From the Easy Chair

Work, Wealth & Poverty

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 114-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161CG156

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161CG156, Work, Wealth & Poverty, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 266, May 13, 1992.

Douglas Murray, Mark Rushdoony and myself are going to discuss a subject which I believe is uniquely important in our time: work, wealth and poverty. Now there is a reason for bringing those three things together. Historically it has always been maintained that the way to wealth has been two fold, apart from criminal means: inheritance or work. And for most people it means work. In fact, some scholars have shown in the majority of cases inherited wealth does not last more than three generations. Not having the work ethic, the third generation dissipates what is left.

So work historically has been seen as the way to become wealthy. But since World War II and, in particular since 1960, we have had a radical change in our thinking and anyone who maintains the old position has in most cases been treated with contempt and disrespect because the means of acquiring wealth have been seen as a monopoly by western man and by white Christian nations and that somehow if you are not a part of the club, you have no chance of wealth.

Of course the Wall Street Journal recently had a long article about a black man who is enormously successful and this is in a southern town where he has by work gained a position of great respect, deals with whites and hires whites.

But because our idea that wealth is a product of some kind of fraud practiced on minority groups has so proliferated in the past generation we have a crisis in civilization, because a large proportion of your white population here and in Europe is convinced that they don't deserve what they have, that somehow they have stolen it from the non white peoples. And, as a result they are not able to stand out up to every kind of criminal aggression, exploitation and abuse So you have the white majorities of the western world acting as though somehow they are guilty because they have head the work ethic and succeeded.

Now not only has this attitude been sold to the overwhelming number of white western peoples, but it has been sold even more convincingly by our school systems and our media to the minority groups.

Now in a book that I am reading at present The New Politics of Poverty: The Non Working Poor in America by professor Laurence M. Mead, M E A D, published just recently and by Basic Books, 1992 he calls attention to a very, very interesting fact which, I think, takes us to the heart of the problem. I am quoting from page 32 following.

“During the 1930s they, black Americans, had gained from New Deal opportunity and benefit programs as employees and farmers, not as blacks. There was no work problem among them then. They would fight for private jobs, even at the lowest wages, employers recalled. And lacking those, strongly preferred government jobs to relief. The 1920s and 1930s were an era of intense black competition with whites for jobs and the problems of blacks were perceived as those of working men,” unquote.

Now this was a long time before the civil rights bill. And yet during the Depression there were no non working blacks. They had a strong work ethic. There were non working whites, not as many as there are now. But because the blacks felt they had to work and they had to become a part of a working world to advance themselves they worked for anything they could get. And as a result they took jobs away from whites because they were ready to work for less.

But that no longer is the black attitude in too many instances. And so you have a growing population of blacks who are permanently unemployed and have no desire to work. And you have a growing population of other groups, white groups that are also homeless or non working.

Now are there some general statements you would like to make now, Douglas?

[ Murray ] Well, the... the natural assimilation process in our so called melting pot in this country. Every racial and ethnic group in the world has come to the United States and goes through an assimilation process, but the... the natural cycle of assimilation for the blacks has been interrupted by actually by politicians who have politicized race. And they have actually held blacks back...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] ...from that natural assimilation process for political ends. You know, we have all heard the terms the welfare pimps and the ... the various groups that get rich off of representing the blacks. And they have become brokers of the... the flow of welfare money.

[ Rushdoony ] I think some time in a generation or two some scholar will write on the worst kind of slavery blacks have ever endured, namely in the era from the 60s to the present when they have become the slaves of politicians. They are puppets and have been destroyed in too many instances by Welfarism and the non working mentality cultivated by these liberals.

[ Murray ] Well, 63 percent of black children that are born today are born with no father in the family. And these are all men. You can drive down the streets of any city in this country and you see men, black men who are otherwise able bodied who are destroying themselves with alcohol and drugs.

Now I can’t in my wildest imagination see why that many men regardless of what race, would destroy themselves unless they had no feeling of self worth. Now who is giving them that feeling of self worth? It is not a specialty of the blacks. They are told that by their leaders. Their leadership, their acquired leadership. And they are not part of the melding process and they have actually been in... placed in the state of cultural suspended animation.

