. He compared that... he said that the press is a partner with big government. The press wants to see the government get bigger and bigger, because as long as the government doesn't regulate the press, the press is in favor of regulation over everybody else. And, of course, every new department means a new job for somebody in the news business to cover. And he points out the expansion of the number of reporters in Washington as Washington has expanded.

In... in Britain I think Thatcher has, as you implied, restored Britain as an intellectual leader, because Britain is the first country that didn't succumb entirely to Socialism that is recovering from it. Now we are rushing into all the lock up measures of the Socialists. At a time when eastern Europe is trying to get rid of the regulations we are rushing into more regulations every minute. The Clean Air Act is going to regulate everything that moves here.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And it isn’t true... I think one of the ... one of the problems here in the Christian community and in the conservative community is that we have gotten out of the habit of looking beyond our own borders at the rest of the world for what is happening and for ideas. Ever since World War II it seemed to me that the average American has got a big head. Really, we got the idea because we were the winners of the war, at least, the fighting part of the war. And we no longer needed to learn anything from any other culture or any other part of Europe. We are engaged in experiments which have been done elsewhere and which failed and we do this without even thinking about it.

I understand that even in medicine, medicines that have been tested and proven in countries like Great Britain and France and Germany, very advanced countries are not accepted here. They have to be retested and re proven here. The United States will not accept the results of research in any other part of the world.

Now I don’t know, really, how we can continue to function such a parochial level, such a provincial level.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Britain is not free of problems, of course. And I think you referred indirectly to one, the great number of aliens that are now in Britain, especially in London so that whole portions of London have been lost.

Now immigration is what made this country great. However, the immigration was from countries that had a common Christian culture with us. As a result, the people very quickly merged into the general population. However, the immigrants in Britain are from third world countries. They are not Christians. They are Islamic or Buddhist and simply are not a part of the society there. So instead of seeking to merge, they are seeking to establish a separate identity. And this is potentially very, very dangerous, because it threatens the character and the future of England, of Britain.

[ Scott ] Well...

[ Rushdoony ] Given the high birthrate among some of these elements, it means, for example, that Islam, the second most important religion now in Great Britain is likely to increase dramatically because the theology of the English churches and the Scottish churches, as well as the Welsh, is in a state of collapse.

[ Scott ] Well, that is true and the Salmon Rushdie affair brought the matter to the core. The ... there has already been a considerable drive, concerted drive inside Britain for the teaching of Islam, Islamic studies and even the languages of India on the argument that since Christianity is taught, that it is unjust for Hindus to have to learn about Christianity when the Christians don’t have to learn Hinduism. And the English liberals are hoist on their own petard, because this is a sort of an argument which they find very difficult to answer. It never seems to occur to them to say that since it is a Christian country and you chose to come here knowing that it was a Christian country, you can either put up with our Christianity or go back home, because you didn’t... you weren’t invited here to change this country.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, they are trying to change it. Some of the peoples for the Arabian countries that are in Britain are guilty of selling their girls into virtual slavery into marriages and the like in their home country. And parliament is unwilling to tackle this because it is afraid that there will be racial problems developing because of it. So short of an aggressive missionary activity which will bring these people into the fold of Christendom, not only England, but Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the other countries that have these alien groups will be in for very serious trouble in the years ahead, in they very short term future.

Otto, you may have seen the November 1990 Phoenix Letter by Tony Sutton.

[ Scott ] No, I don’t... I don’t get that letter.

[ Rushdoony ] Oh. Well, the title of it is “George Bush Moves Towards New World Order.” And it discusses the heavy emphasis now in the media and in Bush’s speeches as well as Baker’s on a global new world order. And the whole operation in Saudi Arabia is presented to us as a big step forward to a new world order.

[ Scott ] Well, have they told the Saudis about this? Are they going to allow Christians and Bibles and women without veils and so forth?

[ Rushdoony ] That is a mere technicality apparently to King George. Then he speaks of the birth pains of the new world order, how to define the new world order, the borderless world, of course. He deals with that.

So he says now everything is seen as a rationale for governmental intervention. And the new world order, he calls a con game for the existing political establishments and their front corporation.

So he sees a tremendous pressure towards a global economy, the kind of thing that the common market represents on a global scale. And we are going to be pressured on this increasingly, he indicates.

