From the Easy Chair

Reconstruction in the Media and Arts

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 99-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161C5

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161C5, Reconstruction in the Media and Arts, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 44, May the seventh, 1983.

Chuck and John Saunders, Craig and I were sitting here telling stories while we were waiting for Chuck Wagner to get the equipment set up and I will pass one of the stories on to you. We were discussing blunders, verbal blunders. And the starting point was one I made on one of these tapes which Chuck cut out. But I told them of an incident that happened some years ago and I was a witness to it. It was a sad one, but it was amazing in its nature. It was in a very large Bay area church. The pastor was a fine and kindly man, but he was walking a tight rope, because two powerful families in the church were alternately displeased with him.

Well, there was a wedding and, of all things, it was between the son of one family and the daughter of another family, of the other family. And neither family was happy with the wedding and at that time they were both angry with the pastor.

So when the service began everyone was tense and he was walking a tightrope. The couple were the only people there who were really happy about the occasion. The pastor did beautifully until the conclusion of the service when he declared, “Whom therefore God hath put asunder, let no man put together.”

There was a gasp, a shocked gasp all over. He tried to recuperate. He concluded with a benediction and left in some embarrassment. And he never lived that down for a man.

However, I will tell you a story that I did not deal with before which is the ultimate boner. And it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person. This was a pastor I really had no use for. He was young and very handsome, very much on the go, seeking his own advancement. And by the time he was in his early 30s he was in a very wealthy congregation, magnificent stone church in the best neighborhood with an exceptionally good salary. He had everything. He had it made. And there was a large wedding taking place and very important families. The church was not only thronged, but people were standing along the wall and in the back.

And so before the service began someone in the family requested that when the processional ended and the organ stopped playing, he asked everyone to be seated. Normally in many churches everyone remains standing for the service which usually takes only about 20 or 30 minutes. So he agreed he would ask everyone to be seated.

Well, the organ began to play. The bride and the groom came each from their respective directions. The organ stopped playing and the pastor announced, “Will the congregation please be seated while the marriage is consummated.”

When he said that he turned red and the congregation gasped and then the began to laugh. They roared with laughter. They became hysterical with laughter. When the laughter died down it began again and wave after wave after wave. And it was some time before the wedding was able to continue. Needless to say, the young man resigned and left.

[ Voice ] That is terrible.

[ Rushdoony ] I... I think sometime I will write a book on...

[ Voice ] Pastoral...

[ Rushdoony ] Pastoral boners I have known about. Well, now to get on with things today. John Saunders Quaid is with me because we are going to discuss something that Chalcedon has planned for this October, a conference on the arts. And it is going to be an especially important conference. We are expecting a very large crowd so that when we send out announcements and you are interested in coming, let us know immediately, because this is going to reach a capacity audience.

John, do you want to tell us about it?

[ Saunders ] Well, I think we have been establishing for some months now the basic position of Chalcedon on the media and the arts and... and we have... you know, we have been telling people that there is a lot of things that we have to do and one of the things that we wanted to do is we wanted to bring expression to that. We want to talk about it and write about it. We wanted to show exactly how to go about doing, how to go about bringing Reconstruction into the media and the arts. The Humanist has been using the media and the arts for many, many decades now as a tool of propaganda of for his world view and we believe that the Christians have a better solution. The Bible is the final authority in every area of life which includes art, and that the... that art insofar as a Christian is concerned is not limited just to doing television programs about evangelism or prophecy or some... or some Bible studies and things of that nature, which all have their place, but our primary concern is with attacking Humanism in its... in its stronghold with... with bringing Christian artists to do some logical self consciousness, to an awareness of what they know and how that influences art. And we are bringing together a number of people from the across the country and not only yourself but Frankie Schaeffer will be there, myself, of course, and Paul Lyons who is president of the American Business Media Council. Paul has been three years trying to get conservative businessmen to wake up to the fact that they are funding their own destruction in television and elsewhere.

Otto Scott will be there also. We will have a number of paintings on exhibit as well as... as quite a compliment of literature on the arts. And we will have, I think, all together there is 11 ... 11 speakers. Senator Bill Richardson will give the banquet address at the conclusion. We are expecting Dr. Cornelius Van Til to come out and be our special guest. I talked to him on the phone a couple of weeks ago and I am going back to see him on May 21st to finalize those arrangements. And we are expecting the... we are limiting the conference to about 350 people. And the reason for that is primarily the facilities, but also because of the fact that this is the first time we have ever done anything like this. And we are trying to ... trying to limit the number of people we have to handle. But we are interested in ... in... in doing things. For example, we want to show Christians how to apply the law of their business, how the artist applies the law to his business and how he also uses that same law in his art and how he develops characters and things of that nature on... on biblical models of character. We want to show the artist, for example, there is a major problem I copyright today and people getting paid for their work, for books and films and tape piracy and things. The ... the Christian position has provided the answer to that problem many centuries ago and we have lost that perspective.

