From the Easy Chair

Rebellion

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 144-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161CX186

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161CX186, TITLE, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 296, August the fourth, 1993.

We, Douglas Murray, Otto Scott and Mark Rushdoony and myself, will be discussing rebellion.

Rebellion is, of course, against authority. Rebellion questions the values of the past. It substitutes new values or sometimes resurrects some ancient ones in order to challenge existing authority. Rebellion is very much a mark of this century. In fact, from the French Revolution to the present rebellion has been seen as a virtue. If you doubt that, just go back to the poetry of Lord Byron, especially in his plays. He obviously comes out on the side of those who rebel, including the devil. His whole attitude is that rebellion is a mark of virtue because it challenges the status quo. It challenges the past. It challenges authority. It questions the values of a society.

As a result, we have a society today in which rebellion is like an acid eating away at institutions and yet it is taught in our contemporary education. It is a part of the progressive education of John Dewey. It has been stepped up by his successors so that we have a generation that believes that rebellion and a rebellious attitude towards parents or institutions, the state or anyone is a virtue. They actually feel that it is a proof of intelligence on their part if they rebel. This, of course, is destroying civilization.

We are seeing that work of destruction on all sides, in the arts, in literature and church and state and the schools in every institution. And the net result is we have a civilization that is in its death throes.

Douglas, would you like to comment on the subject?

[ Murray ] Well, it kind of feeds back into the previous subject of authority. We have a rebellion against authority on every level and I used to ask my father when I was a kid: What is everybody so unhappy about? The ... we have wars going on that are fostered by our leadership, envy, politics of envy, envy in class envy, economic envy, racial envy and dissention and it all seems to be fostered by our leadership. And you have to ask yourself: If these people are ... are supposedly sought power or after power to try to create a peaceful society, they seem to be working and diametrically opposed to their stated purpose. What is the point? What are they after? And, you know, the only answer that seems to float to the top is power.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] It is...

[ Rushdoony ] Sometimes it is only the power to destroy. There is a relish in that.

[ Murray ] Well, that seems to be a... a recurring theme through history and we don't seem to learn any lesson from history and, you know, either we have... we are lacking in intelligence. Something is lacking there that we can’t seem to learn from our mistakes.

[ Scott ] Well, most of our mistakes are not presented as mistakes. And also I find this ... I have always been fairly rebellious. I have never lived easily under authority. And when I was younger I really couldn't live under it hardly at all. But it didn’t take, in my case, the form of abusive language or aberrant behavior. I simply walked away. I left home when I was 15 and there was no scene. There was no great arguments. There was no bad language. There was nothing of that sort. I simply packed and left. And I quit more jobs than I can remember going on to, because they either bored me or I didn’t care for it or I didn't fit well or whatever.

And I saw around me, when I was a boy, all kinds of boys my age, little... little older and a little younger in gangs, in groups. If was never in a gang. I was never in a group ever, ever. There was no club or organization that I ever felt was better than I was. And I didn’t give a damn whether I joined them or didn’t join them. Sometimes they asked me to join and I would if I felt like it, but it didn’t mean anything to me. it didn’t buck me up. It didn’t put me down. And I dressed for... as well as I could when I was a young guy. I wore pinstripe suits when I went ashore as a seaman and I would say that I was a rebel.

Now most of the people that I would see and hear today who talk against authority are talking against traditional authority, but they obey the authority of their group and their school. They got through school. They eat dirt to get the degree. And I have seen them crawl on their bellies in the city room before the city editor. So I don’t really consider this a period of rebellion. I consider this a period of conformity. I consider most of the people of the United States Totalitarian minded. I consider the Democratic party intent upon becoming the only party that governs in this country from here on. And they have been going down that line ever since Roosevelt. And this whole country, they talk about gridlock. They mean the possibility that somebody will vote against them, because the Republicans right now don’t have enough votes to stop the Democratic program. So where is the gridlock? I mean they now say you are doing the wrong thing by not voting. Well, to vote or not to vote is part of your freedom. In my opinion you don’t have to vote if you don’t want to vote. Why should you? And why should you go along with the crowd in any event?

