From the Easy Chair

Deconstruction 1

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 118-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161CK161

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161CK161, Deconstruction 1, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 271, August the seventh, 1992.

This evening Douglas Murray, Mark Rushdoony and I will have the pleasure of interviewing one of our staff members, Sam Bluemenfeld. Also with us are two of our Christian school staff Karen Grassmoat and Darlene Rushdoony who will also be taking part in this meeting. Otto Scott, by the way, is out of the state in Boston doing some research.

Samuel L. Blumenfeld has been described by the National Education Association as public enemy number one of statist education. That is because over the years Sam’s effect on private schooling, especially home schooling has been nothing short of phenomenal. He has criss crossed the United States time and time again speaking on the problems of statist education and the answers and the remedies to that. He has been very, very effective.

Sam puts out the Blumenfeld Education Letter which is exceptionally telling month after month. If you are interested in getting a sample copy, telephone 208 343 3790, 208 343 3790. The subscription rate is 36 dollars a year. It is the Blumenfeld Education Letter and I strongly recommend it.

Besides knowing more about the United States from his travels than almost any other living American, Sam has also traveled extensively abroad and spoken on education not only in Britain, but in Australia where he spent some weeks last year speaking all over that tremendous country on education.

Sam, why don’t you give us a summary of your observations on your travels aboard as well as your travels here and exactly what you have observed? Take your time.

[ Blumenfeld ] Well, Rush, first of all I just want to tell you what a delight it is to be here with you in California. Last summer at this very same time I was in Australia and that is why I wasn’t able to visit you then. But I spent five weeks I Australia crisscrossing that country and trying to find out what they were doing there as far as education was concerned because we were being told in the United States that Australia had the highest literacy rate and that their... their reading instruction programs were the best in the world. And I knew that that was false, but I didn’t have the information. So being down there I was able to find out that their education system is just as bad as ours, their reading problem is as bad as ours, if not worse. And the program that is being touted, their reading instruction program which is called whole language and being touted as the ... one of the finest in the world, of course, is just as... just as bad as ours is.

As a matter of fact, I discovered that reading instruction throughout the English speaking world is so bad that it is obvious that there is an attempt to dumb down the English speaking peoples in general. And the reason for this is that the Christians in the English speaking world refpresent the only obstacle to a world pagan system, a world socialist pagan system. And so if you can dumb down sufficiently the Christians in the English speaking world so that they will not be an effective opposition to this scheme for world socialist pagan government, then, of course, you can win. And the educators, the Socialists, the Fabians who rule Australia and rule New Zealand and, of course, to a large extent the education systems in England and in the United States, they believe that... that in two generations they can dumb down Christian children sufficiently so that they won’t even be able to read the Bible, because, as you know, Rush, 85 percent of the Christians put their children in public schools.

And because of that, they have the Christian children in their hands and they can do with them what they will. And, of course, they are doing a great job as far as they are concerned. And that is what I found in Australia. I found that the Fabians run the Australian education system even though that, like ours, it is... they have state systems.

As you know, Rush, they have these...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Blumenfeld ] ... seven or eight states in Australia and each state has its own school system, but they are virtually identical in what they are doing. The curriculum is... it is the same package that you find coming out of American universities.

The interesting thing is that their professors of education come to the United States. There is this incredible cross breeding among Australian educators, British educators, New Zealand educators. They are... and, of course, they are all ... they are all completely in agreement on behavioral psychology which is international. As you know, the psychology ... the... the movement, behavioral psychology movement is an international movement.

And so what I found in Australia is... is exactly what I expected to find. The interesting thing is that we don’t have that information here. So I was able to gather sufficient number of clippings from Australian newspapers where they raise the alarm about the dumbing down and, for example, they can’t find enough recruits for the army who can read. Industry is hurting in Australia because of the low literacy level of the young people.

But I was able to get enough sufficient clippings so that I couple put out a newsletter documenting chapter and verse the decline of literacy in Australia. So, as you can see, Rush, the situation is ... is quite ... quite bad. And, of course, here in the United States it is getting worse, but the educators are deceiving our people. They are deceiving the parents. They are deceiving the teachers by telling us that, oh, well, these new metehods of teaching reading are working wonders in Australia and New Zealand. And, of course, we found out that they are not.

