From the Easy Chair

The Election of Sept. 1992

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 125-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161CN167

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161CN167, The Election of Sept. 1992, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 277, November the ninth, 1992.

This evening Otto Scott, Douglas Murray, Mark Rushdoony and I will be discussing the election of less than a week ago. Few elections have produced a like response, from the extreme of radical indifference during the primary to a record turnout unexpectedly at the time of the election. Never have I had as many calls as a result of an election and the calls since yesterday from pastors and others who have seen the election as a judgment and as the beginning of the end.

As a result, it is important to discuss the election and its meaning for the country. First of all, I think it is fair to say that none of the four of us favored either Bush or Clinton. We felt it was a question of who was going to be the greatest disaster. Neither one confronted the major issues. Perot did deal with the deficit, the key issue and he did not come up with any good answers. So as far as the three major candidates were concerned, little hope was offered.

As a result, we have to view the election, as many are viewing it, as the beginning of the end. What kind of an end it would be remains to be seen, but it does seem possible that before very long when Clinton is inaugurated there will be a great many people expecting miracles to be performed.

And the economy is not going to respond to those attempted miracles. Some newspapers are already printing a list of Clinton’s promises and what he is expected to perform very shortly after becoming elected so that the euphoria is fading rapidly and a great many people are heart sick as they face the election.

I won’t say any more at this time. Douglas, would you like to comment? And we will just go around the table.

[ Murray ] Well, I... everyday has a sense of foreboding, I think, about what is coming in the future because there was really no choice in this election. All three of the principle people that the press chose to ... to showcase as being the only candidates were Socialists. And each one of them had a slightly different approach to it, but essentially their programs would all boil down to pushing this country further into the Socialist spiral that it has been on for some time.

I think that the ... the thing that... that bothers me more than anything else among many things, but the fact that Clinton will be appointing a lot of judges. And I am afraid they will be of the caliber that were appointed under Jimmy Carter and the kinds of decisions that they will be handing down will be verging on insanity for anyone who has lived more than one generation. And the ... many of the issues that we are concerned with are probably going to take a beating at the hands of these judges. I think they are moving very rapidly to push their agenda as rapidly as they can, because they feel that time is short. They want to get, as many previous president elects have done, they want to get the worst pain out of the way first and pay as many of their political bills as they can early in the game, because they feel that this gives them a strategic advantage if they want to run for another four years. So I think that in the ... this 100 days we are going to see some very radical decisions come out of this administration. We have seen two already regarding the gays in the military, which, if I were in the military I would ... if I had a commission, I would resign it immediately because your life would be in danger if you got into a battle situation and you needed a blood transfusion. That blood is not going to come from the domestic blood supplies. It is going to come from blood donated by members of the armed forces. And so that AIDS, I expect, if this goes through, will spread like wild fire through the military and there will be no stopping it.

If they can’t stop female soldiers from becoming pregnant then there is no way that they are going to stop AIDS from spreading in the... in the military. So that is just one of many ... many things that we will see in the next few months.

[ Rushdoony ] Otto, would you like to comment now?

[ Scott ] Well, I think it is rather interesting. For quite some time I have drawn a private comparison between the United States today and the Weimar Republic. And we have many of the same arguments and tensions that the Germans had in the 20s, in 25, let’s say, to 31. The abortion argument arose, the coat hanger argument and so forth arose in Germany in that time. The films became semi pornographic and pornographic. There was a great opening with the gates for lesbians and... and faggots. And many of the arguments were between various groups of Socialists. The National Socialists under Hitler, the International Socialists under the Communist party and the Social Democrats, as they called themselves, that were in charge of the government. And we are in a very similar situation. We have... what we have in the recent campaign was an argument between Democratic Socialists and Republican Socialists. Both parties being agreed that the government is omnipotent or semi omnipotent and that the government is responsible both for the economy and for everything else. And that, of course, is the essence of Socialism which as the root the idea that the government should have total power to do whatever it considers necessary to solve difficult problems.

