From the Easy Chair

The Seizure of Properties

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 126-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161CN168

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161CN168, The Seizure of Properties, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 278, November 9, 1992.

Otto Scott, Douglas Murray, Mark Rushdoony and I are now going to discuss a very, very important subject, a sad subject. It is the seizure of properties.

When people are presumed guilty and without any evidence a raid is made and even if no drugs are found, or anything else, the property is seized, the car, the boat, the plane, whatever. For example, there is a move now to make certain areas of west Texas a game refuge. They are moving to seize these properties from the ranchers.

Now originally that area had hardly anything except rattle snakes and field mice and that sort of thing. And the saying was some years ago, from a west Texan, that it wasn’t a draught there unless it did not rain for seven years. Well, a lot of ranchers moved in there, bought the land and incredibly low prices put in ponds and reservoirs to retain all the water that might fall, put in pastures and so on so that now there is more game in these ranching areas than over in eastern New Mexico, mountain country, which is a big game refuge.

So they are trying to take this land away from the ranchers and the ranchers are experiencing some real problems. For example recently one rancher was visited by the authorities who said they had an anonymous tip that he had shot an endangered kind of species of eagles.

Well, how anyone could have seen him do that in that very isolated ranch, even with binoculars, because it was miles from anyplace, is ridiculous. So you have to question in a lot of these things whether the anonymous tips are really tips.

Of course, there was no evidence that he had done such a thing and he had not done it. They seized his pick up. On the way back to town miles from nowhere they passed his wife and daughter coming back from town. The seized the family car, left the two women almost hysterical at the side of the road. They didn’t know what was happening when these men stopped them with guns drawn and seized the vehicle.

Now west Texas ranchers are facing a concerted move to have their properties taken from them and one way or another, sooner or later, the apparently intend to confiscate it. But much more common and, of course, the IRS is doing this sort of thing, seizures to collect what it claims is owed it. Much more common is a seizure by the drug enforcement people on the federal, state, county and local levels.

Early in October a very wealthy, a multimillionaire inhabitant of Malibu was shot. His ranch was desired by one agency to extend a game refuge. Supposedly, he was marijuana on his property although none was found or had it stored in his found. None was found. They broke into the house with guns drawn. The man, very hard of hearing, an older man, came down the stairs with his gun in hand and they ordered him to drop the gun and they claim he pointed it at them and they shot and killed him.

Now this man, Donald Scott, was not a nobody. He was prominent in the Hollywood community. Clint Eastwood was a good friend of his, so something is being done by this.

By the way, Scott was partially blind. He had just had a cataract operation and could not see. At the same time a San Diego businessman, Donald Lee Carlson, was gravely wounded on another raid. Properties are being seized from coast to coast from people. Their homes, their farms, when they were not in the least guilty.

Now we were discussing in the past easy chair the election. Well, I think this is an important part of the reason why the Republican party lost, because it was under the Reagan administration that this power to seize under any circumstances was passed and it has been steadily expanded so that it has been the Republican party that has been guilty in this respect. Moreover, at present there have been hearings in Washington, DC, by Congressman John Conyers, a black, a very liberal congressman and he has been fought tooth and nail on these hearings by the justice department and the Bush administration.

Now Conyers has been intensely interested because not only are very wealthy whites having their property seized, but a great many minority peoples, especially blacks. And a great many grand parents who have taken in a grandson, say, 12 or 14 years old who has been in trouble and are now trying to help him. On the grounds that this boy has been involved in the past in drugs, they have come in, examined the house and seized it even if drugs are not on the premises and the people have lost their homes.

This points clearly to what you have said about the danger of a dictatorship. We have having it in this type of seizure. Your article in the Chalcedon Report, by the way, was Xeroxed in quantities by the California state assemblyman David Knowles and passed around to some of his colleagues. And we might get some action on the California level. And hopefully with Conyer’s work and if Clinton gives any support to Conyers, on the federal level. Bui this is a very, very grim and dangerous fact. Anonymous tips anyone who is disliked can have an anonymous call sent in to the DEA charging that person with growing marijuana or having some kind of drugs on his premises and it can mean the confiscation of their home, of their land.

