From the Easy Chair

A Federal Police Force

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 98-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161BZ142

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161BZ142, A Federal Police Force, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 252, October the first, 1991.

Douglas Murray, Otto Scott and I are going to discuss now the subject of a federal police force. And I am going to ask Otto to introduce this all important subject.

[ Scott ] Thank you, Rush. Well, there is a bill pending in Congress and apparently has been a source of back and forth debate between the White House and the Congress for some time now, several months, maybe even a year or more about doing something about the crime situation in the United States. I understand that there are over 50 crimes which are going to be defined as capital crimes, calling for execution. And they will involve—and I have not seen a list of them and I don’t think one is published—but I understand that they will involve the expansion of federal authority over criminal law in states. And in order to do this they are going to federalize a number of laws. One senator, for instance, wants to federalize any crime that is committed with a gun that could be connected with interstate traffic and by such technicalities expand the administration of criminal law to the federal government. And in order to enforce this, as part of the enforcement, to set up a federal police force which will be differently trained than local police forces. They will get courses in psychology. They will get a higher academic background and so forth and they will be trained especially to serve as federal police.

Now we have lots of police in the United States. We have county police. We have city police. We have state police. We have a fair number of individuals in the enforcement of the law. Generally speaking what we do have is an increasing crime which is generally part of a weakening of authority. If Congress enacts a particular law that I have seen reference to, we will be confronted with much more authority and many more policemen of a different caliber than we have today and I think it would be good to discuss how the law is enforced today and what the law consists of today, because this is becoming a very, very important topic in every day life.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Douglas, you have had a background in law enforcement. Would you like to comment on this matter of a federal police force?

[ Murray ] Well, there is one development that took place rather quietly about 15 years ago and it has had a local effect here and elsewhere as well as elsewhere in the country and that is that the U.S. department of the interior formed a ... a police force specifically to forcibly, if necessary, remove and destroy any property or individuals on government land. And into Olney County, just to the south of us, a woman who was in her 80s whose husband had filed a mining claim legally on government land, they were way back in the wilderness, weren’t bothering anybody. He died. She was living on the cabin that they built together. They had a legal mining claim in force, yet because she wasn’t the one who filed it, this police force from the interior went out there, dragged her out of the house, did to allow her to take any personal possessions or belongings out of the house, held her down physically although she fought them and they burned the building to the ground and then escorted her of of the public lands.

And this same type of thing was repeated against another prospector on another mining claim in Olney County and it never made the national press. It was reported by the Sonora Union Democrat and a few garbage can liner papers in the area. But it was not reported in the national press. In fact, the very fact of the origination of this police force for this particular function was never reported. It took place very quietly.

[ Rushdoony ] That reminds me of something I had forgotten about. When I was on the Indian reservation in the 40s and into the early 50s, at that time in the inner mountain country in the high country, there were the log cabins built by the forest service that were three sided. One wall was missing, but they had a place for a fire place so you could cook, have some heat. And these were for hunters who were caught in a storm who took refuge in these cabins and experienced hunters knew where there was one.

And in the particular area where this was done there were frequently quick storms that moved in and before you knew it you had a tremendous amount of snow that fell. I know I was caught in one that deposited perhaps two to three feet of snow within an hour. It was just impossible to see. But they went up into the woods and burned down all these cabins, systematically, so that this type of policy has been underway a good many years. And one purpose of it has been to close off vast areas of national forests to people because it does make it dangerous in some areas for a hunger to hunt. He no longer has a protection, especially where it takes him a day to get up into the high country.

[ Murray ] Well, my oldest son has been doing some hiking and climbing recently and he told me that the Sierra club has a stone lodge about the 8000 foot level on Mount Shasta. And it is supposed to be for skiers or hikers who get lost in case of a blizzard, as you mentioned. There is a sign now that they can no longer use it for that purpose.

[ Scott ] What ... why is it still there?

[ Murray ] I guess it is for the Sierra club if you make arrangements with the Sierra club you can stay there, but if you are caught out on a... why, you can’t go in there.

