From the Easy Chair

Politicizing of Life

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 110-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161CE152

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161CE152, Politicizing of Life, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 262, March the fourth, 1992.

Douglas Murray, Otto Scott and I are now going to discuss the politicizing of life. I feel this is a key issue to our time.

If I may take a few minutes by way of introduction. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians six telling them that they were sinning by going to the courts to have ungodly Romans adjudicate their disputes, he told them to set up their own courts to adjudicate their own matters and Christians did. And with the fall of Rome for six centuries those were the only courts of Europe. They were quickly so successful that pagan Romans came to them.

Christians took over education. They took over health. They took over welfare. One thing after another so that they depoliticized the state. They put into private hands, the hands of interested Christians to create various agencies that would govern these spheres in life so that the state receded to a point where it had primarily a military function and its courts handled very few things. Most courts were private courts. Businessmen had their courts and these prevailed until recently. And in every area of life there were grades of courts that that particular group of people could resort to. The guilds had their courts. And if you were dishonest, you were finished. You could not work.

So life was depoliticized after the fall of Rome. And what we have seen is life being politicized again so that the state has its nose in everything. The family and the Church are the last two independent spheres and it is trying to move into that area now.

Otto, would you carry on?

[ Scott ] Well, I think you are talking about centralization and decentralization.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Different spheres of influence and authority which prevailed during the ages of faith. There was the nobility which protected the common people from the centralizing expansion of the crown, which was the real purpose of the aristocracy. And then, of course, the rights of cities. We had free cities, the rights of the guilds as you said and so forth. It has taken a different term... a different turn here in the modern world, the modern period. As you know, I have always traced the modern period to the Renaissance, but I think in this instance we might make it more explicable by beginning with the French Revolution.

The French Revolution openly and deliberately removed religion from the state all together. They set up an Atheist state. And they also moved the political argument outside the confines of the family and the Church and everything else to cover everyone in the country. You had to be fore or for the revolution or you could be guillotined. So there was a political party line which applied to everybody in France and then even later when Napoleon came in, Napoleon expanded that French Empire across all Europe together with its secret police and its rules and regulations and set up what was not simply a territorial tyranny, but a political tyranny in the name of equality and freedom. Everybody was locked up.

Now we have our version of it today in which we have politicized all the cultural aspects.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] All of the cultural aspects of the politicized art. We have politicized architecture. We have politicized every aspect of our life, even up to and including in recent days the baseball game. We can’t have the Braves but it diminishes the native, the Americans, the rest of us not being native, you know. We are something else. We are ... we are known others or whatever. And associations.

[ Murray ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Or Cleveland Indians.

[ Scott ] Or the Cleveland Indians. It has reached... you can’t say that it has reached ridiculous stages because all these stages are accompanied by threats, by blackmail, by punishments and you have over you the club of racism or bigotry to hit you over the head if you disagree with any of them, because...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... if you disagree with one aspect of political correctness, you are held to be outside the pale.

Now this is what Solzhenitsyn and others said was the worst aspect of the Soviet Union when it was in full flower and that was that everything was false. Everything that people said was false and everything that they were told to think was false. And this is the area that we are now discussion in existence here.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, no doubt the animal lovers will protest against the name of the Detroit baseball team, the Tigers.

[ Scott ] Could be.

[ Rushdoony ] As nothing...

[ Scott ] They are men of a certain stripe.

[ Rushdoony ] Douglas?

[ Murray ] Well, I like Webster’s definition of a politician. It says a politic person, a schemer, an intriguer. But the... the next one which is very interesting is that... the definition is: One who views the state as without inherent power over religion.

[ Scott ] That is Webster.

[ Murray ] That is Webster.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Now today the current dictionaries simply say that politics is the practice of government.

[ Scott ] They practice of government. They don’t mention religion.

[ Murray ] Not at all.

[ Rushdoony ] And, you see, in the early years of this country up until about Lincoln, you never spoke of government, but of civil government, because government was a broader term than the state. It included the family, the school, the individual self government, his vocation, the community, a vast number of areas that were all government. Civil government was one government among many.

