From the Easy Chair

Reactions to Disaster

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 121-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161CL163

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161CL163, Reactions to Disaster, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 273, September the first, 1992.

This evening Otto Scott, Douglas Murray, Mark Rushdoony and myself will be discussing reactions to disaster.

I think this is a very important subject, because I believe this is going to be a decade of disasters, of world upheavals, of problems in the economic and monetary sphere, in the spheres of government, of weather, of a variety of things including health, epidemics and this sort. So we had better think over the question of reactions to disaster. And I think we are singularly unprepared.

We have, since World War II—and most of the people living have been born since then—at an unusually comfortable existence. There have been fewer deaths through diseases and none of the things that used to mark life in earlier years. During the war wonder drugs were discovered. It doesn’t seem possible now to recall the fact that when I started school it was not unusual for classmates to become seriously ill and to die. After all, appendicitis was a very serious matter in those days. One of my good friends in grade school died of a ruptured appendix. There were no wonder drugs to take care of things and a simple cut on a finger killed President Coolidge’s son through blood poisoning. Things like that happened. Childhood ailments which are now being pushed back or have been since World War II and are now returning, eliminated a great many deaths so that the death of children is not as common now as it once was.

I recall having a funeral a few years back of a woman who was in her 80s. She had children and grandchildren and a few great grandchildren. Both she and her husband had been orphaned when they were about 10 years old. They had been brought up by relatives and, as a result, in that particular family there had not been a funeral for between 60 and 70 years. And everyone was devastated. I have never had a funeral in which there was more sobbing and devastation than that particular funeral, because death was a rarity to all of them. It had never come close to them before.

I am afraid we are in a similar predicament nowadays in that major disasters that have taken a major toll on human life have not been commonplace for the generation born since World War II. So the question is: Will they be able to take the troubles that are coming.

I read only today that as a result of hurricane Andrew a great many people—how many the article didn’t pretend to say—are disoriented and are having problems.

Well, with that general introduction, Otto, would you like to make a general statement? General and as specific as you want and as long.

[ Scott ] Well, thank you. Well, the ... the ... the press does not help when we have natural disasters or catastrophes or anything else for that matter in the United States. I don’t know how long they are going to shove microphones into people’s faces and ask them how they feel when something terrible has happened to them. Nor does the press explain the general contexts in which the event occurs. It doesn’t... for instance on the TV screen they don’t put up a map. They don't tell you where the towns and the areas are involved. And they don’t describe the matter in overall terms.

As far as the people’s reaction is concerned, it is quite a contrast between hurricane survivors that I knew years ago and what I hear on the ... on the screen today.

First of all, the idea of governmental help did not arise. They assume that it was a natural catastrophe which in the old days, at lest, relieved the insurance companies, because it was an act of God and insurance companies didn’t pay for acts of God. And people picked up an started their life over again.

I was in a hurricane in North Carolina in a lumber camp and I remember we had semi barracks and it was all men. There was a lot of drinking when the hurricane was approaching and when it hit. There was no point in leaving because you had only trucks to go over corduroy roads and they were pretty bumpy even when things were good. So we sat it out.

I remember the next day there was a little rise in the ground. It was covered with snakes that had gotten up there, more or less, I don’t know why, and quite a good number of them. And it was not a traumatic experience in my life. I believe it was the first time I have mentioned it since it occurred and it occurred a long time ago. I have been in hurricanes at sea where it is fairly easy. All you have to do is head the bow into the waves and ride it out.

[ Rushdoony ] But you have seen men washed overboard.

[ Scott ] Yes. I saw men washed overboard. And also if you got into a trough, if you got in between the waves you would be turned over. So it... it had its... its... its moment of interest, you might say. It kept you awake. You didn’t go to sleep out of boredom. But on the other hand, you didn’t fly to pieces either.