[ Rushdoony ] yes.

[ Murray ] They are not... they are not being allowed to mature as part of the ... the citizenry of this country. And it... and it ... where it came to light and I haven’t heard anybody comment on this, was the stark contrast between Korean business owners in LA who have been in this country maybe five years, couldn’t speak a word of English when they got here and they are in... they are... because they have a family structure, came here with a family structure, they went to work at very menial low paying jobs, got a little money, got together in groups, opened businesses and the blacks have been here for 200 years and they are unable to do the same thing. And they think that is where some of the rage comes from.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. It is interesting that very able historians who grew up in the South and knew a great deal about the condition of blacks pointed out that there was in those days before all of this came about a character, a work ethic, a degree of education that has since disappeared in the black community. It has been downhill for a sizable percentage of the black community.

[ Murray ] Well, how many generations now has the welfare thing been in... in effect? You know, when you say it takes three generations to... to destroy wealth, how many generations would it take to destroy the work ethic among blacks or any other group?

[ Rushdoony ] I know one welfare worker who described going into a home where the grandmother, the daughter and the granddaughter all unmarried were pregnant and all three on welfare with a variety of children.

Mark, would you like to make some general observations?

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, it is about capital and I... of course, the socialistic line is to criticize capital as being anti labor. But in a sense, our capital is tied up in the hands of people who are sometimes of questionable character. You said... you said it takes three generations to lose inherited capital. Most people lose their wealth on a month to month basis. How much does an average person have of last month’s paycheck?

It is... wealth is redistributed...

[ Rushdoony ] Redistributed.

[multiple voices]

[ M Rushdoony ] No, that is not right.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, never mind. We know...

[ M Rushdoony ] Wealth changes hands, let’s say. Wealth changes hands.

[ Rushdoony ] Good.

[ M Rushdoony ] ...on an almost daily basis.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ M Rushdoony ] And with... between our... our social welfare programs, confiscatory taxation, regulations against business so people cannot go into business or they have to close down their business because it is too expensive to have a small business with workman’s comp, et cetera. We have changed the way that money changes hands. So very often capital is in the hands of people who have learned how to play the game of the bureaucrats.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ M Rushdoony ] Who have ... so they have learned how, if they are farmers, to take federal subsidies. They have learned how to survive by playing the game the bureaucrats have created. And so very often we can’t say, “Well, let Capitalism, let the capital, you know, the... make the decisions,” because sometimes the capital is in the hands of people like Ross Perot who made his money off of government contracts and working with states to create programs that help them channel government funds.’

[ Murray ] You know, I ... I got this image very early when I was a kid. I used to go out to the San Francisco zoo and they used to march by all of these, cage after cage after cage of all of these animals that I had read about, these glorious animals and the wilds of Africa and they... the wolves and all these animals that had been able to get their own food for themselves. And here are these poor bedraggled looking animals in cages that were fed every day at four o'clock and if you turned them loose they would starve to death.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] And it is... you know, it is... and people can’t learn that lesson. It is so simple. You put people in a cage. No matter what you call it, whether it is welfare, the welfare cycle or whatever and pretty soon they ... they don’t know how to get ... get for themselves anymore.

[ Rushdoony ] In the 50s Robert Argrave wrote some books about animal life and other things and indirectly writing about man. And he made a very telling point, namely this. He said, “Zoo animals have an abnormal absorption with sex. They are welfare animals. They don’t hunt. They are fed. So what happens to them when they have this security? All they do is to think about sex. It is the major aspect of their lives.” And he said that our society is turning us into zoo animals with a preoccupation sex. Now that was very perceptive because it was in the 50s and he saw what was about to happen.

Shifting a little bit in emphasis... In January I was in Prince George, British Columbia and both in Vancouver and in Prince George I was interested to see the tremendous influx of Chinese from Hong Kong. Now these Chinese cannot migrate into Canada which is another British possession unless they can deposit in British Columbia or in Canada 100,000 dollars in the bank. Then they can come over.

