From the Easy Chair

Revolution

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 134-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161CS176

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161CS176, Revolution, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 286, March the third, 1993.

Tonight Douglas Murray, Otto Scott, Mark Rushdoony and I will be discussing the subject of revolution.

We often hear it said that revolutions mark the modern age, but that is not entirely accurate. Certainly the modern age has been a revolutionary one and the bed made of revolution has been Romanticism as more than one scholar has pointed out. However, {?} in his Essay in ... “From Under the Rubble” edited by Solzhenitsyn and in his own book on Socialism called attention to the Persian revolution of the Masachites. He is the only scholar I know who has related that to the subject of revolution. It is a subject I am very familiar with because an ancestor after whom y grandson, Mark’s son Isaac, is named was one of the first victims of the Masachites.

The Masachites advocated total revolution. They wanted total equality. They wanted also the communization of all land, of all money, of all wealth in every form and of all women. This theme has been an under current in western revolutions. The anarchists in Russia in 1917 and 18 made like demands. But basic to the Masachite movement even more than this equalitarian or communizing tendency was hatred the hatred of all excellence, the hatred of anyone who was more successful, the hatred of anyone who had succeeded when you failed.

This was made into a political faith and a religion, because it was a total perspective. And, of course, revolution ever since then has seen itself as a totalitarian faith. It means to effect everything across the board, to alter the total life of man from religion to his eating and drinking, his every habit. And in every age it has been murderous to the nth degree.

The Persians, although they overthrew the Masachites, never fully recovered from that and were overcome by the Seljuk Turks. Every group affected by a revolution has suffered a decline for a time or for protracted time as a result of it. How long the Russians will take to overcome the revolution or any of the peoples whom they conquered, we don’t know. Certainly the indications at present in central Europe are not favorable to a quick turnaround, nor are they in the Soviet Union or any of its constituent members.

Solzhenitsyn has said that one of the problems in Russia today is that the peasant has disappeared. He was destroyed. And those who are on the land today have no relationship to the peasants of old. And he land, he says, is the backbone of a nation. You cannot neglect the land without destroying a country. So he sees a bleak future.

Well, with that, Douglas, would you like to continue?

[ Murray ] It seems to me that the driving force behind revolutions is sin. You know, when somebody has got something that you want it boils down to covetousness and envy and that seems to be the driving force behind Socialism. I just can’t stand any differential whatsoever.

[ Scott ] As long as it is up.

[ Murray ] Yeah.

[ Scott ] They like what is down.

[ Murray ] Yeah.

[ Scott ] They like what is inferior.

[ Murray ] But this has been ... the fact that it is repetitive, that revolution has been repetitive since the very beginnings indicates that it has been {?}, because we keep falling into the same pit time after time after time.

[ Scott ] Well, it is from the bottom in terms of emotion and from the top in terms of approach. I think one of the most horrifying of modern examples is the {?} in Peru. They have gone through like a flame and they have murdered men, women and children. They are killing everything. They finally caught the leader and they have him in a cage and they have the cage in a very large cage and all four walls are lined with soldiers shoulder to shoulder to keep him in that cage.

[ Rushdoony ] Students at one university have appealed for his release, students in this country, because he is a great philosophical figure and political scientist.

[ Scott ] Well, they are very lucky that I am not dictator of the United States.

[ Murray ] Yeah.

[ Scott ] Because I would send them down immediately to join him in his cage, immediately, every one of them. We don’t need students like that. We don’t need people like that.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] But that is the... that is the... there is no philosophy. It is... it is... you put it terribly well when you said hatred. It is hatred of excellence. It is hatred of superiority. It is hatred of any obstacle, between the individual and total power. And the Soviet system turned out... I don’t think they planned it in every specific, but it turned out to be very interesting. Everyone who allied themselves with the Communist party in the Soviet Union got a little piece of the action all the way down from Stalin down and although he swept time and again he swept the ranks clean and started all over, I mean, he... he had a whole bunchy of secret police to check in the beginning and he killed them and then he had another bunch and he killed them and so forth, because he was insatiable. His only thought was to kill you. His only... it was ... in the end, his only pleasure was to kill you and to make you aware of the fact that he could kill you at any minute.

