From the Easy Chair

Environmentalism

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 130-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161CQ172

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161CQ172, Environmentalism, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 282, January the fourth, 1993.

Douglas Murray, Otto Scott, Mark Rushdoony and I are now going to discuss Environmentalism.

Before we begin, I would like to point out that there are really two kinds of Environmentalism, but the two are interrelated. The first its hat kind of Environmentalism that has to do with saving the planet, the worship of the mother Gaia, the belief that... of the tree huggers that the trees are more valuable than people, that we should avoid killing animals, because they have rights and we should eat vegetables only and so on and on. It has its religious aspect now very openly in the worship of the earth goddess Gaia. Then there is the kind of Environmentalism that says that you and I are products of our environment and, to quote Carl Menninger, the very prominent psychiatrist who has done a great deal of evil in our century, as he stated, and I quote. “I suspect that all the crimes committed by all the jailed criminals do not equal in total social damage that of the crimes committed against them,” unquote.

And, of course, as far as he is concerned the major criminals in this matter are parents and especially mothers. So Menninger, a highly respected man, was particularly venomous towards everything that Christianity represents. So you have these two Environmentalisms, the one the mother earth Gaia, then the other whereby people are victims of their environment.

Now the two are related very closely in this respect. If you worship nature you then believe that man is determined by the natural world and the forces around him. So man is a product of his environment. Family and natural, political, social, he is a product. However, if you believe that God created man then man is a product of God and even more, according to the Bible, he is an image bearer of almighty God. If you believe in Environmentalism you are going to say that man is predestined by the natural world as, of course, {?} one of the leaders in this school of thought declared in his book, Man and Machine. If you believe that God is the creator then man is predestined not by nature. He is Lord over nature if he is predestined by God.

So we have a conflict between Christianity and Environmentalism. Environmentalism has declared total war against biblical faith. And the sad fact is a lot of idiots within the churches fail to realize it and they keep producing articles and booklets and books presenting a Christian version of Environmentalism.

Douglas?

[ Murray ] Well, I have come to look upon the environmental movement, really as a Trojan horse, because there is a lot of things being done in the name of Environmentalism which have much deeper ramifications such as the attack on Christianity and a lot of the... there is a lot of people who for whatever reason are simple minded or something of, you know, have bought into that movement who, you know, go for the mother Gaia thing. In fact, some ... somebody that at Christmas time after having received my Christian Christmas card sent me a greeting card with Gaia, mother Gaia on the front of it and I sent it back to them with a little note scribbled at the bottom, “Is this I a picture of your mother-in-law?”

And... but you see it in every sphere. The ... the environmentalists, for instance, recently... I have been involved in recreational mining, gold mining just as an avocational interest and the environmentalists have really honed in on destroying every use of the land by people. They want to eliminate absolutely every use of the land. You cannot set foot on a piece of ground that is either BLN property or wilderness area unless you are an approved specialist or an approved expert in some particularly field of study. And all that means to me is that the public is going to be excluded from public property.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] And, you know, you have to wonder what... what is the point? What is the ... what is the ultimate goal of these people?

[ Scott ] Well, the ultimate goal apparently is fleshed out to some extent her by Dixie Lee Ray.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ...who gave an interview to the Acton Institute for the study of religion and liberty. Interesting new group.

First of all, she was sent down by various conservative groups to cover the real conference on the environment which is supposed to set up a world order of Environmentalism and she questioned the Prime Minister of Norway who was the assistant executive for the conference and asked them if it was true that the conference resembled the agenda of the world Socialist party. And this Norwegian political woman said, “Well, yes, of course.” And the next point brought up in the interview is the role of property rights in the environmental debate. And there was an attack in Rio on the idea of people having property rights. The environmental movement does not believe that because you own a piece of land you have a right to do anything with it. So, in other words, the whole concept of ownership is not recognized by the real environmentalist. The farms are being taken away from people on the wet lands issue. I mean, if there is a couple of mud puddles on your land then it is a wet land and it can be taken away without any particular due process and so forth.

The junk science effect, which has created Environmentalism in the popular sense... first you recall the nuclear winter and now we are supposed to be ... the... the... the globe is supposed to be heating when it is not. All kids of scares about this is unsafe and that is unsafe, junk science. The press cannot be corrected. They talk about acid rain when it doesn’t exist, when it can be very easily eliminated where it does exist. All sorts of things of this nature.