[ Scott ] Well, to govern yourself.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Self government.

[ Murray ] Self government.

[ Scott ] To govern yourself was taught.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] I was taught you were taught.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] My father and your father both came from the generation in which there was a great deal of discussion of will power. Do you remember that?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, all the books on it.

[ Scott ] The will power was it. If you didn’t have the will power you couldn’t make your way in the world because you didn’t know how to govern yourself.

[ Rushdoony ] Otto, I have forgotten. How many books there where when we were children about will power. They have all disappeared.

[ Scott ] Well, now you go to the hospital to stop smoking.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] They hypnotize you.

[ Scott ] I stopped smoking, period, without having to pay anybody for the privilege, because I was raised with the idea that if you had will power you could stop anything.

[ Rushdoony ] Well....

[ Murray ] That is Scotch ancestry.

[ Rushdoony ] Whether it was a school teacher or parents, a crushing statement was: Have you no will power?

[ Scott ] Oh, absolutely. I... one of my father’s favorites.

[ Murray ] You know...

[ Rushdoony ] I had forgotten all of that.

[ Murray ] That is really the question that is at issue with the condom give away.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] You know, this AIDS thing and the sexual revolution, the question is now being asked. Isn’t will power or the exercise or will power...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes...

[ Murray ] ... a viable alternative?

[ Scott ] Well, that is considered a religious argument. Chastity, to promote chastity is considered an intrusion of religious ethics into the public arena and it carries us into the area, that comment carries me into this area that what is at the basis of all this? There are two things. One is the basis of worldly power in a pagan sense, power over everything on earth and everybody on earth. And the other is the gradual diminution of the fear of God.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] So that if you feel that you can do anything that isn’t seen or anything, let us say, that is permitted, whether it is moral or immoral, you have lost fear of God, because there is no God. There... there is... if there is no God, everything is permitted. On the other hand, if you believe in God he is watching you.

I used to resent that as a boy very much. Why did he have to watch me? I mean, there were certainly other people around.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, maybe God knew something about you.

[ Scott ] He did and I will show you the difference. Now in my eighth decade I take comfort in the fact that he is watching me.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Well, it is another thing, very topical here, that ruling within the last couple of days by the U S Supreme Court would almost seem to be a challenge to people to exercise will power and that is that they refused to disallow pornography, essentially, from going out over the air waves. The... the Supreme Court some people see it as the Supreme Court saying that the... the... the ... the public air waves are now an open sewer and the broadcasters can dump anything into the public minds that they want to.

On the other hand, there may be a hidden message in it, that perhaps people had better start looking less to the courts and less to the Constitution and more to individual will power to say no.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Well, I have mixed feelings about it. I have just finished before the compass writing an essay on iniquity and I have connected iniquity to pornography, because pornography leads to iniquity in real life. I think the court was very cavalier in that particular ruling. I am surprised that a conservative court would make such a ruling.

[ Rushdoony ] You know, Otto, if you are not careful, you are going to out do Jonathan Edwards one of these days preaching about sinners in the hands of an angry God.

[ Scott ] Well, I don’t know. I don’t think what I have said is much different from what you have said on quite a few occasions.

[ Rushdoony ] No, of course. No and very well put.

Well, it is either state power or will power in a very real sense. And there has to be power in a situation. And if you deny God, you are going to deny power to yourself. Then the only power is the state. So the state progressively takes over and all of life is politicized.

[ Scott ] Well, if the state no longer protects children, let us say, from pornography and denies the right of the parent to be involved in an abortion issue, who protects? Who protects whom in this... in the situation that we have arrived at?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Well, the state is not protecting anybody, but themselves. On the ... you know, there is a growing body of people who feel that pornography is addictive.

[ Scott ] Oh, I am sure it is.

[ Murray ] Just like drugs.

[ Scott ] I think it is.

[ Murray ] Yeah.

[ Scott ] One of the first things that I had to learn in my teens was to control my mind.