We want to deal with the historic greatness of Christian art as it was in the Reformation which is... which is your topic in the conference. And to get the {?} something to shoot at. So it is going to be a very, very broad based perspective, concentrating primarily this time on television and the media art and secondarily on the other arts.

We are expecting ... there is, as I said before, to take about 350 people. It will be a two day conference. Registration on Friday the 14th from nine until 12...

[ Rushdoony ] This is October.

[ Saunders ] October. And then we will have four hours of instruction and lecture on Friday and then another eight hours of instruction on Saturday concluding with a banquet that night and I think Martin Selbredies who is doing ... doing a paper on the theory of Christian music he is trying now to put together a concert for a dinner concert for the guests, about 18 to 20 pieces to do some original compositions. And we are... we are expecting it to be a... a full fledged affair. I am very excited about.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And let me add, Martin Selbredie is doing an important music ... musical study.

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] On a Christian theory of music. And he is not an amateur at it. He has had 26 compositions played by various symphony orchestras. So we are looking forward to that aspect of our conference.

Well, it sounds wonderful and we will keep all of our listeners and readers posted on this as time goes on. Is there anything else you want to add?

[ Saunders ] Well, we are interested in ... in beginning to develop some other factors in the arts in... in terms of how we bring the Chalcedon view, for example, the biblical Reconstruction view to the whole of arts. And one of the things that we are looking at I this area is various media projects which we have talked about before.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] And those projects are coming along... coming along very slowly, but coming along very certainly in terms of development of the concepts we are working with. We are talking with Chuck Wagner here about doing some more ... expanding our radio effort and various other things.

The... the whole media and arts arm of Chalcedon and... and the Reconstructionist perspective is really, I think, is really beginning to lay a solid foundation for a major explosion here in the next year and a half where I... Carolyn and Gwen and all... all of the wives and things around here are ... they are kind of lonely at times when we take off across the country, all of us and ... but they have so much to do here insofar as Chalcedon’s work and in particular in the arts and ... and them media that it is really provided a kind of unity, this project has. It has brought us together to work on a particular project. And we have had a... a ... a great deal of blessing as a result of that.

Caroline Kelly and Gwen Saunders, in particular have been doing a lot of the work on this October conference, too.

Anything further you want to add?

[ Saunders ] Not at the... not at the moment. I can only say that the invitations, the... that are being mailed out to people, we do expect the conference to be full. As you said at... at the top of the... of the show, at the top of the tape that we have already got something like 80 some applications and people that want to come to the conference and who have committed to come to the conference and we haven’t even sent out the... the... flyers and ... and registration forms yet. So ... and we are limiting it to about 350. So...

[ Rushdoony ] These are some of the media people themselves.

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Are they not?

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] From Hollywood.

[ Saunders ] Yes. We... we have sent invitations to two or three producer friends of mine who... who want to come. One of them is the producer of Happy Days and... and to two or three writers who write for major television productions and we have a number of technical people coming, for example, a director of photography, Roy H. Wagner will be ... there is an extensive, extensive knowledge of ... of the history of film and how it is... and why and how and why it has declined. He is also coming to the conference to deliver a paper and there will be a number of people there who are indirectly related to the media insofar as producing is concerned, people who have television stations, who are interested in... in funding television projects and ... and media projects. We are very concerned with seeing those people discover that there is a conservative Christian basis for the arts and that this ... and not only is it true, but it can also be very, very profitable.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Let me add this. In the arts and media we are lining up the personnel, the professionals who have expertise. Now all we need is someone to give us the funding and we are ready to do some remarkable things, because there are people there in Hollywood, as John indicated who are simply waiting for the right vehicle and who are unhappy that they are being given turkeys to produce and to market. They want the kind of thing that Chalcedon can deliver. Now we need the funding.