[ Murray ] The... the... the... the drug war is becoming and the people involved in prosecuting it has become the American version of the KGB.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] As they operate very much the same. I am going to throw in a little levity. When you said it is dry in west Texas, the ... I know a guy in west Texas who had a pet frog that was 12 years old and didn’t know how to swim {?}.

[ Rushdoony ] Perhaps you ought to tell people about how in every major community, in ever county there are large yards of seized properties.

[ Murray ] Well, at the... the thing that always troubles me is when I see the people they are all driving around in new cars and they are not fleet cars and they say, “Well, we have to have undercover vehicles.” But it always winds up being somebody else’s car. They don’t go out and buy them. And I think they... they kind of like that. You know, and it gives them a sense of satisfaction to confiscate these vehicles, but the... the... network of information is ... the loop is closing very tightly. Computerization has linked databases at all levels of government together so that if they stop you in the street for a traffic citation now they have video displays in the patrol vehicle and they can bring up your assets, where they are located, the numbers of your bank accounts, your address. This information is available even when you call in on the 911 numbers so that they can very quickly without ... with the slightest provocation get a telephone search warrant and come to your house and they know where all the goodies are. They have made it a very efficient operation.

[ Scott ] Well the interesting part of all of this ... it takes us back 400 years. This is the sort of thing that occurred in England under Charles I and it is if the authorities didn’t like somebody that was operating a little inn with a bar, they could just come in and take the whole thing away. It was one of the causes of the English Civil War. And it isn’t just the drugs. It is the fish and game people and it is also the sheriffs and it is also the city police and the highway patrol. All they are... it isn’t suspicion of drugs alone. It could be selling liquor to Indians. It can be fraud. It can be several different offenses, because it is escalated beyond the drug scene all together. And the most amazing thing about it is that there is no charge. There is no arrest. There is no trial and there is no conviction.

I took the material from the Pittsburgh Press that you have in front of you...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And that report reviewed 25,000 government property seizures and found that 80 percent of the people who have their assets seized by the government prior to trial were never charged with any crime at all. It was ... and there was... there is a legal and a lawyer like way in which this has been accomplished. Criminal law gives the criminal certain constitutional guaranteed rights. He has a right to a lawyer. He has a right to bail. He has a right to know what the charge is and so forth. The seizures of property by the government are not under the criminal law. They are done under the civil law. And under civil law you don’t have, in the American practice, constitutionally we have rights no matter... over our property. The Fifth Amendment, for instance, guarantees us against having our property seized without due process, which means they originally meant with that, without constitutional protections. But now civil law has been separated from criminal law so that it is a separate area and you do not have the same constitutional rights in civil law in the practice of civil law or the conduct of civil law as you do in criminal law. In a civil case hearsay is accepted as evidence. Depositions can be made in which you have to bear your whole soul worse than you would in the confessional under pains of penalty and contempt and this and that and so forth.

So the property is what is called a target of the government seizure, not the individual. So they come in and they take the house, the furniture, the car, the yard and everything in it, but they leave you alone. You can go on. You can walk away. You may be a pauper. You have just been stripped of all your possessions, but the argument is that only the property was taken and you were not put in any jeopardy.

[ Rushdoony ] In some instances where parents have turned in a child who has been using drugs or dealing in drugs, their homes have been seized.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] And...

[multiple voices]

[ Scott ] ... in the home.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. This is the Fourth Amendment, buy the way.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] So it is a very vicious thing. It masquerades under the name of law. The people who are fighting it are those on the far left and on the far right. The ACLU, I am glad to say is on the right side for a change.

[ Scott ] Oh, when did they move? This has been going on for several years.