So there was... and he hated ... he was a little man, five foot three. And isn’t it interesting that in all the observers, in all the interviews and all the photographs and all the films and everything else they have never made that clear?

[ Rushdoony ] He always stood on something to be higher.’

[ Scott ] He stood on something. And he was photographed from below.

[ Murray ] Sitting down.

[ Scott ] Sitting down. Yes.

Revolution was a very favorite word in this country. It still is. Only no they... they don’t call it that anymore. It is... now it is environmental.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Have you noticed that in the last two administrations that they have alluded to the fact that they have created a gen... a revolution? Clinton’s crowd is claiming a revolution and Bush’s crowd claimed that they had created a revolution.

[ Scott ] Mr. Bush, Mr. Shrub.

[ Rushdoony ] Mark?

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, you mentioned the fact that revolution is based on envy and hatred. It is also necessitates destruction. You can’t have a revolution unless you destroy what you want to change so that the only alterative is what you are offering. So it has to, by necessity, be destructive.

[ Rushdoony ] We mentioned envy earlier. I think it is important to understand the roots of revolution. A very fine pastor I know, an excellent man had military training, versatile in his talents was asked by a church to become their pastor. He was told that they needed a building. They had a growing congregation, but they needed someone who could take charge of the construction. And this was one reason why they chose this man because he had some experience as a carpenter, contractor. So he went there to be paid a pittance. His wife taught school. And he took charge of the construction of a sanctuary. Then he waited for them to give him the promised pay. They did nothing. So he finally told them at a meeting of the board what he expected and said, “This is what I want. I have worked for you. I have been here for two or more years and have no pay, just expenses. Now this is what I expect to be paid. This is what you can pay.”

There was a long heated discussion back and forth in the board and about one o'clock in the morning one of the members broke out angrily and said, “If we pay a pastor that much you will be making more than I am.”

Now the man no doubt thought of himself as a good Christian, but he belonged in hell, because out of that type of temperament are revolutions made. And that kid of temperament is very prevalent.

I know that one man told me once that someone in his organization confronted him angrily and said, “What makes you think you are better than I am?” And the man said, “And what makes you think I am not?”

But people today are resentful of superiority.

[ Scott ] They always are.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. But as more than one scholar has pointed out, only Christianity has been able to temper that and make progress possible. And when the Church is weak and wimpish this prevails again. And whether it is men or women or children, superiority creates envy and resentment.

[ Scott ] Well, of course, they are not taught—as they should be as children—that to feel envy is to have an inferior reaction.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] That it marks you as inferior if you allow yourself to be envious, that you will lose everything you have got if you give way to sensations of that sort. But if you are raised without any knowledge of honor, any knowledge of justice, any knowledge of how to behave yourself, you have no self respect.

[ Murray ] Kids are being taught this in the public schools.

[ Scott ] I know. They are taught that they have a right to be envious.

[ Murray ] Yeah.

[ Scott ] And they therefore have no self respect.

[ Murray ] I saw a bumper sticker on a car today. It says, “When all else fails, cheat.” And that is a prevailing attitude among kids, a lot of kids today.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, we have a politics of envy today which is really the politics of revolution because that is what it leads to. And this is how politicians regularly campaign by appealing to the envious in men.

[ Scott ] Yes, because the rich are going to pay their fair share.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] As if there was any way that the rich didn’t pay a fair share when they are... have a progressive tax system.

[ Rushdoony ] And how many clergymen are ready to get up and say to their congregations, “God makes it clear in his law that the tax is to be same, that... for all without exception”?

[ Scott ] And percent.

[ Rushdoony ] And that justice means you do not favor the poor because they are poor or the rich because they are rich, no respect of persons. We have abandoned that.

[ Scott ] Well, the whole system ... well, honor is word that I haven’t heard for years. And so insults are not recognized in our court. You can no longer take a man to court for insulting you. The court will throw you out, unless, of course, you are a favored minority.

[ Murray ] Then it becomes a hate crime.