So we need rebels, in my opinion. And we don’t have any. We don’t have enough. When Mr. Clinton was rebelling against the Vietnam War was he taking a chance? It was perfectly safe.

[ Rushdoony ] Well...

[ Murray ] Well, you are talking... excuse me.

[ Rushdoony ] The question is: What are you rebelling against?

[ Scott ] Yes. Well, you are rebelling here in lock step.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ...against tradition. But you are not rebelling. You are part of a movement, an anti traditionalist movement.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] That is not what I would call a rebellion.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ M Rushdoony ] More of a revolution if they are just joining the... the revolution.

[ Scott ] That is right.

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, if... if authority is derivative and ultimately from God then the ultimate rebellion is to rebel against God and that is what many people do. That is what ... that is what morally are men are. They are in rebellion against God. And so the essence of... of rebellion and the essence of ... or revolution, what we see as anti Christian today is the... is the same rebellion as Adam’s. Men want to be their own God. And when men will rebel against one authority they establish another whether it is an anti war movement, a liberal movement or this movement or that movement. They bore their own autonomy. They want to do their own thing. And the rest of the world can just drop dead.

So whenever you rebel against one authority you are always claiming another authority.

[ Murray ] Let’s explore the derivative aspect. All.... in almost every case you can trace the rebellion back to rebellion against God. Rebellion against parents is rebellion against God. Rebellion against legally constituted authority is rebellion against God. Every... everything goes back to the one root cause. It is rebellion... in other words, rebellion with ... without a cause which is anarchy and there is rebellion with a cause and I think you are, Otto, you are talking about rebellion with a cause in that...

[ Scott ] Well, it always begins, I think, with rebel... rebellion begins from the top, is led from the top. The intellectual world became, you might say, fascinated with authoritarian socialism by the 1870s. That is a long time ago. That is... that is over 100 years ago. And it swept the top levels here and in Europe. That is when Burkhart predicted the looting of the Louvre and the destruction of all the treasures of art. Now he was an art critic and he did a marvelous job in talking about the art of the Renaissance. The art of the Renaissance was entwined with the Church.

[ Murray ] But why did this sell so well from 1870 on?

[ Scott ] Well, it didn't sell for a long time. It... it went little by little by little. His... his book you may...

[ Murray ] Yeah...

[ Scott ] Well, you mean the movement. Why did the movement sell?

[ Murray ] Why did the movement... yeah?

[ Scott ] Well, if you offer the image of new power everyone who joins expects to share in that power. New sources of power against the hereditary aristocracy of Europe in 1870. You had the individuals who were coming up who wanted to displace the... the whole mystique of the monarch began to fall. And, you know, there is always this back of the stairs business regarding the upper class that they have got to be displaced, that it is unjust that they should exist. And these... all the traditional accumulated traditions of Europe, the old families, the old dynasties, the old art, the old architecture, the old music, everything came under attack and is still under attack. Only now it has been under attack for so long that there are new authority figures that have risen.

I remember during the so-called rebellion against the Vietnam War which came right out of the academy which came right out of the press. Nobody went to jail. Remember that Carter pardoned all the draft dodgers. Nobody suffered.

[ Murray ] Jane Fonda never went to jail.

[ Scott ] This was... no, she didn’t. It was a very easy kind of rebellion to join. It was very fashionable.

[ M Rushdoony ] Ford pardoned them.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ M Rushdoony ] It was Ford.

[ Scott ] Ford, well, Carter also. Carter.

[ Murray ] Yeah, but treason, treason was virtually eliminated. I mean it was...

[multiple voices]

[ Scott ] That is right. There is no ... there is no such thing as treason.

[ Murray ] Nobody was guilty...

[ Scott ] Well, then they joined the... the... you might say the revolution is what this really was. It was a bloodless revolution, but it was a revolution. It... it went sideways. It began. It displaced the clergy in terms of brotherhood. It began... the... the freedom march, the new reconstruction under Kennedy.