Well, what happens then is that a husband and wife and all the children go to work. Their 100,000 may have come from the sacrifice of relatives so that they could amass that much and they are busy earning money to send back to Hong Kong so another related family can come over with 100,000 and help work to bring another set of peoples over. And it was amazing how little English these people had and how they were working and how eager they were to please because they... those jobs were important to them. It was a question of life and death for their relatives in Hong Kong. They wanted them out before Communist China took over Hong Kong in 96, I believe, isn’t it? But in a few years. So they are racing against time. But they have demonstrated how intense a work ethic can be.

[ Murray ] Well ones that can’t raise the 100,000 will come to the United States, because it will be the boat people thing all over again. We will get all the poor one and Canada will get the ones with money.

[ Rushdoony ] But they are so ready to work.

[ Murray ] Yeah.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, the ... going back to Mead’s book, he points out that the biblical injunction that he who does not work let him not eat has been basic to the West. But we could add that it has been basic to the progress of the West, because in many cultures feeding the beggar is regarded as a virtuous thing. So you have a continual professional class of beggars and Buddhism, the monks or everybody becomes a monk for a month to go around begging. But he says we have failed to overcome property because we have instead of expanding opportunity we have expanded the opportunity to get welfare. And so we have shifted the ground from getting work to getting welfare. And we were going to promote equality by our welfare programs and he says all this is coming to a halt. Its failure is very clear to the people. And he says the idea of throwing money at social problems is decidedly passé. And while big government is still popular with the voters, people are beginning to back off from the welfare state.

So he says what we have now is a different kind of problem. The poor no longer are people who are seeking work, but people who don’t want to work. So we have a radical shift. We are still assuming that... or Washington is, that the trouble with these people is they can’t find jobs. Let’s give them more education, more training, more special programs. And the problem is very different as he says, a great many native born Americans do not work. They don’t want to work and this is true in other cities. And he says non work has devastated large sections of New York. And he says there remain many hard working self reliant people in East Harlem, but with over a third of the residents on welfare, workers no longer set the tone.

One woman laments, “All those generations on welfare, there is no respect any more because people haven’t worked.”

You...

[ Murray ] Well, one of the solutions that is being tossed out now is one of the old New Deal chestnuts which is the WPA programs.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] To put all these people to work on infrastructure projects like bridges and that sort of thing, but nowadays you have to have people with extraordinary skill to work.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] You just don’t put anybody to build a bridge, otherwise it is going to fall down.

[ Rushdoony ] That is for sure.

[ Murray ] So it is going to take a much more highly trained work force and at least somebody who can read blue prints and read plans and follow, take instructions and follow them. And we just don't have that kind of work force. When we... today when major corporations have to teach people basic reading and arithmetic to get them to do simple tasks on an assembly line, I don’t think the WPA would work any longer.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, the army has to teach its recruits how to read. Otherwise multi million dollar equipment will be destroyed.

[ M Rushdoony ] You teach somebody who doesn’t want to work how to be a lawyer or an engineer or a teacher, they are going to be a lawyer, a teacher or an engineer who doesn’t want to work in that field, because if you don’t have a work ethic, it doesn’t matter what kind of an education you have. You are not going to be productive.

[ Murray ] Well, it has to be incentive. You can’t punish productivity and reward sloth and that is what we have bee doing.

[ Rushdoony ] No. I know a white family where there is money and each of the children received 50,000 a year just handed to them. The net result is that recently one of the sons and all of them are... almost all are worthless. After seven years of education decided he did not want to follow the profession he had trained for. So he is doing nothing. Why should he if he can live at home and have 50,000 dollars a year as wealth? So whether it is through Welfarism or through subsidizing one’s children on the excuse, I don’t want my children to go through what I had to go through, we are creating a non working class. And whether they are getting 50,000 a year or a welfare check, you have to say they are lower class.

[ Murray ] Well I became close for a time with a family, a house hold named international merchandiser of goods. I don’t wan to mention the name, but he was a friend of mine for many years when he didn’t have anything. And after his company went public and he became overnight a millionaire many times over he gave his son too much and his son killed himself with an automobile and a high powered automobile. His ... he had daughters and the daughters got into drugs and they destroyed their lives. His wife had a nervous breakdown and the money had just destroyed his family.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] He just didn’t know how to handle it. He gave them too much too soon and they just destroyed themselves with it. And this idea of wanting to make it easier for your own son is ... it is a destructive thing and it is probably very difficult for some of us to realize that the depravation that some parents subject their kids to is actually an act of love.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] It is what keeps them alive. It gives them the will to survive, to keep that work ethic alive.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Mark, would you like to add something to that?