[ Scott ] Well, the drug enforcement laws are something that I recently looked at. They began in 1970 and they ... their first stage was to confiscate the assets of anyone convicted of violating the drug laws and that meant everything, all assets, whether the man had a wife and children or not. So, in effect, it would beggar an entire family.

Now this in my opinion is a violation of the Fifth Amendment takings clause against unreasonable searches and seizures, because most of those drug laws had specific penalties, statutory penalties if you were found with this you got so many years and so forth or a spread of years and what not. To then go and... or a fine. But to seize all the assets an individual has seem to me cruel and unusual punishment. But, at any rate, the laws were enacted. They were applied. And there was no outrcry against them and I didn't recall seeing any editorials much about it and they began to expand the laws. The first expansion that I noticied was a couple of years back and I was a little late in getting around to it, was to tell the attorneys, the defense attorneys for these drug people that they would have to sequester their fees. And if the individual was convicted the fee would have to be turned over as part of his assets. Well, you know, the trial attorneys didn’t like that one little bit, so they made quite a fuss about that and I don’t know where that particular codicil of the law stands at this point. But the expanded beyond that so that by 1984 they began to seize assets without a drug charge and without a conviction, just seizing the assets under the rubric that these were assets that were somehow acquired in drug traffic, without even an arrest. They just simply came and seized the assets: boats, planes, automobiles.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Homes, bank accounts and so forth. And that proceeded without any public outcry and without the courts or anyone else paying too much attention.

So now we move forward to 1989, 1990, 1991. By this time these methods have been broadened to be applied not only against people who are suspected of being involved in drug traffic, but those involved in fraud, in gambling, in bringing tainted meat into the country or carrying liquor into an Indian territory.

Now part of the argument for this particular applicatio of the law has been that they need this money both to conquer the drug war, win the drug war and they need the assets to proceed with the drug war, so that the assets are... become property of the police, not simply the federal police, but the state police and even local police can apply these laws. And I read recently of two cases, which I will cite if you don’t mind. One was a big black man who, burly, was in the airport going from Nashville, Tennessee to Houston, Texas and he was paying his ticket in cash so following the instructions the ticket agent informed the police that a person filling the profile... fitting the profile of a drug dealer was there and the police came and took him and searched him and found 9600 dollars on him and took it and gave him a receipt.

Now he turned out to be a man in the nursery business who was going down to Houston to buy some flowers and shrubs and it was a family business. He still hasn’t got his money back.

The next case I ran across—and I was just reading this series in the Examiner—was that of a man 53 years old who was driving his wife, his two grown children and a couple of grandchildren through a small town in Georgia who made a wrong turn and was stopped by the police. The police asked him if they had... if they gave permission to search his car and he did. They emptied the suitcases, some jewelry and they found 10 lottery tickets from this Florida lottery. They took them all to the station house and held them for six hours. They also found 2300 dollars and they confiscated all the suitcases, the jewelry, the money and the lottery tickets on the charge of gambling paraphernalia and possible drugs. They found a stick... a white stick of something. They showed it to him. Said it was cocaine. He didn't know. He had never seen cocaine. But then they were allowed to go, leaving their property behind.

It took him 11 months, his lawyer 11 months to get the laboratory in Georgia to give them an analysis of the white stick. It turned out to be bubble gum. And it was 11 months before the court finally ordered the police in this small town name—Fitzgerald, by the way, that sticks in my mind, my grandmother’s maiden name, Fitzgerald Georgia—for the police in Fitzgerald, Georgia to give the poor man back his money. Now that, of course, didn’t count the expense of the legal actions.

Now here we have something very serious. We have American citizens stopped, searched and their property seized without a charge. This the constitution tells us cannot be done, but there are now on the books 84 different laws enacted by Congress which allow the authorities to do that. So you can imagine with the expansion of the federal crime law that they are cooking up what we are looking at.

[ Murray ] Well, I think that was changed by the Burger court, because when I was a police officer you could not order somebody to open the trunk of their car, for instance. Now if you have... if you see something inside the car that leads you to believe that there may be something in the trunk of the car, then the driver of that car has no choice. He must open the trunk of the car. But before unless you could see it in plain view it didn’t exist. And I think the Burger court is the one that changed that. So now it is a fishing expedition. They can go anywhere they want to.