[ Saunders ] Just a... just one thing, Rush. I was... I got a letter from a producer of one of the most successful situation comedies on television here a while back and he is a Christian, very concerned about the declining morality and philosophical basis of television, but in this letter he lists a running history of how he tried to mount two successive projects over a period of three years which had a definite Christian foundation. And one of them was even about a Christian, a Christian man who was the very image of the Christian man that we talk about all the time who was the leader of the home and the responsible, et cetera. And who even... who even talked about God in the... in the show. And he talked about the incredibly excruciating and frustrating problems he had with 99 different people trying to defuse possible uprisings in various quarters of the United States because of its obvious Christian content. And it isn’t that... that there aren’t people there who are not trying, because there are people there who are definitely trying to get this kind of product on... on... on the networks. But the networks are not buying it and they are not buying it for a lot of... lot of reasons, all of which are... are, of course, fundamentally corrupt. But I just wanted to... us... to... to say that because I wanted to let people know that there are ... that there are many individuals in the industry right now, who are in major positions of power and expertise, but... but only in the production sense and not at the network level. And these people are trying to turn out the kind of product and trying to offer the kinds of products to the networks that we are talking about, but they are having absolutely no success whatsoever.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Let me add something there, something I hope one of these days to write a little article about. I am increasingly weary of the efforts by Christians to clean up television, because the thing that comes home to me is that what they are trying to do is fundamentally false. It is rotten. What they are saying is, “We don’t want pornography and we don’t want sex and violence on television. We want to clean it up and give it a moral aspect.” What for? All they are saying is we want to make Humanism palatable. We want to give a kind of a Christian veneer to Humanistic programming. Well, I am glad that TV is as bad as it is today, because it is Humanism going to seed. Let people see what Humanism adds up to. And let them say, “We don’t want Humanism cleaned up. We want it replaced.”

[ Saunders ] And I think one of the best biblical admonitions about this whole thing is one does not put new wine into old wineskins.

[ Rushdoony ] Very good. Exactly.

[ Saunders ] And... and I believe that... that ... the only reason why the Humanistically controlled networks survive today is because the Christians haven’t done anything. I believe it survives only because the conservatives who are always talking about competition in a free marketplace, nevertheless arbitrarily exclude media and the communication arts from that marketplace.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] And... and I believe that what is going to have to happen is that the conservatives and the Christians who have the funding, who have the ... the financial clout, et cetera, are going to have to realize that they can’t go to the opposition. The opposition will launder their money as they always have. And that it is not to try to reform the networks, because that is just trying to put new wine in ... into old wineskins. It is... it is casting pearls before swine. And I think what we ought to do is... is... as we have said before in the journal and in previous tapes, build the network from the ground up. The marketplace is there. The need in the marketplace is there. The ... the audience research demonstrates that this is the kind of the product the audience wants. And I think that all we have to do is provide the alternative in the marketplace and you... and you can just cut the legs off of the major networks right at the knees. And I think that it will be art will be extremely successful, philosophically, theologically, religiously and I think it will also be extremely successful financially.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. You know, one of the great evils of our time is not on the side of the Humanists. It is on the side of the Christian community. Here we are clearly in the majority in this country, because according to all the polls, those who profess to believe the Bible from cover to cover number 55 to 60 million. On top of that one recent poll indicated that the ... over 90 percent of the people in this country declare that they believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

Now what are these people doing? They could be turning this country around if they were ready to put their money where their mouth is.

Do you know that just since the first of the year—and I have been on the road so much—I was gone three days this past week. I will be gone four days this coming week and every day the next week and so on for a while. Just he people who come up to me wherever I have been and said how much they think of our work and they can hardly wait for the Chalcedon Report to come and whatever they are doing, they drop it to read it immediately. If the people who said that to me—and I know because I look at all the material, the deposits everything—were giving not Chalcedon, if they had given 10 or 20 dollars since the first of the year or last year we would be in a much stronger position financially and able to do some of the things we cannot do.

[ Saunders ] No question. No question about it.

[ Rushdoony ] The Christian does not put his money where his mouth is. He will complain about politics, but he will never give to a political campaign.

[ Saunders ] Well, it think it is always easier to complain than it is to put forth a positive affirmation of what you believe in. Negative criticism is very, very easy. We are all very good at it, throwing rocks at other people’s houses.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] But it is one thing. It is quite another matter to sit down and build your own house.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Exactly. We get all kinds of letters from groups that want us to promote this or that cause which is anti something. Our primary concern is with building.