But now this new teaching method... do you want me to go on on this?

[ Rushdoony ] Surely.

[ Blumenfeld ] Rush? Ok. This new reading program is called whole language. Now what distinguishes whole language form the look say or whole word method is ... is that it is even more insidious than the Dick and Jane books. Whole language is now based on deconstructionist theory. In other words, they believe that when you read, you make up the meaning.

Let me give you, for example, a ... let me read to you a quote from a book about whole language in which they define or describe what is. Quote, “From a whole language perspective, reading and language use in general, is a process of generating hypotheses in a meaning making transaction in a socio historical context. As a transactional process, reading is not a matter of getting the meaning from the text, as if that meaning were in the text waiting to be decoded by the reader. Rather, reading is a matter of readers using the cues {?} provide a knowledge they bring with them of language sub systems of the world to construct a unique interpretation. Moreover, that interpretation is situated. Readers creations, not retrievals of meaning with the text vary depending on their purposes for reading and the expectations of others in the reading event. This view of reading implpies that there is no single correct meaning for a given text, only plausible meanings,” unquote.

Now that is... incidentally, this is the official policy of California, of the school system public education in California now espouses whole language as their method of teaching reading. So they are telling the children, “Read it any way you like,” you see. In other words, what we are... what we are creating are subjective readers. And other... and they don’t teach phonics. They are very anti phonics, because if you... if a child becomes a phonetic reader, that child becomes an accurate, objective reader. But what they want to create are subjective inaccurate readers, inaccurate subjective readers.

Now where do they get this nonsense from? Well, if you simply look into the deconstruction movement which has its roots in... in modern philosophy going back to Lichtenstein and, Rush, you and I discussed...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Blumenfeld ] ...the influence of Lichtenstein and perhaps you can elucidate on that a little bit later. But Lichtenstein obviously influenced {?} who is the French spokesman on deconstruction and I looked up the definition of deconstruction in... in the Webster’s New World Dictionary, the third college edition and they define it as, quote, “A method of literary analysis originated in France in the mid 20th century and based on the theory that by the very nature of language and usage, no text can have a fixed coherent meaning,” unquote.

Well, the whole purpose of this, I believe is actually to destroy the words, to destroy the... the absoluteness of the word as... as we know it in the Bible. And they make it rather clear, because in an article that was published in the Academic American Encyclopedia on deconstruction it states, quote, “What most characterizes deconstruction is its notion of textuality, a view of language as it exists not only in books, but in speech, in history and in culture.”

So the Deconstructionist language constitutes everything. The world itself is text. Language shapes humanity and creates human reality. Yet upon close examination words seem to have no necessary connection with reality or with concept or ideas. And then it goes on to say, “Given the numerous hidden links of a text to its cultural and social inter text, the text content and meaning are essentially indeterminate. Texts, therefore, are unreadable. And the practice of interpretation may be defined as misreading.”

Now they are teaching the kids to misread so they are becoming great Deconstructionists.

The article goes on to state, quote, “The reader attacks what he calls loco centrism. The human habit of assigning truth to logos, to spoken language, the voice of reason, the Word of God to redefine that logo centrism generations and depends upon a framework of two term oppositions that are basic to western thinking such as being, non being, thing, word, truth, lie, male, female. In the logo centric epistemological system, the first term of each pair is privileged. Truth, lie, male, female. {?} is critical of these hierarchical polarities and seeks to take tradition apart by reversing their order and displacing and, thus, transforming each of the terms by putting them in slightly different positions within a word group or by pursuing their etymology to extreme lengths or by substiuttiong words in other languages that look and sound unlike,” unquote.

In other words, what we have now in the primary school, the philosophy of deconstruction now is the basis of reading instruction to five and six year olds. It just shows you how the lunacy that exists at... at the highest level in our academic world can be... can filter down or be rubbed down to the level where it is actually used as the philosophy for teaching children to read, you see.

Rush?

Now, perhaps, Rush, you would like to go into Lichtenstein who is probably the father of decon... would you say that he is the father of Deconstruction?

[ Rushdoony ] I don’t know. I think it has many fathers.

[ Blumenfeld ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] But he certainly was a central one, a very central one.