What we are confronted with is an attack upon property, property rights, human rights in the guise of helping the earth. And it is typical, I guess, of Lucifer to come in the guise of helping. The environmental movement is probably the worst thing that has hit us, worse than Communism, worse than Socialism because it goes beyond.

And I will just make one more point, if I may...

[ Rushdoony ] Take your time, please.

[ Scott ] Well, mass liability. There is an article on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal. This is January the fourth, 1993. A small company, a small paint company called the Jones Blair Company which only employs about 400 people, had to pay 205,000 dollars to the EPA because it had dumped some of its chemicals, under license at a particular deposit. It got permission to do so. It paid for the permission and had permission and then it used this, whatever they call these places now. They don’t call them dumps anymore. But after they had paid that fine the individual beholden... a group of individuals claimed to have been damaged by the things that were put into that particular dump. Went to court. And the government then turned the... they included this particular paint company in the people liable.

The judge admitted that the paint company was, even though it had already settled with the government, so they had to hire a lawyer and go back into defense again. The ... as the trial proceeded, several of the companies involved... every company that had ever dumped anything into this place was sued. And the companies began to diminish in number because some of them were put into bankruptcy by the cost of defending themselves. The judge then ordered this paint company to hire what he called a liaison lawyer to deal with the litigants. The liaison lawyer told the paint company it would have to put up another 206,000 and charged them 20,000 dollars for making that recommendation. Their original lawyer was so outraged by the fact that they were back into court although they had obeyed the law, that he is now working for them gratis. However, as the case continues the 84 year old owner of the paint company said it is like wrestling with a man who has a pistol. There is no way to win. We are going to defend ourselves as log as we can, be we are all certain that we are going to be driven into bankruptcy.

Now this is just one case. There are mass liability suits all across the country under the EPA, under the superfund act which is supposed to clean up everything that every generation before us has ever done in this country. This generation is going to pay for it.

[ Rushdoony ] Moreover, both parties are guilty, both political parties in this respect. On top of that, the major target has been the small corporation. Some so small that they are just family operations, because they know that these do not have the money to put up a million dollars in their defense. And so it is a kind of blackmail, an operation shake down. And the kind of people who join in these suits are very often on the political left who feel that any form of capitalistic enterprise is evil and therefore must be the target of litigation no matter how absurd and unjust.

[ Murray ] Well, the other... there is another aspect to it. It is that they ... the government needs a scorecard.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] They have to show that they are getting something done in this area and small companies make good targets.

[ Rushdoony ] That is right.

[ Murray ] And if you had 10 companies, chemical companies, nine of them were small and one of them was DuPont, you can say, “Well, we have got a 90 percent kill ratio here.” And they can look good politically without having to go after somebody that is big enough to take care of themselves. So the... the people who prosecute these are politicians. And if they can get nine out of 10 convictions and put nine small companies under, then as far as they are concerned it is ... there is no big loss. And for the one big company, they have eliminated 90 percent of their competition and it didn’t cost them a dime. The government paid for it.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Well, Ashland Oil is a big company as manufacturing companies go. It has about eight billion dollars in annual volume. It is being sued by 800 people who all claim to have had their health injured by the operations of the refinery although the refinery has always operated within the limits of the EPA regulations.

Now these 800 people are represented by three different attorneys, two from outside the area, one from inside the area. None of the 800 people have allowed a medical examination and none of them will provide their medical history but all of them claim to have been injured and to be suffering from the actions, operations of the refinery.

The judge has now ordered the lawyers suing representing the suers, to sit down with the lawyers of the company to bring... to come to a settlement saying that a trial will be too lengthy and too expensive for the tax payers of the region. Now this fits what you just said about blackmail. The first trial... there was a trial originally held with only a few of the defendants and the jury brought tin 10.9 million in favor of the people who were suing. Then it turned out that three of the four people involved had no property. They claimed property damage and couldn’t prove any physical ailments and the supreme court of West Virginia at that time through the whole case out. But there is no guarantee when the judge says settle, it means settle, because if you then decide to go to court and go to a jury, you can imagine what the largest company in the state of Kentucky is going to fare at the hands of a blue collar jury against 800 working people.