[ Scott ] But the pressure is very strange. There ... we are in the process of subsidizing a civil war, a bloody civil war in South Africa on the premise of one man, one vote is essential. And, in the meantime we are going to protect Saudi Arabia where there is no vote for any man.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, don’t expect consistency from Washington, least of all George Bush.

[ Scott ] Well, even Mr. Bush is only ... is only one individual. He is the president, of course. But there are supposed to be some other thinking individuals in this nation. And it is amazing that these contradictions don’t seem to occur.

[ Rushdoony ] I don’t think...

[ Scott ] We are... we are... we are told here in the United States that we should accept all ideas, all religions, all races, all people and we are going to work, we are going to send our boys to fight for a country that accepts nobody from the Christian community. No one.

[ Rushdoony ] No. Well, I think Liberalism is bankrupt and it has become a façade. I don’t believe the majority of the liberals in governmental spheres actually believes in the liberal agenda any longer. They pay lip service to it. The goal now is power.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Naked power.

[ Scott ] It has always been.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] But the rationale is getting rather... is getting too thin.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] It is transparent.

[ Rushdoony ] That is why I believe it is advisable for people to save the copies of these economic and political reports they get as a point of reference because less and less are you going to get any truth from the established media.

So we are facing a crisis of information. We are getting information about a lot of data, but nothing that constitutes true knowledge, insight.

[ Scott ] Well, we have had this. I listened to Crossfire this afternoon which comes on CNN and there was gentleman there, rather impressive, who was accused by Scott Stanley, who was also a guest on the program...

[ Rushdoony ] Oh.

[ Scott ] ... of being a professional pacifist. And the man said, very quietly, I am a combat veteran from Vietnam and I am perfectly willing to fight for my country if I am asked to do so. But, he said, “If we are going to go to war because a larger power invaded a smaller power and dispossessed its ruler, it seems to me that we should also take some look at what we did in Panama. We are a great power and we moved into a smaller power and we took away their ruler. We now have him in prison and waiting trial in our country. And if we are going to go to war, I think we should know why. And I think that we should do it constitutionally, that our congress should vote the issue. And if they vote that we go to war,” he said, “my objections will cease. But I am going to object as long as the matter is being handled in an authoritative way by a single official.”

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And the whole situation since World War II has been progressively removed from the people. Korea and Vietnam....

[ Scott ] None of those were declared wars.

[ Rushdoony ] No. The whole idea, of course, is to avoid the necessary oversight by the representatives of the people. Now, given the fact that congress doesn’t represent us very well anymore, still, the form is a necessity. We can hope that they will represent us better in the future and the whole situation right now is a denial of democracy which is what they talk about. It was a purely unilateral act on the part of the White House without consulting the American people or their representatives.

[ Scott ] Well, the movie The Godfather, the godfather would give a man an offer he couldn’t refuse. Mr. Bush started out by giving a man an offer he couldn’t accept. He began with an ultimatum. He began at the end of the road. He said, “Surrender, give up, get out of office or else...” Well, or else what? What alternatives has Saddam Hussein been offered?

[ Rushdoony ] None. And while he is of ugly character, in this situation he is on sound moral ground as against us.

[ Scott ] Well, he is a long way from the United States, a very long way. It took us over two months to send 200,000 troops to his border. And there were no submarines in the way this time. Mainly because we have no merchant marine anymore and we have very little cargo vessels for the navy. We have a very small navy. We have what amounts to a one nation navy, a one ocean navy. And you cannot transport all the equipment from the food, the supplies, everything else that you need quickly in sufficient quantity by air.

Now we are straining. We have had to borrow money in order to indulge in this peacetime exercise. What is going to happen when the fighting starts on land? I don’t know. But the main thing that concerns me is not that sort of thing so much as the contradictions. What difference does it make to us which group of Arabs sell us the oil? And where do the Mohammedan world... where does the Mohammedan world fit in to the new world order? The Mohammedan world is a totally different culture.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] It has been a sealed culture ever since Mohammed put it together. It has been impenetrable from the West. In order for me to get a passport to get into Libya, a visa to get into Libya, when I was with the oil company it took me about six weeks. They have incredible bureaucracy. If you have ever visited Israel you could not get into Libya. And here we are allied with the head of Syria, one of the most vicious despots...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... in the world. He is anti Israeli. He is anti Iraq. He has been accused by human rights organizations of perpetuating the most horrible tortures upon his people. He eliminated a whole city with 20,000 people in it as an example. And this is an ally of the United States in what is supposed to be a war of great principle which we are being guided into in the name of a new world order. And this world order, I don’t know if Anthony Sutton and his Phoenix Letter has figured out he may have figured out the basis for the new world order, but I can’t draw it on the map.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Who does it include? Who is going to run it? Who is going to be the new president of the world?