[ Murray ] But I think that it is almost an admission by government that they can’t solve the problem. They obviously can’t solve the drug problem. They obviously can’t solve the teen pregnancy problem. They can’t solve the AIDS problem.

[ Scott ] Those problems...

[ Murray ] They can’t solve the pornography problem.

[ Scott ] Those problems are once solved, so... so...

[ Murray ] Yes. It appears as though the... the government or at least the Supreme Court judicial part of it is saying, “We can’t solve the problem. Therefore it is up to you to solve it on your own.”

[ Scott ] Well, culturally... let’s go back to this. Culturally, I have just... I have brought tonight with me the latest issue of... I think it is the Times literary review. I am not sure. They have a series of articles on French culture. And the first one is headed, “Supermarket culture.” And the state of the nation in France... In France recent... and under recent prime ministers, everything is being changed. The architecture, which, of which France was once famous, is being changed. Under Pompidou, for instance, they put up the gas works. This is a museum of modern art.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Which everyone in Paris calls the gas works because it looks like the gas works. It is ghastly inside, too.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And then more recently they have had this Chinese architect, a Pei, P E I, who has put up a glass pyramid right next to the Louvre.

[ Murray ] Oh, yeah.

[ Scott ] And they have also created a new opera house which the people detest at an enormous expense and they had this fabulous old opera house there before. And we have this same sort of phenomenon going on here. We have these extreme Bauhaus buildings that are put up as an annex, for instance, that the ... the national academy of art or the Washington art, whatever they call it now. Very traditional building and right across the street they have a very modern building, Bauhaus building which is filled with nothing but modern excrescences, modern abstract art. And I puzzle over this. Why such a drastic change? Until I finally realized that it is a campaign against traditional Christian art.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Against all the art of the Christian ages, which has to be scrapped or at least made to look ridiculous.

[ Rushdoony ] That is a very important point, Otto. And I read a book a few days ago on impersonalization in poetics. And the author, who was analyzing T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound called attention to a passage in James Joyce as seminal to so much in our writing today. And in this passage Bloom is meditating on whether he should repay a loan of a pound or 10 pounds to A E. That was George Russell. A E was the name he took because that apparently was some kind of pagan Irish magical thing.

At any rate, Bloom says, “I borrowed it from him a year ago,” as he is meditating. “The atoms in my body are now changed. I am not the same person. Therefore there is no way for him to collect, because the person he borrowed it from no longer exists. I am another person, whatever the clothes or the name I bear.”

And this passage, according to the author, is basic to Pound, to Eliot and to a great many writers.

[ Scott ] Well, you know, Pound was his mentor of Eliot’s in particular.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Yes.

[ Scott ] Eliot was an admirer of Joyce.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And this passage in Joyce saying there isn’t a person, that they are just changing sensations and experiences has led to this art which has no meaning because there is no continuity. You are not a person.

[ Scott ] Well, you remember that piece I gave you from Hilton Kramer’s magazine, the new {?}...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] On art from Israel.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] In which the writer who was an Israeli writer said that traditionally Jewish art is impersonal, because representational art was against Judaism. And even though most Jews no longer believe in Judaism, the tradition is maintained and has reappeared in the form of abstract art. And also an absolute dislike of traditional western art.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Well, I have a question. Has anybody tried this atom changing on the IRS?

[ Scott ] But their atoms change, too.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. So the IRS that bills you isn’t the same IRS ...

[ Murray ] That’s right.

[ Rushdoony ] That you are dealing with today. I don't think they will buy the argument.

[ Scott ] Well, it is... it is not falling in on itself, excepting to this extent. The French people

absolutely hate these introductions by Jack Lang and others that is now going on. The American people hate the modern art that is being foisted upon us, in particular, the horrible objects that are placed in the rotunda and in the foyer and in the lawns and so forth across the country, grotesque objects which are called art for which tens of thousands of dollars are paid.