[ Rushdoony ] True. But they are now beginning to be a bit afraid, at least the ACLU in southern California.

[ Scott ] Well, some of their cousins must have been affected.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Mark?

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, a thought just escaped me that I was going to say. Go on. I will think of it.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, I feel that the major threat to our future is precisely in this sphere and I do believe this is a major reason why the Republican party was repudiated.

[ Scott ] Oh, I am not sure that most people are aware of this, because I think 60 Minutes put a program on about it.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And so did Inside Edition.

[ Scott ] But generally speaking the press has pretended it isn’t occurring.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, the Pittsburgh Press carried it and lately ...

[ Scott ] I know that. I cite that.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And a number of other newspapers {?} have done so. The Scott case in southern California, the multimillionaire has been picked up by the media and has been in the press for a month now.

[ Scott ] Well, he is a prominent man.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] He was a prominent man. He was a friend of the proper people in the film industry. And he was in a very fashionable area. Most of the people who have been the subjected to this sort of treatment have been, as you would expect, minorities, relatively poor people whom the police have suddenly discovered by accident, sometimes by design, to have a few thousand dollars in cash and they immediately assume, as the IRS assumes, that what you have in your bank deposit box was illegally obtained.

[ Murray ] This whole envy thing working in the subtle envy thing working in the media, though. On television which minorities tend to watch more than they read newspapers, you see dramatic depictions of white criminals going to jail. And it is the reverse in the newspapers.

[ Rushdoony ] You have people coming out very plainly now and saying this is not about drug seizure any longer. It is about asset seizure. Well, that is a good sign. I feel that the people are beginning to wake up to it. About 50 million people were exposed to it on just those two television programs.

[ Scott ] Well...

[ Rushdoony ] So it is beginning to be well known.

[ Scott ] Well, we go back for a minute... pardon me, Doug, to the Weimar Republic.

One of the things that occurred there was a breakdown of law and order in the streets, a rise in crime which is always a sign of a weak government. And as the crime escalated and as the political divisions within the country became more severe, as they are becoming here, we have talked earlier about culture of war, the hatred that I see and hear on the radio and television and even person ... personal contact, the hatred that liberals radiate toward anybody that has a traditional position is really frightening.

That greets that state in that Weimar Republic and private armies began to gather. And the police began to hold themselves aloof from the action. They didn't interfere because if they did bring in the wrong people before the wrong judge the judge would let them go. A Nazi sympathizer judge would let the Nazis go. A Communist sympathizer judge would let the Communists go. So the policeman had to figure out who he could arrest. And the easiest thing was not to arrest anybody, but let them fight it out.

At no time did the German people rebel. There was no real rebellion from the bottom. The German people were so conditioned to obedience and to discipline that they marched like Lenin’s... when Hitler finally resolved the argument, they marched and marched all the way to {?}. And contrary to your hope, my feeling is that the American people are so flaccid that the traditionalists will not rebel. It is the left that is doing the fighting.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, but it is some of our people, too. It is some of our people. It is a Christian Reconstructionist assemblyman in California. And it is some Christians who are helping Conyers with his work. It is black preachers and others so that we have a measure of resistance. We have had this for eight years building up and now both in the state and federal level, to repeat, there are counter measures in the works.

[ Scott ] Well, I ... I hope ... I think you are right to an extent. But it is a rather small and timid flickering of action. Just the other day I saw where 100 anti abortion protesters were hauled off to jail. And we know they are going to be very severely treated. And at the same time I don’t know how many left wing demonstrations I have read about recently and nobody seems to be hauled off to jail.

[ Rushdoony ] All that this true. I grant you that 100 percent, but I think resistance is developing and what we ought to do is to be writing to our congressmen and telling them, “Why aren’t you on John Conyer’s side?”

[ Scott ] Oh, writing a letter to a congressman. I hope it will work with a new congressman. It certainly doesn’t seem to have worked with the old ones.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, we have got a good one in this district and I think it would help to write to him and alert him not this issue.