[ Rushdoony ] Well, there are lots of unanswered questions that are deliberately left unanswered, because they don’t want us probing too far. I believe that this new world order is already operative, has been for some time. And its final phase is approaching and, perhaps, its final judgment. But in any case to get back to our original thrust, Mrs. Thatcher has almost single handedly tried to stem the tide on these issues.

[ Scott ] That is true. She was the only... she stopped the increase of sanctions against South Africa. And she did it at a commonwealth meeting which was attended by various brown and black representatives of member of the commonwealth. She was the only voice and the only vote, but it was the prevailing vote against applying any more sanctions against South Africa. This was several years ago, as you know. And it was because she saw a film in which the ANC was burning alive a young woman with an automobile tire filled with gasoline around her neck, the wonderful ANC that Mr. Mandela represents.

And Margaret Thatcher said, “I will not assist the people responsible for that atrocity.” It was a very simple, sound and sensible position. And the newspapers of Great Britain went up into flames.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. As though she had uttered the ultimate blasphemy.

[ Scott ] Yes. And it is true that she is trying in the most desperate way to stem the pace of the common market unification effort in, I believe, the hope that if she can slow it down, the people will eventually see that it is a great bear trap. And I don’t... I think it was you earlier today on the phone who said they were propounding the sort of situation that Germany now occupies. Germany is unified and the Soviet army is sitting in the middle of the unification. The East German mark is going to be equal to the West German mark which means that worthless paper is going to be exchanged for very valuable currency and the people of western Germany are going to have 17 million individuals who are coming in, buying up everything in sight.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Which they didn’t have to labor to produce.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Now that is not justice.

[ Rushdoony ] No, it isn’t. And it may be the pattern for the new world order throughout Europe and throughout the world.

[ Scott ] Well, in other words, the goods of the West...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... will be distributed to the world.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And the people of the West will be reduced to workers and on a very low level.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, the outlook is a grim one. I don't think Mrs. Thatcher is going to be able to stem the tide, although she has done heroic work. I think her work will be hard to undo, but I think that we are going to go at it with a great deal of zeal. I do believe that as the old proverb has it: Man proposes, God disposes. And we are going to see the judgment of God in our time. And the various nations of the world are going to feel the brunt of it. It will shake tem up thoroughly. I think we are at the end of an age and one consequence of it will be that all the old truths will be thrown out.

So even as we enter into the worst decade of the century, perhaps, we have a great deal of reason, I think, to hope.

[ Scott ] Well, we have just gotten through an election which is very interesting. It was an election against the incumbents. Although most of the incumbents managed to escape the guillotine, there were more of them who had a narrower shave this time than they have had in many a year. And their draconian laws against limitations of terms and so forth, against expansion of their budget in the state legislature were enacted here in California and in some other states. And my feeling is that in two more years on the national level the American government is going to get the biggest shock it has ever had in a long time. People are going to appear from very strange new quarters that are going to be elected, because there is a tremendous feeling throughout the country against the government.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] The government is the only part of the nation that doesn’t know. The government and the press, the press is loathed. There never was a time when journalists had a good reputation, you know. Journalists have always been very close to blackmailers and scandal mongers, fantacists of one sort or another. It is a dirty business and it always has been and the fact that they are getting big salaries doesn’t make it any less dirty.

The journalists, though, are parading around today under the impression that they are honored citizens. And the fact of the matter is that they are hated.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And the same thing is true of our officials. Now I do not believe that a government that loses the confidence of the people can survive. So therefore I don’t believe that the plans for the new world order are going to go forward. The people in charge of the ship don’t realize that they have got leaks in the vessel.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And I think one of the amusing aspects of the election here this week was that when it was over, the media was trying to explain it as though their rational thinking was the truth, as though they had the key to it. And I think the fact that the voters turned out a great many of the high tax people including those who voted themselves a pay raise, was a good sign of things to come. I believe that the temper of the people is a volatile one now, one of anger. I think the fact that in Arizona the bill to make Martin Luther King day a holiday, a state holiday failed, in part, because of the blackmail threats if they voted it down by the National Football League.