And I know from personal experience—because I know some of these sculptors and artists, I used to know them—that they laugh about them, because it is their attitude that the American bourgeoisie is too cowardly to do anything about it.

[ Rushdoony ] Also as one pop art theorist has written, life has no meaning. There is no God, no meaning. Therefore anyone who tries to find meaning in the art work we do belongs to another era. They are not with it. They don’t understand that meaning is dead.

[ Scott ] Well, particularly Christian meaning.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] I think the anti Christian nature of these activities is what is the most significant development.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And that is what the ... the clergy has not talked about.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] Has not recognized, will not get up and defend our traditional art which means they will not defend our traditional culture, our traditional literature, our traditional music, our traditional dance. And without all these aspects of our culture, what have the people got to unite?

[ Rushdoony ] Well, you see, all the traditional forms of art represented a discipline.

[ Scott ] Yes, very much so.

[ Rushdoony ] An apprenticeship.

[ Scott ] Very much so.

[ Rushdoony ] There was one artist shortly after World War II who wrote a book and he said the ability to create a work of art that will still be there two centuries from now will be gone in a few years, because they no longer know the materials, the canvas, the board, what its properties are, how to paint on it, how to mix paints, how to create a paint that will be alive generations hence. And, of course, he is right, because all the museums of modern art are seeing their works disintegrate.

[ Scott ] Wonderfully.

[ Murray ] Well, the ultimate insult is that none of the artists who put together these abominations force us to pay for them through our taxes.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] That... that is and, of course, Buchanan brought this up about the subsidized art.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Now the whole idea of the state subsidizing art, you have many times made the point that when the state subsidizes education, the state controls education. And the real problem with the state controlling education is that no student is ever going to be taught anything the government doesn’t want him to know. Now the idea of putting federal money into the arts is the same thing...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ...because it means that the federal government tells the artist, picks the artist out, picks... if you... if you look at PBS at all—and it is hard to look at most of the time—you get all kinds of horror programs that are federally subsidized.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] It would be interesting to know how many Christian artists have received grants from the federal government.

[multiple voices]

[ Rushdoony ] Well, I think....

[ Scott ] I think you could count them on the fingers of one hand.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And... and... and they would... they would have to disguise themselves.

[ Rushdoony ] To show how far this politicizing has gone, the only achievement tests we can give our students in the Chalcedon Christian school are those of 20 and 22 years ago.

[ Scott ] Really.

[ Rushdoony ] Because since then they have all been politicized. So they will no longer test your knowledge. They will test social attitudes.

[ Scott ] Could you give me an illustration of what that means?

[ Rushdoony ] Well, it means: How do you feel about the use of fur? How do you feel about minority groups? How do you feel about people who call homosexuals queers?

[ Scott ] What has this got to do with the ability to draw?

[ Rushdoony ] Well, that is the point, you see. They are not interested in education. They are interested in remaking the mind of the child.

[ Murray ] Well, there was a recent case where a young girl attempted suicide because the teacher, after having asked all kinds of questions in a test, very personal questions, questions that involved things that were strictly within the family and then the students thinking that this was confidential all of the sudden the teacher started discussing this very personal information in front of the class.

[ Scott ] Well, of course, these are total violations. I have noted with interest that when I pick up a topical magazine, let’s say Time magazine, a brief article which will have seven names at the end of it as the authors... and more and more I see where there are about two and three and four people producing a book. You know...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... from your own experience that it takes a certain amount of diligence to produce a full length book. You have to do your own research, this, that and the other thing. Very few of it sort of like Robert... like Michener who can hire a team of researchers or Churchill who did the same. And then write a... a narrative gloss over it.

The real business of an individual writer is becoming almost extinct, because there is a collaborative team behind most of the books that are published.

[ Murray ] Is that what they mean by if you put 100 monkeys in a room full of typewriters they will eventually turn out a book?

[ Scott ] Well, they could turn out some of the books that have been published. I will say that.