I would like to point out something that most people never think about. Deconstruction has taken over all the churches. Their scholars are deconstructionist without saying so. For example, there is a small library of books that have come out in recent years which tell you with all kinds of paraphernalia of scholarship with the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible that the Bible is not against homosexuality.

Now basic to what they are saying is that deconstructionism can be and must be applied to the Bible. So they can take the very plain text of Scripture—which calls for the death penalty for homosexuality, that calls homosexuals dogs and somehow make it a vindication of homosexuals. All this is possible because if you begin with the Deconstructionist theory then meaning is something each person makes for himself.

This is why, for example, Deconstructionism in our state schools leads to values clarification courses. In those courses values are taught the parents are assured. We are strongly for moral values. But what they mean by it is that each person makes his own values. And those values can include every kind of evil imaginable. But it is your values. You are the creator of meaning. You are the sole determiner. No one as the right to judge you for it.

Now 20 and 30 years ago these people would say, “Of course, anything is valid as long as you don’t hurt someone else.” That is no longer the case, because now they are saying: Who says that you have no right to hurt or use someone else? They are taking the position of the Marquis de Sade that you have the unlimited right to exert your will in any direction and no one has the right to judge you. This is why law enforcement is being eroded by our courts.

[ Blumenfeld ] Oh, yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Because the philosophy that informs our legal system is being subjected, increasingly to deconstructionist thinking.

[ Blumenfeld ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] This is why the editor of the annual Supreme Court Review has said, “There is no longer any law that winds up meaning what the framers of the law intended it to mean.” When the lawyers and the judges, especially, get through with it, it is turned upside down.

Well, this is all deconstruction in action. It is the death of meaning.

[ Blumenfeld ] Yeah and the children are being trained to accept that.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Blumenfeld ] In other words, that is the way they are going to read. Let me quote again from the book of whole language. Here is another definition that they give of whole language.

Quote, “Whole language represents a major shift in thinking about the reading process. Rather than viewing reading as getting the words, whole language educators view reading as essentially process of creating meanings. Meaning is created through a transaction with whole meaningful texts, i.e. texts of any length that were written with the intent to communicate meaning. It is a transaction, not an extraction of the meaning from print in the sense that the read created meanings are a fusion of what the reader brings and what the text offers. In a transactional model, words do not have static meanings, rather they have meaning potentials and the capacity to communicate multiple meanings,” unquote.

Well, you can imagine what... what this is doing to the children’s minds. No sense of accuracy, no sense of precision, no sense of absoluteness as far as the word goes, the logo goes, the Bible goes. You know, you could make it into anything you want.

[ Rushdoony ] To give very down to earth practical example, what deconstruction does is this. Let’s assume a hypothetical case. A mother goes out for a while and she tells her, let’s say 10 or 15 year old son, “I have a pie cooling on the kitchen table. Do not touch it. Do not cut into it. That is for the company tonight.”

And when she comes come he pie has been messed up, partially eaten. And when the child is rebuked he says, if he is philosophically astute, “I am analyzing your statement and interpreting it in terms of a Deconstructionist philosophy. I found a clear go ahead signal in your words to eat the pie and to do what I wanted with it.”

Now that is deconstruction. Well, apply that in education. Apply that in law. Apply that in society and you see why we are developing an increasing social anarchy.

[ Blumenfeld ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Before we go further, why don’t we have a few quetsiosn. Douglas, would you like to raiase a question or two about this?

[ Murray ] Well, one of the first questions that come to mind is the timing of this Deconstructionist. When did this really start do you think?

[ Blumenfeld ] Well {?} wrote his books... he seems to have... in the mid 70s, from the 1970s. Lichentenstein, of course, worked during the... it was the 40s and 50s, wasn’t he?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Blumenfeld ] He died, I believe, in the 50s. But he laid the groundwork. Lichtenstein laid the groundwork by literally destroying meaning in language. In other words, philosophy came to it... a dead end. That was the end of philosophy. There is nothing... nothing further they could do. The purpose of philosophy, of course, has always been to try to explain reality without God, you know. And so they have use... up until then they have tried to use the word, just as the Bible use the word, the Greeks used the also. A is A according to Aristotle. The word in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. So the Greeks and ... and Christians and Jews believed in the word as being the ... how would you say? The carriers of truth.