[ Scott ] Well, it is worse than that. It means that they can always find whatever you have got.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Exactly.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, when this country was started, law enforcement was in the hands of local constables and justices of the peace. The justice of the peace was not a lawyer. You did not need a lawyer to go before a justice of the peace. He was a man who had a good reputation locally and knew his Bible. And he tried a case in terms of general Christian, biblical, legal premises, equity. Now that was how, until our childhood in most of the country, not the cities, law was handled.

[ Scott ] True.

[ Rushdoony ] ...by a justice of the peace and a local constable. But the justices of the peace were dispensed with. They were not lawyers and somehow the excellent law enforcement they had provided for generations was no longer valid. And the constable gave way to trained police who were tied in with other police groups. Every country in history that has had a centralized police force has wound up in tyranny. It has had a KGB or a Gestapo. And that is exactly where we are headed now. And this is why we have the confiscations we do. If you should have a passenger in your car who has a couple of marijuana cigarettes in his pocket, unbeknownst to you, you can lose your car.

[ Scott ] Yes. On the spot.

[ Rushdoony ] On the spot.

[ Scott ] No I read in Reason magazine that the police in Stockton have, as many cities do, they have this unofficial red light district which is a pain and women walking around, motorists coming, stopping and so forth. And they have police decoys. And the police decoys are bugging or taping the possible transaction with men in the car. Now the police in Stockton are confiscating the car. They are not taking the fellow in to arrest. They are just taking the car.

[ Rushdoony ] They have {?} profitable.

[ Scott ] Yes. They have taken over his thousand automobiles. Now the actual offense on the books is a misdemeanor, which, according to Stockton police costs 250 dollars at the most. So here is a punishment greatly in excess of the offense. And then we compare that with confiscations without an offense. Now you have to go back roughly 475 years in English history to find a comparable set of circumstances. In {?} he describes how a ale house, he said, which is of no interest to anybody except a publican and his wife who brew the beer themselves and sell it, it can be closed down, he said, coldly and cruelly without any proceeding whatever. And it was one of the... part of the proceedings, part of the life of England in those days a suppression of the life of the common people which led to the revolution.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Now we have gone all the way back to that.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Well, there is another... you know, talking about this national police force, I am confused about where the federal government finds the constitutional authority to come into the state of California, for instance, and prospectue elected state officials and, in effect, nullify an election of the people in the state. But what happened to the state’s rights part of the constitution?

[ Scott ] State’s rights were wiped out with the second reconstruction. They were wiped out by the first reconstruction, as you know, for a period of what? Something like 12 years or so when the South was occupied and when the federal government mandated the rules of its elections. The second reconstruction, which began under the Kennedy wiped out the right of the southern states to set up the rules for an election. And under Johnson the rights of each state to educate its system, its children was pretty well wiped out by a system of ... of... of pressure and bribery. So you have the federal government now with federal funds in everything, in highway construction, schools instruction. In election districts, the redistricting which is going on now is being supervised by a special committee in Washington, DC which is telling each state that it has to aapprove of the redistricting plan before they can conduct it. So the federal police are merely following where everybody else has been.

[ Rushdoony ] The Constitution, contrary to what a lot of Americans and especially Christian Americans believe, is a dead letter.

[ Murray ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] It has absolutely no meaning. It means what the courts want to make of it. It is a pretext. The Constitution says that the federal government can own no land in the states except military bases and post offices.

[ Scott ] That is very clear English.

[ Rushdoony ] Very clear. And yet in some states 90 percent of the land is federal land.

[ Scott ] Well, Wyoming for instance.

[ Rushdoony ] Or Alaska.

[ Scott ] Oh, Alaska particularly.

[ Rushdoony ] And California it is over 40 percent. Nevada, most of the western states.