[ Scott ] Then it becomes a hate crime.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] But, of course, that is something else. What we are talking about here is a revolution. Revolution is, as far as I can see, is... is the desire to have power over others, break it down to its final analysis. And I remember on a troop ship seeing an officer coming down a ladder and at the same time an enlisted man was going up the same ladder. And this officer put his hand in that fellow’s face and pushed him backward rung by rung all the way down. And I thought, “Fellow, you will be lucky if you live through your next battle,” because he would be shot, a fellow like that.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, you mentioned desire to have power over others. Some years ago I read two or three monographs about Africa, intensely interesting. One by a scientist called attention to African inventiveness. Long before we had anything comparable in the western world, the Africans and sedan chairs for chiefs so that they could go up a mountainside and never tilt the sedan chair. It would always adjust so it would be always level.

And automobile manufacturers have developed a comparable thing in modern times. But the Africans have had it for a long time, but only for the chiefs.

An the scientists said, “This is what held Africa back,” because the essence of everything was power over others. And a thing was good because only you had it. Others didn’t.

[ Scott ] That was one of the principles in the Soviet Union.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] It wasn’t that the members of the party did so well. They had special stores and they had big houses and they had servants, but in effect, they didn’t live any better than the rich anywhere else. The great pleasure was the fact that nobody else had it. And this is expressed... you hear that... I used to hear it expressed, though I haven’t been around those circles for years. Anger at seeing somebody go by in a big shiny automobile, a black guy driving a big Cadillac. And I just think, what the hell is it to you. But it would annoy some just as any other possession seems to annoy certain people.

Now you don’t get any larger in your shoes if the other guy goes down. You don’t get any taller.

[ Murray ] Kind of a perverted sense of envy to gain power by depriving others.

[ Scott ] Exactly. And the revolutionary promise is always that they want power in order to do good. That is a staple. This is for your own good.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] But the power to do good has been used in this country to ... till it is pretty fragile.

I heard on Cross Fire the to other day an anti smoking fellow talking about two dollars a pack would be all right for cigarettes to protect the teenagers so that they wouldn’t be enticed into smoking and they wouldn’t be able to afford to buy cigarettes. And I thought, have you seen our teenagers that you want to protect.

[ Murray ] Yeah.

[ Rushdoony ] That is a classic line, Otto. They are not exactly a national asset, not those we see around.

[ M Rushdoony ] In fact, the more expensive it is the more desirable it is.

[ Murray ] Yea, I wonder if some of these public school educators who, you know, want more money and say that, you know, kids today are the future of this country and I say to myself, oh, boy, with the orange hair and the purple hair.

[ Scott ] Hard times coming.

[ Murray ] The... the four letter words emblazoned on their t-shirts and jackets and...

[ Scott ] Save them from cigarettes.

[ Murray ] Yeah.

[ Rushdoony ] Strange that some teachers haven’t got the message and they want protection from the teenagers. They don’t see that the teenagers need protection.

[ Scott ] The real rebel today if he is a teenager is well dressed and wearing a tie and is totally different. And this is where the rebels are going to come from. If there is ever another second revolution I the United States it will come from the orthodox.

[ Rushdoony ] Well that is an interesting point you raise about wearing a tie and all. Two, three times in recent months I have been on flights, well filled flights and I have been the only one with a coat and tie. And the only time when I do see a lot of people with coats and ties is in some flights to Washington, DC, people going there to try to get something.

[ Scott ] Well, the lawyers in the courtroom are very well dressed.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] They are not wearing dungarees and sweatshirts because they know they are not going to sway the jury.

[ Rushdoony ] Unless they are women.

Douglas, you can tell us about one woman lawyer.

[ Murray ] Oh, yeah. She was a peach. She wore these long red leather boots into court and chartreuse ... a long baggy chartreuse jacket and I don’t know where she got the clothes, but she thought this was very arty and the...s he found out over time that the juries up here that were predominantly people in their 50s and 60s and they took one look at her and she was losing case after case. And I see she just closed up her law offices downtown. And it didn’t fly.