Well, it reaches a point where the philosophers can’t go any further by denying God so they deny the word and say, “Well, you can’t know God because you can’t... the word doesn’t make any sense, you see?” Words... language is a... is a myth. Language is a ... is a... is a ... a chimera. Language is fantasy, you see. And that is how they finally destroy things.

For example, in another article on the ... on whole language... on... on deconstruction, an article on {?} and contemporary authors it says, quote, “Deconstructionism emphasizes the reader’s role in extracting meanings from texts and the impossibility of determining absolute meaning,” unquote.

[ Rushdoony ] Very simply, what deconstruction means is there is no God. Therefore there is no meaning. Therefore the only meaning that can exist is what you yourself create for yourself. There can be nothing out there, neither God nor man nor written text nor law that can bind you. You are your own source of meaning.

Well, this is the kind of thinking that has been taught on the university level. It is the kind of thinking that informs movies and television programs. And you have to say that the people in the ghettos, the young people, while they may not know what the very word philosophy means, have gotten the drift of everything from films. They are the biggest patrons of the films together with university students. So they are totally lawless. They are more logical than the children of middle class families who still have, from the perspective of the deconstructionists, a hangover of God and law.

So this matter of deconsttrction is not an abstract problem. It is one we confront every day not only in our schools, in our entertainment, but in the streets of our cities and it is destroying civilization.

[ Murray ] Well, I will tell you quick anecdote. Where I first came to face to face with this was in the early 1950s when I joined the military and I had to sign a loyalty oath and before I did so, because I was being ... applying for a clearance for a high security job, they had me read a list of all of the organizations—of course this was by, you know, the beginning of the Cold War era, the height of the confrontation, the early 50s and I was amazed at the names of the organizations that were on this list, because they were all... none of them made sense. They were all groups for peace when, in fact, they were groups that advocate the violent overthrow of the United States. And there were, you know, there were hundreds of them.

So it was the first time I saw this... this disorientation method of throwing people off balance by choosing names for organizations that were directly opposite form their intent.

[ Blumenfeld ] Well, of course, the Communists have done that for years. I mean, that... that has always been... they are masters at misusing language, you know. War is peace, you know, and right is wrong and good is bad.

[ Rushdoony ] Do you have a comment, Mark?

[ M Rushdoony ] Yes, I... as I understand it, they don’t have to explain to children that the words don’t mean anything. They train it ... them in it because they have to write compositions before they can write sentence...

[ Blumenfeld ] Yes.

[ M Rushdoony ] ...without any spelling. Even if the composition doesn’t make any sense, they are praised, because it is ... they are being creative.

[ Blumenfeld ] Yes, they use what is known as creative spelling. Yeah, creative spelling. Creative spelling. Creative spelling is spell it any way you like. In other words, the children are told to write before they can even... before they know how to read. And so they will scribble anything that resembles writing. Sometimes it doesn’t even resemble writing. And the children are asked to read it and, of course, some of the kids look at it then and try to figure out what they wrote. They... usually they can... they can... you know, they know what they wanted to say and so they will say it. But tomorrow they won’t even be able to remember what they wrote or won’t be able to translate it.

So they don’t teach spelling and the way they teach reaching now is that the children first of all whole language believes that you don’t have to teach children to read. They learn to read the way they learn to speak, naturally. So all you have to do is surround them by books, immerse them in real literature and somehow through a process of osmosis they are going not learn to read. And one of the whole... one of the commandments of whole language is that you must not fragment the language. Everything has to be done in wholes. Therefore, you cannot teach phonics in isolation. You cannot teach letter sounds, because that is fragmentation. That is not whole. So they have got this fetish of the whole. And the result is, of course, the that children are... read very inaccurately. They... they... of course they guess at words. They substitute words. They leave out words that are there and the put in words that aren’t there. They are encouraged to even skip words that they don’t know.

So after you have been encouraging children to read this way for two years, the first two years of their education, you can imagine what kind of products you are going to get. They are not going to be able to write. They are not going not be able to read. And that is going to be a pretty messy situation for them...

[ Rushdoony ] {?} stand against this sort of thing and why the home school and the Christian school that is knowledgeable about what is at stake is so very important. We have a battle that involves everything that constitutes civilization.