And we also have a man coming into office in a couple of weeks or so from this ... this tape, who is youthful and who is making a great many vague promises, who claims to have a plan to solve everything and, of course, it... I heard one of this advisors on the air the other day saying that he thought the first 100 days would consist largely of executive orders. Now the Weimar Republic reached that stage where it began to govern by decree. And one of the writers on Fascism whom I researched some years back, dated the control of the American... of the German people from the time that the banks were nationalized, because, the author said, there is... you no way that you can hide because you have to go through a bank somewhere or another in some transaction or another. And who has control of the banks has control of the people.

Now we have, as you know, total control of the banks, total lack of privacy regarding our financial transactions and even our lives are... have become open books to the government. And we have a man coming in who has said he will solve all our problems and whose advisors say that he is going to operate by decree.

So I would say that we are moving into the final stages of the American Republic and that we can look to some very sweeping authoritarian measures, not simply a replay of the Rooseveltian period which consisted of the WPA, the CCPA and so forth, but we will have public works. He has already promised a 20 billion dollar program of road building. We will have racial favoritism in the allocation of the jobs in the public works which will not quite fit the majority idea and we may see some very autocratic tightening of the noose. In fact, I see American liberties which have now greatly diminished from what they were going down very, very rapidly. And I don’t regard this as a... as a... as... as a good omen.

[ Rushdoony ] Mark?

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, a lot of the comments right after the election were how quickly people expected Clinton to do something. One man said, “I will give him 100 days, but no more.”

[ Scott ] No more.

[ M Rushdoony ] And I... the... the... the pressure is going to be on Clinton in a recession to do something. And I remember a few months ago when the Democratic... during the Democratic primaries they were sorting kind of looking for somebody other than Clinton. Clinton appeared to be going nowhere. And about the only one who was still in the race was Jerry Brown. Others had to drop because they... even though Clinton’s was very shaky in his support, in his potential to go all the way to the convention looked shaky, the others ran out of money. Clinton hung on because he still had money and he still had an organization. And so the left over from the Democratic primary has now become ... going to become our next president.’

I think Clinton knows what would have... what straights he is in. I think, like you said, Otto, I think he is going to... he is going to want to do something. And he is going to want to do something decisive. And I think he is more likely to want to do something major to try to get popular support. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he did something regarding the national debt before his first term was up.

[ Scott ] Like repudiation?

[ M Rushdoony ] Something to that effect, something major. Because otherwise I am afraid he wants to do something that will sound very popular. And not paying off debt will sound very popular to a lot of people. And ... but he is going to want to do as much as he can, because he otherwise... he doesn’t want to be viewed as another Carter. The Democrats have another Carter. They don’t want to look at another 12 years of Republican rule. So he is going to want to extend this to more than four years.

[ Scott ] Well, the Germans got Hitler. They also got an international boycott, a financial boycott which made it impossible for Germany to regain its footing by international trade which, of course, was what it was better suited to do. It did continue trade with its immediate neighbors, but what Hitler did was to go into barter. He had a helmet shock. And he conscripted. He didn’t use the term, but he conscripted all the laboring class and put it to work. And he paid no attention to debt whatever. He simply manufactured what you might say would be German script, because they had lost all their international banking connections. There was no hope of regaining them as long as Hitler was in office. So he went on his own road and he applied Socialism in the Communist sense. It became a vast work camp and he built the autobahns and so on and so forth.

Now we are on the verge of a trade war. And the Democrats do not like the trade treaty with Mexico. The trade unions are against it and the French, of course, it is not possible to have an international treaty if the French are part... privy to it, because they can’t agree... they always destroy every international relationship there is. The French are going to lead Europe into a trade war against the United States. And the Japanese are going into a heavy depression. They have already lost 60 percent of their financial values in their stock exchange and their real estate. So we will be in a semi Hitlerian situation. And the solution that he will take if he wants to listen to his advisors and he wants to do, as you said, stay in for eight years and he doesn’t want to disgrace himself ala Carter, will be to set up a semi Authoritarian system or an Authoritarian system in the American style with lots of sentimental words and helping people and investing in America and all these double jointed words that they are so gifted at pointing.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, it is a bleak outlook. However, to look for a meager amount of hopefulness in the picture, I think we need to look at Congress, not because Congress is anything good to look at, but because in this century we have seen particularly since the Depression, two interesting episodes in our history. First you have the radical control of Congress by a president, Frank Delano Roosevelt. Congress jumped when he told it to jump. About the only time they broke with him was over the Supreme Court packing measure.