[ Scott ] It didn't fly. And it is... it is not flying. In business firms they wear suits and they wear ties and they are shaving more.

The ... the revolutionaries usually come from the class, the professional class that has not achieved, the people that are educated beyond their capacity, you might say, in society, who feel that by virtue of their education society owes them a high position and they don’t have the ability to attain that high position through ... through merit and through accomplishment. They don’t want to wait it again. They are very impatient.’

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Colonial powers as well as missionaries did a great deal of harm in sending a lot of peoples from Asia and Africa to England or to the States for university training. And when they went back, they found the kind of life they had lived intolerable. The missionaries could go on using an outhouse, but they had to have all the modern conveniences they had seen at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard or elsewhere. And they felt that the colonial powers should give them positions commensurate with their self importance. And these were the people who became the revolutionaries.

[ Scott ] Well, it is interesting that in India, having educated these fellows at Oxford and Cambridge they went back and they began to agitate in India. Most of the people of India never saw an Englishman. They were so few.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ...that they never came in contact with them. But the people that England accepted the arguments of that small Indian elite that went to the university as the voice of India.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Now look at India. India is regressing back into the internecine racial and religious and ethnic hatreds that has marked its culture all through the centuries.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes and some are predicting that in not too many years it will disintegrate into hundreds of states.

[ Scott ] It will have to, because they cannot live together in one state.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Murray ] Well, they have proven themselves ungovernable.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] They can’t govern themselves. And that is true of some other artificial countries that have been created in this century.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. They are going to disintegrate in the next generation or so, if not sooner, but they will. And the idea that somehow the United Nations is going to prevent it and we will have a one world order is the height of insanity.

[ Scott ] Has anybody looked at the enclaves of the United Nations or listened to them?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] They took them off the air after the six day war, because there were objections to some of the speeches. And they have never put it back on again, because it is a cacophony of every bigoted point of view conceivable.

[ Rushdoony ] Earlier Mark mentioned something that marked revolution, love of destruction. And I think that is very, very important and needs to be considered for a while.

I was startled a few years ago to learn that demolition parties are becoming popular in certain areas among well to do people, that if a building is to be demolished the party goers will go there with sledge hammers and every kind of instrument imaginable and with shrieks of delight men and women will proceed to demolish things.

[ Scott ] Is that a sign of frustration?

[ Rushdoony ] I don’t know, but it is not a sign of anything good.

[ Scott ] There is an awful lot of suppressed violence in this country. There is an awful lot of frustrated people. There is a lot of anger which you can see in any highway. And I think these drive by shootings on the highway are a part of this, just unfocused anger.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, speaking of frustration and anger, maybe you remember the story which goes back to the 20s that used to be told about how if a general’s wife blew up at breakfast and berated him for not having done something he went and to the ... his job seething and took it out on his aides who took it out on the officers beneath them and it wound up going down to the lieutenants who took it out on the sergeants, who took it out on the privates. And the privates took it out on the army mules.

There was a bit of homely truth in that. And I think {?} people are not at peace with God and therefore not at peace with themselves and with one another. They are going to have a love of destruction.

We have an unprecedented amount of destruction around schools, not only on the premises but in some of the cities whereas not too many years ago and into the 50s when a realtor was trying to sell a house one of the advantages that would be pointed out was: You are close to a school. Now that is no longer an advantage, because there is so much vandalism to properties close to a school. So the love of destruction is among children. And one of the things that used to be commonplace when you and I were young, Otto, was the number of toys that were handed down. Now they don’t last.

[ Scott ] No.

[ Rushdoony ] Partly because of their construction, but partly, also, because of the destructiveness of children.

[ Scott ] Well, they are not stopped.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] Their destructiveness is not checked. The ... I think we talked about it at breakfast. The two 10 year olds that killed a two year old in Britain and the... the editorial in The Spectator was that bring back caning.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ...because the caning was the way of teaching them right and wrong. Now you can’t punish. You are not supposed to punish. Punishment, they say, is only vindictiveness and has no purpose. Well, punishment is a corrective. It is not only a corrective, but it teaches. You don’t do it again. You got hurt.