[ Scott ] Well, they should tell the National Football League not to even go through the state. After all, the National Football League is out there trying to make money from the people. If they don’t want to take any money from the people of Arizona, they can do with out it.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. But now the question mark is in Britain. How do the people feel?

[ Scott ] How can you tell?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Because they have no voice.

[ Rushdoony ] They have no voice.

[ Scott ] You really... there is really no way. I could say what I have about the American government because I talked to a lot of people and we know other people in common and this is the reaction that we get. All we could say, I can say, about they city of London, for instance, is that it is very pleasant to be in a very large metropolitan center where it is safe to be out on the street at night.

[ Rushdoony ] In certain areas.

[ Scott ] Well, at least in the areas that I was in. In no area are we safe here.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, you are safe in Murphys.

[ Scott ] Well, not in the metropolitan area.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] In fact, Bill {?} a friend of mine who is a very well known analyst in Wall Street, Bill is a somewhat slender, short man in his early 60s, I would say, was mugged in the Grand Central terminal last week and I said, “Was he hurt?”

And they said, “Well, yes. His nose was broken and they kicked him around a bit.”

In Grand Central terminal.

[ Rushdoony ] This is in New York.

[ Scott ] In New York City. So you can be sure that London looked pretty good from that point of view.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... as far as I was concerned.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And Edinburgh looked wonderful. Thorough delight.

Well, the election coming up, about the same time, isn’t it, in Britain as it is here in 92.

[ Scott ] I am not sure whether it is 91 or 92.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. It will be interesting to see how the people react again, whether as in previous elections against the media and against the intellectuals, the people who put Mrs. Thatcher into office, whether they will do it again. If they do, if they continue her, I think a trend will develop.

[ Scott ] Well, I ... I do think that although the people have no voice, they certainly have minds. What the conservative party in Britain seems to be solidly behind Mrs. Thatcher and, of course, they have a different system than we do. The party elects the leader. The people never vote for a prime minister directly. And, therefore, I think that as long as she wants to stay there and as long as she is as capable as she is today she will probably be able to stay.

I think here on the horizon, you know, a little cloud no larger than a man’s hand, there are movements to create an alternative to the two major parties. And I think that it might be similar to the 1850s in which the... a third party movement today might really take off.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, I hope so, because the Republicans and Democrats would become Tweetledum and Tweetledee, very little difference between them.

[ Scott ] They... they share nothing but their shame. They are actually the most unscrupulous men, I guess... I don’t know what happens to somebody that is elected to office in the United States.

It has been too long since the people in the United States have exercised their right to control their own government.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, if you have no character and are placed in a position of power, it will corrupt you and the kind of people we have elected have been likable people. They have {?} what amounts to a popularity contest in many instances. And they go there and become little dots and they are corrupted, very quickly so that their enemy becomes not the other party or another position, but the people.

Well, of course, the creation of television has an awful lot to do with the altered character of American politics. It destroyed the political machine. It destroyed the local machine and it enabled the politician to talk to the people directly in the form now, mainly of advertisements. They advertised... they are advertized like soap of coffee or whatever.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] We don't hear their speeches, because speeches are no longer aired. Even the conventions...

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] ...we don't see anything except the faces and the voices of the commentators, the reporters, the anchormen. They really think we have turned in to see the anchormen.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] We don’t turn in to see anybody else.

[ Rushdoony ] This past presidential election of two years ago I could not watch the convention because it wasn’t the convention you got, but what the anchorman chose to show you.

[ Scott ] And then they would carry it on to the floor where they tried to provoke fights on the floor.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Never heard a single speech.

[ Rushdoony ] No. I did...

[ Scott ] You would hear a voice in the background and they would say, “Oh, so and so is speaking.”

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

Well, our time is just about over. Is there a closing remark or two that you would like to make, Otto?

[ Scott ] Well, I think I would like to see the Christian community and the conservatives look at a little bit wider spectrum of the world. I would like... I think that it would be a good thing if they were to subscribe to some of the British publications, for instance and they are fairly outspoken. Although they have strict censorship laws over there, they somehow manage to have more diversity of opinion than we have here where we have no censorship laws. It is an interesting paradox. And I think it would ... it would be good if we began at least intellectually to start thinking along terms of Christendom.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. I think we need to think not in terms of Nationalism or Internationalism, but Christendom. And the politicians are determined not to permit us to think that way, but to break down the religious strength of Christendom. But I do believe it is going to reassert itself, because the present humanistic world order is perishing.

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.