[ Scott ] Now, you see, all the land in the United States originally was open to the people. Once the people had populated to a sufficient extent after our federal union was organized, they could then create a local state government and they would be recognized as another state in the union and they would send in representatives and senators and so forth. All the land in that state was open to be settled. Now suddenly somewhere along the lien we have states that all the land is not open to be settled. At what time did that transition take place?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And now your own land, if you drain an area which has been a dump and because there is a little bit of water sitting there in it and it has been a mosquito breeding place, it is wet lands that you have drained and you go to prison.

[ Scott ] People have done that.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And they have gone to prison for it.

Well, the Fifth Amendment has got, as you know, two parts. The first part is that you have the right not to be ... not to self incriminate yourself. And the second part is that you are to be safe in your person from search, unreasonable searches and seizures. Now we just got through with the searches and seizures. So they must go back to the Fifth Amendment as most people understand it. The right to remain silent. If you actually use that right in an official situation you are limited to giving your name. If you answer any question beyond your name you have given up your right. Now Webster says an inalienable right is a right that cannot be surrendered or taken away or transferred, but the lawyers and the courts have decided that you surrendered your right against self incrimination if you answer any question. And, of course, they will goad you with all sorts of questions.

The other part is that when they found out that gangsters like Costello. You remember the {?} hearings where they had Costello on the stand, asked him if he was a murder, if he had ever stolen things and all kinds of things. And, of course, he refused to answer on advice of counsel or the Fifth Amendment that might incrimante or degrade him. They decided they had to do something about this Fifth Amendment so they set up this system of offering immunity. Now immunity is a means of forcing a man to testify, because the immunity means that you are not going to be prosecuted for what you admit. Of course, you can be disgraced. You can be ruined in your community. Your reputation is finished and that would, I think, come under the category of cruel and unusual punishment in a civilized society. But we don’t recognize that as a penalty.

Now with Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North they went even further. They offered limited immunity. And I said at the time, limited to what? How limited? Well, of course, in any event, limited immunity he was forced to testify against himself and against his will. And then he was prosecuted for what he admitted. And the federal judge took the case. It took the appeals court years later to say that the case could not be taken. So Colonel North, after all these years and all that money and all this fuss and all the money is finally getting his pension and, of course, the are still millions of people who are going around calling him a scoundrel and so forth. I mean, he has paid a heavy penalty and so has his wife and children and his relatives.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Don’t you think that is the game?

[ Scott ] Of course that is the game.

[ Murray ] Make him pay a heavy penalty.

[ Scott ] Yes. But the game is also to destroy the Fifth Amendment. There is very little left. There is only a fragment of it left. Now the Fifth Amendment was established 450 years...well, it was laid... the basis for it was laid by the Cromwellian revolution. And when the founding generation in this country, the founding fathers were descended from men who had lived though that. This country was founded by refugees from that sort of a system.

[ Rushdoony ] The Bible does not permit torture, nor confessions and if a man confesses to a crime there has to be full corroboration before there can be anything done to him.

[ Murray ] Three witnesses.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, we have gone a long way since the Constitution was written and now, of course, it means nothing. So we are moving into a federal police force which will destroy all our freedoms. I recall very vividly one man with high federal law enforcement connections who once told me, he said, “I want to tell you something, because it is people like yourselves who are fools when they are tackled by any federal official. You are so obvsiouly confident of your innocence.” And he said, “Act like a Capone. Say nothing.” And he said, “Under no circumstances take a lie detector test,” because he said, “You will be asked questions about your personal life. Have you cheated on your wife. Have you thought about cheating? Have you done this and that? What kind of thoughts have you had about your employer? That will so throw you off that you are an emotional mess.” So he said, “Under no circumstances allow them to do this to you.”

[ Scott ] Good advice.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And it was because he had seen it done that he was so vocal about it.

[ Murray ] And I think that Christian schools and home schoolers are going to have to redouble their efforts to teach history and teach this next generation coming up the price that has been paid.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. I have a copy of the Constitution which stands about 15 inches high and is about three inches thick. I have a supplement to it also which is quite heavy. It is a copy of the Constitution published by the government printing office every few years. And for every clause it has annotations of all the Supreme Court cases which have, in effect, rewritten that particular phrase so that from the preamble to the last word, you have all these decisions citing key aspects of thereof.