The most recent reaction seems to be a litany of complaints that the governmental assistance wasn’t quick enough. Now Florida is not a cold place. It is a warm climate and southern Florida and southern Louisiana. Nobody was going to freeze to death down there. You might have to go a couple of days without something to eat and I have gone several days without eating on voluntary fast on occasion and sometimes when I was very young involuntarily. I can vouch for the fact that it is not painful to go without food. And I had ... I do feel sorry for the 200,000 homeless families down there. I think I feel most sympathetic and ... and... and for them because of their apparent helplessness. I am very surprised at the lack of inner resources and I think this may be attributed to their upbringing in that they have been told that the world is essentially a safe place and if it is not a safe place, it is the duty of the government to make it a safe place. I am not surprised that they blame the president for not getting enough assistance soon enough.

When Managua went down as a result of an earthquake nobody knows how many thousands of people lost their lives within a 12 minute period. The entire city collapsed, the entire city. And a lot of aid was sent down. I can vouch for the fact that American aid is not always as good as it sounds. People get rid of a lot of trash and send it as part of the aid. Somoza did the best he could. But the Nicaraguans blamed him for the catastrophe in much the same sense that sometimes subliminally a woman is out to blame her husband when there is a family tragedy, that if the captain of the ship was really a good man, this wouldn’t have happened to the vessel. And I think we are seeing some of that in the hurricane reaction.

[ Rushdoony ] Douglas.

[ Murray ] Well, what always disappoints me is the... what I call the professional carpet baggers who rush in to ... to take advantage of a natural disaster to further their own agendas. The recent fires that we had here in northern California produced a number of people who ran out, for instance and wanted to provide in the field on the spot mental health services for those people who were unable to sleep well or felt some anxiety or changes in their patterns of behavior. It... it is almost pathetic that these so-called health... they used to call themselves practitioners. But apparently they felt that that didn’t sufficiently exalt their position so they changed the term to professionals, health care professionals. And because I have had doctors tell me that when I complain about their not being able to come up with a diagnosis, much less a cure, they will tell me, “Look the sign over the front door says I am physician, not a magician and we practice medicine here.” So they can always beg off when they get in a corner, but it is a... it is difficult for them to accept responsibility when they can’t do what they try to convince people that they are capable of. But the... the fire produced our local mental health services here in this county where the Old Gulch fire took place, it is... it is pathetic. They... they are like people who are desperate to make their services available. They are desperate because they want to be needed. It seems to... it is like the ... you know, getting the genie out of the lamp. They want to be made to feel indispensible and immediately after any kind of a disaster they run out and try to find clients. And rather than letting people go about their business of healing their own lives.

The other thing that Otto touched on was the press seems to milk the disasters for ratings, because I have noticed a logical progression in the way they cover these disasters. First they start out by using it, as Otto pointed out, to attack the government. The government is not doing enough. It is not getting it fast enough. They didn't plan for this. Well, how do you plan for a hurricane? It is almost as if they want the government to have disaster plans the same as you would have in military planning. You know, you can... for any contingency. And then after they have... they have milked that for a few days then they move in to goading insurance companies. I have noticed that they will highlight those insurance companies that get there first and then they will, by implication, say that any other insurance company is not doing their job because they are not up there shoving money at people on any kind of a claim.

And then when that is over with, where they feel they have held fast enough by taking big business, then they will begin to spotlight the normal reaction of the people is that they want to survive. So then they will pick out instances of self help among the self reliant victims who simply want the government to get out of the way so that they can rebuild their house and, as we saw with the Oakland fire, government got very much in the way and there is large areas of the Oakland hills which are not rebuilt yet because they have rewritten the building codes, they have thwarted the contractors. They have thwarted the people who own the property in cases.... in some cases to the point of desperation where the people have sold the property. They gave up after pouring thousands of dollars into building permits and... and environmental impact reports and the rest of it. They just finally gave up and abandoned the property.

And you almost think that Oakland wanted them to, because I heard one individual express the thought that Oakland would try to intentionally keep people from rebuilding in that very exclusive, expensive area so that they could put in low cost housing instead.