Lichtenstein, by the way, was an Austrian who went with the war to Britain to teach at one of the two great universities there. He was a moral degenerate. He was an enemy of all meaning and he was at war with the idea of truth, of anything having any fixed or eternal value.

And this is why the whole concept has take hold with such rapidity because the world in its war against God has wanted a faith, a philosophy that would enable it to say, “I am my own God and I can determine for myself what is good and evil.”

Sam, would you like to continue?

[ Blumenfeld ] Yes, I did want to point out that these people know exactly what they are doing. For example, there was an article in Education Week, February 27, 1985 entitled “Political Philosophy and Reading make a Dangerous Mix.” And authors wrote, quote, “After spending six years observing the efforts of the self styled new right to influence education throughout he country, we have found a pattern of activities that could, if some members of the new right are successful, cause a very limited model for teaching reading to prevail in both public and private schools. The model is based on the belief that literal comprehension is the only goal of reading instruction. Because it trains children to reason in a very limited manner, it is a model that we believe could have serious political consequences in a country where the ability of the citizenry to read and think critically is an essential detriment of democratic governance. By attempting to control the kinds of materials and questions teachers and students may use, by limiting reading instruction to systematic phonics instruction, sound symbol decoding and literal comprehensioin and by aiming its criticism and reading books’ story lines in an effort to influence content, the new rights philosophy runs counter to the research findings and theoretical perspectives of most noted reading authorities,” unquote.

So you can see they know exactly what they want to destroy. They want to destroy literal meaning, literal comphension, intensive systematic phonics. That is the enemy, you see, because that is going to produce accurate, precise, you know, objective readers.

[ Murray ] Well, I would like to ask the question: If the Deconstructionists know what they are doing, haven’t they explained how they are going to operate a high tech world with functional illiterates who can’t read instruction books.

[ Blumenfeld ] Well, let’s assume that... that assumes that they believe in a high tech world. You see, they believe in civilization. They don’t. These people, if you get down to the bottom of it, they want even a form of society that precedes even pagan culture, because the Greeks believed in A is A. I mean, they believed in the word, their own, their own word. But these people want to go back to... I would say to primitive man at the earliest stage of his development when... when the way of knowing, his means of knowing reality was through superstition and emotion. In other words, emotion and superstition, feeling were the two means of knowing reality.

Now what kind of a civilization can you have that depends on superstition and emotion as your means of knowing? You have... you re going to have something even more primitive than, say, ancient Greece.

[ Murray ] So that is why they are teaching occultism.

[ Blumenfeld ] Oh, yes.

[ Murray ] Along with this deconstructionist reading method.

[ Blumenfeld ] That this the superstitious inredient, you see. Why is there this... this resurgence of astrology, psychic reading, all of that. People are ... want to know reality and even say that people play the stock market by going to psychics these days.

[ Rushdoony ] And you...

[ Blumenfeld ] Yeah.

[ Rushdoony ] ... you have a scientific convention that has as part of its program the worship of mother earth, gaia and outright Paganism, Primitivism.

[ Murray ] Well, there... there is a conflict in ultimate purpose, it would seem. If these people ... the Deconstructionists wipe out the means of generating wealth that pays their paychecks, where do they wind up in all this?

[ Blumenfeld ] Well, you know, it is very interesting that while these people expect children to read inaccuratey and unobjetively these people know how to make reservations on planes, you know. They know how to get their paychecks. They know how to read their book contracts, talking about the people at the top. So obviously you are dealing with a... a very degenerate elite that doesn’t mind dumbing down enough people so that they can destroy Christianity. That is...that is... that is their first goal, destroy Christianity. Then they will see what else they will do, you see? First let’s get rid of Christianity, you know? I imagine they... they think of it in terms of stages, you know. But that its he first thing you want to get rid of. And, of course, they don’t apply these principles to their own lives. I mean, after all, Lichtenstein knew how to make reservations on ocean liners and how... and he was also paid the rent, things like that. So they have a ... a grounding in reality.

[ Rushdoony ] You have to realize that some of the far out environmental groups like Earth First have said that 90 percent of the human race has to go and the remaining 10 percent remain as caretakers of the environment. When they first made that statement it marked them as quite a far out group. But now so many others are making wild statements not unlike that. So it is becoming apparent that you have a growing number of people who feel that most of us should be eliminated and that a handful of them alone should remain as the caretakers of goddess earth.