And the thing that comes loud and clear is that in the hands of the courts, from the very beginning, the Constitution has been rewritten. The meaning often turned upside down so that when you and I read the simple words of the Constitution there is scarcely anything that has not been given a radically different interpretation by the courts so that this edition is put out for the benefit of lawyers. And the supplements are continuous. And it gives you an idea of how little the original text means. It is like having the Bible and then having ...

[ Scott ] Commentary.

[ Rushdoony ] Ten books which tell you what the Bible really didn’t say as, for example, right now there are some writers who are busily telling us that the Bible nowhere condemns homosexuality.

[ Scott ] Nonsense.

[ Rushdoony ] And there is a whole school of them here and in England and no doubt on the continent who go through all kinds of contortions to make the Greek words and the Hebrew words mean something other than they mean.

Well, we are without law.

[ Scott ] Well, this is not a very esoteric conversation in a way, because I have held out one of the copies of the Wall Street Journal this Sunday from you. I have kept the Thursday edition of last week. I have forgotten the date on it off hand. But there is an article in there by L. Gordon Krovitz who is writing living under the law essays in the Wall Street Journal. And he has some excerpts from the Clarence Thomas hearings. Very interesting. Senator Biden who is... who, as you know, wrote Hamlet and other things. Senator Biden questioning Judge Thomas mentioned two legal scholars, one from Harvard, one from the University of Chicago who had questioned the constitutionality of some of these new laws, some of the laws, for instance, that I am talking about and who are demanding better protection for people’s property in business. And Senator Biden accused Judge Thomas of admiring these scholars and asked him why he admired them. And Thomas said he ... Thomas got rather personal about it. And he said that these kid of laws make him think of the black code which kept his grandfather from getting licenses to earn a living and he felt, in effect, that one’s labor is part of one’s property and that things that interfere with one’s labor, interfere with one’s property.

And Biden then went on to bring up a court case. And the case was the supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of an independent prosecutor. Now Judge Scalia brought a dissent on that in which he said the Constitution only calls for three branches of government. It doesn’t call for any official that is independent of all three branches of government. And Biden, who rushes in where angels fear to tread then brought up another very significant case. He said, “If we had another Scalia on the court, that would have gone the other way.” And he said, “That would mean that independent agencies might be brought up on the constitutional level.”

Now what he is talking about there is the fourth branch of government. For Congress to create an agency that can adjudicate and enact and admistrate all at once, do what all three branches are forbidden to do is obviously unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court has allowed this to go on. Now if we have, he was saying, in effect, if we... if Thomas is going to join Scalia, he said, we don’t know how the government will operate.

So in other words, what men have done men can undo. We do have a very interesting government in the sense that there are all sorts of powers available with the people have not been taught and don’t know how to use. At the end of this essay that I was writing I looked for that quote from Thomas Jefferson who said, “Don’t tell me...” What did he say? Don’t ... do not speak to me about the good will of men. Bind them, bind them, I say, with the chains of the constitution. And in seven of the books that I have in my library of that period I couldn’t find a single one that carried that quote. They were all modern books.

[ Rushdoony ] Otto, I think it would be very important for you to cite something we discussed earlier today. Pat Buchanan’s essay....

[ Scott ] Oh, yes. Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] ...and the response to it.

[ Scott ] Marvelous. He... he put out a political statement called “American First.” Now Pat Buchanan has made a great career and he is a great writer. He has made a great career of commenting on politics and commenting on other political people. This is the first time I know in his history that he has put out a political statement of his own beliefs and what we should do. He believes that we should stop this iternational do goodism at the expsense of our own country. We should bring our troops home. We should concentrate on restoring our country. End all foreign aid and end all this business of protecting the world and being the policemen of the world and so forth.

I believe that he has done this I conjunction—I can’t prove it and I haven’t called Howie Philips—but, you know, Howie has a third party movement. And I think that Howie now has the best publicist in the United States because American first has bee Howie’s platform. And I think that the things we have been talking about can be corrected.