[ Murray ] How do you find this in the ... in the Christian school the general run of kids that come in? Do they have what... what is their viewpoint toward the work ethic?

[ M Rushdoony ] As far as their... their attitude towards school work which, in a lot of people, is a little different than their work ethic otherwise, because lots of people didn’t like school and it was difficult. But I find that when they get to... I teach sixth, seventh and eighth. And especially when they get to my seventh and eighth grade they have to be certain... disciplined to a certain point. And there are times when I have discouraged people from enrolling their children if I thought the child didn’t really want to come here be... to... to our school, because I knew he wouldn’t do well. He didn’t have the work ethic or he didn’t want to come... he didn't want to work that hard.

I have had students who have been academically quite low and yet they did fine because they are willing to work and in some cases the parents literally have to stay up and ... and, you know, into the... you know, late hours helping them get into those habits sometimes for a whole year. It has been difficult for the parent and the student, but then the student has learned how to work. If the student is willing to do it.

I have had other students who have been very bright, scored very high on standardized tests. And yet they... they have not willing to work.

[ Murray ] Well, I get from what you are saying...

[ M Rushdoony ] It is... it is... it is across the board. But you have to remember. People come from a Christian school from ... for a lot of reasons. And sometimes those are wrong reasons.

[ Murray ] Well, that is what I was just going to say is that some of the parents may be bringing their kids to a Christian school so that you can teach them what they have failed to teach them. This goes back to parental responsibility. You can’t just throw it on to... on to the school to teach these basic concepts. If it doesn't come from a family the school is... I don’t care what you do, you are not going to able to inculcate these values in them. So it is... it is really a parental responsibility.

[ M Rushdoony ] Yeah, something you hear a lot with regard to education is talking about motivating, because motivating is... is seen as ... as the key and that tells you something. It tells you that a lot of these students don’t want to do anything and they just refuse to do it. And so it is the teacher’s job suddenly to motivate students to want to do...

[ Murray ] Well, that is what...

[ M Rushdoony ] ... their responsibility.

[ Murray ] I have always... always regarded that word motivating as a code word in the public school system for trying to teach what the parents were not... were unable or unwilling to teach. And it all goes back to the ... to the parental and family responsibilities. And unless that is biblically based and taught and biblical precepts, there is no school in the world that is going to be able to overcome that kind of a...

[ Rushdoony ] Oh, I would like to interject something about the school. Oh, it was perhaps two or three months ago when this person I didn’t know stopped me to say that our school was a remarkable one and decided, Chris De Grasma, who is as a high profile working as she does in the bank and being so outstanding in every way that she was a credit to Chalcedon and to her family.

So when we get children from the first grade or kindergarten on, then they do develop the work habits and the difference is great. If they begin with bad habits in the state schools it is very, very difficult then to change them, because the further along they are, the more the bad habits are entrenched.

[ M Rushdoony ] I... I would guess that we spend half of our efforts trying to instill good work habits, discipline habits. Sometimes it is... it is behavior habits or dependability in doing home work assignments. We spend a... a lot of time doing that. If you... when you have to begin a class where you have those iron ... problems ironed out, you can accomplish a great deal.

[ Murray ] You... you think, then, that it is teachable even if the child doesn’t come to school with them.

[ M Rushdoony ] It is possible. It is possible. It depends on the child. Sometimes I... I have had poor results because a student is stubborn and if a student is fighting learning they are not going to learn. If a student wants to learn they are going to learn. I think that is... that is ... that is a key. But it is amazing how many students really don’t want to learn anything. They have no desire to learn anything and they don’t care whether they learn which shows how they are not at all future oriented. They have got terrible perspective, especially when they get up around 10, 12, 13 years old. They are approaching adolescence. And when they have poor attitudes towards the future they are going nowhere and they can’t see it.