The appeal court does not evaluate these things on the basis of the judgment. It ... it... it only passes on the correctness of the procedure of the trial. And the Supreme Court of the United States, I hate to use that word about it, has yet to do anything about these unlimited liability cases. And most of these unlimited liability cases used to be medical. Now they are turning into the social, biological.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, what you have said, Otto, makes very clear that justice has left our political and legal system.

Today the courts are politicized. They follow the intellectual fads of the day, whether environmental or anything else so that individuals and corporations are no longer capable of receiving justice if what they represent goes against the political ideology of the moment.

[ Murray ] This fellow down in Florida who was a very highly qualified expert in water fowl and he was hired by some people to improve the wild life habitat on this particular piece of land. So he drew up a plan. They had to go through a lengthy and very difficult permit process and wound up getting 26 permits and he improved this piece of land so that more water fowl were able to use it in their north path... north south fly way along the east coast. And the federal government went after him because he changed the nature of this particular wet land area. And this was after they had gotten all of the permits and had complied with all of the regulations and he is going to do, I think, six months in prison, in a federal detention center because of this. And when they interviewed the... the federal regulators it was very plain that all they were interested in, it was not that whether he had made things better or worse or what the impact on his family was going to be or anything else. It was just that they wanted to exert their power and it was just raw, naked exerting of power, that they had the power to put this guy in jail and you could see it in their eyes.

[ Scott ] But, you know, this is sort of moral pornography. The ... the basic thing about pornography is that it treats people as objects.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. That is really the basic attitude of a criminal. The criminal treats people as objects, objects that are in his way, objects that have no right to their own property, objects that you can handle and treat and do anything to and it doesn’t matter and it doesn’t object to his conscience. And what you said before, Doug, about treating people as digits, as numbers is involved here.

What... what can you say about a lawsuit that has 800 people in it? How can you even examine and take depositions from 800 people?

[ Rushdoony ] People who will not submit to a medical examination to demonstrate the validity of their claims of medical damage.

[ Scott ] That is right.

[ Murray ] It is really buying... it is like buying a lottery ticket, you know. It is an attempt to get something for nothing and in the case of this 800 people or at least some of them, it is fraud.

[ Scott ] Well, we have had examples of federal justices, district judges, federal district judges taxing people. We have a judiciary which doesn’t seem to be aware of the economic consequences of any decisions.

Now if these people put this particular veterinary out of business I have forgotten how many thousands... tens of thousands of people will be put out of work. The state of Kentucky will lose its largest tax payer and people will lose their livelihoods.

[ Murray ] You know, if any of these 800 people filed a fraudulent claim against an insurance company they would go to jail. And if they are filing a fraudulent claim against a company, you know, no... no examination, not proving their case and they can never get away with that if it was an insurance company.

[ Scott ] Well, what can you ... what can you say about it? If, for instance, maybe some people do find their breathing affected. When coal was... was being used in London to heat and provide power for the city of London its fogs were famous. There is no more fogs in London, by the way. the atmosphere is all cleaned up. They are not using coal anymore.

[ Rushdoony ] No more of the black fog.

[ Scott ] That is right. No more...

[ Rushdoony ] Just natural fog.

[ Scott ] Just natural fogs from the river. But when they were using coal I am sure there are an awful lot of people who died as a result and partly as a result. I mean, people had respiratory problems or exasperated and so forth. But you cannot create a perfect atmosphere for mankind. We cannot escape the fact that life is a test and it is ... our earth is cursed, that we have trouble that are ineradicable. They just... they change like from germs to viruses.

[ Murray ] Well, how many people would have frozen to death in London without the coal. You know, they didn’t have the North Sea oil fields at that time.

[ Scott ] That is right. That is right.

[ Murray ] It was either coal or freeze to death.

[ Scott ] That is right. That is true.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, before the discovery of coal in Britain the forests were regularly stripped in severe winters and a good deal of the woodland of Britain returned with the discovery that they could use... mine and use coal.

[ Scott ] Well, that brings up a point. I saw a program the other night on the Discovery channel which is filled with little animal things which annoy me. But I turned it on by accident this Krakatau? Do you remember the Krakatau?

[ Rushdoony ] Oh, yes.