[ Murray ] Well, I think the temper of the country is beginning to run in that direction. Recent polls, people are fed up with the foreign aid.

[ Scott ] They are fed up with foreign aid. They are also fed up with all the rest of this thing that we have been talking about. How do you suppose... most of those confiscations, by the way, have been of small people.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] There is no big money involved in most of the...

[ Scott ] No.

[ Murray ] ... a large percentage of them are nickel and dime.

[ Scott ] No. The ... the big people have got lawyers. The big people are protected.

[ Rushdoony ] It has reached the point where I am almost ready to favor the legalization of drugs for this reason. Virtually every piece of paper currency in the United States has passed through the hands of drug dealers at some point and it is possible to detect traces of drugs on them so that a fine analysis or a dog who is sniffing out can prove that you are trafficking in drugs because any money we have in our pocket, any paper money is likely to have traces of drugs on it.

[ Murray ] I don’t know if it was in Mark {?} paper where I read it, but one of the defensive things that you can do I this regard is when you go into a bank to cash a check, you ask the teller for new money. You don’t want money that is out of the drawer. You want brand new money from the mint.

They used to wash the... the bills.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. No more.

[ Scott ] They are letting them get old and faded, I noticed.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, it is a serious matter if you can be arrested because of the currency you have in your wallet.

[ Scott ] Well, you know, the dogs are drug addicted and that is the reason that they go smelling for drugs. No, I am not. They feed the dog drugs so that the dog is looking for drugs every ... everywhere he goes.

[ Rushdoony ] Amazing. I did now know that. But you can see how logical it is. That is how they train the dogs. It is bad enough that our youth are druggies. Now we have got to make dogs...

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] ...addicts.

[ Murray ] Boy, wait till the animal rights people get a load of that.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] But...

[ Scott ] I think you had better write something about that in...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, Otto. Write something on that.

[ Scott ] But, you know...

[ Rushdoony ] I... I don’t believe there are 10 people in the country who know that.

[ Scott ] Well, it just occurred to me.

[ Rushdoony ] It is obvious.

[ Scott ] It just occurred to me to mention it and ... at any rate...

[ Murray ] Even ... even if it is not true...

[ Scott ] Oh, it is.

[multiple voices]

[ Murray ] It can be rumored.

[ Scott ] No I can assure you... I can assure you it is true. But, you know, the confiscations extent to gambling. And imagine if you have a pint of whiskey in your pocket—I can’t know of anyone nowadays who does—but I remember prohibition. So do you.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And they were breaking down doors then. They were seizing stills and they were sending men to the penitentiary, poor farmers in South Carolina who were making a little corn liquor went to the... went to the penitentiary and prohibition was a heavy hand.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And then they... they had gang wars that had corruption. They had a black market. That is where our black market began. Well now, of course, the black market is much larger. So I wouldn’t go for legalizing drugs, but I would go for a third party to change this kind of government.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Otto, the next time I come over if that great big German shepherd of yours sniffs at my wallet, I will know what you are feeding him.

[ Scott ] And poor Max is a very innocent dog.

[ Rushdoony ] He does not have an innocent look. He has an intimidating look.

[ Scott ] That is... the vet said, “I wouldn’t want to call his bluff.”

[ Rushdoony ] I would agree. Well, I think Pat Buchanan has done us all a favor by writing his monthly letter on the subject of America first. We cannot destroy this country trying to save the world and there is no way that dollars can save the world.

[ Scott ] And it didn’t save us.

[ Rushdoony ] No. There was an excellent and cynical monograph written after World War II by, of all people, a socialist, Rheinhold Niebuhr and the title of it was, “Dollars save the World.” And he made it clear that it was a ridiculous opinion.

[ Scott ] Well, countries that get addicted to American help are injuring themselves. They have to take care of themselves. I think this is part of the thing that happens with black people in the United States.

[ Rushdoony ] And to black Africa.

