From the Easy Chair

Contemporary Look at Biblical Economics

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 149-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161D7

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161D7, Contemporary Look at Biblical Economics, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 51, August 2, 1983.

We are going to continue our previous Easy Chair talk with John Stafford. Only this time we are going to go into a different area.

Some years ago I wrote a book titled, I believe it was 1965, a little paperback, Preparation for the Future. I dealt with the inflation that was just ahead and what was going to happen to gold and silver and more. Thousands of copies of that circulated. I may have one around, but I don’t know. But the idea of preparation for the future has always been very, very important to me from the time I was a young man. And I have often discussed it with people and we are going to discuss it with John today.

Let me just throw in something. Back in the mid to late 40s when I was in Nevada up in the Indian reservation area and isolated ranching country, I was talking about preparation for the future with a few of the men there once and one of them, a veteran cowhand said, he said, “Well, you know,” about preparation for the future he said, “A while back I was at the spring round up when we were branding calves and I wasn’t careful like I usually am and I jumped off my horse and walked a few feet away to relieve myself. Suddenly I found I was watering an angry rattler.” And he said, “You got to be prepared for the unexpected.”

I think I will let John...

[ Stafford ] Well, I don’t know much about branding calves, although my dad... I have got a picture of him with a ten gallon hat on a horse rounding up wild horses in Wyoming because my grand folks, the Olsens and Staffords homesteaded in eastern Wyoming not too far from Rusk where Jim Watt is in the early part of the century. But I think it may illustrate an important principle and that is that by following sound and particularly... financial concepts and... and... and including sound concepts from... from Scripture and God’s law and God’s Word, we can avoid the syndrome of second guessing and worrying and being blindsided by the so-called unexpected. In other words, if you are doing the right thing, again, you know, God will take care of it and has told us that in advance, so that say in the investment business by ... by entering into a particular investment position on the right principles from the beginning with the right timing, it almost doesn’t matter what happens afterwards. You will probably come out all right or possibly even do very well. So when people come up to me and say, “Oh, well, who could have known that interest rates were going to 20 percent,” or “It was totally unexpected according to all the economists that the price of oil would go up five fold,” or whatever. My answer to that is bunk. And even ... but even if you couldn’t specifically have predicted it, which many intelligent people have on... as far as many of these events are concerned. They have predicted them. It is just that nobody was listening to them at the time. But even if you couldn’t particularly predict the specific event if you had positioned yourself correctly, you would have either benefited a greatly or at least not dis benefited from what eventually did take place which surprised everybody else. And even though I am a member of the National Economists Club, I have never held myself out as an economist and I... I... I really... so I can, you know, I wouldn’t say ridicule them, but poke fun at them on occasion. And one thing that comes to mind, a couple of things that come to mind about economists and the advice that they give and the views that they have, everybody follows so closely. It is not only that if you had all the economists laid end to end you would have... they would never reach a conclusion, but then also when you read in the paper all the time the phrase, “Economists surprised.” And it seems that they are always in a perpetual state of surprise. They never seem to be in sync with the markets. They never seem to be in harmony with economic trends and they seem to be living, to refer back to our previous tape, in a world of fantasy and constant self delusion.

So I am... my instincts have always served me well and I am very glad now in the last many years because my clients have been quite fortunate in their investments that I dropped both econ 31 and econ 32 at the University of Maryland in successive semesters because within the first class period or two all I heard from the professor, the neo Keynesian professor was gobbledy goop and I feel that a person can’t intelligently and clearly express the idea that he has in mind without using a lot of jargon and so forth and so on, that I am not interested in what he has to say.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] So I learned my economics from the... and finance from the school of hard knocks, putting my own money on the line for years and years before I even had the temerity to think that I had any right to offer advice to anyone else as to what they should do with their money.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, you know, we lost a very good friend here not too long ago in the past month, as a matter of fact. He was a bank manager at the local branch of Security Bank, a classical scholar, by the way, with a degree in...

[ Stafford ] Unusual for a banker.

[ Rushdoony ] ... in classical Greek. Yes. And he was at one of our staff breakfasts just recently before he left, promoted to another bank... branch bank and he made this remark about bank economists. He said, “Bank economists can give you the most brilliant and learned reasons to explain why they are always wrong.”