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Because I have seen millions spent on negation without accomplishing anything. We are only beginning to turn things around as some people have gone out there and worked hard to establish this or that agency, to go out and do grass roots political work, to start Christian schools to start homes for delinquents and so on. And a lot of people just sit back and insist that their calling is to criticize and that is the essence of their religious duty.

Well, now to go on to something else. I am very grateful to John Lofton for having sent me an article, “In Defense of the Welfare State” by George Will from the May 9, 1983 New Republic. It is a most remarkable essay, because I believe George Will has some kind of church affiliation. Certainly there is no evidence of faith in this article, because the essence of his position... well, let me quote a few passages.

“But a free market economic system is a system. It is a public product, a creation of government. Any important structure of freedom is a structure, a complicated institutional and cultural context that government must nurture and sustain. Obviously free speech is not free in the sense that it is free of prerequisites. It is not free of a complicated institutional frame. Free speech, as much as a highway system is something government must establish and maintain,” and so on and on.

Now for George Will the state has replaced religion as the motivating force in life and also as the overall environment of man. It has replaced God. So he is thoroughly, in the tradition of the Greeks and of Hegel who said the state is God walking on earth. If the state is the environment of man as he says, if the state is the creator of all institutions, of all freedom, then, indeed, we have bypassed Christianity totally and moved into a radically pagan world.

To give you examples of this kind of pagan thinking in Will, I quote. “If we are to be properly conscious of our politics, if our politics is to be properly conscious of itself, we must be wide away to this fact, choosing an economic system or choosing, substantially to revive significant economic policies is a political, which means moral, undertaking,” unquote.

Notice the equation of the political and the moral. Now this is Aristotle. Aristotle said that morality was something that came out of politics, a product of the state. This was Plato also. But we believe that God is the source of moral law, that if you do not derive your morality from God, the state will become God or the individual man will become God. There is nothing in this article that would indicate that George Will ever did anything but walk through a church. It apparently never registered on him.

In fact, he goes on to substantiate his point with regard to the welfare state in these words, and I quote. “A welfare state is certainly important to and probably indispensible to social cohesion and, hence, to national strength. A welfare state is implied by conservative rhetoric. A welfare state can be an embodiment of a wholesome ethic of common provision.” Again, you see the moral occasion, a wholesome ethic of common provision. “The doctrine underlying the politically economy of the American welfare state was enunciated in 1877 by Chief Justice Waite in Munn versus Illinois. The court upheld an Illinois statute regulating rates in grain elevators holding that private property, quote, ‘becomes clothed with a public interest when used in a manner to make it a public consequence and affect the community at large. When, therefore, one devotes his property to a use in which the public has an interest, he, in effect, grants the public an interest in that use and must submit to be controlled by the public for the common good to the extent of the interest he has thus created,’” unquote.

Now as one scholar has pointed out recently, this decision, Munn versus Illinois, destroyed private property, because there is no private property that cannot be said to I some extent have a consequence affecting the community at large, have a use in which the public has an interest.

So everything then becomes a matter of public interest which the courts have so interpreted means a state interest.

So not only does Will deny that religion is the source of morality, not only does he replace God with the state, but he has, in effect, assented to a tradition which has destroyed the significance of private property in this country.

Moreover, he goes on to say, subsequently, that—and I quote, “The most important reason conservatives should give for their vision of the welfare state is the most important reason for doing anything politically. It is justice.”

And he goes on to define justice as something that is created and established by the social order, by the state. Well, justice means an ultimate right or wrong. It means righteousness. The two words are equivalent. And the only valid standard of justice or of righteousness can be God, none other. So that if you make the state the arbiter of justice and if you justify its existence I terms of itself, you have taken away the possibility of allowing for any freedom and, of course, for Will, freedom is a product of the state.

What George Will’s article clearly reveals is that Conservatism, if it is separated from Christianity will become destructive.

[ Saunders ] I think potentially the ... this is just a logical consequences of something we have been talking about for ... for a long, long time at Chalcedon in that as soon as you remove the foundation, it doesn't take very long fort hose who style themselves as conservatives to, in fact, become, become anti conservative and liberal. I would also point out that George Will is considered by ABC in his appearances with David Brinkley and ... and a number of others as their token conservative.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] Because he and he appears on a good many of the ... of the standard talk interview, where you have three or four newsmen interviewing somebody. He... he appears as the regular token conservative on ... on ABC television and they have used his perspective a great deal against the conservatives because the liberals know where... where Will is really coming from.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Only the liberals will call him a conservative.