[ Rushdoony ] That is interesting as totally off the subject, but a book was published by a scientist, The Philosophical Scientist, I believe the title. And he says that in the 20s and early 30s science was moving away from Darwinism into a recognition that there had to be a mind behind the universe. And he said then the absorption with the Nazis and with World War II, he said, “All that disappeared, but it is beginning to reappear.”

And he has a chapter on Huxley’s monkeys. Of course, I dealt with that in a book. I said it would be impossible, because if you had a million monkeys, a million typewriters first how would you get those monkeys to type away infinitely so that in a billion years they would create all the works in the British Museum? And, second, how do you know that within five minutes they wouldn’t destroy all the type writers?

[ Scott ] Well, what he was giving was a theory of evolution.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. But at any rate, mathematically he points out how even if you had these monkeys working through all these billions of years they could not create a four line poem from Wordsworth, because the odds against that type of coincidence are too great.

[ Murray ] Well, perhaps, Huxley had plans to politicize them by unionizing them.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, ... well, politicizing the world is what is now underway. And I was very interested the other day to see in one of the current magazines an illustration of the European community as advertisement of itself, a brochure. And on the cover is a picture of the tower of Babel.

[ Scott ] Yes, that is right.

[ Rushdoony ] And the message is, “This time we will make it work.” They are going to politicize life. They are going to create a vast tower of Babel. They already have, what is it, 34,000 unelected bureaucrats running the European community.

[ Scott ] Well, that is not very many. That is about the same number that assist our Congress.

[ Rushdoony ] Except that they have just started operating.

[ Scott ] Ah, yes. Well, I live near a school, a public school. It is only about three quarters of a mile, I guess, at most from my house. And, of course, the children are carried back and forth in giant busses. I mean, we used to consider that just a warm up when I was going to school. But what interests me is that when I go by that school in the evening, almost every evening the yard is filled with automobiles, which means that there is a function of some sort going on in the evening in that school. And when Anne was teaching ballet to some of the kids who went to these schools, there was a great deal of difficulty in getting an appointment or keeping appointments beaus the girls had to play softball. Their athletic program of the girls was interfering with the ballet and Anne said, “These mothers don’t realize that they are giving the girls the wrong kind of muscles,” that ballet they come out very smooth and very strong. It is... it is tremendous for the body, where softball doesn’t do the same.

But, in any event, the thing that caught me was that the school was being used as a social center.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And the school is a government enterprise.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] The government is providing a society and providing the parties and the gatherings and so forth. I recall how shocked I was when I learned that little kids on Valentine’s day had to give a valentine to every one in the class, which took away the whole purpose of a valentine.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And it took away the choice. It was a great thing to send a valentine or to receive one, if you recall. But when everyone gets one, well, what good is it? So the social life in the United States is now centering around work and around the ... what they call social parties or charity balls. You can’t have a ball anymore just because you want to have one. What you have to have is one that is for charity. It has to have a social significance.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And gradually I would say are the social life between television and these institutions and corporations and so forth, social life is becoming denatured.

[ Murray ] We have to add that these balls have to be for a politically correct purpose.

[ Scott ] Oh, yes. They couldn’t have a ball for a white charity, for instance. Even though most of the poor people in the country are Caucasian.

[ Rushdoony ] One minor revolt against politicizing life is growing in San Jose. San Jose, California is now the second largest city in California. Very few people are aware of that.

[ Scott ] Larger than San Francisco.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, by far. By far. San Francisco has been losing steadily.

[ Scott ] Well, normal people are leaving.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, the...

[ Murray ] And {?}

[ Rushdoony ] The San Francisco Giants are eager to move to San Jose. They will make more money there. But, of course, nowadays I believe the Chicago Comiskey Park is the only privately owned park. All the others are Socialist parks. The city puts them up.

[ Scott ] That is a good point.

[ Rushdoony ] And these multi millionaire baseball and football owners have cities bidding for them to come. And the tax payer foots the bill. But a revolt is brewing in San Jose now.

[ Murray ] Well, the environmentalists have got to beat them to the punch. They found out there is some obscure burrowing owl thing on the property they want to build on and so it is down the tubes. They can forget that.