That is unfortunate. It doesn’t happen a great deal, but now and then we have head students like that who are going nowhere and they don’t seem to mind.

[ Rushdoony ] Going back to Dr. Mead’s book on The New Politics of Poverty, he makes a very interesting point that he says... when he says that we are seeing an increase in immigration into the United States. It takes us back a generation or two or more. And he said it has increased in the 60s, more so in the 70s and even more in the 80s and now. And he says that is the legal immigration. And the illegal from Mexico and other Latin American countries is very high. It has been estimated to be as high as 15 million.

The difference between the current immigration is that it is mostly from the third world. But the interesting thing is that most of these new immigrants find a job within the first day, even though they speak no English. And they are doing jobs that neither American whites nor American blacks want. So they are improving the economy for everyone and employers agree that the aliens are indispensible, Mead says. One man is quoted as saying, “A New York City businessman in garment manufacturing, laundries, restaurants and other fields have flatly stated that if it were not for the illegals they would have to close up. Businessmen and their attorneys I Miami, Houston and Los Angeles agree.”

One store manager in the Bronx says, “I can’t recall one American coming in here and asking me for a job.” According to another in Brooklyn, “American citizens don’t want to work for the minimum wage.” The head of a furniture company on Long Island protested that, “My unskilled jobs go begging if aliens don’t take them.”

Then he concludes a long section on immigrants with these words. “The newcomers appear to have no job... the doubt that jobs exist. One young man from El Salvador told James Fallows in Houston that he couldn’t understand all the talk about unemployment. Why he himself was holding three jobs.”

[ Murray ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] So the problem is that we have a non working poor increasingly and people who find welfare profitable the black families with two parents are rarely poor. The problems are moral problems basically. And they are what is destroying the black and white population and are creating poverty.

[ Murray ] Do you think that the minimum wage should be lowered?

[ Rushdoony ] I think it should be abolished. A few years ago some black economist testified before Congress that a great deal of the damage done to the black community was the minimum wage law, because they said, “How else can these untrained black youth get any training?”

[ Murray ] Oh, they can make more money selling drugs no matter what the minimum wage is.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] ...anyway, but the ... the... it seems a little incongruous or ... at the least or hypocritical at the worst for our government to be touting free trade and then have a minimum wage. In other words, we don’t... we have selective free trade. We have a selective free economy.

But I think there is a good chance that the minimum wage could be lowered or altered somewhat, because the unions have lost tremendous ground in the past 10 or 15 years, because of all of the jobs that have been exported. They are just not enough workers to support a lot of these unions.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Unions have been the only ones really that have been, you know, holding out for the minimum wage and have put the pressure on Congress to keep it in ... to keep it going.

[ M Rushdoony ] Child labor laws accomplished the same thing as...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ M Rushdoony ] ... the minimum wage. They keep children out of the work force and so they don’t know how to work.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ M Rushdoony ] The child has to wait until he is 18 years old before he has a real job. He has lost a lot of valuable training. And a lot of children are willing to work.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ M Rushdoony ] I mean I... I... I have got kids out in our... our recess. I wanted to mow our ... our field and I had to get the rocks out of it so I offered them 50 cents each to work for a 25 minute recess. They all... oh, they were happy to do that.

[ Murray ] Sure.

[ M Rushdoony ] And that is important. I want them to be able to get that. And, you know, a lot of the rationale behind our child labor laws is you don’t want a child of school age working during the school week. And yet if you look at all of our community events, community things such as, you know, 4H and little league and the soccer leagues and all the ... the children’s activities, they all take place during the school year. Summer there is almost nothing for them. They all take place during the school year, during the school week. They are, in effect, saying these kids don’t do anything after school. They don’t do homework. So let’s keep them busy with all these activities that don’t let them have a job.

[ Murray ] Well, that is destructive, because I think that if necessary for kids to see the product of their labor, you know, whether it is digging a hole or moving rocks or whatever. When they can stand back from it and see, “I did that, I accomplished that today,” it... I think it gets them a much greater sense of self worth.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Mead points out that New York and New England at apple growing areas and they have to bring in migrant workers from Jamaica to pick the apples because there is no local labor that will take the jobs.