Lyndon Johnson, similarly, had a remarkable control over Congress. I won’t go into the likely reasons for it, but I was for a magazine at the time reading the Congressional Record regularly, every issue of it every day.

[ Scott ] Oh, what a terrible chore.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. It was. But also an interesting one, because it went from Kennedy with whom his own Congress was continually at war, so that Kennedy accomplished very little except his speech making. And suddenly you had every Democrat and a lot of Republicans falling into line when Lyndon said jump. And you wondered if they weren’t being blackmailed or some such thing...

[ Scott ] Was it really a wonder?

[ Rushdoony ] Well, he certainly had them in line. The attitude of a lot of congressmen was never again. So when Carter became the president and they made all the trouble they could for Nixon and Ford and then with Carter they made more trouble than they made for Nixon and Ford, because Carter felt that as a Democrat the party should fall in line and roll over when he said roll over, jump when he said jump and so on. And Congress was in full scale rebellion. In fact, very powerful congressmen during the last decade said that they preferred Reagan and Bush in the White House, because it left them more power than Carter would have allowed them if he had had his way.

Now there are already hints that Congress is not enamored of the Arkansas boys. Outsiders are going to come in and tell them just how to run things and Congress is already preparing to dig in its heels and say no at the first opportunity.

[ Scott ] That is the reason for the executive orders.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, they hope that whatever he does Clinton will fall flat on his face.

On the other hand, they are concerned, I heard from Washington a day after he wedding, the election, excuse me, that the ... at any rate the gist of it was that the horrible realization had hit Congress that they had such a clear cut majority now that they could not blame the Republicans any longer. The Democratic party was going to have to take the heat from now on of everything that went wrong.

So this may give us a slim ray of hope that the White House and Congress are going to fall apart.

[ Scott ] Well, of course, if they fall apart we fall apart.

[ Rushdoony ] Of course, but we are going to anyway.

[ Scott ] And so... so the hope is a grisly one, really.

[ Rushdoony ] The alternative is a dictatorship.

[ Scott ] But the... the alternative is a dictatorship American style. And this is ... we are right on the edge of that now.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] We had it in essence, but the people don’t yet know it.

[ Rushdoony ] Garett Garrett in, I believe, 39 wrote a book The Revolution Was.

[ Scott ] Yes, a very good book.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. A slim book, well worth reading if you can locate it, but he had been the editor for years of the old Saturday Evening Post and what he was trying to tell the American people was that the republic is dead. A revolution has taken place. You are not going to feel the chains for some years to come, but everything is in place.

[ Scott ] Well, it is masked to a great extent by the licentiousness of the popular culture.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Which will probably continue. With a president who wants to put gays... I hate to use the word. I... I... there is nothing gay about hose sad types. But who wants to put them into the military. It is... it is obviously going to open the gates to whatever.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... you will see explicit sex on regular television and... and the whole works. And that is a great distraction. For most people that is liberty. That is what they think liberty consists of. They don’t realize that it consists of the freedom to do what you want to do instead of what you are supposed to do by the government or whoever. And, in any event, liberty of intellect liberty of opinion, of expression will come under I was... I would... I would imagine severe restrictions.

I think that conservative think thanks have reason to fear.

[ Rushdoony ] Douglas, what is your reaction to these things?

[ Murray ] Well, I was just reading today the Detroit News and Free Press reported that ... I don’t know if you remember seeing on television the women that were attacked during a freedom festival fireworks celebration in Detroit and the police stood by and turned their backs and did nothing and walked away while these women were being beaten by a mob. Well, the U S district judge there has held that the police do not have any legal responsibility to protect the public.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. I saw that statement.