So there is... and then, of course, the press routinely ignores any Christian attempts to alleviate suffering. You don't see anything, any of the nuts and bolts of the Salvation Army going out and helping people. Well, I haven’t seen. Or any churches or the bringing in of any help from the outside. And there has been done by the hundreds. I mean there has been hundreds of churches have loaded up goods and rented trucks or borrowed trucks and it is all stuff that they are... and none of that is highlighted by the press. So they seem to be milking it for ratings and furthering their own agenda in the process.

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, Otto talked about people’s reaction to disaster after and... and the media’s reaction. Something I have noticed is during a disaster most people behave quite well. Otto has mentioned that in the war time most people are physically courageous. And they... they do what is expected of them.

[ Scott ] Sure.

[ M Rushdoony ] During the recent fires people were very cooperative. They were willing to help people, neighbors that they had never spoken to before. And people generally behaved quite well. And some of them very courageously defending other people’s homes. Some of them risked their own lives. Some private contractors who had water trucks went up to friends’ homes and saved the homes of people they knew, because they parked their water truck there and they made water available to fire fighters.

It has been said many times that one of the reasons that we don’t have community because people don’t believe the same things. They don’t share the same ideas. So they don’t have much in common. You can talk with them about the weather and about sports, about what is in the scandal sheet, but if you get into any substantial discussion then you start alienating people. In a disaster people have something in common and it very often brings out the best in... as far as the victims go in the people who are evacuated. Sometimes the people you see on TV waiting for handouts are not the best example of... of the people affected by a disaster.

Many of the people who are evacuated from an area do not go to evacuation centers. They will ... friends, church members take care of them. So the people {?} who are in evacuation centers sometimes they don’t know anybody locally, but sometimes that doesn’t represent the whole picture. Also something I have noticed when I have been on fire lines and camera crews have come around, many of the fire fighters will disappear. They don’t want to be interviewed and they don’t want to have anything to do. Other people think it is exciting and they want to be interviewed. So they will cluster towards the camera crews. So what you see on TV is not at all representative, necessarily of the ... of emergency personnel or the victims.

[ Scott ] That is good to hear. That is good to hear and you are a fire fighter so you ought to know.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, the fact of community help which you mentioned, Mark, was very clear as you pointed out in the recent fire here in this county. About a third of the people in the county were homeless, 14,000. Only a few hundred, I believe, were in the centers they established in the two high school gymnasiums, I believe. Most were with friends and were taken in by friends or relatives or some times people who only knew them casually. So the amount of help given by people in such a time is dramatic. Of course, as you said, disaster will often bring out the best in people as well as the worst. You have a prevalence of looters in times of disasters. We don’t have that problem up here in the mountains, but a disaster brings people together in a common cause.

During a time of war a great many evil things happen, but there is also a greater unity and a helpfulness among people and there are fewer mental breakdowns and mental problems during a war time because everyone feels caught up in a cause bigger than itself. And that has a powerful impact.

However, there is another aspect, not a particularly good one. I have encountered this and, well, people who have worked in disasters have told me about this. One of the most common remarks of people is, “I can’t believe this happened. I can’t believe this happened.”

I wonder about that. After all, many of them show in their persons the effect of the disaster on the catastrophe. Are we so acclimatized to disasters and catastrophes in a make believe world of films and television—and I am asking the question and I think it would be good if we all expressed ourselves in that—but increasingly television and the films have been upping—I don’t see much, but the little snatches I see occasionally indicate a heightening of horror, of disaster, of everything so that it has been estimated how many thousands of murders a child sees in a year on television, how many rapes, how many cases of arson, how many accidents and so on so that we get a daily diet of horrors if we are tuned in to the world of entertainment.

Does this create a sense of unreality? Does it make it hard for people to see these things in the real world when they are so used to it as a part of entertainment? Now, why don’t you comment on that, Otto.