[ Rushdoony ] Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter in their book of 11 years ago Roots of Radicalism called attention to the fact that the rebellion of the students was really a demand for revolution. It involved a kind of blind lock step conformity and it was not given to being honest on the issues. They cite the fact that in Berkeley the slogan was: The issue is not the issue.

In other words, whatever issue they were fighting on with the administration was not the real issue.

[ Scott ] It was a pretext.

[ Rushdoony ] It was a pretext for rebellion, a pretext for overthrowing the existing order.

[ Scott ] It is Abby Hoffman, revolution for the hell of it.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And they quote the Columbia SDS president Mark Rudd as saying, and I quote, “We manufactured the issues. The institute for defense analysis is nothing at Columbia. And the gym issue is bull. It doesn’t mean anything to anybody. I had never been to the gym site before the demonstration began. I didn’t even know how to get there,” unquote.

Now he baldly states that they manufactured the issues, because they wanted to be disruptive.

[ Rushdoony ] now what did it begin against? It began against the entrenched society. It began against the aristocracy, the nobility, the monarchies of Europe. It went against the class structure. They wanted to theoretically equalize everybody, but that is just the pretext. They really wanted to replace. I mean, before he died, Molotov said, “Stalin was a softy compared to Lenin.”

[ Murray ] Well, it... Clinton’s people got into office and it was almost a surprise to them. They didn't know what to do after they got it.

[ Scott ] Well, they didn’t expect to get it. They didn’t deserve to get it. They ... they lost most of the votes. They got it because of Perot and they didn’t have the grace to thank him for it.

[ Murray ] Well, what... does this ... is this simple rebellion thing, does this simply evolve from the lack of ... of discipline, of youth that they simply get into college and they are still arrested?

[ Scott ] They were very...

[ Murray ] A consensus of...

[ Murray ] They were very disciplined. They obeyed the professors and went out into the street. This is a revolution in lock step. This was a... this has been a drive toward a different civilization.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Rothman and Lichter who are not Christians still say, and I quote, that... and well, they say that Freud was a main spring of this. “Freud’s work was profoundly subversive of the cultural underpinnings of European Christian society, a subversiveness of which he was not unaware. There is evidence that some of the impetus for the creation of psychoanalysis lay in his hostility to Christianity. It is not without reason that Isaac Deutcher places Freud among those non Jewish Jews who so profoundly influenced the intellectual climate of Europe,” unquote.

[ Scott ] Well, let me make the point that I made before off record and that is that first the Jews rebelled against Judaism and it was after they abandoned their own religion that they began to attack the Christian religion.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Because religion...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] God was their enemy.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Not of the orthodox.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. The rebellion in its positive aspect, in its negative it is a lock step thing of real confirmitarianism as Otto said earlier. But in its positive aspect, if you can call it that, it calls for the destruction of Christianity and its replacement with radical Humanism and Socialism.

[ Scott ] And that... in order to achieve that they have to trash all the Christian centuries.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] If possible destroy all record of them.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] We need to...

[ Scott ] This... this came up in the Renaissance.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] They... Burkhart talks about one of the ... I have forgotten the name now of the mercenary soldiers during the Renaissance. But one of them had emblazoned on his crest, “Enemy of God.”

[ Murray ] We need a giant {?} mural of the devil as a hydra headed monster with Dewey and Marx and...

[ Scott ] It exists in a stained

[ Murray ] And all of these...

[ Scott ] In a stained church in... in England. The socialists put one together in the 1890s and they have got all the figures. I will dig it up for you one of these days.

Well, of course, now the origins are lost. The ... the revolution has changed the culture of the country. When Adorno said that anyone who was against abstract Expressionism was an anti Semite those days are all gone. Now you can’t criticize the avant garde. I mean, my daughter went to art school and everybody there told her not to bother with painting realistic pictures of people and scenes that... that that is old hat. Regular music is old hat.

The only thing is that the people can’t swallow it. The people remain patriotic. The people remain basically religious. This has turned out to be a great revolution of the educated classes.