[ M Rushdoony ] Who are they supposed to protect?

[ Murray ] Well, I think it shifted. They are supposed... their point of view, apparently, is that their principle efforts are directed to arresting law breakers, not protecting law abiding citizens.

[ Scott ] Well if a woman is being beaten in front of their eyes, isn’t somebody breaking the law?

[ Murray ] Well, they don't want to get hurt. We saw that in Los Angeles.

[ Scott ] Oh, that is their excuse, but what is the judge’s excuse?

[ Murray ] Well, that is what is said earlier that we are going to see more of these kinds of judges, because I expect... I suspect that this particular judge was appointed by Carter.

[ Scott ] If I remember correction these were white women that were beaten by black women.

[ Murray ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And I think that is an interesting point and I think it is time to say these things when they occur.

[ Rushdoony ] I wonder and think this is a good time to bring it up. In The National Review West for November 16, 1992, there was an editorial “Race and Other Matters.” Did you see that?

[ Scott ] I don’t recall it.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, let me read it. It is only about four paragraphs, very short ones and I read it now.

“Reverse discrimination is a recipe for racial strife. Take Los Angeles, where self-proclaimed black and Hispanic leaders have been battling over whom the board of education should choose to be school superintendent. These leaders are more concerned about getting an appointee of their own color than about improving a district that doesn't educate its kids.

“The situation is an echo of what happened a few months back in San Francisco. When the school board there chose an Hispanic superintendent, various black leaders decried the decision as blatantly racist, and even threatened to start their own black board of education.

“UC Berkeley was the scene of a similar flare up when sociology students denounced the hiring of a well-qualified French-born scholar. The protestors said that, as a white, he wasn't equipped for a post that included teaching Chicano studies.

“Meanwhile, at San Jose State, controversy erupted when Ruth Leventhal, provost and dean of Penn State's Harrisburg campus, was offered the presidency after a nine-month search. The list of six finalists for the post was a classic affirmative-action roster: one white male and the rest

women and minority-group members. But the choice of Leventhal brought an outraged response nevertheless from Asian and Hispanic faculty who said she had no experience dealing with people like them.

“In all these cases, we see the natural result of the ethnic-spoils system. What proponents of affirmative action said would never happen – hiring by race and ethnicity -- is exactly what is happening before our very eyes, writes Berkeley professor Aaron Wildavsky. Without reliance on merit there will only be racial and ethnic warfare, notes Mr. Wildavsky. Remember that when you hear politicians boasting about his opposition to racism -- and endorsing affirmative action to prove he's sincere.”

An excellent phrase there, ethnic spoils system. That is what we have. And it is a monstrous evil.

[ Scott ] Well, yes. The ... I heard tonight no the radio some performance artists, that is a great phrase, these are people who put on an act and call it art and some others who have been getting government subsidies, glorying over the hope that Mr. Clinton when he comes in will restore those subsidies. And what we have is the... an administration that is going to represent the composition of the Democratic convention. All the...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] All the minorities excepting that all the official minorities. I mean, we are all minorities. But some of us are not officially recognized.

[ Murray ] I imagine that the people at the National Endowment for the Arts are just counting the money.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Just waiting for the...

[ Scott ] A buyer...

[ Murray ] ... the trucks to back up to the door.

[ Scott ] There was something else. On Cross Fire there was a dialogue between Sununu and that horrible wretch Kinsley and Eliot Abrams whom I am vaguely, slightly acquainted with and that Harvard law professor, the flashy one who wrote the book Chutzpah.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] I can’t think of his name.

[ Murray ] Was it Dershowitz?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, Dershowitz.

[ Scott ] Dershowitz, yes. I have a block against his name.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] They were talking about the release of the indictment against our former secretary of defense four or five days before the election. And also the repetition and , in this case, the second indictment that was handed down included a note signed by Cap Weinberger to the effect that Vice President Bush at the time knew something about the Iran Contra affair. And Dershowitz made it very clear that he thought that the secretary of defense should be indicted for this and that he hoped if he was convicted that he would then rat on Bush and turn him in. And then you could almost see him salivate over the hope that they could put a former President of the United States before the bar.