[ Scott ] Oh, at the end of World War II I was in London reading the London Times and I recall an article. I wish I had saved it. It was an article about the Germans and it traced some of their problems back to the German film industry, which, as you know, in the early 20s and on began to show all kinds of sadistic movies. The was no {?} I recall the film about Dracula. There was Dr. Kilgare’s cabinet and so forth. And the article went on to say that these film would open up with, let’s say, a tree lined suburban street with a man, a perfectly well dressed man walking down the street and the only hint you would have any problem would be somewhat eerie music. And then suddenly a violent attack would occur. And this was presented in the German films so often as to plant the idea that violence is a part of every day life. And that violence, in fact, is normal, that the abnormal was normal. And, as you know and as I know, the Weimar Republic which was up headed by Socialists, did an awful lot to foster the idea that the abnormal is normal, much as is going on today, where the abnormal sexual behavior is called an alternate lifestyle, another version of normality. And our films and our television are a sodden with Sadism.

Now I think this has ... this has made people actually more callous, not more sensitive and more accustomed to the idea of violence than repelled by it. I think the business of I can’t believe this has happened is just a cliché, like the fellow cited... you tell a fellow something and he says, “You are kidding.” That always annoys me and say, “I am not kidding.” But it is one of those meaningless phrases.

[ Murray ] Well, you mentioned, you know, TV and film and I think if we take a look at the period of time that we are in where television has become so overpowering in our culture and film now has gone into a new dimension. It is no longer a medium of entertainment. It has become a media of indoctrination, of propaganda and I think that people are in emotional overload, intellectual, you can call it that, but at least sensory and emotional overload. And I think it is people’s natural reaction to start tuning out. They shut out of their lives what they are either... don’t understand or are unable to cope with so that when a natural disaster does occur it jars them back to reality and that, you know, that is the reason they can’t believe it, because the majority of the time they are living in a dream world.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. I think that is a very important point, Douglas. I do believe that because so much of their life is taken up by fiction, films and television, the real world is no longer real to them. The importance they attach to film personalities and entertainment personalities is amazing to me. The adulation, for example, going back some years of the Beatles and of today the rock stars, the readiness to believe that Elvis Presley is alive, the fact that there are perhaps a dozen or so Elvis Pressley imitators making a very fat living going around impersonating him.

[ Murray ] Well, it is... it is part of the false god syndrome. People are looking for something that they can either look up to or believe in and if they have no faith they will attach to anything. It is just like we were talking about earlier. A local shop that sells mineral specimens also sells crystals to people who are involved in the new age movement. It is all part of the same thing. They are just people that... who have no faith, who will attach themselves to anybody or anything. They will even stare into a rock for whatever that does them.

I mean, there are people in the Bay Area right now that are in emotional stress and will probably have to go pay money to see a shrink because Jose Canseco got traded to the Astros. I mean, their whole life is... evolves around their... their baseball heroes or their Elvis icon or whatever it is that they attach themselves to.

[ Rushdoony ] I am afraid you are right, Douglas. The adulation of sports and entertainment figures is really startling. And it is a substitute for reality for a great many people and they are not happy when reality forces them to look at it.

[ Scott ] Well, I don’t know about that. I think a lot of the sports chatter is because of its theory that watching sports is somehow virile. Sitting on your buttocks watching sports never struck me as being particularly manly, but I am... I am very strange in that respect I think it is just ... means a social chat more than anything else.

[ Voice ] Please turn your tape over ...

[ M Rushdoony ] Oh, before we do that, I want to remind our listeners that the noises we hear and... right now are from the crickets.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Voice ] ...just going crazy outside. So we might hear cricket noises during these tapings and the clock might be bonging off, so bear with us.

[ Rushdoony ] We have comment before you begin, Otto. Bob referred to the sound of the crickets. I want you all to realize you are getting these sounds for free, because during the intermission one of the men made a comment that people actually buy recordings of country sounds. So that is a bonus. No extra charge for the sound of the crickets.

Ok, Otto.