[ Murray ] Well, sensible people don’t buy it either.

[ Scott ] That is right.

[ Murray ] That is why the NEA has to extort money from the federal government to finance that trash.

[ Scott ] That is right. That is right. I mean that is... it is... it is almost condemning your children to send them to the university.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Rothman and Lichter also cite the fact that the hope of these radicals and rebels is that {?} will be proven true. So they were very pro {?}.

[ Scott ] Isn't that ridiculous?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Because they could not accept the fact that there were unchangeable aspects of human nature that only God could change by conversion.

[ Scott ] Well, now they think that genetic manipulation can take care of it.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. They are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into such research because the goal, like our space work, is the triumph of Humanism.

[ Scott ] Don’t you think that ... that the question has already come up. That this foolish argument that one genetic element is responsible for homosexuality. The next question that came in the minute that was publicized by people who believe anything if it is called scientific, was whether or not prenatal examination would disclose the possession of such a gene and whether it would increase abortions.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, some years ago when we were in southern California someone took a ... an in house mimeographed paper that went along... around among the NASA people and it was very revealing. This was before the first space shot and what it said was, very clearly, they expected to disprove Christianity.

[ Scott ] Not plan on getting angels up there.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, I guess so, but...

[ Scott ] The Soviets commented on that one...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... when we first went up, you know. Said there is no angels.

[ Rushdoony ] Well...

[ Scott ] Of course, they wouldn’t be able to see one if there was one.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, this mimeographed paper, which I have lost in the moves since then, was very open about it, not trying to belligerent, just as a matter of fact. They believed that they could move people beyond Christianity with what they were doing and that this, they stated, was one of the goals of NASA.

[ Murray ] Well, some of the... some of the astronauts achieved conversion as a result of their experience in space.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, but that hasn’t pleased anybody in NASA and they haven’t gotten brownie points for that.

[ Murray ] You don’t hear about them anymore. They are considered as aberrant individuals.

[ Scott ] Well, that is... that brings up another point on the... on the success of the revolution so far has been to practically sweep Christian spokesmen and Christians, as such, off the public stage, the public stage being the media and the films and so forth. Films, of course, go further than just portray them as bullies, sadists, et cetera.

But the ... in the press Christianity appears only in... in brief, you might say, on Saturday which is interesting, not on Sunday and never on Monday and practically nothing that the Christian churches or people do is reported. But there is only one church as far as the Chronicle and Examiner in San Francisco is concerned and that is the Baptist Memorial Church. That is a black church.

[ Rushdoony ] {?}

[ Scott ] It is the only...

[ Rushdoony ] Yeah.

[ Scott ] It is the only one in San Francisco.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, which is Marxist.

[ Scott ] Yes. And all the rest of the churches remain unreported totally, completely. They don’t... there is ... there is just nothing there. And, of course, if you... if you push against a journalist today and accuse them of bias, they are very surprised. There is no bias involved. They think it is automatic that you don’t deserve attention, because you have ... you represent bigotry at large.

[ Murray ] Oh, they also have the attitude that they have to ... they have to be the guardians of the separation between church and state because they see themselves as part of the state.

[ Scott ] They are part of the state. They are part of the government. They are the cutting edge of officialdom. They are the first to call for more law and the first to call for more rules and the first to consider themselves rebels while they make sure that nobody in the city room disagrees. It is like the black caucus. There are 30 odd members of the black caucus. There is one black Republican member. They won’t allow him to sit in their meetings because he doesn’t agree with them. There is 38 against one. They allow him to attend their meetings for the first 30 minutes only. This is a black caucus which argues for the rights of minorities, their own minority has no right.

Now what do... this has not be rebellion in the old sense of the word. This is an effort to increase the authority of the government as long as it goes in a certain line.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, it is a rebellion against the past. It is a rebellion against God. It is a rebellion against anything that will militate against them. You were discussing this morning this black senator, the woman from Illinois.

[ Scott ] Oh, yes.

[ Rushdoony ] I forget her name.