[ Saunders ] That is right.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Now here is another item. The reverend Robert H. Schuler—and I think most of you are familiar with him—is pastor the Crystal Cathedral in southern California. The church has been stripped of its tax exempt status and this was because they had what has been called commercial activity. They have had concerts by Lawrence Welk, Victor Borga, Fred Waring and others and a 12 concert season of spectaculars which brought Tony Bennett, Mitch Miller and the Fifth Dimension to the church.

Now you and I may disagree about the value of their concert series, but the whole point of the state’s argument against the church was that these were profit making activities. Well, let’s examine that a bit. The idea that a church cannot in any respect make money is ridiculous. The idea that that state has a right to tax profits is a very recent idea, very, very recent, not much older than a lot of people still living. And that has been a usurpation by the state. The medieval church had concerts. They had drama. It had all kinds of activities. It ministered to every social and cultural need. That has been the historic life of the church. The church very often loses money on much of what it does, but today the attitude of state and federal agencies is that if they make a little bit of money on anything they must immediately be clobbered.

Well, the whole promise is invalid. It means that we are losing our freedoms to the state which today says we will tax profit making activities and which is also proposing that non profit activities be regulated and is regulating them increasingly so that what is left that is free from state controls. And what is wrong with the church making some money?

Now I may not agree and I do not agree with Schuler’s theology or with his concert program, but I believe he should have the right to have those things if he feels he wants to put on. It is a church. It has a ministry. It is meeting an important need in that community and it is doing a number of things that I think are excellent. It is helping a great many people in need. I think if you were to balance the kind of expenditure the church makes where it is, in effect, giving away money for Christian community purposes against what it has taken in on this ticket sales for its concerts, the Crystal Cathedral has lost money. But, of course, the state does not figure that way. I think it is very wrong. It needs to be challenged.

Now to go on to something else, a very interesting book, Megatrends, M E G A T R E N D S: Ten New Directions Transforming our Lives by John Naisbitt, N A I S B I T T. It came out just recently, 15.50 a copy, published by Warner Books, 1982. You can buy this by ordering it from Heritage Book Shop, 2427-B Marconi Avenue, Sacramento, California 95821.

Now Megatrends is written by a man who is not a conservative. He is simply trying to document the trends that are now in appearance that will determine the future. Let me say his book is far superior to the kind of thing that Alvin Toffler wrote. I thought Toffler’s Future Shock and Third Wave were nonsense. But there is a great deal of important data in Megatrends. One of the things that mark it as a superior book is that it is written with discernment, with wisdom.

For example, one of the observations he makes at the very beginning is especially astute. He says, and I quote, “Trends are bottom up; fads, top down.” That is very important for us to know, because today the world is very much dominated by fads and it tends to look at the future and the present in terms of fads. And fads are from the top down. But the trends which govern the future are from the bottom up. And those trends are very important for us to know.

Now apart from acknowledging that there is a trend in the area of religion which he goes over very lightly, Naisbitt does not do justice to the religious trends of our time which, I believe, are exceedingly important. I think we are a part of those trends here at Chalcedon. Every day I recognize how much we are when somebody calls me and tells me that in some periodical or other someone is taking another swipe at us as some kind of growing menace in society.

[ Saunders ] It is good publicity, Rush.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Now one of the points Naisbitt makes is, and I quote, “The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of many,” unquote. So that we have a tremendous growth today in information, in trends, in the growth of small business, in new sources of vitality, energy and power. We are seeing the destruction of old forms, the old education among other things. Naisbitt comments, “We are drowning in information, but starved for knowledge,” unquote, an excellent statement.

He deals also with what is happening in medicine, with the entrepreneurial explosion. He calls attention to a fact that Drucker has commented about, but nobody really believes anymore that government delivers.

Moreover he calls attention, too, to the kind of thing that is developing, something I called attention to a while back. And he cites the fact of gleaners in northern California harvesting the crops of the apples and so on and points out that there are gleaners in Arizona, Michigan, Oregon and Washington states as well. This kind of thing is taking place all over the country. So that he says, “We are developing a different kind of country, one that is very much different from what we today are familiar with.”

It is an important book, well worth reading and I urge you to get it. You won’t agree with everything and I think it is all the more important because Naisbitt does not come from our perspective. He begins with a radically different position.

He also deals with the world of banking. He deals specifically with a number of fields and he asks what business a bank is in. And he says, “Unless banks reconceptualize what business they are in, they will be out of business.”