[ Scott ] This island that just erupted and only a fragment of it is left, I think, about a third of the original island is there. The rest and all its inhabitants were inundated. There was a tidal wave 100 feet high which swept around the world and it put all kinds of people into their graves and so forth. Well, that was ... when was that? 150 years ago?

[ Rushdoony ] Something like that.

[ Scott ] Somewhere I that area.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Well, now the fragment that was remaining which was a desert, everything was stripped, everything was gone. It is teeming with birds. It has got giant vegetation and trees.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] It has got all kinds of animals and bugs and insects and everything else. It is an absolute … vibrant with life.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Within a year or two there were some plants and vegetation on Krakatau, just as after Mount Saint Helens erupted, very quickly there was a return of vegetation and of other life. And, of course, they have gone in and planted trees where the forests were destroyed.

[ M Rushdoony ] One of the areas of California with the strongest environmental safeguards and regulations is the Lake Tahoe region. And in the last century when the Virginia City mines were going full tilt they needed mining timbers. There was no timber around there. The closest source was the Lake Tahoe basin because through... for... around the entire lake they could log the trees. They clear cut the entire Tahoe basin. There are no... if you go there today it is a beautiful area, but there are no huge trees. They clear cut the entire basin. They took the... the logs down to Lake Tahoe. They could float them across the lake and then they had a railroad that could take them to the Virginia City mines. The entire area was clear cut. Today it is a tourist attraction for its beauty.

[ Scott ] Yeah.

[ Murray ] I often think that God must get frustrated at times trying to demonstrate to man that man is not I charge, you know? What do I have to do?

[ Scott ] Well, the idea that on this tiny planet we could pollute the whole atmosphere of infinity is insane, absolutely insane.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Dr. Ivan Browning said that if all the spray cans with their supposedly harmful chemicals from all over the world were taken and people pushed them and emptied them next to Mount Saint Helens it would not even remotely equal one of the moderate eruptions.

[ Murray ] It wouldn’t be measurable next to that.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Murray ] ... and eruption of that magnitude.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, it is interesting the mythology that has been created, the evil that is being done. What we do have here is not science, although it masquerades itself as science, but the fanatical political agenda of the new Marxists, because I do believe the new Marxism today is Environmentalism.

We saw something of the absurdity of the environmentalists here in this county, of course, this past year with the tremendous fire which was on the newsreels from coast and I suppose each of you had calls as I did from people wanting to know if we were being burned out. Well, of course, the fire which burned between 17 and 18,000 acres of forest land was preventable. It was caused by the fact that what once prevailed, the use of these lands for grazing by cattle was ended. Grass grew up year after year, matted and created a tremendous hazard. Brush grew up that this highly inflammable. Whereas with the cattle the brush would be destroyed and the young trees would sprout and grow much better. The cattle would not eat the pine because of the turpentine taste. Only in great extremity when nearly starving would animals touch it.

So conditions were created throughout the West by this type of environmental regulation that led to tremendous forest fires.

In Australia they had fire in the past couple of years that if it had taken place in the United States would have meant everything from Dallas, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia would have been burned. And, again, the reason was environmental pressures.

Douglas, you know a great deal about that sort of thing from your own experience.

[ Murray ] Well, I have recently hiked through the area where that fire, the old gulch fire started. And it is reassuring to see green grass is already appearing.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] And the buds have already formed on the poison oak. So, you know the ... the place is rejuvenating and strangely enough it is ... it has opened up a lot of areas, of course, and we find old cabin sites, old mining sites and cabin sites and so forth that were very interesting and found artifacts and so forth that would have just rusted and wasted away. And a friend of mine has collected some of these and taken them to the local museum.

But the... you know, there... the... the rebuilding is already started. And it is... it is in an indication that, you know, if the fire ... if we had set the fires intentionally in an effort to destroy the area, you can’t... you can’t destroy it, because the ash creates better soil and the birds come in and distribute the seed and it begins to rejuvenate I a very short period of time. So it lends credibility to the idea that, you know, even with a concerted effort, very intensive destructive effort in a particular area that it is pretty difficult to ... to destroy life for any length of time in a ...in a particular location.

[ Scott ] Well, I remember, I sailed tankers during World War II most of the time because there was less work on them a cargo vessel and I was lazy. And of course the tankers were... if they were hit they went down and they sailed by themselves. They didn't sail I convoy. The Germans would use cannon, wouldn’t waste a torpedo on a tanker.