And he said, “Well, the alternative,” he said, “would be amnesty.” He said, “We should, we should forgive them all. Forgive Pollard and forgive everybody.”

Now this equating of a traitor, a convicted traitor with a former secretary of defense...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] So shocked Sununu that he turned his face away from the camera. But that is what we are confronted with.

[ Rushdoony ] I would like to throw in a little item from the news today which ties in that... with this matter of all minority groups salivating to get their demands in and have their wrongs real or imaginary and usually very ancient settled.

The Hawaiian people are now demanding restoration of what has been taken from them. A few are demanding restoration of the monarchy and independence, but most of them have a vague demand that something has to be done to right the wrong done to them.

Well, I recall as a student reading a book by a Hawaiian who is associated with the bishop museum in Hawaii write about the monstrous evils of the monarchy and how the commoner was mistreated, that he was treated as animals are. But with all these people, they glamorize their past and feel that any wrong done by Americans must be magnified 1000 fold so that they can claim their ostensible rights.

Douglas, you had something to say.

[ Murray ] Well, we were just talking about perhaps defining what it is that people feel so {?} about, putting a ... a term on it. I call it a cultural revolution. People are so off balance because of the tax on traditional culture. We have had an unrelenting attack on traditional icons. I remember back, I thought it was kind of... of ridiculous when the left would attack John Wayne. I mean here is a guy that is just a movie actor making a living, but because he was a symbol of gravitational American values, why, he was singled out. And the homosexuals trying to get into the boy scouts of the ... the attempts to move females into previously all male clubs, sporting organizations, regardless what it is, all of these barriers which they call barriers which were previously what we would consider traditional cultural ...or aspects of our culture have been under consistent, unrelenting attack.

And it is a cultural revolution. It... it... it covers all aspects of our... of our life. And there isn’t one area that I can think of that has not come under attack by the left in this country. The family, the traditional family, the redefining of all these terms. And this is what has people, Christians and as well as the general public so confused. They feel intuitively that there is something wrong, but they can’t quite put their finger on it. And people are just kind of milling around like sheep in a barnyard trying it figure out where the lightning is coming from.

But it is a very. I think a steady program. I hate to use the word conspiracy, because I don’t think it is a conspiracy. It comes... it is... it has a ... a broad pattern to it. And it just... it permeates our entire culture today at every level.

[ Scott ] Well, a conspiracy is secret and this is not secret. It is just the opposite of secret. This is in the open. This is a movement and they attacked Pat Buchanan’s speech at the Republican convention when he said this is a cultural war and we want to take our country back. And every commentator in the United States went on to say that this was a vicious, racist, terrible thing to say.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Dorothy and I listened about a week ago to a tape of a lecture at Harvard by a Harvard professor of government. And while he did state what the issue was, he ducked it after describing it. He said most people want to view the world and its crises in political terms. But he said they are essentially religious. It is a world of Islam resurgent and determined to obliterate Christianity. And the west does not understand the terms of war.

Well, after making that statement, he dropped that aspect of it simply to analyze the extent of the revival of Islam and the various countries. And one important point, he called attention to the fact that the Islamic world is working to establish alliances with what he termed the Confucian world, with the Far East. And he felt that the West was in deep trouble. But apart from his preliminary statement, he never returned to the aspect of Christianity.

[ Scott ] What do your parents say? Do you talk to them? Do they bring this up at all when they bring their children in to your school?

[ M Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] They don’t... they don’t mention it.

[ M Rushdoony ] No. Very few parents ... most parents... this is I think true in most Christian schools, the majority of parents have them there for an assortment of reasons, many of which are not very good. They don’t want them under a particular teacher in the public school.

[ Scott ] Oh.