[ Scott ] Well, when we were talking about disaster and personal experiences, I forgot to mention... and Mark mentioned and also you, Doug, how many people help their neighbors. I forgot to add that you took in my dog.

[ Rushdoony ] We had two over at our place. Well, how did Max enjoy it?

[ Scott ] He didn't’ say, but I hear by indirect sources that he did a lout of whining while he was over there.

[ Murray ] Willing to be fed every half hour and walked every 15 minutes.

[ Rushdoony ] You spoiled Max.

[ Murray ] It is just like when you take your kid to Grandma’s house, you know, the kid takes advantage.

[ Rushdoony ] Mark, you wanted to say something.

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, as regards natural disasters, I think one of the top reasons people have trouble dealing with a major national... a natural disaster like a hurricane that devastates an entire region or a forest fire that burns thousands and thousands of acres is because they have been told throughout their schooling that nature is basically god and that nature is what created them and they are here because of natural processes and that nature is supposed to be getting better and better. When they see nature turn on itself they think this isn’t supposed to happen. And, of course, that is the whole idea behind environmentalism, that if you leave nature to itself nature is going to get better and better. It is the idea behind our ... our wilderness areas is that the best thing that we can do for our forests is to leave them completely alone and ... and let man keep his hands off. Naturally that is not the best way. Our best forests are the ones that have genetically developed trees that are superior and use better wood, grow faster and straighter.

And, if you believe in ... in the... the biblical account, nature is fallen and nature is self destructive and that nature is going down hill. And people don’t like to see that because it is not what they have been told.

[ Rushdoony ] That is an important point, Mark. The European enlightenment and the age of reason began after 1660. It received the death blow in 1750 when the Lisbon earthquake took place and no one knows to this day how many were buried under the rubble. They know that at least 10,000 died in that earthquake. It shattered the belief in nature as benevolent, in reason as the governing natural force in the world and everything in every way getting better and better every day. And the Lisbon earthquake was a shattering thing for the Humanists of that day. More than one book has been written about the impact of the Lisbon earthquake on the Enlightenment. It led to the rise of Romanticism and a belief in a nature that was wild, unreasonable and unknown and we don’t tend to show interest in the grim side of Romanticism of which the Marquis de Saad was the governing force in which evil is a triumphant and dominating force in the natural world. All that came about with the Lisbon earthquake.

Well, today with the environmental movement we have been going back to a faith, as Mark indicated, in a benevolent world of nature. And we are beginning to get disasters, volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes. The were tornadoes, by the way, this past week in southern New York over a wide area. Not common there. And people are not used to thinking of nature in such a malevolent form.

[ Scott ] Well, that depends on their life experience. People who are involved in basic activities, policemen, clergymen should be well acquainted with disasters. Experienced reporters in my day... I must say that the reporters that I see in action now don’t seem to have ever had any experience at all. But I ... both as a seaman and as a wandering blue collar worker in my early youth and as a crime reporter, and even before that as a child... I mean, my grandparents didn’t want a country and I used to pick up garter snakes on the way to school and put them in my pocket.

[ Rushdoony ] For the teacher?

[ Scott ] Yeah. No. Just to scare the girls. And... and there were... there was all kinds of things. The were mosquitoes and this and that, poisonous snakes. I mean, anyone who grows up has to grow up in a very protected environment not to know that this is a terrible world in many respects. I remember we had well water at a time when goiters were common, when tape worms were common. As you mentioned earlier, when death was no stranger. I saw an elderly man die when I was a very young boy and nobody paid any attention to me when I went to tell them so I just went home and waited for the rest of them to find it on their own. I recognized death immediately. You don’t have to be told that it is death. You see it. It is an instinctual recognition.

The whole idea that we have to be protected from reality and surrounded by fantasy, that the government hast to make us secure, that we have to have therapists to enable us to handle our grief is a ... a real intrusion. It is a real insult to the human race that is being conducted by poorly educated and arrogant social scientists who are causing, I think, a great deal of problems. I... I hear now that incest apparently is as common as a common cold. Well, that is pretty weird to discover after all these centuries of civilization.