[ Scott ] I would rather go grab him by the necktie.

[ Murray ] Didn't the Libertarians warn that the war against drugs would become a war against people? And at the time I thought that only mean the war against the people who used drugs, but I am beginning to change my opinion. I think...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] ...the war against people was much broader than what I had first assumed.

[ M Rushdoony ] I think cops tend to have a little disregard and disdain for the whole system, because they see it throwing... throwing criminals back out on the street. And I think they... they fell for this because it seemed to them a way we can get these guys and nothing is going to stand in our way. We can... we can get him where it hurts and we can confiscate their property. And I... I at least initially there was certainly no opposition to it. People thought, oh, well, that makes sense. Take what they bought with the drug money. But it has gone whole... a lot farther than that and so far I haven’t noticed too many people standing up.

[ Murray ] They are... they are really pawns in the situation, you know?

[ Scott ] I already see...

[ M Rushdoony ] But they get a lot of money from...

[multiple voices]

[ Murray ] They are... they are...

[ M Rushdoony ] ... the drug enforcement agencies, the... the local ones, they get a lot of the revenue from what they seize.

[ Murray ] Yeah, but they are being driven ahead of this broad movement of getting power. You know, the government increasing its hold of public lands, getting what it is... furthering its agenda of the acquisition of properties for the so-called propagation of wild species and protection of endangered species by confiscation of private property. And if they can’t get ... I mean, they used to buy groves of trees because they were afraid now they just have the property.

[ Scott ] Well, I see these television programs. I don’t watch them. As, believe it or not, I don’t like the exhibitions of Sadism and it all... it always upsets me. But I... I see flashes of these programs, Cops, and other programs in which they are built up like green berets. They are in camouflage uniforms. They have got heavy guns and everything else. They creep upon the house. They break the door down. They throw people down on their face and this is being flashed as though these are our heroes.

[ Murray ] Well, it is a warning. I see it as a warning, just like the weaver thing with 500 FBI agents went in to take, you know, a family and three or four people. I mean it is ludicrous.

[ Rushdoony ] No crime.

[ Murray ] But it is a warning. It is... it is an object lesson for everybody else to ... to... to take into account. It... it creates that element of fear in your mind that you are not going to get any constitutional rights should it become your turn. If you... if you happen to get what... hung up in the machinery, you are going to get ground to dust just like they were.

[ Scott ] Well, then, how we are talking about tyranny American style. It is being used and it think the leading... the leading instrument is the computer. The ... the computer has turned into the means of the lock because our bank accounts, our insurance policies, our health records, our medical records, our school records, everything has been gathered up. We all have a dossier from birth onward.

I recall when I was 21 ... I have forgotten what year that was. I would have to stop and figure it out. It is a long time ago. But I sat with a couple of my friends who were about the same age and we compared our situation and as Americans with the situation of Europeans. And we all three or four of us felt sorry and glad that we weren’t born and raised in Europe, because in Europe your record began at birth. And this is, of course, in the 30s. And followed you all through schools with the comments of each one of your teachers and your employers and evicting. So they knew all about you. You couldn’t escape your résumé so to speak. They really didn’t even have résumés in those days.

Americans could move across this country from one side to the other and if a fellow failed in some town he could move to another, change his name and start all over again and nobody would know the difference. To this day it is legal to change your name in the United States without any formal documentation if there is no intent to defraud, if you are not engaged in a criminal enterprise. But you couldn’t do that today because your dossier is there. Your employment record, your school record, if you have ever had a job. They would call you upon the computer and, bingo, there you are.

But now they are using it to treat us as though we are criminals on parole.

[ Murray ] Well, the social security number has come to symbolize the mark of the beast.

[ Scott ] Well, this is what Revelation spoke about.

[ Murray ] And they put that mark on at a very early age. What is it, as soon as your are born?

[ Scott ] Now it is.