[ M Rushdoony ] Or particular group of kids that they don’t want them associating with or at a particular age, say, junior high, they think that perhaps it is better that they not be in the public school. I am... I am not saying all of my parents fit into that, but I... something I have come to discover that a lot of children are in... are in Christian schools for a lot of the wrong reasons. So, no. Christian school parents as a whole, I think, are more aware of what is going on in our culture around them. But they couldn’t put their finger on it too well.

[ Rushdoony ] I read a book recently and I intended to bring it with me tonight, but forgot, a book by a professor named Ginsberg. The title was something about public opinion. And what he very carefully pointed out and documented there was this. That what we have seen beginning with the French Revolution is the extension of the franchise, of the power to vote to one group after another until now it has reached virtually everybody and we have had movements and possibly in some states it has succeeded to extend it even to criminals as soon as they are released from jail. They used to lose their citizenship when they were convicted.

And he said this extension of the franchise to minority groups and the creation of new minority groups has been used by civil governments and their bureaucracies to extend their power because whenever you have a group that is declared to have claims against the majority you enhance the power of the state as the agency to right these wrongs. So he said as the extension of the franchise has reached its outer limits and now with rapidity minority groups are being created where some instances none existed, you have reached the point where the power of the state over the people will be well nigh total and the defense ... and the meaning of liberty, he said, has been shifted from freedom from the state to freedom in terms of state controls and measures.

So he had a very, very gloomy picture of the future of democracies.

[ Scott ] You already know that the federal government stepped in before the last campaign, the last election and insisted on redistricting all of the congressional areas up for the election and they went to extraordinary lengths to make certain districts in which blacks in one area and Asians in another area and so forth would be dominant to ensure, to make sure that minorities would appear in Congress more and more, greater percentage than before. Also ... and also that we saw something in this campaign which I don’t think I have ever seen to such an extent before. The press made itself the auxiliary of the Democratic party. It made itself the absolute chorus for Clinton and Gore and for the whole Democratic machine wherever it is.

At the same time we were told that there was an enormous outpouring of votes. Well, in California, the increase in the number of voters was five percent. And this is the most populous state in the union. Now, of course, five percent of the American electorate is an awful lot of people, but it is no long way from being a great outpouring. And for a long time I thought that the reason most Americans have stopped voting is because they are disillusioned. But I am now coming around to the theory that most Americans have stopped voting because they take it for granted that the government will take care of them no matter who gets in office.

We are already, in other words, conditioned for controls because we have been under controls.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And... and an expanding rate, geometric rate almost since 1933.

[ Murray ] Do you remember two years ago, two, three years ago where the spokesman for a Hispanic organization in southern California proposed that illegal aliens should be able to vote in California elections because since they...

[ Scott ] Pay taxes.

[ Murray ] ... receive... yeah, since they pay taxes that they should be able to vote here. So citizenship is no longer required. All you have to do is get here.

[ Scott ] Citizenship. What are the powers of citizenship? We don’t have any greater rights in... in our courts than non citizens

[ Rushdoony ] The Roman Empire and the republic before it in the last days of the republic expanded the right to vote increasingly until it included everyone. And it expanded its power over these peoples as it gave them the right to vote so that citizenship became finally meaningless. Whereas, for example, in Saint Paul’s day to be a citizen was comparable to being a nobleman.

[ Scott ] Well, yes. You were not tortured and so... so on and so forth. But, of course, they had slaves. And they had slaves even after they expanded the vote to foreigners. The foreigners who really overturned the Romans were the people who drifted in and settled. They just crossed the borders. There were no real borders in those days. And as long as they weren’t fighting anybody or causing any trouble there was no great interference. And they gradually settled until they out numbered the Romans and took over the empire quite naturally. .

Even before the empire fell apart, the emperors were ... were not Roman. They were not Italian. The latter Roman Empire’s emperors were of not even Spanish anymore. They were Gauls, Teutons and so forth. Otho...

[ Murray ] All the others.