[ Rushdoony ] Well... Go ahead, Douglas.

[ Murray ] One of the incongruities is that people seem now to accept pretty much as normal those that happen to somebody else, drive by shootings. Crime of all kinds. And they know that the government can’t control it. It is obviously getting worse. Yet they feel that the government should have control over such things as hurricanes and forest fires. The other thing that regarding the fallibility of all powerful government is that on the radio today I heard that the old antebellum mansions who were built by craftsman with no government building code were not touched. They are all standing. All of the buildings that were built by the government building code were destroyed.

[ Rushdoony ] Very interesting.

[ Scott ] I read this evening there was something on the ABC News, I believe, and almost all the modern buildings went right away. The older buildings that were more than 20 years old survived. And yet the building codes are more severe than before. So they showed a ... a building inspector looking at one of the ruins. And he said there were supposed to be metal struts protecting the roof to the sidewalls and he pointed out three and then the rest of the building didn’t have any. So the rest of the roof went... went fine.

[ Murray ] That is called corrupt building inspectors.

[ Scott ] That is corrupt inspectors. Corruption. We have lots of rules and how many do we live by?

[ Murray ] Well, they think the one thing that natural disasters do for us is make us realize how infinite the state really is. If it does anything positive that is...

[ Scott ] ...by accident. Well, storms at sea...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ...convinced me that if God is not gentle a long time ago.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, your famous statements: God is no buttercup has gone around the world.

Well, one of the things that natural disasters do is, as you have indicated, to humble people. After all, anyone who has been in an earthquake when you are awakened to the earth shaking, the house shaking, things coming crashing down...

[ Scott ] Then you start shaking.

[ Rushdoony ] We had a cat in the 71 earthquake who could sense the tremors before they came and she would jump into the air and wave her four paws trying to fly to avoid being on the ground. It was the funniest sight imaginable. She knew that it was coming and she was full of eagerness to get up in the air and escape from it.

[ Murray ] Well, having been brought up in and born and raised in San Francisco, I have been through a few earthquakes. And it is interesting to watch, particularly if you are in a theater or in a large group. I happened to have been in a classroom in 1957 how quiet normally boisterous and self confident people get.

[ Scott ] That is true. And During... do you remember the so called Cuban missile crisis?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] I was living in Greenwich Village and Greenwich Village was crawling, swarming, I think, is the proper word, with all kinds of infectious types, guitars, beards and name it and inch by inch so you could hardly get through the crowd on the weekends, especially in the summer. And that occurred, I am pretty sure, when the weather was good. And suddenly the streets were absolutely vacant. All those fabled hippies and leftists and guitarists and revolutionists and so forth vanished back into whatever cellars they came from.

And they didn’t emerge until the crisis was over. It was quite a phenomenon.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, I remember an engineer whose name I have forgotten who had lived through the Long Beach earthquake of the early 30s, quite a devastating one. And he said he saw people jump out of their bathtubs, run out of the house in their nightgowns and pajamas, be on the street without a stitch in many cases, because their immediate reaction was to get out of the house.

[ Scott ] That is a good reaction.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Yes and he said from there on—and he told me this during the days immediately after the 71 San Fernando Valley earthquake, he always put his trousers on a chair near his side of the bed so he could swing around and pull them on before he raced out.

[ Murray ] Just like a fireman.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. He said he saw too many people embarrassed.

[ Scott ] I think like it is very strange, though, that the press covering these catastrophes didn’t find any decent behavior to report on when, as you say, it was all around them. It is almost as though they look of the worst, to report the worst. And the fact that they will not talk about what the churches do as thought there is something unspeakable about the very presence of religious people.

[ Rushdoony ] They did mention in one newscast the Salvation Army’s work and urged people in California to help the Salvation Army. Then they did a picture in another one man in a community where everything was leveled who was using whatever resource he had to help organize all the people.

[ Scott ] Well, then you are... you are saying that it isn’t so. They did report... they did report the good.