[ Scott ] That is how... when are they going to move in to protect the insects?

[ Murray ] Well, they are working on it. Nobody knew that the owl was there until they wanted to build a baseball park out there.

[ Scott ] Not even other owls knew about it.

[ Murray ] No.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, one of the problems, of course, with what I have to do as president of Chalcedon is the politicization of everything. For example, right now we have to have an accountant and the amount of forms that must be filed with a state or federal agency every quarter or in some instances more frequently is appalling. And the total cost to us is increasing steadily because each year there are more forms required. And they will be routinely 15, 16, 18 pages.

This is why General Motors in 1980 alone had to have 22,000 people doing nothing but filling out forms for the federal government. No wonder they are in trouble. No one looks at that. That is a tremendous expense.

[ Scott ] Well, it is not only a tremendous expense, but it is a tremendous threat, because the regulations involved and the forms in view, these are forms in response to regulatory instructions. So they are decreasing the area of liberty.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] All the time. And that means, of course, that you are constricted. And the more you are constricted, the more you have to operate by the rules.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Now when a ... when a factory... when a union decides to slow down in a factory for whatever reason, it decides to operate by the rule. Then production plummets to the stone, like a stone because you go by the rule. Everything slowed to a crawl. A country that has to operate by the rule is slowed to a crawl.

[ Murray ] Well, some of this is technology driven. The rapid expansion of data base memory in computers has been oversold to government and, of course, bureaucrats’ eyes’ light up when they are handed this kind of a tool. It is like giving a loaded weapon to a child. I mean they have got to use it. And so the government wants this information to fill these databases, because it creates a lot of government jobs. It ... it creates what they perceive as putting themselves in a position of being needed, quotes, needed of this particular job.

[ Scott ] There is another point. Originally businessmen’s associations provided the government with the overall statistics of an industry and they did that because they maintained the confidentiality of the relevant statistics. Now with these new instruments, the government doesn’t need monitoring by a businessman’s association. They no longer accept the reports of an association as valid.

[ Murray ] Well, also they can destroy the power of that association...

[ Scott ] So...

[ Murray ] ... and get the control.

[ Scott ] ... the basic purpose of an association has been wiped out. The old cooperation between the association and the government no longer exists. The government now through all these multiple reports can monitor everybody in an industry on its own and it can govern each industry separately. So it is a divide and conquer situation.

Now the government has more information about an industry than the industry has about itself. And the private sector, in other words, has been diminished into the individual sector, the individual enterprises and so forth, politicized. Everything is in the maw of Washington and now, I understand, that under the rubric of the social security system your entire personal history, your school records and everything else has been incorporated and amalgamated so that at the press of the button they can tell you more about yourself than you remember about yourself.

[ Murray ] Well, we have fallen into the same trap that the Russians did. Central planning, central management.

[ Scott ] Well, every candidate in the presidential election is asked what his plan is and to improve, get us out of our slump. And every one of these candidates, with the exception of Buchanan who is the only sensible one there, they all have a plan. And yet we know that the planned economy does not work.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, the difference between this depression and the last was brought home to me vividly earlier this evening when I was watching the news and this farmer was talking about the fact that he was going to lose everything, because he was going to be cut out 100 percent as far as water was concerned. Now in the last depression if you were someone like that farmer and your place was debt free, you survived.

[ Scott ] Oh, yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Because you had your garden, your chickens, your cow. You got along. Your taxes were maybe 10, 15 dollars for a family sized farm. But now the taxes are thousands and if you have no income you are wiped out. So everything has been politicized.

At that time the federal government was very remote. Even the county government was remote. It was self government essentially.

[ Murray ] The county government now is almost totally controlled from the state level.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] They have almost no discretion.

[ Rushdoony ] That is right.

[ Murray ] Over spending.