[ Scott ] We are moving into a very similar position. And if we talk about the immigration from Mexico, we are talking about people who have been oppressed since the days of the Aztecs, who have never participated in the Democratic society, who don’t today and who don’t really expect to among us.

[ Rushdoony ] Mark, did you have a... something to say?

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, what Otto was saying a few minute ago with on... on.... on voting, it strikes me... I notice after every election, I notice how out of touch I am with what other people must be thinking. I say... I find myself in a small minority with each election that I can almost guarantee how the initiatives in California will go, because they usually go the opposite of my thinking. But I think something that is telling on how people don’t know what they believe. And they don’t know what to vote for so they vote for a line. The best illustration, I think, of that is the undecided votes, how such a large percentage of people remain undecided right up to the election. I am surprised they... I am surprised they don’t do exit polls of people coming out of the polls and say how many were undecided after they came out, because it seems hard to believe that somebody after all these months of campaigning can’t decide who they are going to vote for. Just because they don’t know why they are voting for the person they are, you know, whether it is... well he is youthful. He has new ideas and all sorts of irrelevant ideas.

And after people have gone through public education, well, then Clinton and... and Bush and the... and the standard party lines about, well, you know, we will stand up for America and if we all pitch in there, roll of our sleeves we will do it. They all sound alike. They all pretty much are alike. What are people going to vote for? I mean, are the candidates offering them?

Do they people really have any firm beliefs? I am not sure people even have any firm beliefs.

[ Murray ] Well...

[ M Rushdoony ] I am not sure they are... I am not sure there is a core of American values or any values in the electorate that we can... that we can poll them.

[ Murray ] There is a... there is a core of American values, but people are questioning just, you know like they find themselves in a minority. And it makes them feel very uncomfortable. And many people that is, you know, the reason they remain undecided is because they are hoping that they will get some flash of insight that they will clear away all that fog. And I think one of the most important things that Howard Philips had to say is vote your beliefs. But obviously first you have to have some.

[ Scott ] But I...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. You are right. And I have been surprised at the number of people who commented very strongly to me by telephone on how impressed they were by Howard Philips and {?} two small party candidates. It is the first time I have ever heard comments like that in all these years. And a little bit of attention was paid to these men in the last days of... before the election in that statements by them were carried on the news. Philips was interviewed on a PBS broadcast so that I think people are beginning to wake up to the alternatives to the major parties. Certainly their willingness to consider Perot indicated that they were and at the exit polls, 40 percent of those who voted for Clinton declared they had seriously considered voting for Perot.

[ Scott ] If he hadn't dropped out halfway through he would have done much better.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] He might have split the vote.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Because he was heading in that direction. But the didn’t know when to shut up either. His excuses for dropping out in the end became too bizarre. But he did point... by his appearance he did highlight, you might say, the hollowness of the two major parties.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] This is... They didn’t discuss the issues. They didn’t discuss immigration. They didn’t discuss crime. They didn’t discuss ...

[ Rushdoony ] The national debt.

[ Scott ] The national debt. They didn't discuss pornography. They didn’t discuss abortion. They didn’t discuss any of the issues that people think about. And they... neither of them changed any minds. What they did was they gave us an advertising program, all glitz, no substance. And everyone was sick after the election.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... because there is a sick feeling that we have got a president who is not up to it just as we got rid of a president who wasn’t up to it.

[ Rushdoony ] Both Bush and Clinton looked childish up against Perot, not that Perot was right nor that he was that much different, but at least he confronted one issue, the national debt.

[ Scott ] And he wasn’t afraid of them. He wasn’t afraid to talk.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] Of course if you have 3000 million dollars it gives you a certain amount of chutzpah. He couldn’t be fired. And he can’t go broke. He thinks he can. He is afraid, I believe, that he might go broke because, I understand that most of us money is in treasury bonds.

[ Rushdoony ] Oh, oh, oh.

[ Scott ] And it is hard for me to admire his intellect if he has put most of his money there.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Too...

[ Rushdoony ] And if the national debt is repudiated by ...

[ M Rushdoony ] He is wiped out.

[ Rushdoony ] He is wiped out.