[ Rushdoony ] Very little, however, very little.

[ M Rushdoony ] Mostly the local northern California TV stations.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[multiple voices]

[ M Rushdoony ] That... that... that cater more to northern California.

[ Scott ] I see. Not the networks.

[ M Rushdoony ] Right.

[ Rushdoony ] The networks, no.

[ M Rushdoony ] They just reported how many acres had burned.

[ Scott ] Right.

[ M Rushdoony ] And how many houses were lost.

[ Scott ] The networks are... the networks are pretty {?} about the whole thing.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] I am still getting telephone calls from people in the East who want to know if I survived.

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, an example of how the networks talk about natural disasters, after the San Francisco quake or the Loma Prieta quake that destroyed part of the Oakland Bay bridge, I believe it was Dan... was it Dan Rather did the evening news for a couple of days outdoors with the... the bridge and...

[ Scott ] Right.

[ M Rushdoony ] And the earthquake damage as his backdrop...

[ Scott ] Right.

[ M Rushdoony ] ...for his newscast.

[ Scott ] Right.

[ Murray ] He is not as dumb as people accuse him of being.

[ Scott ] He did that in the... in the hurricane area, too. He does that. He appears on the scene.

[ Murray ] Yeah, but outdoors.

[ Scott ] Outdoors.

[ Murray ] In case there is another earthquake. Nothing will fall on him.

[ Scott ] Well... if I was in his position, I would be outdoors, too.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, I think before we conclude—we have about 12, 13 minutes—we ought to turn to a very important question. As I indicated, I feel that there are disasters ahead, disasters in the economic sphere, monetary and job wise, disasters in the governmental sphere, disasters in the health sphere with epidemics, plagues and so on, disasters in the weather sphere, more droughts, more floods, more everything.

Now how are people going to take these disasters that are coming?

[ Scott ] Well, if they come in bunches, as you indicate and as we all fear, you will get used to them. You know, as the war progresses a lot of sentimentality vanishes. The first ... the first casualties create quite a little shock, but after a while they become taken for granted and I remember being on a ... at Saipan somewhere. I think it was... I went on a naval vessel one evening to see the movies because they had projectors and they had movies and we didn’t have any of those amenities at all. And they let us in and it was a Boris... Boris Karloff movie. Now the fighting was still going on around the rest of the island and so far, but we watched the movie and the was one part where Boris Karloff was driving a coach and there was a cadaver bumping against him and he was showing all kinds of fear. And the whole place broke into laughter, because there were bodies piled up on the shore like cord wood.

And people get accustomed to disasters. They get accustomed to everything else. The human beings are very resilient, very strong and capable of all kinds of diverse reactions. But I... I think... I think really the people will hold up to the troubles that come better than the government will.

[ Rushdoony ] Douglas?

[ Murray ] Yeah, well they are... they are proving that. They are... they... I was watching this evening a short piece on PBS where they were interviewing the governor of Florida and he is making some ridiculous forecasts such as he sees the recovering in three stages: First the restoration of the primary infrastructure, the getting the water supply and the electricity and that turned on. Then there is the cleanup phase and then the rebuilding phase. And he was asked the question: Well you think this can all be accomplished by election... by the election? And he said, “Well, I think that we can pretty well have the second phase completed by the election.”

Now the election is what 60 days, 90 days away. Hurricane Camille, I visited the Gulf coast about a year after hurricane Camille struck the Gulfport area of Mississippi and I want to tell you for 15 miles inland it was still devastation. And I am sure that there are areas down there that are still destroyed and will probably be left that way and never rebuilt. And I am sure that the same thing, no matter how much money the government pumps into this operation, it will take years. You just don’t build 85,000 homes by the election. You don’t put families back together or put communities back together by the election. So there is a lack of realism, a lack of the appreciation for the magnitude of the disaster on the part of government and they are giving stupid reassurances that nobody with an IQ over 10 would accept. Yet these guys are on television tonight giving these kinds of forecasts.