[ Scott ] Well, who has discretion? The Chinese used to call it squeeze. And it was a ... it was a bribery system where everybody got a little piece of the action. The Soviet Union had a squeeze system. Everyone in the Soviet Union from the top down had just a little piece of authority. If he was only keeping the gate an... at an institution to let you in and out, or he was a clerk in a store, there... everybody could give somebody else orders. It was one of the things that kept the thing going for 75 years.

[ Murray ] We have come very close to this.

[ Scott ] We have such a large public sector. So... so many officials and they all have a little authority over you. The individual who isn’t connected directly with the government, even indirectly, let’s say via social security, there are very few people who don’t have some connections with our government, who are, therefore, part of the system, who have something to lose if the system fails or if the system is changed. All the elderly people on social security are in fear and trembling all the time that they will lose that stipend.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And they help prop it up. Well, they deplore the lack of freedom.

[ Rushdoony ] They are one fourth of the voters now and increasing percentage wise. And they are a tremendous power. Their hero is Ted Kennedy, because he will pass any legislation they request.

[ Murray ] The government is really to blame of that themselves. It is almost as if they engineered it, because they have not encouraged saving. People don’t save for old age anymore.

[ Scott ] Well, they can’t save. The taxes take what they could otherwise save.

[ Murray ] That is what I am saying.

[ Scott ] There is no way they can save.

[ Murray ] That is what I am saying. They have created this dependent constituency that is this power block, because they have deprived people’s ability to save for their old age.

[ Scott ] They take that deliberately.

[ Murray ] Exactly.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, consider the fact that it is a fact of life now that every year this time we are short of funds precisely because it is income tax time. And it takes almost until fall to recover.

[ Scott ] It takes five months of your labor...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ...before you can say that you keep the money you are earning.

[ Murray ] That is right.

[ Scott ] The government takes the first five months of all of your earnings. They have a new wrinkle now, you know. If you don’t... if you pay a projected tax and it is above you get penalized very heavily. If it is below you get penalized very heavily. It has to be precise. And for an individual like myself whose income goes up and down with his writing, this is an impossible trap.

[ Murray ] If you over pay, they don’t refund the money. They hold it in escrow until the end of the next tax period. If you under pay, then they sock it to you.

[ Scott ] Well, suppose you get a commission on December the 10th at the end of the year, then you are penalized for the whole year.

[ Murray ] Great system.

[ Rushdoony ] But they can collect above and over and pay no interest on what they have collected.

[ Scott ] Well, I read recently where a man in an automobile on a city street was shot to death by a group of so called youths—very badly used word—because the music he was playing was jazz and not rock on his car radio. Now we have a division between the generations that no civilization has ever encountered before, because of the age separation of the youth as they grow up in school so that we have the multiplicity of peer groups, of classes, you might say, chronological classes, by age so that the difference between what we are talking about and what a young person would be talking about is like from here to the moon.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Otto, you may remember being closer to my age how in the 30s there was a book that was very widely promoted and caused a great deal of horror about Hitler and about the educational system he promoted, School for Barbarians. And do you remember that?

[ Scott ] I don’t recall it.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, the schools for barbarians that Hitler had would be considered good schools compared to ours today, because our schools are even more politicized than his schools and have broken more with learning and with standards than his did.

[ Scott ] Well, just imagine. We have schools that outlaw religion.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Well, you know how they teach public school ... teach public school kids history. They take them to Columbia State Park and give them a ride on a stagecoach. That is considered a history lesson.

[ Scott ] Well, I recall when Columbia University decided to drop the Middle Ages from history curricula.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] They ended with a pagan world and they resumed again in 1660 which they considered the beginning of the age of reason which is, of course, the period without religion.

We always come back to the religious.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And when people deliberately campaign something against a religion, they know what they are doing.

[ Rushdoony ] This is why we are in a time of conflict, because what is happening is that they have been busy secularizing human ... and turning the world into a humanistic tower of Babel, but there is a Christian revival under way.

[ Scott ] It is true because the only religion they are attacking is Christianity.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] No other religion is under attack.