[ Scott ] Mosley something.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes... who felt that Senator Hatch had no right to refer to the Dred Scott decision that no one had the right to use the confederate flag. In other words, the past has to be rewritten as you pointed out to suit her.

[ Scott ] That is right.

[ Rushdoony ] And this is increasingly a prevalent attitude. A rebellion against reality. They don’t like reality the way it is. And this is why we have as the supposedly most important development of the day and of the commanding fact of the future, this whole virtual reality bit whereby they are going to create a new reality for people and very shortly it is going to be on TV and a couple of places, one of them in Florida, on cable. And little by little it will take over and I believe her name is Joyce Robertson writing in {?} a new journal which is dedicated to this virtual reality is the punk rock people are going to use it saying that it will enable them to abolish Christianity, because with virtual reality, they will be able to rewrite the past, recreate people from the past, take someone like John Wayne and have him to films more to their taste because even though he is dead they can recreate him perfectly.

[ Murray ] Well, he has been a non person for the last 15 or 20 years. As soon as he died, well, that was...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] ...he became a non person. But I think the American TV viewing public is now being prepared for this by putting all of these obnoxious shows on like Rosanne and these... some of these kids shows and so forth. Some people will say, “Well, anything would be better than Rosanne.” So... well, watch the virtual reality. We will learn some history.

[ Rushdoony ] I think what we have to say is that the essence of a spirit of rebellion in our time, whether it be a full scale revolt or the conformitarian type of revolt which is totally subject to the spirit of the age. It is all a rebellion against reality. It begins with are rebellion against the reality of God. It comes down to the practical level whereby we are denying the reality of male and female in one rule or law after another which is a way of saying God did not know what he was doing and we know better and we say these distinctions are arbitrary. And we have people leaving any sense of reality.

When Bill Richardson was in Sacramento he called me up one day. He had had a long session with Feminists who were there in his office demanding his support of this and that and he was telling them that under no circumstances could he agree with them. I said, “Why don’t you start indulging in some humor? Why don’t you say, for example, you are going not introduce a bill that no woman can have a child until men also have children.” They had been raging, some of the women, at the humiliation and the hardship, the suffering of child birth. And he said, “Are you kidding? These people are so crazy that they would whoop with joy over such a bill.” Now that is a loss of reality. And I think we have that across the boards in the United States today in one area of life after another.

The real world no longer exists. It is the world of their imagination and that is why virtual reality is going to be so popular.

[ Scott ] Well...

[ Murray ] Science... science has now set out to prove the absurd is possible. All of these sex change things back and forth, I remember reading something recently where someone, a male who had changed to a female is going to try to conceive a child.

[ Scott ] Well...

[ Murray ] By artificial means.

[ Rushdoony ] Which is impossible.

[ Scott ] Well, they... one of the thing that impressed me when the Gulf War started was that the American people have forgotten what war means. I mean, the last war was 50 years ago. Since then there have been a few little minor skirmishes which they talk about. We invade Panama. We invade Granada, that sort of thing, but little...

[ Rushdoony ] Well, they were more than minor skirmishes, but the people were not involved in them as they were with World War II.

[ Scott ] Well, they weren’t much by World War II standards. And even after the Gulf War was over, they couldn’t quote grasp the fact that we killed 175,000 people. I mean, when you heard all the moaning and groaning about the Vietnam action, 50,000 people over a period of a dozen years and 175,000 people in a couple of weeks didn't make any impression upon the idiots in this garden of a country. They didn’t... couldn’t understand what that meant. I mean even the one... one area where 10,000 men were buried alive.

[ Murray ] They are not...

[ Scott ] That sure didn’t impress them.

[ Murray ] They are not sure.

[ Scott ] Oh, they have to have a picture.

[ Murray ] Well, we have got all of this graphic stuff during Vietnam of people getting their brains blown out on the evening television, but none of this was graphically shown about the Gulf War. Abortions are not shown graphically. Fetal tissue research is not shown graphically. It was shown graphically they would tear the White House down to the foundations.