[ Murray ] It used to be...

[ Scott ] Now it is, yes.

[ Murray ] When I was a kid it was you didn’t get one until you were 14 years old. I got a work permit when I was 14 years old and I had to get a social security card. But now it is at birth.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, you have I don’t know how long.

[ M Rushdoony ] It might be a year, six months or a year.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. You had a little time, but you have go get it for each child.

[ Murray ] Well, they don’t want to waste any numbers.

[ M Rushdoony ] You don’t have to...

[ Murray ] ... infant mortality, they don't want to waste any numbers.

[ M Rushdoony ] The way they have worked it now is you cannot take a tax deduction for a child if they don’t have a social security number. Ostensibly they said, well, there are so many broken homes, we don’t know how many parents are claiming this child as a dependent. And that is ostensibly why they required all children....

[ Scott ] I am sure that... that is a good bookkeeping reason. I am sure they are active.

[ M Rushdoony ] I am sure that is true.

[ Murray ] Well, they want to go after errant fathers who are not supporting their... Every... every excuse is a means of gaining additional control . And that all had... you know, they come up with some good ... on the surface some noble goal, but it always results in a greater depth of ... of .... of tyranny.

[ Scott ] John Adams said it a long time ago. He said, “The old trick in which every emergency is an excuse to expand authority.” Only in our case it is every problem is used as an excuse to expand authority.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. An aspect of these trials that is particularly grim, trials of people who are attempting to recover seized property was brought out by the Pittsburgh Press in the {?} case. Their property, a jet, it was seized. They had chartered... theirs was an air charter service and a drug dealer carrying money, not drugs, was seized. He had over, I believe two million in cash, 2,795,000 in cash. They seized the cash. The man {?} had no idea what the man was carrying he just booked a charter flight. Well, {?}’s plan was seized. And he still has not gained it back.

However, in the hearing a witness was produced describing {?} to a tee, the clothes he wore, his beard, the color of it, everything except, as it was subsequently brought out at that time of the flight {?} did not have a beard. So it was obviously false testimony. But it didn't shape the federal government in what they did. And this is the kind of thing that is going on. It is corrupting our whole legal system. They have admitted that they are own going back and the IRS is doing the same thing over their records to see if they can find on any technical ground a way of seizing somebody’s property, somebody who might have been in their home. Four years ago in one instance, anything to increase the take because we have a greedy and powerful federal government.

But I feel encouraged in the fact that so many are beginning to wake up to the menace and certainly the Libertarians feel they are getting a better audience than ever before now because of theses seizures and allies are coming forth from all kinds of quarters. And of the first time the media is beginning to carry something. The Pittsburgh Press was the first to deal with it. Television has now done it.

I do believe it is going to build up and I think the Conyers hearings are going to draw more attention in the days ahead.

[ Murray ] The thing that bothers me is that I don’t see any indignation or disgust over these actions, particularly in the case of this man Scott that you cited in southern California. You don’t see any indignation or disgust in the press, in editorials, nothing that I have read indicates that they think that there is anything wrong with this.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, they have had some excellent articles, news reports, ostensibly, that have called attention to a number of key things and they have had the federal and in this case the county, Los Angeles County authorities on the defensive. And they are acting as though they have no right to make the charges that they are making that to impugn the motives of law enforcement authorities is a terrible thing. But it is being done. This has created quite a ruckus in Los Angeles. The fact that from October the second to the first of November is still in the press means that something is building up.

[ Murray ] Well, eventually they would... they would hang themselves or shoot themselves in the foot by going after someone who is prominent, someone who has got the money to... to fight it, to make a lot of noise. I just wonder how many thousands of little people have been ground to dust and who will be ... whose screams of pain will be lost in the silence of no one knowing about it.

[multiple voices]

[ M Rushdoony ] You know...