[ Murray ] Well, I have talked to grape growers down here just south of us in the San Joaquin {?} county and they actually had to go out and invent machines that would harvest grapes because they couldn’t get people that were willing to go out and harvest grapes. Or... or they wouldn’t even come out and ... you know, trim the vines.

[ Rushdoony ] The school year, when I was a boy, was set in terms of fruit picking, beaus the school children were the major source of labor for picking fruit, for cutting and drying fruit. Now that has disappeared. The kids now can’t do the work.

[ Murray ] Yeah. Well, there used to be families. You know, we have down here in Linden, we have the largest walnut growing area in the world. There is 36 square miles of walnuts grown down there and it used to be all harvested by families that would go in and contract to the farmers down there and now they have to have machines that go in.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] ...like vacuum cleaners and they shake the trees and then pick up the walnuts because they are... the labor won’t do that.

[ Rushdoony ] And there is a loss with some of these processes. For example, the earliest form of mechanical picking was the cotton picking machine. And the waste is enormous.

[ Murray ] Well, there is another loss, too, is that it forces agri business to grow varieties that can withstand the handling.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] ...by machine. And you get varieties now which have... don’t taste as good ...

[ M Rushdoony ] And bounce off the floor.

[ Murray ] Yeah, you can... you can use them for tennis balls. And nobody likes it, but that is all there is available.

I went to work... I... I got a paper route when I was nine years old and we fought to get the paper routes.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] And I remember the ... the social security card. We had to go get a ... a work permit and a social security card and when I was 14 years old. That was mandatory before you could, you know, get a job at a regular wage.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Mead makes this statement also which I think is very telling and I quote. “Non work constitutes the core of the social problem if not the full of it,” unquote. And behind it is a moral problem. So we come back to the same thing. We have abandoned in education and in the churches a faith which teaches people how to work. And the result is that entertainment has become a life for most and an emotional experience which leads directly to liquor and drugs.

[ Murray ] Well, we have the wealthiest poor in the world in this country.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] They own television sets and cars and have a regular income even if it is from welfare. And people in other countries, I mean, that... they can’t even envision that.

[ Rushdoony ] And the number of people who, as Mead points out, are ready to say they cannot afford to take a job...

[ Murray ] Well, there is... you know, there is an awful lot going for it between the food stamps and the... the regular check and plenty of time on their hands. But they are killing themselves with it.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And they are destroying our cities. They are destroying the fabric of American life and we are doing this to ourselves. We have been voting in the politicians since Roosevelt who have fostered Welfarism and the welfare state.

[ Murray ] Well, it should be obvious by now that the politicians will never tell the truth about this.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Murray ] The black leaders, black politicians will not tell black people the way out of their misery. This is really a self inflicted... you know, they are shooting themselves in the foot. I just can’t believe that all of those men want to sit around and destroy themselves with alcohol and drugs that there is almost any other option open to them. But no one is there to tell them.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, black leaders like Jay Parker in Washington, DC, the black and white community know little about that. Jay Parker is one of the most important figures in the country in terms of what he does as an individual. And yet he is unknown to most people. He is a black Christian, a Calvinist, a free market man whose work in creating jobs in charity in one sphere after another is remarkable. But here is a man who is doing more than Jesse Jackson, but he doesn't get the coverage that Jackson does.

[ Murray ] Well ,it just lends credibility to the fact that the change is going to come from the bottom and the people at the bottom are not going to get the headlines. So, you know, in order to survive they are simply going not have to adopt the idea that there is no end to what you can accomplish as long as you don’t care who gets the credit. And you just are going to have to... to avoid the press and the... and, you know, not care whether you get any headlines for what you do. It is going to be true Christian missionary approach.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. I think it is very interesting that Colonel Doner and Joseph Mc Auliffe of our staff are busy in Nicaragua fighting poverty by taking people who are ready to learn, teaching them a trade, setting them up with 300, a maximum of 600 dollars and in one instance one of their trainees is now hiring 15 people all of them are now self supporting. We could use a program like that in the United States but there are so many regulations it would be difficult to apply this program to our inner cities.