[ Rushdoony ] Oh, no. I get catalogs with page after page of books on Islam, on Buddhism, on Judaism, on native American religions and so on and so forth, nothing about Christianity unless maybe one or two books which are hostile. But they are recognizing that we are a force, because 40 percent of the children in this country are now out of the public schools and more are leaving the public schools every year. They recognize we are a threat because increasingly the churches are moving into other spheres, charity.

For example, work that Chalcedon does—orphan aid, rehabilitation of the people with birth defects, this sort of thing. And that attracts them. It is surprising. You would think we are doing good. People should be thrilled.

[ Scott ] You are not supposed to do good. The government of the city of New York when I wrote a book... wrote an article, rather, about Bowery Mission was in the process of trying to destroy the Bowery Mission because the social workers working for the city government felt that the Bowery Mission was a menace.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... to their activity.

[ Murray ] Didn’t they have similar circumstances right here in Stockton, not too long ago? Somebody was... religious group was running a soup kitchen...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Down... and they shut them down.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] And yet they... they didn’t... had nothing to substitute in its place.

[ Rushdoony ] That is right. They are making it very difficult for churches to be charitable and for independent Christian groups. However, in spite of that, more and more is being done across country.

Some of it is sub rosa, some of it publicly. And the results are not pleasing to state authorities and city authorities, because it means that government is slipping out of their hands, that life is being depoliticized and Christianized. And it comes as a shock to people to realize what is happening.

But it is there, for example, John Upton when he became converted and began to do the kind of charitable work he is heading up for Chalcedon, was startled by the opposition that developed, the hostility.

[ Scott ] All new Christians are amazed who run into the hatred...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ...that surrounds us.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] But I would say that the great structure, the political structure that is trying to envelop us all is collapsing.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] The President is amazed at the amount of dislike he is running into. The whole establishment is amazed at the number of people who refuse to go to the polls because they say it doesn’t make any difference.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] A lot of people have left political parties.

[ Scott ] And a lot of people have... have decided that the government is inadequate and although it still stands there suspended on air and tradition it is in deep trouble.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Bush’s answer on television tonight was that about the challenge to... that Buchanan is providing and by the cynicism and all, that before election time they will forget about everything and be back to voting.

[ Scott ] They didn’t forget about his lips.

[ Rushdoony ] No. They are not going to forget.

[ Scott ] And that was three and a half years ago.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, yes.

[ Scott ] They will never forget.

[ Rushdoony ] No. The politicians are all of them living under the allusion that people still believe that salvation comes by politics and politicians.

[ Scott ] The trouble is they believe the press and even the people don’t believe the press.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. That is for sure. And I think it is interesting how fewer and fewer people are subscribing to newspapers.

[ Scott ] That is very true and also it is also true, as you remember, from the 30s after the cynical 20s, cynical and selfish 20s, which really was a decade of greed...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] That the fear of God came back with the Depression.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And instead of being a time of lawlessness, that depression was a time when crime decreased.

[ Scott ] Even the movies got religion, remember?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. It was a time when you could go to the movies and enjoy yourself.

[ Scott ] Suddenly morality came back into favor.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, let’s hope that happens with this depression that is developing. I am not sure it is going to, but I think they are either going to change or perish.

[ Scott ] Well, the pendulum swings. After the regency you had the {?}. And young people are growing up more serious.

[ Rushdoony ] Douglas, our time is almost over. Do you want to add something?

[ Murray ] Well, I... I think that actually there is a lot of opportunity here when you see this systematic politicizing of every group the boy scouts, the girl scouts, you name it, baseball teams. And, I mean, it has gotten ludicrous.

[ Scott ] Well, the...

[ Murray ] The... the intensity of...

[ Scott ] If it weren’t so grisly it would be funny.

[ Murray ] Yeah, but... the point I want to make is that people are going to question this. You know, I don’t care, you know, after so long a period of time when it gets so stupid, everybody is going to question this and they are going to look for alternatives. And I think that people will find an alternative in Christianity and hopefully Christianity will be there, organized Christianity will be there to fill that void that people are looking for.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, very good. Thank you all for listening and God bless you.

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