[ Scott ] Pardon me. The Pittsburgh Press and that is a couple of years old. There were 25,000 of them. But I think there are some other developments that come in in this area. The Metzger case. Metzger was obviously a white supremacist or whatever and a racist and was a leader in that particular movement. And several hundred miles away from Metzger somebody committed a crime. I am rather vague on the details now, but I believe it was a murder or a beating or something of that sort. And the individual had material that Metzger had written and published and Metzger was charged with the crime with having inspired the crime by his writings and found guilty and his property was confiscated.

Now ...

[ Murray ] I wonder if they are going to do the same thing with sister {?}.

[ Scott ] Well...

[ Murray ] The rap singers.

[ Scott ] Well, they... they... they could if they were consistent they could. But what this means—and I believe this was a federal case and I believe that the decision was handed down in the federal court. The was another case of a similar nature that came up about the same time in which a printer who had printed a paper back book was arrested, put on trial for the contents of the book and fined. I don’t know any more about it than that, but I ... I... this is one of those little blips that pass your... your attention, you know. And a flag goes up and you remember it.

So what I am saying now is that not simply open and pure confiscations of people who are then stripped of their ability to protest in court successfully, but I think we can expect some intellectual tyrannies to come in. I think that conservative foundations, for instance, will... will have a harder time in the future than they had under the Republicans. And I think that newsletter writers may very well come up for particular examination. You know, this ... this is a periodic thing. Every so often the SEC wants to crack down on people who are talking about stocks and bonds without having a license or... or whatever. And people who write dissenting views of any sort, like myself, can expect, I think, to find a changed atmosphere in the days to come. And you brought up {?} and it was a good... it is a good thing. This will only be against the right and against tradition. It will not affect the left, because the left is in favor of unlimited authority to suppress all dissent.

[ Murray ] So we will have a double standard of justice.

[ Scott ] Yes. We have anyway.

[ Rushdoony ] All that is true and a lot more, but it is, I think, interesting, as I said, the TV coverage reached so great an audience. The Pittsburgh Press series of articles began in February of 91, as you said, almost two years ago.

[ Scott ] Right.

[ Rushdoony ] And it was later in the year, in August put out in this large format. It has been selling steadily to this day.

[ Scott ] Well, yes. I wrote a column ... an essay on it.

[ Rushdoony ] But before you did it was selling.

[ Scott ] Sure. And... and I... I repeated what they were selling.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. So this indicates a growing number of people are waking up to the issue.

[ Scott ] I hope so. I hope so, but, of course, to wake up to it is one thing. To do something about it is another.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, some are doing something about it.

[ Scott ] I have written about it. So I did something.

[ Rushdoony ] Douglas?

[ Scott ] I ... I ... I am not really... I am not really {?} and {?}, but I do think that {?} is... has... plays a major area here in the United States and the Christian community which saps the will to resist and to fight.

[ Rushdoony ] When I was in Pennsylvania I heard about your article. It had aroused people. Today I heard that our assemblyman, David Knowles, has reprinted it or Xeroxed it and passed it around and he is building up support to act on it. Things are beginning to happen.

[ Scott ] I wonder what he... what the state of California can do about federal statutes of that sort? Federal...

[ Rushdoony ] They can bar action as in Malibu by any county, state or....

[ Scott ] That is true. That is true...

[ Rushdoony ] ... or local authority.

[ Scott ] {?}

[ M Rushdoony ] A lot of these confiscations are by local law enforcement agencies, too.’

[ Scott ] That is true.

[ Murray ] Yes.

[ M Rushdoony ] Because most law enforcement is at the local level.

[ Scott ] Right. Well, we had better do something, because the door is almost shut.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. I agree. It is a grim situation. But I am impressed by the fighting quality of the American public.

[ Scott ] Well, all right. I have been involved in a war with the American public and I am not as impressed as you are. It seems to me that we have a long way to go to live up to the traditions of this country. In recent years they have slid...

[ Rushdoony ] They have. But I don’t think it is hopeless.