[ Murray ] He can... he can... he can join the Japanese in being nervous about where his money is going to go.

[ Scott ] He did have some very funny sayings, though.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Now at least they... he brought a little wit, a little humor into the thing, because otherwise it was durgeville.

[ Murray ] Well, some of the financial commentators feel that we will see gradually escalating inflation, at least two percent by the end of this next ... by the end of this next year.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, R. E. Mc Master feels that we could be in war by 95.

[ Scott ] With whom?

[ Rushdoony ] We will create an enemy. Who would have guessed we would ever be at war with Iraq?

[ Scott ] Well, we...

[ Rushdoony ] Three weeks before hand?

[ Scott ] We created that one.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And killed 180,000 civilians.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Which is a pretty good war.

[ Rushdoony ] And that is how Roosevelt solved he problem with the Depression. He put us into war.

[ M Rushdoony ] Bush would have... would have been reelected if he had had that war a year later.

[ Scott ] Yes. His timing was off.

[ Rushdoony ] But...

[ Murray ] Mr....

[ Rushdoony ] Let... let... let... let me just add this, Douglas. R. E. Mc Master in the late 70s predicted that in the 90s we would be in wars.

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, it does take people’s mind off of the economy to a certain extent.

[ Scott ] Well, it solved the Depression. Jobs didn't come back in the landscape until toward the end of 38. And it began with the defense industry. And even I got involved in that and I took a course in welding. And I learned how to make a straight vertical overhand weave only with steel. You know, it is more complicated than that. And it came in with wage controls. And your... you may see that again. You... you may see all this...

[ Murray ] And Dole.

[ M Rushdoony ] And after... Bob Dole. Remember he pointed out that the wars of the century were Democratic wars.

[ Scott ] Oh, yes. That used to be a regular Republican argument every election until Bush came along and started kidnapping people like Noriega and putting him on trial here. How about Israel?

[ Rushdoony ] Otto, after all this... all these years I now find out you are a welder. Maybe one of these days we will learn that you were a professional boxer or wrestler, too.

[ Scott ] No, no, no. No, I was never that stupid. But I thought it would be good to pick up a trade of some sort, a semi trade.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, the election will be followed by the inauguration and that will be important. In January we will see what this whirlwind program of Clinton’s will be like. And we will see how Congress reacts to a Clinton presidency, the Democrats in Congress.

I suspect they will give him a breathing space and then begin to pressure him and resist him.

[ M Rushdoony ] There has been a heavy turnover in Congress, more than in years.

[ Scott ] Yes, there is... there is 100 new congressmen, but mostly Democrats.

[ Murray ] The press is just gleeful over the prospect of another Camelot. They think that the wives of the two, the President and the Vice President elect are going to recreate the Kennedy era.

[ M Rushdoony ] I prefer... I prefer Jay Leno’s scenario. We have a governor of Arkansas and a senator from Tennessee. He said it will be like having Bo and Luke Duke in the White House.

[ Scott ] I heard somebody else say hee haw... that little Abner and Lady Mac Beth are going in to the White House.

[ Murray ] Yeah.

[ Scott ] I have also... know that the... he has offered in New York during the primary to set up a kosher kitchen in the White House. It will be interesting to see if he follows through on that promise. That is a fairly easy promise, although the food might be a little boring.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, our time is about up. Is there anything in the way of a last statement that any of you or each of you would like to make?

[ Murray ] Well hold on to your hats.

[ Rushdoony ] Otto?

[ Scott ] Well, I think you are going to see tyranny American style.

[ Rushdoony ] I think we already have it and have had it for some years.

Well, thank you all for listening. I think we can take heart in all of this in that God is bringing this present humanistic order down. We are going to pay an ugly price before it is over. But I do believe we are on the last days of Socialism and Humanism. I do not see how after the reckoning begins the American people can continue to be enchanted with either the Republicans or the Democrats. I suspect there will be great changes ahead, some very difficult ones to take, but ones which in the long run I trust will make us a much more free people.

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.