[ Scott ] Well, then they have to have pictures. They have to have pictures. This is supposed to be an adult country of 250 million people.

[ Murray ] Well, you have got people that are conditioned to visual recognition.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. One of the things that has horrified me, a few years ago when Dorothy and I were in Tampa Joseph Mc Auliffe took us to Disney World, but said nothing before we did. And when it was over we told him how wrong we felt the whole place was, because it was a virtual reality place using the first place where it was used.

And I felt that it was highly immoral and it was then that Joseph said, “Well, I am very glad to hear you say that. I will not allow my children to come here.”

Now the shocking thing is that a great many people go there and feel that it is like a visit almost to a shrine. It is surprising how many elderly people predominantly women, because this is an area with a high percentage of women, have gone there apparently on group trips and have come back talking as though they had taken a trip to a holy place. They are so powerfully moved...

[ Scott ] I...

[ Rushdoony ] and what science can do.

[ Scott ] I sell... Oh, oh.

[ Rushdoony ] They feel.... they are... God is science. Man as the scientist.

[ Scott ] Well, I will go back to this point that I brought up before. I mean, both of you jumped on me and said because it wasn’t graphically illustrated. And I won’t accept that. I ... unless this entire country is a totally illiterate, I don’t think you have to be told and have to be shown corpse by cadaver that 175,000 deaths mean.

[ Murray ] Oh, consider...

[ Scott ] In my opinion it is a callousness.

[ Murray ] Well...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] It is a callousness.

[ Rushdoony ] I will agree to that.

[ Scott ] It is a callousness towards other people. It is an absolute lack of conscience and compassion. It isn’t ignorance.

[ Rushdoony ] If you are...

[ Scott ] It is not.

[ Rushdoony ] If you are not a Christian you are going to be calloused. You are going to be selfish and that is what we are.

[ Scott ] Well, this...

[ Rushdoony ] We have a self indulgent population.

[ Scott ] This is a country that didn't give a damn about all those people that were imprisoned and tortured in the Soviet Union.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] And it still doesn’t. They have uncovered all kinds of mass graves over there and it happens... I haven't seen a single editorial calling for the single punishment of a single criminal.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] We are still sitting here shaking hands with Gorby and the American people make me ashamed.

[ Rushdoony ] The media is. They trotted Gorbachev around paying him a few hundred thousand dollars for a lecture tour. And hardly anyone wanted to hear him and the man who headed up they project committed suicide.

[ Scott ] Really?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. But...

[ Scott ] That is news to me. I didn’t know that.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well...

[ M Rushdoony ] It was security bankrupt.

[ Scott ] What?

[ M Rushdoony ] The security costs they didn’t realize...

[ Scott ] Oh.

[ M Rushdoony ] ... that they had to pay for Gorbachev bankrupted them.

[ Scott ] Is that so?

[ M Rushdoony ] And he ended up committing suicide.

[ Scott ] So that is why he... it wasn’t... he lost his money. No, what we are talking about really what a lack of faith means. What... what a ... a lack of belief in God means is that you will suddenly lose all compassion for your fellow man.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] You... you fall below a savage...

[ Rushdoony ] That is right.

[ Scott ] ... because even a savage has a God that he fears.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, it is that ...

[ Scott ] And they don't need lessons on this. They... they know. They don’t care.

[ Rushdoony ] Well Paul says that such people have their conscience seared with a hot iron.

[ Scott ] He is absolutely right. He is absolutely right. I mean, we grew up. We grew up since World War II I have... I can count on one hand the number of sermons I have heard about the suffering of the people in the iron... behind the iron curtain.

[ Rushdoony ] What we have today is a triumph of evil in the state. We have had the horrors of things like Waco. What I find in calls that I get sometimes every week good, innocent people who are sent to prison heavily sentenced because some psychiatrist has claimed to find hidden memories of child molestation in one of their children even though the child subsequently says that is not so. That was implanted.

At the same time, actual cases where a man molests children, his own and others flagrantly, repeatedly, numerous children, is given a suspended sentence and allowed to go back to his home. The courts are on the side of evil too often.