So his book is very important. He also attacks the idea of strategic planning and he says it is worthless unless there is, first of all, a strategic vision. The book has a lot of good hard common sense and I... I think you will enjoy it. It is easy reading, can be read in a very short time.

And any comments about it, John? Are you familiar with this book?

[ Saunders ] No. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. I have... I have... the thought did occur to me, though, a while a ago when we were talking about the problems with reverent Schuler and... and... and the Crystal Cathedral. And then I will come back to this. One of the things that Jim Griffith, who is an attorney at law, one of the things that he is going to be dealing with at the conference on the media and the arts in October, is this very problem and he is going to attempt to send forth the biblical law with respect to how do we found our efforts in these areas? And one of the major problems in Christian art today, for example, is the fact that most Christians seem to feel that some way their work is sanctified if they set up a non profit corporation. And, in reality, what they do is acquire a non profit mentality which means that they are guaranteeing not to make any money. And... and.... but I just wanted to mention that, in passing.

Now Megatrends ... if my one... the one perspective from the brief excepts that I have... I have seen from Megatrends and heard from it, I think the reason why Naisbitt does not deal with the major religious trend is ... is starting point. This is an illustration of... of how a man’s starting point blinds him to real factors. In reality all of the major trends that he talks about in that book have a religious foundation. But he can’t see that given his starting point...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] ... of presuppositions.

[ Rushdoony ] Very good.

[ Saunders ] His book is, in effect, a criticism of effects or results and not a book that has to deal with causes.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] ... with ultimate causes. And it is ... it is interesting that it comes out of... out of... what really is a... is a member of the opposing camp.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] And ... and... and once you make that kind of statement, the kinds of statements that he makes in that book, it is ... it is very, very interesting. You mentioned the trends in education. I think we are all aware now of the major blow up that has occurred in the last few weeks in the... in the major media. The media is suddenly horrified that ... that the public school system is turning out incompetents by the millions. And I have been watching this debate recently. And it is following a trend in all such debts. The liberal first raises these kinds of issues in the media and then beats his breast for several weeks and then it is very quickly forgotten.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] And brushed aside. And in the meanwhile, though, everyone has been firmly convinced of the fact that the system that exists is ... is a failure and something is going not have to replace it.

But I think Megatrends is... is an important book. I think everybody ought to read it.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] Particularly when you realize the fact that he is... he comes to these conclusions without any real solid foundation.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] He doesn’t really know what he knows. All he can try to report the facts and explain them. And I think it is important from that perspective, very important.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, you know, one reason why the prosecution of Christian schools is underway is because it is the only way they can hope to deal with the competition. The public schools cannot match them. So they are going to try to eliminate them.

[ Saunders ] Well, I think it is evident. I think it is evident who the leaders of the United States are going to be in 20 years. They are going to be those out of the Christian schools.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] And the reasons why are really very, very basic. Number one, they are... they are... by the time they are in the ... in the seventh and eighth grades, depending on what... it varies, of course, from school to school, but by the time they are in the seventh and eighth grades they are already thinking at the intellectual level of a high school graduate in most public school systems and by the time they finish high school they have the equivalent of a junior college education. And ... and... and with that kind of a foundation going into a university, if the... as long as the faith stays strong they can really interpret the data very, very effectively, become much better interpreters of facts and data and I think just the natural outworking of ideas having consequences is going to produce a bifurcation or a split, rather, in ... between the... the humanist educated and Christian educated men of the future.

That there is going to be two very distinctly different camps of thought and that you are going to find all of the sudden that the majority of the leadership positions are held by Christians.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] Simply because of their fundamental competence. And that is going to create some very interesting problems in the future.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, well, John, you were the other night at our Chalcedon Christian School open house.

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] This was the first time you were there.

[ Saunders ] Yes, indeed.

[ Rushdoony ] Do you want to comment on what the school is like?

[ Saunders ] Well, I mean, it is... it is... I can... I won’t go into it in too much detail, but one person who was a guest there whose children were not in the ... in Chalcedon School, but whose children will be in Chalcedon School come September, a gentleman walked up to me and we were standing there talking and... and he said, “You know....” And he said it almost under his breath like he was afraid some of his friends there might hear him who had their kids at other schools. But he was making reference to another private school and he said the difference between that school and Chalcedon is the difference between the USFL and the NFL. And I had thought, very interesting observation. I think I was incredibly ... I was... I was impressed to an extent that I have not recently been impressed by an educational effort. And i... I say that with a great deal of thought because I have been very concerned with my children’s intellectual development and when I saw the results begin to happen, when I could see my daughter, for example, compose a work of poetry, you know, in the sixth grade that ... that rivals 75 to 80 percent of the stuff that appears in published magazines, I... I... I... it just struck me how incredibly incompetent the human’s perspective is and how competent even the simplest Christian foundation can be and what it ... and the kinds of consequences it can produce in children in... in thinking.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, John you should have heard what the parents with children in public schools said about the contrast.