[ Murray ] Well, there are already calls for government to get out of the way because they have demonstrated their inability to solve these problems and I think there is a growing realization is that government is going to have to scale itself back and simply get out of this... this businesses entirely.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, it is going broke. So it will be out of business before long.

[ Murray ] A self liquidating problem.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And I think we saw a taste of what is coming under Jimmy Carter, because, if you will recall, under Carter inflation accelerated rapidly. And it created serious economic problems and it is what defeated him.

One of the things that happened was that a lot of people with foster children were handing the children back to the counties and cities because they couldn’t afford to keep them for what they were getting. Now that is going to happen again. Welfare people are not going to be able to survive with the inflation that is probably ahead of us, because inflation will move faster than the state grants in aid will be forthcoming.

[ Murray ] Well, they are going to go broke. They are... we are... California has already run out of money for this fiscal year.

[ Rushdoony ] yes.

[ Murray ] They are starting to scratch around looking... looking at all the different pockets to see where they can come up with another few hundred million to keep going until the end of the fiscal year or so. They are going to have to... some states have already cut back and they have put limits on welfare and, you know, that is the big topic of conversation in the talk shows nowadays is the states that have put ... if a woman has another child she doesn’t get any additional welfare for it. So there is no money in illegitimate birth anymore.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. One judge threatened a woman if she got pregnant again and with certain penalties. Perhaps some of these judges might even go back to the time of the crusaders for the chastity belts.

[ Murray ] Start a new business.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] There is a new profit opportunity.

[ Rushdoony ] Well...

[ Murray ] The trouble is that Congress will... and the EPA will get involved and they will draw up design regulations that would be impossible to meet.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, the connection between wealth, work and poverty has been broken. And I think one of the reasons why it has been broken is the Church. The Church no longer preaches the work ethic. And when I was a boy the amount of preaching—this was in the 20s and 30s—directed at stressing the work ethic was legion. It was a routine thing to preach on the parable of the talents and other things and to stress the necessity of work. There was no other way. They said that it was possible for a godly man to prosper.

But the churches now are too spiritual to preach what used to be very much a part of the old time religion.

[ Murray ] Where they are almost trying to fulfill Marx’ maxims.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] That religion is the opiate of the masses. Some of these churches nowadays are ... are trying to make that come true.

[ Rushdoony ] In a fuzzy minded church and here in California a large and important one, where they believe they are very earnest and devout Christians, in a Sunday school class for five year olds they passed out some pennies at random just took them out of a little basket and gave them to teach of the children and then asked them to count them. And then the teacher said, “Oh, Mary has five and Johnny only has three. If we take one from Mary and give it to Johnny they will both be fair. Don’t you think that is Christian?”

And they got the kids to agree after a great deal of coaxing. The kids didn’t want to surrender the pennies. But this was pure Marxism.

[ Murray ] Sure.

[ Rushdoony ] And they were teaching it as Christianity. And I heard of a situation where the idea from each according to his ability to each according to his need, which is Karl Marx, was taught as a Christian standard.

Now when you have that type of idiotic Christianity, it is no wonder that the world at large is what it is today.

[ Murray ] Well, you were saying this morning there is in Britain, how many churches are closing?

[ Rushdoony ] Since 1960 an average of 100 a year, old churches, magnificent stone edifices, some going back to the medieval era closing, becoming antique shops, bars, little theaters and so on. And as a result, the ... both parties now are socialist to the core. And the country is slowly going downhill.

[ Murray ] The Communists close churches forcibly and...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] .... the western world is closing them voluntarily.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And when I was there last November I heard Margaret Thatcher being accused of a terrible offense, representing middle class Christian morality.

[ Murray ] Oh, terrible.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Of course,...

[ Murray ] It is what built the country.

[ Rushdoony ] We haven’t had anyone like that that we could accuse of middle class Christian morality.

Well, any final comments before we conclude? Our time is nearly at an end.

[ Murray ] Well, maybe we can get Margaret Thatcher to come over here and run for... run for president.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, she wasn’t born here so she is not eligible. But I wish she would come over and run for U S Senate and tell our Senators a few things.

[ M Rushdoony ] Maybe she could become a bureaucrat and really run things.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, thank you all for listening and God bless you.

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