The ... the greatest number of tankers that were knocked off... well, let’s take New York harbor. There were a lot knocked off the Galveston bar. Galveston at that time being very big and Port Arthur being the largest oil port in the country. The ships when down off New York harbor and off Port Arthur and off Houston and, of course, there were great oil spills. The oil was washed up on the shores of northern New Jersey together with part of the crew and the were over 1000 allied merchant vessels knocked out in the first year of the war. So we are not talking about small numbers. And we are not talking about small oil spills.

By the end of the war or surely I never heard anybody complaining in New Jersey about it and, of course, none of these sinkings were printed in the press because it was all classified. After the end of the war the New York Times ran in the series of editions, pages and pages and pages of the ships and the crew and so forth that went down. But it was all washed away by the ocean.

Oil spills are disbursed by natural processes. And I investigated oil spills off the coast of California at one point about 15 or 20 years ago and I found that the oil spills off California had enriched the plankton and other types of sea organisms. So the oil actually helped the ocean. The oil spill helped the water. And now an oil spill is put in headlines as though it was a massacre of the Indians or something. It is one of the craziest pieces of nonsense I have ever read in my life.

[ Murray ] Well, you know, the number of ships that ... there were a lot of ships sunk along the west coast, too, at that time. A friend of mine in the coast guard told me that even prior to the declaration war against Japan that 50 ships a night were going down off the west coast, that there was 50 S O S’s that were picked up by American military monitoring installations up and down the west coast and they could do nothing about it.

But I can remember as a kid, because I used to practically live on the beach, surf fishing and so forth. And that oil would, you know, would come in and within a day or two it would wash out to se.

Later I got interested in doing a lot of skin diving and I was amazed to find coral growing down in Monterrey Bay which is only a ... what? 100 miles south of San Francisco. I mean here is a tropical, a, very delicate tropical growth, you know, that far north. It is not even... the water is not even warm.

So it has a cleansing action. These things break up. They oxidize. They change into other forms.

[ Scott ] Alaska had a big fish run right after the...

[ Murray ] The biggest they have ever had.

[ Scott ] Exxon Valdez, the biggest they ever had. In other words, God takes care of this.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] God takes care of the whole scheme of existence.

[ Murray ] Well the environmentalists can’t stand that, because they are not in charge.

[ Scott ] They don’t want... they don’t believe it.

[ Murray ] It can really...

[ Scott ] They have undertaken the work of God.

[ Murray ] And...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, exactly.

[ Scott ] And it is... they have replaced God. They think that modern science has replaced God.

[ Murray ] It frustrates them terribly to see that go on.

[ Scott ] You know.

[ Rushdoony ] They want the state and the scientists combined to do God’s work.

[ Murray ] Well, you know, if you call ...

[ Scott ] But they don’t understand God’s work.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] That is the problem.

[ Murray ] They wouldn’t know if it if they saw it.

[ Scott ] Well, you know, remember what Dawson said. You can always tell it by the fact it is so different from the way we would do it.

[ Murray ] That is right. Yeah. Yeah. Very good.

Well, you know, if you cry wolf long enough, as the environmentalists have done with the global warming and the ozone hole and all the rest of it, you know, we have discussed all these things about the scientists in the Antarctic who told me that there is no ozone hole. We have been down there measuring it and we can’t find it. It is not happening. And, you know, if you yell wolf long enough pretty soon everybody becomes aware of the fact that it is not. ... it is not true and they begin...

[ Scott ] There is no wolf.

[ Murray ] They begin to ignore these so-called dire warnings and, you know, they will lose their ... their credibility.

[ Rushdoony ] Mark, you have been on the fire line force, fire after forest fire after forest fire year after year. Do you have something to add to the question?

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, the trees grow back. They always do. I think more interesting is some years ago when I first moved to the area I saw a picture of some of this area when they needed mining timbers. They would clear cut entire mountains around here. And you would see pictures of them with the logs loaded on these horse drawn vehicles or these old big steam tractors and the entire hill side behind them and, you know, in ... in, you know, one case I remember seeing a... a... a local land mark was amazed to see this local landmark with no vegetation around it and now it is all big oak trees and pine trees.

[ Rushdoony ] Exactly.