[ Scott ] And to black Africa and to Israel.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And to... of all places the Soviet Union looking for the United States as a Savior.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Everybody, countries, individuals have to go through lean times and they have to get up on their own feet and they have to work their way out of it and these are tests of God.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ...which are determined to bring out the best in you. I mean, I read a very brief article not too long ago about the business of deaths where some individuals were deploring the deaths of children. And the writer went on to say that in the earlier days of Christianity children died as well as other people. But it was never considered part of Christianity to say that God should not take a child. They ... that had nothing to do with the faith, because we are not in a world that is to be all summer. Of all things in the Odyssey when Odysseus was offered immortality by one of the goddesses that he had an affair with, he turned it down because he said, “I would rather be a man that all the troubles involved then lead the pointless life of immortality on earth.”

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Otto, you said that these things are sent by the Lord to try us. And I am sure you are right. But if the Lord sent us Bush to try us, I am flunking where he is concerned.’

[ Scott ] President shrug somebody called him. I think he is incoherent right now.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Douglas, you have been silent for a while.

[ Murray ] Well, it is an interesting... the... all of these various groups like the animal rights people and homosexuals and so forth, the debate is no longer possible with them. Everything is confrontational and logic is impossible with them. And it seems to be getting to a boiling point, this latest thing in Sacramento where public officials can no longer address the public. Wilson today was booed loudly. His entire speech, 15 or 20 minutes at Stanford University. You mentioned earlier that the former police chief of San Francisco, Jordan, had to ... ran for three blocks and was beaten an entire distance before he was able to get in a car and get away. And I heard his statements today that felt that the ... there were no police present. And he felt that the police were ordered to stay out of the area.

[ Scott ] I am sure he is right. I am sure that Mayor Agnos would have done that.

[ Rushdoony ] And ironically the paper yesterday claimed that San Francisco was the number one city in the world, or at least in the United States as far as the desire of people to visit was concerned. Now I don’t know where they got those statistics.

[ Scott ] They make them up.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Some things are for sale and that is one of them.

[ Scott ] They make them up.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] This is the oldest game in the... in the newspaper business and in politics. They make it up as they go and who is going to jump up and say you are wrong?

[ Rushdoony ] Well, they were certainly congratulating themselves in San Francisco and declaring, of course, we are number one.

[ Scott ] Well, the abusive types will get what ... the only thing that people always find when the look for it is trouble. There is lots of trouble in the world. And we have groups in the United States that have forgotten that there is such a thing as a majority. We have heard so much about minorities all our lives and the rights of minorities and the virtues of minorities that we have forgotten that there is such a thing as a majority in every culture.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And that the majority of a culture has rights in that culture.

[ Rushdoony ] Some years ago the Birch Society had a slogan, “Support your local police.” I think it needs reviving again, because if we don’t, before long we won’t have any local police, just the federal police.

[ Scott ] Well, look at how a federal police would operate. They don’t know you.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] They have authority from far away. At least the local police know who you are. They know you are a resident. They know your background. They know how you live. They will treat you accordingly. They have nothing against you. They know who is bad in the community and who is good and so forth. What does an outside federal force with super authority over everybody know about you?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And care?

[ Rushdoony ] Well, for example, here we have some of the local and county sheriff’s men whom we know on a first name basis, some of whose children attend our Christian school. That is a world away from somebody who ... from Washington who has nothing but contempt for the hicks he has to deal with.

[ Scott ] Well, so far... in recent years people in authority in the United States have not behavfed well.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] They are not courteous. They don’t listen. They don’t have respect and we are becoming a nation of rules. I was very upset. I had a German tell me that we called you, he said, the people of the rule. When American tourists come in, come around, he said, they want to know what is the rule here. And then he said, they know how to behave. And I didn’t like to hear that.

We used to be a little more natural than that, not quite as conformist. And, of course, you have things like running a... setting up a gaunlet for former police chief Jordan to run through the Castro district of San Francisco is what I heard on the air and nobody punished. Well, of course, punishment delayed doesn’t mean that punishment never comes.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] It just means it is delayed.

[ Rushdoony ] And we are assured that there is not a jot nor a tittle that God is not aware of and finally renders a rendering on.