[ Scott ] Well, this, of course, is what eventually happened to the Romans.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Their society was evil and they grew to know it. And they probably were improved by the presence of barbarians as the barbarians immigrated into the country, because the army became barbarians. The Romans became so decadent they wouldn’t fight any more. They had to have Roman soldiers, because the Romans gave up fighting. And I noticed that our armed services are beginning to reflect increasing numbers of minorities, the majority is... is... is just not being geared to fight. And decadence in the true sense. You don’t want to fight for your country. I... I remember in the post World War II years being progressively astonished at how many people were actually afraid of the Russians. I mean, you could only die once. What can a nuclear bomb do to you that a bullet in your head can’t do? I mean, what is the... what is the difference? Die... death is death.

So if ever there were elements, underground elements, I would say, this anti traditional revolution, this bloodless revolution has turned off a great many more people than it has turned on. This is something artificially created from the top and we are not Russian peasants in this country. This is a high skilled country. There is an awful lot, I think, I may be wrong, but I think there is an awful lot of rebellious tendency, rebellious attitudes growing in the population.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] People are now saying the government is never going to anything good and the government can’t do anything good and the next step is the government is no good.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] In effect. They are saying the government is no good. Well, then what happens when everyone agrees that something is no good? How long do they keep it? I mean, between the two propositions, one that the government would change the people and the other that the people will change the government, I will take the second.

[ Rushdoony ] There is an historical precedent, a very interesting one which is usually treated very badly, Savonarola.

[ Scott ] Oh, yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Savonarola faced a society, a Renaissance society that was incredibly depraved and corrupt. He came close to condemning all art, but not quite because he found art so degenerate. But the fundamental thrust of everything he did—and I am not saying that I agree with all of the other issues, some of his prophecies and that sort of thing—but the fundamental thrust that was like a thunderbolt in the Renaissance society and which occasioned the systematic hatred for him that finally brought him down was this. He said, “We have in our day raw power with no connection with morality.”

And power in a Christian society such as we pretend to be must be controlled by morality. Now that was a fundamental thrust of Savonarola. And you can read an entire book about him without getting that ever clearly stated. And that, of course, is the issue, again, today.

[ Scott ] Well, excess brings its own collapse.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] There has to be limits. If there are no limits you can’t have science. You can’t have anything. And limits upon yourself, limits upon the government, limits upon the state. At this point the states are operating without limits and I notice with dismay that our prosecutors are beginning to take this silent approach. They go all out to totally destroy the accused.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] It isn’t sufficient to give him a sentence or to give him a fine.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] They want to take...I forfeit his property. They want to make it so that he is absolutely and totally destroyed and his entire family with him. There are no limits now to prosecution or zeal.

Now that means, of course, absence of limits on one hand brings absence of limits on the other. I think we heading toward rebellion. All the elements...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... of rebellion are present.

[ Rushdoony ] And it is a rebellion that will go nowhere until it has moral, godly foundations. It will be blind destruction as that remarkable Chinese woman told me was so endemic to Chinese history, a rage, an anger, a destruction, but more of the same when it was over.

[ Scott ] China has never known a democratic or let me put it another way. It has never known a republican period.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] It has never.... it has never even come close to the republican ideal.

[ Rushdoony ] It hasn’t the moral foundations, the religious foundations to create anything. Power always prevails.

[ Murray ] I asked a man once who was... he was Chennault, General Claire Chennault with the Flying Tigers.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] This was before World War II. He was the doctor for that group. And I asked him one time why has the Chinese people lasted so long for 3000 years? It is because, he said, that they have learned to endure rather than to overcome.

They simply have learned to put up with whatever comes along. When it gets too bad they will... they will smash it, but they will not overcome. They can’t get up... rise above what it was that oppressed them.

[ Scott ] They are... that book I... I read recently about the ... the English embassy to China in the 1790s.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ...portrayed a society in which the academy had overcome the civilization. We were ruled by professors.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] They were ruled by the mandarins. And they were totally deceitful and totally false, completely, utterly and totally ruthless, but with all of the vices that one associates with the professorate, heavily infused with homosexuality, very well mannered, excellent when it came to talking and entertaining and putting up a good civilized façade with nothing, nothing in terms of morality underneath.