[ Murray ] One of their goals, Deconstructionist goals must be to destroy newspapers so they can save trees.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, they are going to destroy people and save the spotted owl.

[ Blumenfeld ] Incidentally, another aspect of this destruction of civilization, of Christian civilization involves sexualizing the children at a very early age. As you know now with this concern about AIDS they are now going to start teaching awakening children to sexuality in kindergarten. And they are going to tell children all of the different ways that you can get AIDS. And I am sure they are going not leave absolutely nothing to the imagination, which simply means now that the children earlier in their lives will become sexually active.

Now when you create that kind of sexual promiscuity among children of that age, they are going to confront Chrisatianity which, of course, forbids premarital sex, that kind of activity. So what is going to happen? What... what is going to happen? You are going to have children whose sexuality has been aroused. They are going to engage in it. They are going to confront a biblical morality and so they are going to have what is known cognitive dissonance. This is a... this is a ... a situation or a condition that the psychologists use in order to bring the kids over to their side.

In other words, if the child comes from a Christian home, he or she will have to make a decision. Which philosophy, which morality shall I accept, the Humanist morality that says I can do anything or the Christian morality that says, yeah, I have got to wait?

Well, what do you think most kids will choose? I mean, you can already see it in the... in the numbers of children who want condoms, you see. And pagan society has always been characterized by, you know, a high degree of sexual promiscuity and a highly sexualized society.

And, of course, what does that bring you? It brigs you disease. It brings you social chaos, moral breakdown and that sort of thing. And so they are getting the children from both ends, sexually and from the point of their ability to read and write.

Can you imagine putting the child in a school system that is going to do that to them? That is why I cannot understand how Christians would put children in a... in a ... in public schools knowing full well that this is happening to them. I mean it is all over the newspapers, this business about condoms in the schools. You know, you don’t need a ... it is no big secret. And the way they are teaching reading is no secret either. I mean, the educators think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. So... and yet there... you have Christian parents who put their children in these schools. Why do they do it, Rush? That is what I would like to know.

[ Rushdoony ] Because they re sinful. One of the things that deconstruction does is also to destroy thinking.

[ Blumenfeld ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Because it denies the validity of logic. It denies the validity of cause and effect. Cause and effect belong only in a world where God is. The English magazine The Spectator, recently went after two Americans, Elizabeth Taylor and Magic Johnson, both of whom while in Europe Johnson for the Olympics and Elizabeth Taylor for some reason or other in Amsterdam had blamed Bush for the AIDS epidemic. And the English writer said, “Now as far as I know, AIDS is passed on by buggery and sexual activities generally and by intravenous drug use.”

And he commented, “As far as I know, George Bush is guilty of neither.” However, a great many of Elizabeth Taylor’s friends are guilty of both. She has had seven husbands and had countless affairs according to her. And Magic Johnson over 1000 he has boasted. And they are blaming George Bush?

So his point was well taken. Common sense disappears, because withy deconstruction there is no sense.

[ Murray ] Well, it is a disorientation technique.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] It really is a... it is psychological warfare. It is a... it is a method of psychological warfare.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Blumenfeld ] It is cultural warfare.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Blumenfeld ] It is the destruction of culture.

[ Rushdoony ] I think that is... that is an excellent point. It is psychological and cultural warfare aimed at the whole of our society and against our young people.

You have this in rock and roll music. Can you imagine Time Warner defending iced tea and saying it was not intended to incite people to kill policemen?

Now that is an abandomment of all meaning.

[ Murray ] Well, their stock is very hot right now.

[ Blumenfeld ] Yeah.

[ M Rushdoony ] The same thing is done with pornography, obscene art.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ M Rushdoony ] It is ... it is all relative to the viewer. Therefore if you see something obscene in it, there must be something within you that makes you interpret it.

[ Blumenfeld ] Well, it isn't abstract art deconstructionist?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Blumenfeld ] I mean Picasso if there was ever a Deconstructionist.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Blumenfeld ] It was Picasso.