Well, you know, when the fourth graders were going over their math work doing the computations mentally, multiply 200 by 223 by six and divide it by four and then subtract so much and add so much and multiply so much and what this the result? All of that in their head. I looked at you and Otto and I knew that all three of us had flunked before we got halfway through the problem.

[ Saunders ] Well, one woman standing the with ... with a baby in one arm and a little... and a little three year old on her... on her... hanging on to her skirt she was ... every time they... and the kids must have done 12, 15, 18 of these continuous strings of... of calculations in their heads and this is in the... and this is in the third grade room, not the fourth. This is in the third grade room when I saw it and she was standing the and I could just see her lips going and she was trying to follow along with the... with the calculations, you know. And then when it was all over, why she said... she gave an answer which was not the correct answer and she did that about five or six times in a row, you know, and she says... finally she just says to herself as the class came to an end, I just flunked the third grade.

I... and she really... and she meant it. It wasn’t something she was just saying as a joke. She said, “I just flunked the third grade. And I am a 24 year old woman.” You know...

[ Rushdoony ] Well, I was delighted at the ease with which the fourth graders not only prayed the Angus Dei in Latin, but conjugated and declined and translated from Latin to English, from English to Latin and so on.

[ Saunders ] There is the foundation for future scholarship right there.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] Because one does not ... one does not go back beyond the 18th century with any degree of... of... of expertise in interpreting documents in history and government and everything else if you don’t read Latin. And ... and we have got ... I mean, let’s face it. The first 1700 years of our Christian history since the Lord’s advent has been done in Latin and Greek.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] And without that you simply don’t understand the foundation of modern languages. You don't understand the foundation of the western world in terms of being able to read the documents. You have to rely on someone else’s interpretation of the document always and that really gets you in trouble.

[ Rushdoony ] You know we had a very wonderful, a very remarkable person there as a guest that evening. And I am sorry you didn’t get a chance to meet her. Some other time you will have to. Sister Mary Audrey.

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] She is 79 years old. She has taught in parochial schools for 59 years in four continents: Asia, South America, North America and Europe. And she is not retired yet, although she has retired from the teaching end of her vocation. You will see her walking around Angel’s camp almost any day of the year.

She has had two serious heart... heart attacks since the first of January. But she is out calling every day on the sick and the shut-ins in the community. She is a very radiant woman full of grace.

[ Saunders ] A remarkable lady.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. She is. Well, now I want to go on very briefly to another book which I do not recommend at all. It is a book by W. P... W. D. Paden, P, as I Paul, A D E N, Tennyson In Egypt: A Study of the Imagery in His Earlier Work. Now I cite this as a horrible example of what so much of modern scholarship and modern thought is about, because what this book does is to go to a book written by Charles and Alfred Tennyson, the brothers, when they were 18 and 17 years of age respectively which was published in 1827. Now those poems were a bit different quality. They are not worthy of attention or reprinting except as a curiosity of something... as something produced by a great poet in his youth.

However, Paden’s interest in it is more than literary, even though he is a literary scholar. His interest is psychoanalytic. He says that literary scholarship must look at anything that is written in terms of certain concepts. The first is the concept of repression. The second substitution so that repressed emotions find a substitute expression. And the third ambiguity.

Now I terms of this he can take the simple meaning of rather indifferent poetry, fairly well written, but nothing remarkable and have it mean all kinds of things about the hidden life of the Tennyson brother in their youth.

Well, of course, the premise here is that of modern psychoanalysis, psychology and psychiatry. From Freud on, especially, people have gone to the unconscious mind, previously called the subconscious, which I feel is still the better term. And read the mind of man in terms of the unconscious.

Well, this kid of interpretation is clearly invalid, but it governs our society. It rests on Freud’s book on the interpretation of dreams. Dreams, somehow, were a code that would tell us what the man really thought so that we were to be understood through our unconscious expressions.