[ Rushdoony ] That is an interesting point, because one of the great scholars of this century was Dr. Eugen Rosenstat Heussy, a German who concluded his career here in the United States. And he felt that one of the great problems of this century was what he called the chinafication of the United States. And he said it was the work of John Dewey and the educational establishment, the chinafication of the United State so that there would be nothing but the kind of blind rage destructiveness with no capacity to change, no capacity to have any real program to advance things.

Now his hope was for a Christian future that he felt that this chinafication effected by John Dewey had to be overcome. And I thought that was an especially telling point coming from a sociologist, a professor, an historian of outstanding ability.

He, by the way, was one of the three influences on Harold J. Berman Law and Revolution. George Williams, Ernst Cantor {?} And Eugen Rosenstat Heussy.

[ Scott ] Well, I think if the Christians were to realize that political liberty began with Christianity that the rights of women began with Christianity, that the rights of the individual began with Christianity, that limits upon government began with Christianity, that the right to choose your ruler began with Christianity, that it would be possible to restore Christianity, because all the things that the anti Christians claim to bring you, Christianity had already given to the world and could give to the world again if the Christians had any idea of the background of Christianity. I mean we went into this book The Great Christian Revolution in an attempt to bring that forward. We have never mentioned it on the tapes. Really, you ought to plug your own books, Rush.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, I recommend to everybody our book written by Mark, myself, Otto, John Lofton and Martin Selbride, The Great Christian Revolution which some of you who have read it have told me has been the formative book in your view of things. So I strongly recommend it.

[ Scott ] I think if we got enough of it out we could start a new rebellion.

[ Rushdoony ] Well I think we are already doing that. I think one of the things that we must recognize and I have called attention to it in one Chalcedon Report was what Cyprian said, Saint Cyprian. In the last great persecution and he was one of those who after he had so spoken and written lost his life, became a martyr. He warned against negation. And he said, “Not demonstration, profession.” And by profession he didn’t mean words. He meant the application of the faith to every area of life and thought.

And one of the great historians of this century who wrote on the origins of the medieval world, William Carol Bark, pointed out that the foundations of western civilization and liberty were laid down by the early Christians and the Church fathers.

And I would add to his thesis precisely what Cyprian said. He did not want demonstrations, empty things.

[ Scott ] Marching in circles.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. He wanted profession, meaning showing in real life what the faith means and applying it to men and institutions.

[ Murray ] Leadership by example.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Yes.

[ Scott ] Well, the attraction always is more effective than anything else.

[ Rushdoony ] I have been working for some years on a study of Christian action, charity, education, health, welfare, over the centuries. One of these days I will finish it and perhaps by that time have the money to have it published as well, but at any rate, in the course of it I called attention to what one Swiss scholar has pointed out and recently I found an American scholar who in passing said that one of the greatest contributions of John Calvin was in the application of the faith. He created in Geneva a Christian community that ministered to ever kind of need. And that is what we need again, Christian activism in practical, positive things.

[ Scott ] Well, I would rather put it another way, that is always needs. Yes, needs will outstrip resources forever. That is an eternal truism. It is to get the other guy to behave in a Christian way and to understand that Christianity stands for this, for that, for the other thing.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] For liberty.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] We are being accused always of standing for prejudice, for limiting the liberties of other people instead of expanding the liberties of other people.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, we have only a few minutes. Are there some last comments you would like to make, Douglas?

[ Murray ] Well, I... you know, we have touched on a lot of positive points here this evening and I think we just need to get the word out better. We need better public relations. The best public relations for Christianity is Christians who lead by example. And I think that will be ... give us the most positive progress in the future.

[ Rushdoony ] Otto?

[ Scott ] No. I... I am spent.

[ Rushdoony ] I find that hard to believe. Well, thank you all for listening and God bless you all.

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