[ Scott ] Maybe somebody will hear me say this and get of their duff. Who knows?

[ Rushdoony ] Well, I think the coming year is going to be critical in this and I think people should be active in alerting their Congressman to the issue in supporting John Conyers in this matter. And I think something can be done.

I believe that this strikes so close to home and it leaves everyone vulnerable because with the lack of a trial, they anonymous tips which, as Douglas indicated, could be sheer envy or malice or hatred, everyone is now vulnerable and everyone is going to be upset.

[ Scott ] Well, I will always be amazed that somebody like Mr. Reagan’s bosom friend who was attorney general, Ed Meese, would sit there as attorney general while the RICO Act was passed.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And while these laws were passed without raising his voice under a so-called conservative administration.

[ Murray ] And that was on the first four years ,wasn’t it?

[ Scott ] Yes, it was.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] When they had a... when they had the power in the Senate.

[ Scott ] They had everything.

[ Murray ] Top stop it.

[ Rushdoony ] Worse yet conservative and Christian groups will have that man Meese as a conference speaker or will have him join their organizations and will honor him.

[ Scott ] Yes, I know.

[ Rushdoony ] And I sat next to him in the White House one evening, stated very casually that they had the power to control all the churches, but were not yet ready to do so. So too many Christians have been on the wrong side of the fence.

[ Scott ] Well, they put people ahead of principles, because they thought they had friends in the White House. They didn’t pay any attention to what the White House did.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] They put it all on a personal level and you can’t do that. Because a fellow seems like a nice man is no reason why you should let him pick your pockets.

[ Rushdoony ] When Reagan was elected conservative groups saw their income drop to 20 percent of what it had been before his election, because people assumed that the millennium had arrived and they could forget about supporting anything that was fighting Washington, DC. And as a result the Republican party did more to rid the chains on the American people than previous administrations.

[ Murray ] One of his well heeled supports switched over to Clinton, particularly people who have big real estate interests because they have a... they have a desire and an interest to see inflation pick up again.

[ Scott ] Well, of course, there is a school of thought which argues that it will not pick up, because if we debase the currency much further it means that the holders of treasury bonds will dump them, internationally speaking and our credit will be destroyed. And without international credit, then we are in the soup, because we will not have the capital to continue to operate.

What they... that school... this particular school of thought believes that prices will decline as jobs dry up, as goods begin to mount up into warehouses. They have to get rid of them somehow. Prices are declining now in many areas because rebates and... and so forth and so on is really a disguised price reduction. And the... as the S and Ls dump, as the government dumps S and L properties and the bank properties that they are going to collect in December, real estate values drop and so forth and so they don’t need the printing press. The printing press will not help them out in that situation.

[ Rushdoony ] I thought the title of the Sacramento Bee article for November the first was very revealing: “Drug War Run Amuck, question mark.” Now the Bee is the most liberal paper in California, on the far left.

[ Scott ] Well, that... that is going some. You have got the L A Times, don’t forget.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, but the Bee is dedicated to a socialistic program and has been vocal about it since the time I was able to read, if not before. Mc Clatchey was one of the most radical men in the West. The titles to the various articles—and I have one or two more at home—are revelatory. They show concern, a dismay and as a result I think we are going to get more on this issue.

[ Scott ] Well, Socialism and Autocracy go together. We have just elected a Socialist president.

[ Rushdoony ] To replace another Socialist.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Was it one of your articles where you put any time you ask the government to get rid of something you get more of it?

[ Scott ] I... I... I wish I had said it. That is a very good... a very good comment. No. I don’t... I wasn’t smart enough to say that.

[ Rushdoony ] With the economic recession, people are going to be angry. It is going to worsen in the next four years and very often people do not wake up out of their complacency with evils until they are hurting. And people are beginning to hurt. This is why whether they are Republicans or Democrats, they are not rejoicing in this recent election.