Is this true? Modern art is governed by this premise. A great deal of criminology is governed by it through psychiatric court testimony. Art, literary and non literary is very strongly under the influence of this kind of thing. A great deal of pastoral counseling, unfortunately, is governed by this. It has had a powerful impact on education and so on and on. And yet the surprising fact is that it is invalid. It has been demonstrated to be, but it fits in to closely and thoroughly with the theory of evolution that it is accepted

Very early, however, psychoanalysts found that when they were studying the dreams of their patients that their patients’ dreams were fitting their theories perfectly and they found very quickly that patients were dreaming in terms of what the psychoanalyst expected. In other words, the mind of the patient was creating the dreams that the mind of the psychiatrist felt would fit his theory. As a result, the more responsible psychoanalysts dropped dream analysis. And so they are trying to get to the subconscious through other types of analysis. But in all of these the mind of the analyzed is governed by the mind of analyst and controls whatever that subconscious expression is.

And the result is that instead of the unconscious or subconscious governing the conscious mind, what the history of psychoanalysis is demonstrated is that the conscious mind controls and creates what comes out of the unconscious.

[ Saunders ] I have just one quick comment about Paden’s interpreting all of this various kind of meaning and some of the simplest phrases. In the art world we call that the puff the magic dragon syndrome, because you might remember for years there was the... there was the uproar over the supposed hidden meanings in the song Puff the Magic Dragon that Peter, Paul and Mary did so successfully. And it... and it didn’t make any difference that... that all three of them time and again refuted all those charges, that they had no such hidden meanings, that it was the construct of... of... of the social critics and the psychologists and not in the song itself. And so a whole concept developed of reading hidden meanings where there are none and... and a lot of us call that the puff the magic dragon syndrome.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] And that is what Paden suffers from.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, a lot of the rock lyrics have been composed deliberately to put in a supposedly unconscious meaning.

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] So they are now manufacturing the underground meaning deliberately.

[ Saunders ] Oh, it shows just how common psychiatry is. I...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. So even though they have the evidence staring them in the face, again and again at the conscious mind controls it, they insist on seeing the unconscious as determinative.

I am going to go into the reason for that tomorrow morning, by the way, Sunday morning, as I deal with the prophetic man, because there are some important implications that I have... I don’t wan to take time to develop here. But we have a peculiar situation today in the world in that man is turning everything on its head. And the result is we don’t know our own selves. We don’t know our world, because we are following the kind of interpretation of things that Paden does. We see a hidden meaning in everything when the obvious meaning escapes us. And so we are stumbling around like blind men and we are creating the sickest literature, perhaps, in all of history and the sickest art, because we have foisted a Darwinistic perspective and everything has to come up out of the unconscious and out of the primordial.

The doctrine of evolution has, in many, many respects, had a very sinister influence on the history of man.

[ Saunders ] I think the... I think the... the... that the whole issue of evolution and the survival of the fittest... and this comes back to Megatrends as well as George Will and... and I think that one of the major outcomes of the whole theory of evolution as it was taught and accepted in the 1860s and 70s and 80s was the fact that... that... that the wealthy and the businessman doesn’t have to do anything for anyone else. And... and out of that... it laid, I think the foundation of the sweat shops, the so-called sweat shops and may of which were not sweat shops, but the examples which were, were exploited well beyond their ... by the social do gooders.

And I think that created that... that... that the theory of evolution is, perhaps, responsible for more evil and death and suffering and depravity in... I the western world than any other single concept.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] That I could name. I ... we could go into a lot of ... of things about ... but I think the one concept which... which is the logical expression of Humanism at work and man being God is the whole theory of evolution concept and one of the things I take issue with very strongly is Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. I thought it was very interesting. They have been rerunning Carl Sagan’s view of the cosmos on all the PBS stations and everywhere else now for the last two years and here is this ... here is this man who is an object of ridicule in the scientific community who is... who is incapable sustaining a rational argument, who sits there in his throne room, who sits in his throne room of... of a set construction and sits in wonder before the universe and at the same time takes his... his... his shots at the Christian religion.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] And... and it is evident that the theory of evolution is being propagated as a fundamental constituent of a religious world view.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] In art and in psychology and in everywhere else. That this why I think that it is probably the single most devastating one concept that ... that... that modern man has to deal with.

[ Rushdoony ] I agree emphatically.

Well, our time is up. It has been good to be with you again and I will be back in a couple of weeks in between which time we will have our conference in Seattle. I will be in Australia and Nebraska and I Florida. Until then, God bless you.

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