[ Murray ] But to go back to your question, you know, to Rush about, you know, how... how did things get this way. You know, I talk to a lot of people around here who are not church goers, to try to find out what they think about a situation, a current situation without any... getting into any specific area of politics or religion or anything. And just to try to find out what ... what... what don’t they feel good about? What... what do they think is wrong with society and the way the world is going? And everybody has a sense of vague discontent. They seem to feel instinctively that there is something wrong, but they can’t really articulate what it is. And these are people in their 60s and 70s and some in their 80s. And it is amazing to me that people of that generation who came probably from a generation that was more religiously based can’t see the contrast between, you know, the cause and effect between what they... the society they grew up in and the society they are living in now.

[ Blumenfeld ] Well, they can’t see it because the media doesn’t define it, you know, the... the media doesn’t tell them what is wrong. The media just gives them this view of American society which is very confusing and chaotic. But I think Rush put his finger on it in a conversation that I had and know you have written about it, Rush, where you say that justice.... the society no longer ... the government no longer dispenses justice. And ... and we have a society where justice no longer exists. People feel that there is something wrong, you see.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Jonathan Edwards defined the state in terms of justice. And the state ceases to be a valid social order if it no longer dispenses justice. Saint Augustine stated it more bluntly in the City of God when he said that—and I will modernize his language a bit—he said that a civil government is no different than a criminal syndicate when it no longer gives God’s justice, because then it is a form of organized evil. Even before Saint Augustine and Augsutine cited the episode, Alexander the Great had his naval officers capture a pirate who with a small fleet was, or one or two vessels, I have forgotten exactly how many, was seizing shipping in that part of the Mediterranean. And Alexander the Great was quite indignant with the man and he was going to have him executed and demanded to know by what authority he was doing this. And the man said, “And what... by what authority do you invade and kill and seize? Just because you call yourself a civil government, a state, does that make it any more just when you do the same thing I am doing? And you call yourself legitimate and me a pirate?”

And, of course, Alexander had to admit the man was right.

[ Blumenfeld ] Well, of course, I... I... I... to give you a very good example of ... of a society that is upside down when it comes to justice, take for example the case of the four police officers in Los Angeles. Now they were acquitted by a jury of their peers. Obviously the jury saw things that the public did not see. I mean, the jurors were not a bunch of racists or ignoramuses. They knew what had occurred before the beating of Rodney King. They were told exactly all of the events that had occurred and as far as they were concerned what the policemen did was justified. They were bound by ... what their duty was to arrest this man, to subdue him and bring him into custody. And what they did was the... and what they did was, as far as the jurors were concerned, perfectly legal.

Now along comes the federal government that now indicts them on a civil rights charge that they violated Rodney King’s civil rights. And the punishment if they are found guilty they will go to jail for 10 years. So they will be punished. They will go to jail for 10 years for having done their duty, for having done what the tax payer is paying them to do.

There you are... there you see a society where justice no longer exists, so people have very queasy feeling. Why is Rodney King going to get six million dollars from the city of Los Angeles for his trouble, but these police officers are going to spend 10 years in jail. Obviously something is terribly wrong there, you see. And now what... and the jurors who are going not try these police officers, how are they going to feel if they, you know, the... the sword of Damocles is being held over their heads. If they acuit these officers, well, the rest of Los Angeles will go.

[ Murray ] Well, the jury will be manipulated by public opinion.

[ Blumenfeld ] Well, that is what they say about the... the men who dragged the ... the truck driver.

[ Murray ] Yeah.

[ Blumenfeld ] I mean if they are found guilty you can see now what is happening to our society. And the government does not have the guts to stand up and say, “Listen. What is just is just, you know.” The criminal will not run this society.”

But now the criminal is running ... is running the show.

[ Murray ] Well, it is a... it is a classic illustration of the trashing of the Constitution, double... double jeopardy. These men are being subjected to double jeopardy. States rights are down the drain. I mean the... they have been validated that essentially invalidated the state courts. They might as well close up shop and go home.