[ Scott ] Well, one of the better things about getting old is that you see the end of the chapter. Most of my hard drinking friends died in their early 50s. And I have seen the end of the chapter of a number of careers which did not end the way the individual anticipated. And that is true of human events over all.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] That would be a real mistake to take the ... the disgraceful abuse of our Constitution as a permanent state of affairs or as a hopeless state of affairs. The generations change things. We have a generation coming up. Mr. Bush, if he is re elected will be the last World War II man in the presidency. The is a whole we generation coming up and not just a generation now in their 40s and 50s, but a generation behind that in their 20s and 30s of whom I take much more ... I take much more look at in their 20s and 30s group, because they are growing up in a world that the liberals made. And they know all is false. And I don’t believe they are going to leave it alone.

[ Rushdoony ] Oh, I agree with you. I think with more and more of the Christian school products growing up, marrying, having their own children, we are going to get a different type of citizen here in the United States. And as of now 40 percent of the children of this country are in Christian schools. Now that means the future. They are not the children who are going to grow up and die of drug overdoses or of AIDS or of any of the number of things that are killing off our youth.

[ Scott ] Well, I don’t even think the percentages are the main point. The main point is the... if, for instance, we have a third party, it is a small party, but it is an intellectual party and it is sound and it knows the arguments, it will be the refuge for everybody when the pressure comes. And it will expand immediately. And as far as numbers is concerned, I always consider that if I ran into a good man in any kind of a meeting, it was a great day.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, I think you point is exceptionally well taken with regard to numbers. Historians have estimated that when the War of Independence broke out one third were Tories, one third didn’t care and one third were for independence, but only a small handful felt it was worth fighting for. But that handful prevailed.

[ Scott ] Sure.

[ Rushdoony ] And I recall years ago reading in one historical study on the Puritans and Cromwell and the commonwealth that it... that the Puritans were actually four percent of the population. Most of the population wasn’t involved and didn’t care. But four percent commanded the country because they meant business.

[ Scott ] Well, you know, most people are always waiting for somebody else to do something. In fact, it seems a cliché. They say, “Somebody ought to do something about that.”

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Well, young families are going to have to start fighting for some things. One of the things they are going to have to start fighting for is better tax breaks.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] For... for young families because it is tougher and tougher, these two... two income families which leave the kids as latch key kids, you know, has destroyed a whole generation. And I would think that people would react by now, seeing politicians raising their salaries to astronomical heights and the tax break for the deduction for children hasn’t... hasn’t changed.

[ Scott ] I don’t... they don’t see the need for that.

[ Murray ] No. But it has got to... it ought to start clicking in somebody’s minds before long.

[ Scott ] That is a very good point.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, look at the many young couples that have visited us of late at our Sunday services from all over northern California. All of them home schooling or, in some cases, children are in Christian schools. And they all represented a totally different generation, a totally different outlook so that the elements of the future are there and they do mean business about their faith. We find that it is young couples like that who are having trouble making every penny count who are among the most generous contributors we have, because they mean business about the future. And so they put their money where their mouth is.

Well, our time is nearly over. Is there a last comment you would like to make, Douglas, Otto? Douglas, do you wan to tay anthing?

[ Murray ] Well, I just... I think that one of the great joys for me is looking in the faces of the children at the Chalcedon Christian School and other Christian schools. There is a joy in their face that is such a remarkable change...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] ... from looking at the faces of kids I public schools who have no hope, no faith in the future, don’t know where they are going and... and really don't care if they get anywhere.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] And the kids in the Christian schools have just a joy of living and a faith in the future that is just a delight to see.

[ Scott ] Well, they will change the world.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, it is intersting, Douglas, that my grandson Isaac, Mark’s son at the farm boys... I forget the name of it.

[ Murray ] Future Farmers of America?

[ Rushdoony ] No. it is not the Future Farmers.

[ Murray ] 4H?

[ Rushdoony ] 4H, yes. Very often he has to read the instructions because the other students are not able to understand and read, so things are handed to Isaac to read.

[ Murray ] That is sad.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, our time is...

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