[ Murray ] Well, that is a product of the head shrinkers, too.

[ Scott ] Well the press...

[ Murray ] … the school authorities how to run their railroad. And that is where they got into trouble.

[ Scott ] Of course, this country swallowed without a gulp the most fantastic quackery from those people that is conceivable.

[ Rushdoony ] Otto, the ... it may have been in the same issue of the English Spectator or the following one, but the one article spoke about bringing back caning and the other said brig back the devil.

[ Scott ] Same thing.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Bring back a knowledge that there is evil.

[ Scott ] That is what the Russians learned. They learned God through the devil.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And it was startling coming from a rather liberal periodical that has sometimes been horrifying in what it contains.

[ Scott ] Well, it is very free, but there is a morale... a moral streak that runs through it. They haven’t abandoned the sense of justice. And also they are a great deal more outspoken than we are. They have not been able to shut the English out, although there are efforts being made in that direction, to be politically correct. They do have hate crimes over there. They have put men in jail for giving a speech listing what some of the Jamaican have done and their defense was that it was the truth. And they said if the truth creates racial dissention, it violates the law, and put them in prison. I don’t think that is just. So they are crumbling at the edges.

We have reached that point. Without stating it, they have at least had the honestly to state it, but we are at the point where if you tell the truth about the American society today you are committing a major offense. Now, of course, this is a pre revolutionary situation.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] I talked and I have written books on this. I have not written books on revolution, per se, because they don’t interest me. But I have written books on the period before revolution, on the conditions that lead to revolution, that... that wind up in revolution. The abolitionist movement.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] The period under James I before the revolution under... under his son Charles I. And the period under Robespierre before really ... well, that really got into the terror. I could say that we have all the conditions for revolution here today.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ...that have occurred in other countries at other times. The Weimar Republic is the closest parallel that we have. Germany in the 20s. They had everything. They have the pro abortionists. They had the rise of the homosexuals and lesbians. They had a psychiatry governing the treatment of the criminal in the court. They had everything that we have. They had a ... a deficit financing system, an uncertain economy. They have racial dissention and political dissention. They had unpopular minority.

[ Rushdoony ] Blue movies.

[ Scott ] It was the home of pornography.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] It was the world capital of the pornographic film. When I was a boy and... and we were in Rio that soft porn movies all came from Germany. And I used to wonder what sort of people are the Germans? Now the world capital is Los Angeles.

[ Murray ] I am beginning to think that this... this repeated stupidity is some kind of a disease that keeps coming back like small pox. You know, you...

[ Scott ] Well...

[ Murray ] You whip it for a while and then it... you think it is gone and then it comes back.

[ Scott ] One of the reasons that we are repeating the errors of the Weimar Republic is that we refuse to ... we refuse to admit them. They have never been analyzed ...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Or they have never been admitted. The fate of the victims has overshadowed the events that led to the victimization.

[ Murray ] {?}

[ Rushdoony ] And we have... we have lionized those who are a part of it like Marlene Dietrich.

[ Scott ] Well, there was Billy Wilder who made movies six months of the year in Los Angeles and six months of the year in Berlin and was making movies just a few years ago here. Some like it hot, tranvestism. Never... he never straightened up.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, we have a growing revolutionary movement the world over that is threatening every society. The only effective protest against it, thus far, is the Islamic fundamentalism which is, unhappily, the wrong religion and a sterile movement.

[ Scott ] True. But what we are talking about is a civilization regression.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Germany was only Germany. France was only France. But we are the leader of the West, the largest, the richest. Everybody imitates us. When Spain was leading the West, everybody wore those dark clothes and the rough and imitated the Spanish formality and everything else. The leading country always sets the cultural tone. Look at the cultural tone we are setting. The worst of our culture is being exported via the film, the radio and so forth and the press. We really have a terrible press. And yet there is more in intellect and there is more knowledge here than anywhere else.

Somebody was talking to me about Clinton and his ridiculousness, his... his imitation plan, as this plan which Perot says he is trying to sell us an automobile by the parts only. We would rather buy a whole car.