[ Rushdoony ] Mark?

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, as far as economic disasters, I ... I wonder ... there are a lot of people who have been raised on the politics of... of envy. And when they suffer economic depravation I think they are going to have some pretty violent and ugly emotions boiling in them and that could get kind of ugly and I don’t... I don’t know... in a... in a natural disaster people will tend to look at something more realistic. When it is something like an economic disaster we are always seeing even in natural disaster there is a tendency to place blame. And that can get pretty ugly when people demand their rights, whatever they decide their rights are.

[ Murray ] There is one interesting squib on the news today where in an accusatory tone the reporter said that the government was totally ignoring the plight of the migratory workers in Florida.

Now anybody who reads the paper or has any awareness knows that in Florida particularly probably 70 percent or more of those so-called migratory workers are illegal immigrants. They are people who have fled into Florida from Cuba or wherever, Haiti, wherever they come from. Nobody works at migratory farm labor unless that is the only job they can get. And many of them simply they either don’t speak any English or enough to get by and so they are trapped in those kinds of jobs. Well, the government can’t help them if they don’t know they are here.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. There is all kinds of pity for the illegal alien rather than an application of law. Right now we have a problem here in California, because illegal aliens, the court says, must not be charged out of state tuition fees. They must be charged the same as California residents even though they are illegal and from another country as well as coming here from another state to go to one of the state universities.

Now the universities are challenging this because they are losing a lot of money on these illegal aliens. But there is an attitude that we can’t do too much for the migrant worker and the illegal alien. And we are actually at least in California, giving them all kinds of benefits, medical care, everything. Things are not legally entitled to if we took the law seriously, if we deported them as should be the case.

I think, to get back to the question: What will happen? I think we will have some who will come to their senses. My favorite line is, of course, in poetry from James Russell Lowell when he spoke of human beings as we who by shipwreck only find the shores of divine wisdom. I think we will have a great many people wake up, who will stop living in terms of illusions and fiction and it will be the making of them.

On the other hand, I fear there will be some like the potato eaters in Vincent Van Gogh’s famous painting. Vincent Van Gogh worked as a missionary among these very, very poor coal miners. They were working mined out coal mines. They were living meagerly. The picture Van Gogh painted of them shows the physical degeneration setting in from their meager diet. What people don't realize when they look at that photo or painting is that those potato eaters, that was all they had to eat and not much of that. They refused to leave those worked out mines. The mine owners wanted to shut them down, but these workers whom they were ready to relocate insisted that their jobs had to continue. So the mine owners let them work it and saw what coal they could dig out of these mined out mines.

And so they sat there and degenerated physically rather than to say, “Well, we have got to move on. There is no coal here any longer.”

I think we have a lot of potato eaters in our society and I think they are going to die, because like Van Gogh’s potatoes... potato eaters, they refuse to face reality. They are going to sit where they are, demand federal hand outs, insist it is some kind of conspiracy from the haves against the have nots. And they are going to pay the price of their blindness, their will to fiction, their refusal to face reality. They are going to die.

I believe that the disasters ahead will be the great opportunity to turn this country back to its foundations to make it a more Christian country than ever before, to make it stronger than we have ever been, because one of the healthiest things that anyone can have is a strong dose of reality. And that this what is coming.

Dorothy and I attended a wedding in the latter part of the 60s, a young couple, newly married, magnificent home, a much better home than the parents on both sides had. They had everything. They both had very good jobs. They both had an expensive car in the driveway. And everything was on credit, the cars, the furnishings, the appliances and the house. And those were the days when 100 down or so and you could move in to a very expensive house.

They were a charming couple. They professed to be good Christians. But Dorothy and I went home distressed, because there was no sense of reality there, none. They were living in a dream world in which everything was going to get better and better, onward and upward.

Well, in the days ahead they will come to grips with reality, I hope. But I think the disasters on the whole are going to be the making of this country and of a great many others.

Well, God bless you all and thank you for listening.

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