[ M Rushdoony ] It is all.... it has all grown back. And they made... I am sure back when they were mining it they made no effort to reforest it.

[ Scott ] No.

[ M Rushdoony ] ... or to replant the trees.

[ Scott ] No. No, not in those days.

[ M Rushdoony ] So it was relatively slow. If you replant trees they grow back twice as fast because you ... you save that early ... early period of germination by several years.

But something Otto said I think on the other side of the tape was that Environmentalism may be more serious than Communism in a way. One reason I think that might be true is that people are predisposed to believe the environmental mind, because they have been taught evolution. And Environmentalism is just a ... a... a necessary extension of evolution. Evolution says that the world and man have evolved by natural processes and that we must not allow those processes to be interrupted by man’s intelligence. The say that man has evolved too far, that man is too intelligent. Man now has evolved the ability to interfere with the environment and that man must be prevented from interfering with his environment, which is just the opposite of the dominion mandate, exactly the opposite of God’s dominion mandate. And so all at once they have completely reversed the Christian position that man is to have dominion over the creation and they have also created the rationale for an intelligentsia to tell man how to live and to force him to do it in a ... in a dictatorial method.

[ Murray ] Well, it is... it is wonderfully reassuring when I walk through the woods on a hikes to see all of the trees that survived this terrible fire, the temperatures were unreal. The heat would sear you within a thousand feet, because a friend of mine and I went hiking with was driving one of the bull dozers that was putting in the, you know, fire breaks. And he said that it ... within a thousand feet it would take the paint off the side of the bull dozer and this was a big machine, you know, that presumably could take a great deal of heat. And he said that they all came in with the... the paint scorched off the side of them. And they had to repaint them and that they took out there.

But I think it is wonderfully reassuring when you walk through the woods to see the... the thick bark, the trees that survived like the... the big cedars, the red woods. They all have very thick bark. So God has provided an insulation that keeps those trees alive. They... they couldn’t survive without it.

Now, you know, that is not just a... that is not just an ... an accident in my mind.

[ Rushdoony ] Otto, you began with the quotations from an interview with Dixie Lee Ray. I think I should call attention to the book written by Dixie Lee Ray with Lou Guzo Trashing the Planet, published by {?} Gateway in 1990 in Washington, DC. It is still available.

The goal of these environmentalists is sighed. For example, and I quote Stuart Briand writing on the whole earth catalog says, “We have wished we eco-freaks for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into the stone age where we might live like Indians in our valley with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our home made religion guilt free at last.”

Now Dixie Lee Ray also quotes Kenneth Golding, originator of the space ship earth concept. “The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state.”

Then, again, from the earth first newsletter, in line with Stuart Brand’s call for some kind of great disaster to wipe out most of the human race and enable the survivors to live built free like Indians the earth first newsletter says that we have got that disaster, AIDS. It is going to wipe out most of the human race, goody, goody. So it will leave a handful of us who believe in protecting the earth and we will do it.

So we are dealing with mad men. The whole situation is ridiculous and I trust before long sanity returns. Certainly Dixie Lee Ray’s book is a ... an important step in that direction.

[ Murray ] Well, you…

[ Rushdoony ] It was, by the way, governor of the state of Washington.

[ Murray ] Right.

[ Scott ] It is very interesting that the feminists attacked her.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] She is not a woman. If... if you disagree with the Feminist movement you are desexed.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] I know they... they will attack you on any... any pretense whatsoever.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, if you look at ... what are those two New York fellows?

[ Murray ] Gloria Alread?

[ Rushdoony ] Bella Abzug.

[ Murray ] Oh, Bella Abzug?

[ Scott ] Bella Abzug.

[ Rushdoony ] And ...

[ Scott ] Bella Abzug is... {?} Feminist.

[ Rushdoony ] Was it...

[ Murray ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, you topped me, Otto. So I won’t say what I had in mind.

[ Murray ] Well, I think that the... that, you know, the... people are already beginning to disbelieve the environmentalists because take a look in this last election. Virtually every environmental driven initiative was defeated.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] All over the country.

[ M Rushdoony ] Except Gore.

[ Murray ] Yeah.