And I said, “Yes, it is true.” But never before have we had so many who knew better. When Roosevelt was peddling his nonsense we weren’t as well informed as we are today. We didn’t know as much. Now there is a great many of very well informed people in this country and I think there is enough to overcome Mr. Clinton.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, I think we will know a great deal more about what is going to happen by the end of the 90s if it hasn’t happened.

[ Scott ] Well, we will ... let’s hope we get through the 90s.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, most of our listeners will, but…

[ Scott ] Well, I am not sure that we will.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Given our age, I would like to stick around and see how the story comes out. But that is in God’s hands. It is certainly a dramatic story. There is on way of doing what some people do, turning to the last page of the book to see how it comes out.

Of course, the Bible tells you how it will, but I want the details.

[ Scott ] The devil is in the details is what Thoreau said.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Revolution today is eroding the whole of the civilized world, because it is perusing the course that, oh, the great Frenchman who wrote on America...

[ Murray ] De Tocqueville.

[ Scott ] De Tocqueville.

[ Rushdoony ] De Tocqueville who said that the doctrine of equality would triumph over every other idea and destroy civilization. And at present Count Erich von Kunelt Ledeen is revising his book of about 50 years ago, 40 to 50 years ago on equality. He plans to bring it up to date and to develop that same thesis more fully that equalitarianism will destroy everything before it, every culture, every kind of art, every kind of science, every kind of superiority. It will level all things with a mass destruction if it is not arrested.

Well, when a fellow says I am as good as you are, he is really admitting that he isn’t. Nobody else would ever think of saying a thing like that.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And if you make that idea better known, you do a lot to stop a lot of nonsense.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Kunelt Ledeen is, of course, a superior man, of the kind that is not as common today in his uncompromising adherence to Christendom and Dorothy and I have known him for some years and he called and we chatted for an hour when he was last in San Francisco. But he represents character that is not common. Here he is, I believe, 84. He lectured this past year at the University of Yemen and when he called me he had just been working on his Arabic, because he plans to be able to converse with them freely in Arabic when he goes back. The lectures will be in English—that is part of the stipulation apparently—but at 84 to think of mastering as difficult a language as Arabic, that is marvelous. And it isn’t common.

I was able, until my father was no longer able to read because of his glaucoma, to pass on very serious books to him and he was eager to read them. That intellectual openness and eagerness, curiosity is now going with a drive to equality.

[ Scott ] Well, I won’t feel quite that bad. I keep finding some awfully good works that are appearing. I don’t think the world is going to die with us, Rush. It think that it will...

[ Rushdoony ] No. I believe it is going to have a revival. But in the process it is killing a great many things.

[ Scott ] Well... There is a lot of things coming up also.

Some of the things that ... that you yourself like very much, the expanding home school movement and all other kinds of things. The very fact that Chalcedon is here at the end of 25 years and more influence than it had 25 years ago goes against what you just said.

[ Rushdoony ] True. I think out of desperation, more and more will turn to us. I am happy to report that the European states in a congress will hear on the... a lecture on the privatization of welfare from one of our number, that yesterday the member of a state legislature called with a similar request because out of desperation that legislature and a liberal committee head, ready to find some solution, because Welfarism is destroying the monetary foundation of modern state.

So they are, out of desperation, beginning to show a willingness to consider some other alternatives.

[ Scott ] And the crisis will bring new solutions also.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Yes.

[ Scott ] You know when... when the horse doesn’t run anymore, well, then, something has to be done.

[ Rushdoony ] Douglas, did you want to say something?

[ Murray ] Well, you know, I keep going back to the same thing that there are an awful lot of frustrated people out there and they want practicals, you know, a practical way to go. You know, you back them into a corner with all this doom and gloom and everybody is, you know, ready to jump off a cliff. What... what can we offer people in the way of a practical solution for the individual to keep from becoming desperate?