[ Scott ] It is hard to rejoice {?}

[ Murray ] Forty three percent of the vote is not exactly an overwhelming mandate.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, of course, the paper is at least one, as I recall it, that we received, hailed it as a mandate.

[ Scott ] Oh, yes. Well, they are very funny on that. When... when Reagan got 49 states they said it wasn’t a mandate.

One thing that... they are like Emerson. Consistency is a hobgoblin for a foolish mind.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] They are... they are not consistent.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, this country has endured Emerson and it can endure Clinton and survive.

[ Scott ] Well the... the people always survive. The people outlast governments. That is...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] That is... that is really... that is true.

[ Rushdoony ] And then I think there is another aspect that is the most important that we must not neglect. There is nothing apart from God and his providence and God is responsible for the judgment that is coming upon us, a shipwreck that may lead us to find the shores of divine wisdom to quote the old poet. The whole world is moving into an era of economic shipwreck and all kinds of other shipwrecks. And it is going to sweep away the old order. The Romans in the last days of Rome still could not believe, nor the emperor’s doubt that they had total power and all was going to go well. And yet it suddenly collapsed, because no one felt Rome was worthy fighting for. And all the machinery, including total terror, including torture as a routine means of collecting taxes from the people disappeared overnight, because suddenly no one felt Rome was worth saving. And we have had a generation that has ... that has lived very well and very comfortably. They are not going to take the aggravation of troubles lightly, of joblessness. They are going to be angry and hopefully when they are angry they will being to think hopefully when they are angry and disturbed and upset they will return to the faith.

The last depression did see a remarkable return to the faith and, with all the homelessness, joblessness and so on, a drop in crime. And it wasn’t until after the war and until the 60s, really, that the mentality truly changed.

I don’t think the Depression will approximate the coming collapse. I think it is going to be far worse. And I think it is going to be unprecedented and unrivaled in history since the fall of Rome. So I am hoping and emphatically praying every day that out of all of this God will bring forth an awakening and a change that will bring forth a truly godly order.

Our time is nearing an end. Would you each like to add a statement or two about the future or about the subject?

[ Scott ] Well, Howie Philips, you know, is not going to give up.

[ Rushdoony ] No, definitely not.

[ Scott ] He... he and his new party are going to continue on. They have access to six million names of people who voted against both the Democrats and the Republicans and not for Perot in the primary. And in the wake of the Goldwater defeat, you know, there were 26 million people who voted for Goldwater and those were the names that gave Richard {?} and his crowd the mail order opening to start a conservative effort. The six million that are left, if three million voted for Pat Buchanan and three million for Jerry Brown. And you have something similar to the resistance to the confiscations. This is the right and the left both expressing discontentment. Only a... a left that is expressing discontent with the left and it is an odd kind of thing. But six million people, then, could comprise a core of a new movement.

Perot is also in the act. Nobody knows who the 20 million voters are who voted for Perot except I don't think even Perot knows....

[ Rushdoony ] Well, what about those who voted for Philips? We don’t know their number, but they are substantial.

[ Scott ] About 40,000.

[ Rushdoony ] You mean in California.

[ Scott ] No, across the country.

[ Rushdoony ] Across the country?

[ Scott ] I think so.

[ Rushdoony ] Oh. Mark, Douglas, would you like to say something?

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, it occurred to me when we were discussing {?} or pictures of Genifer Flowers that accused Clinton of growing marijuana. We might be rid of him.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, maybe we can make an anonymous tip about something growing in the flowers at the White House.

[ Murray ] Well, I just...

[ Rushdoony ] I wish some comedians would make a joke of the thing. That is one of the best ways to kill something.

[ Murray ] I am going to paraphrase John F. Kennedy by saying, “Ask not what God can do for you, but ask, instead, what you can do for God’s kingdom.”

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Very good. Well, thank you and thank you all for listening and God bless you and do be in prayer for the future of our country and do what you can to help those men who are out there working to change things.

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