[ Scott ] Well, I have... heard recently that a poll was taken of the people in Colorado regarding the anti faggot amendment that they voted for. And the press, the media wanted to find that ... that may Coloradans didn’t agree with it. To their horror they discovered that over 90 percent not only agree with it, but embrace it. And as far as the boycott is concerned, they say that it is all to Colorado is going to keep people like that sympathizers of that sort out of the state.

[ Murray ] Sure.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, I...

[ Scott ] Now I think that is a step in the right direction.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And I think it is a... an arrow toward the way... that is the first time that the people are beginning to react.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, it appears that immediately after that election 16 states began working towards a similar initiative and the number now may be over 20.

[ Scott ] Isn’t that interesting?

[ Rushdoony ] So that into encouraged a great many people. You hear very little of that fact and a great deal of the various film star who are anti Colorado now.

[ Scott ] I wonder if it has helped their career as much as they think.

[ Murray ] Well, they will jump on any... any band wagon. I don’t think it is going to happen.

[ M Rushdoony ] Yeah, I have heard Colorado at all...

[ Scott ] It is not going to hurt Colorado. It purified the state.

[ Murray ] Yeah. Well, you know, it has driven up property prices and native Coloradans find it very difficult to ... to buy a home, you know, first time home buyers are virtually excluded from the market there because the... the...

[ Scott ] High price.

[ Murray ] The Hollywood crowd has driven the prices beyond their reach. And most of them cannot afford to live I the town that they work in, like Vail, Colorado. They have to drive maybe 100 miles, you know. They work in jobs, you know, in restaurants and that sort of thing and they have to drive very long distances. They can’t afford to live there.

[ Scott ] I was in Aspen, Colorado five or six years ago during the season on an interview and it is like a movie set. The whole town. Really it is like a movie set. It has fancy restaurants and discos and very expensively costumed people. I wouldn’t say dressed, costumed is... is the only term for it. And you... you I feel... you... I felt like saying when does the play begin?

[ Murray ] Well, they are very fickle, you know. And they get tired of it. They will drop and they will move on. You know, it is a traveling road show.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, what they hope to do to Colorado is what they did to Arizona with Meacham and Martin Luther King’s birthday, but I don’t think it is going to work.

[ Scott ] It is not going to work. It didn't work in Arizona. The people of Arizona never rescinded that. They have a law there. The holiday, it seems, was on a certain day which Martin Luther King’s holiday fell and that occasion on some off calendar point for that state. And he ruled that it was illegal. They have never changed that rule there as far as I know.

[ M Rushdoony ] I think they may have in the last few months.

[ Scott ] Oh.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. I have heard that they had.

[ Scott ] Well, then it must have been very recent.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, these environmental bullies, I think, are going to have to retreat, but I hope the courts soon fid out that they are not in tune with the people on these issues. That is the fearful aspect. The courts are assuming that the media and the liberals constitute the United States.

I believe this is where Christians in particular have a great deal to do. They need to wake up and become relevant to our time. They need to recognize that Environmentalism is a fool’s game and the devil’s game, because it is an attack on Christianity. It is an attack on the sovereignty of God. It is a belief that man can destroy nature or we make it, which is a myth.

[ Scott ] Well ,it is the old myth that rose in the Renaissance that the... that we can control the tidies and we can control all life. And to reach... to use religion as a retreat is not proper. It is not supposed to be done. I ... I...I mean the ... the parable of the talents comes in here. You are given the knowledge and grace descends upon you and you have the faith. You are not supposed to bury it in the ground.

[ Rushdoony ] That is right.

[ Scott ] You are supposed to use it in the world.

[ Rushdoony ] And that is where 20th century Christianity has been a failure. It has been in retreat. It has surrendered one area after another to its enemies.

[ Scott ] Especially intellectual areas.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Yes. Well, this is why Chalcedon was established. And I think it is wonderful that we are making headway.... That...

[ Scott ] We are making enemies. We have...

[multiple voices]

[ Rushdoony ] Oh, yes. We are making enemies, but every day there are interesting responses. I had a call from Congress today. Congressman thoroughly delighted with the last issue. And more and more people in positions of influence were hungry for enrollment application of the faith. And they are reacting enthusiastically.

I think if God so provides we are going to do a great deal more in many more areas, because the time is right, I think. Our present world system is on its last legs. And it is only a question of will we wake up to the issues and do something about it?

That is our concern and I am happy to report it is the concern of growing number of 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.