[ Rushdoony ] That is a very important point, because you are so right. There are a lot of people out there of amazing talent. If we could start a college tomorrow I could bring in brilliant men who are unable to find a place or are put down in some kind of teaching position where they are not teaching what they can teach, just have some left over classes that nobody else wants. If the money were available, a great deal could be done to give a voice to many, many remarkable men. But, of course, the money is not there. I am going down hill because I have got more work than I can cope with. We need a full time administrator. I can’t get to the writing I would like to do because I am doing so much with the telephone and with lawyers and all kinds of details dealing with the accountants and odds and ends. And I think that goes back to the Christian community. They are going to get what they pay for. And they are going to get hell if they are not going to pay for something better.

Mark, would you like to add something?

Ok, Otto?

[ Scott ] Well, are we still on revolution?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] It is interesting that in the end, of course, it brings a great craving for order. And I think there is a great craving for order in this country today. Underneath the surface everyone that I know is really sick and tired of the unsafe streets, the uncertain future that we confront, the fact that you have to pick up the paper and look into it to find out what a dollar is worth. It changes from day to day. If you don’t have a stable unit of currency, it is impossible to have a stable economy.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] You don’t have to be Albert Einstein to figure that out. We cannot live on this paper money forever. We cannot live by this nonsense that is emanating from Congress and the White House forever. I think Perot put it very well when he said, “If this man is going to add 30 million people to the health rolls and reduce the cost of health overall, he is really remarkable.” And I read in the paper where he said, “What we are watching now is a steep learning curve on the part of certain PhDs who have never held a job or created one.”

[ Rushdoony ] Well, you know what Clinton plans to do after he accomplishes those things? Walk on water.

[ Scott ] He is going to score the circle, I think.

[ Rushdoony ] Yeah, walk on water.

[ Scott ] He will invent a perpetual motion machine when it comes to speeches, because he is speaking around the clock.

But, so... the ingredients for reform are at hand.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And a certain amount of candor about our national situation would go a long way toward clarifying it and opening up the path. I mean, Howie Philips keeps talking to people across the country. He is apparently on the road 24 hours a day. The tax payer’s party has... he has not lost his enthusiasm or his energy. He is 50 years old. He said he is...

[ Rushdoony ] He is a young man.

[ Scott ] He is a young man and he is going to continue this for the rest of his life.

[ Rushdoony ] Well that is going to be a major blessing to the country.

[ Scott ] And he has behind him all sorts of Christian support.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And he needs more, because he has taken a Christian position. And I think the idea in the first place of his party was that an intellectual alternative to this nonsense would be set up in place for the people to have an alternative to turn to when the crunch comes. I think it is going to come. And I see no reason in the world why he will ... he will not get that following, because I recall—and so do you—the days of the 30s Depression when all kinds of figures rose up that we hadn't heard of before and all kinds of multitudes turned to them.

Do you remember Upton Sinclair in California? Huey Long, every man a king. Father Coughlin in Michigan, some little church in Michigan.

[ Rushdoony ] {?}

[ Scott ] Yes. Mr. ... Mr. Roosevelt wasn’t the only voice.’

[ Rushdoony ] And Lempke.

[ Scott ] Lempke.

[ Rushdoony ] ...for congress.

[ Scott ] He was from... from North Dakota, wasn’t it?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] I believe it so.

[ Scott ] They pop up all over the horizon and I look back at some of them had a very simple solutions. I mean, Upton Sinclair and his... every... 200 dollars a week for all the seniors was going to take care of our money problem.

[ Rushdoony ] That was Townsend.

[ Scott ] Oh, Townsend.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Dr. Townsend.

[ Scott ] Dr. Townsend.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, we have got Townsend’s plan.

[ Scott ] Yes, we did.

[ Rushdoony ] Roosevelt stole it and it is...

[ Scott ] That is right.

[ Rushdoony ] Its name is social security.

[ Scott ] That is right. So there is some rather interesting things coming up.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] In fact, revolutionary things.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, it is ironic and it tells us what has happened with all these schemes of Roosevelt and others that Townsend was going to make all the elderly and the retired rich with 200 a month.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Two hundred a month today...

[ Scott ] It is... it is...

[ Rushdoony ] ... is another thing.

[ Scott ] What is 200? Well, now it is dinner for two.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, our time is about up. So 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.