[ Blumenfeld ] Well, but as you can see, though, that is why the public, as you say, you were talking about these individuals that you speak to know there is something wrong. They can’t articulate it, though. But anyone watching television and seeing what is happening in Los Angeles knows what is wrong, but they know there is nothing they can do about it. What are you going to do about it when the President of the United States, you know, believes that the jurors were wrong and doesn’t explain to them when the press doesn’t explain why the jurors found these police officers innocent. Nobody has used logical thinking. Nobody has analyzed it in the press. You know, the schools now are every concerned and keen on teaching children critical thinking, not logical thinking, not clear thinking, but critical thinking. And they are supposed to apply their critical thinking, of course, to the Bible. Naturally, you know, that is where you get the higher criticism that is now being taught in kindergarten and in the first and second grade, so...

[ M Rushdoony ] Teenagers tend to be critical and cynical anyway.

[ Blumenfeld ] Yes.

[ M Rushdoony ] I mean it is something that is easy to teach.

[ Blumenfeld ] Yeah. Yeah. You are absolutely right, Mark.

[ Murray ] Well the schools have television piped in them now.

[ Blumenfeld ] Yes.

[ Murray ] And so the media is able to get into the classroom. They even want to put commercials in, but I think they have put a damper on that temporarily. But the media is reaching right in to the public classroom.

[ Blumenfeld ] Yes. Well, the kids anyway get it on television. They watch, you know... of course, the kids don’t watch the news very much. They watch their own entertainment shows. So people wonder why don’t the kids know more? They have got all this television. They are all this... there are all these wonderful National Geographic programs and all this wonderful stuff on public television. How come the kids don’t know where Australia is or, you know, where ... {?} you know?

[ Murray ] They can’t spell the city they live in.

[ Blumenfeld ] It is because that is not what they are watching.

[ Murray ] Yeah.

[ Blumenfeld ] They are watching their sitcoms and they are watching their MTV and they are not interested in the documentaries. It is only old folks like us, senior citizens who are watching all those wonderful programs.

[ Murray ] Well, I had another question or two, to...

[ Blumenfeld ] Sure.

[ M Rushdoony ] What posture do you think the home school movement should take? Should it remain low key or should it go promotional? How do you think it can best survive and propser?

[ Blumenfeld ] Well, the home school movement is growing on its own very quietly. It is occasionally given some publicity by local newspapers, you know, who discover a local home school family and then they write it up and ... it is... it is a movement that is spreading mainly by word of mouth and by example. A family is home schooling. Neighbors sort of, you know, look in and see what is going on. They get interested in it.

Of course, the wonderful thing about home schooling is what it is doing for the parents more than what it is doing for the kids, because now you are getting an entirely new kind of parent that is becoming teacher, that is becoming politically aware, that is actually going back to school. A lot of these parents never got a decent education. And in the process of teaching their own children they are learning Latin. They are learning geography. They are learning history. The are even... some of them are even learning to read. And that has been a great pleasure, particularly from my point of view, because I am so concerned about this teaching of reading and... and my own book Alpha Phonics has become very popular among home schoolers and there are so many young children are learning to read.

And we have been told, of course, well, children are... there has got to be readiness. You know, you can’t teach children to read before they are eight years old. And yet we are finding out that four year olds, three and a half year olds can learn to read very nicely, provided that you do it very logically and sensibly.

[ Murray ] Well, that leads to my next question. Whenever a new market, if you will, springs up like this, there is always a lot of people jump into it. Some of them well prepared and some of them not so well prepared. How does the parents ... how do parents evaluate the quality of home study materials?

[ Blumenfeld ] Well, there are, of course, a number of home schooling programs, some very good ones. There is Christian Liberty Academy. There is the Abeka program. There is ... oh, any number of programs now available. They attend book fairs. They go to workshops. They listen to what the presenters have to say. There is a lot of comptetition. It is very interesting how even in... in the teaching of reading you have got a half dozen very good phonic programs being sold and, of course, I like to believe that mine is the best, but that is ...

[ Murray ] Knowing you, I am sure it is.

[ Blumenfeld ] Well...

[ Rushdoony ] Well...

[ Blumenfeld ] It certainly is the least expensive.

[ Rushdoony ] One other thing is happening, for example, is that home schoolers have available video courses so that in subjects where a parent might not have confidence, such as physics and chemistry, you can have a course on video and have a better instructor than any private or public school could ever get so that the home school child is exceptionally well prepared.

Well, our time is just about up. Thank you all for listening and God bless you. I

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