[ Stafford ] Exactly. Well, that sounds like energy experts. The Wall Street Journal on the, I think, top half of the second ... of the first page of the second half of a recent article of a recent edition, the article, I think, was entitled “Energy Experts Almost Always Wrong.” And it ... and it... and it pointed out that almost all of the people who hold themselves out as energy experts or consultants are almost always wrong 85 percent of the time. And the... and, again, they are totally out of harmony with the flow of... of what this happening in the world. And I think a lot of it has to do with... with over intellectualizing. But I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they are not soundly based.

I remember, you know, from Scripture Matthew in particular where Jesus talks about building your house on a sound foundation, on a rock, versus an unsound foundation of sand. And when the storms come and beat against it, the one is washed away and the other one holds. And I think that this really goes to the heart of why these people are so consistently wrong to the point where by doing the opposite you can be a winner a vast majority of the time, because their... their thinking or lack thereof is not soundly based.

And perhaps because they don’t have a ... a theological basis for it. As I said, my workshops are entitled investment strategy from a political perspective and I found myself saying a lot of things which were true and they worked and I think from my early training in religious topics that even, you know, without knowing it subconsciously, I had some good sound reasons and foundations for giving people the advice that I was giving them, but my personal question, recently, the last two or three years has been to try to find the proper scriptural and theological foundations for the principles and advice that ... that I have been articulating in my letter and in these investment workshops and in direct dealing with my clients as a broker and investment advisor.

[ Rushdoony ] Now to get to some specifics, John. A few days ago we were at the Saint Francis Hotel where you had been attending the conference on investments. And the men there were divided between an inflationary expectation and a deflationary expectation. Do you want to comment on that specifically, because it makes all the difference in the world how a person prepares themselves?

[ Stafford ] Exactly. You have to know what word you are likely to face to be able to prepare for it. I think that to be forewarned is to be forearmed, so if you know or have a reasonable expectation that x will happen then you will prepare for x rather than y.

I am glad you asked this question, because this, of course, is a ... a major topic, a very important one in which there is quite a bit of division and even among the professionals. And maybe I could start by doing something I think is extremely important and perhaps we are having a loss by losing Senator Hiakawa of California because he apparently was the only semanticist in the United States Senate. And I think when you have legislation which is deceptive in its title, such as the tax, equity and fairness act or the fair credit reporting act or the bank secrecy act, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, we need somebody there who will fight the or will end the double speak.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] And... and new speak type of thing that is going on today. The... the outright deception.

So if you ... to... to address the this topic I think it is important to start with a proper definition and so what I would say is that contrary to what most people mean when they talk about inflation and depression and ... and inflation that we should concentrate not so much on the effects which is the increase or the decrease in the general price level, but rather on the cause which is the increase or the decrease of the total quantity of money and credit in the economy and not just this economy, but the world economy, because what is going on in terms of credit creation outside of the United States has an impact on our own markets, let’s say, the stock market, because that money pours in here and, you know, as a demand factor, let’s say, for stocks. So you have to look at it from a total world wide view. To me inflation by Noah Webster’s dictionary, any way, means increase... an excessive increase in ... well, an increase in the quantity of money and credit and if you have price inflation as a result, it means that there was an excessive creation beyond the productivity factor. And deflation is just the opposite and deflation, as a matter of fact, would not only be a reduction in the quantity of money and credit, but also would have the result of increasing the purchasing power value of whatever currency unit you are talking about depending on what country you are in.

If you are in Argentina you have seen a huge decrease in the value of the currency both internally and externally against other currencies. The same obviously with Mexico. I think just a few... a handful or two of years ago the ratio was six to one Mexican pesos to the dollar. It got as high as 180 to one recently which means that the Mexican peso has been reduced in value by a factor of 30 times. It is, you know, worth 30 times less is one way to put it. Or it only has one thirtieth of the value that it had some time ago. And many American investors who foolishly put their money down there to get a, quote, higher rate of interest, end quote, or maybe to avoid taxation or whoever knows what the reasons were, were perhaps making a higher rate of interest, but their principle was at risk and this was a very, very stupid thing to do and it reflected a lack of understanding about this inflation and deflation argument.

Something that ties in directly with that is that I think it was Will Rogers that said about bonds that I am not so much interested in the return on my money as I am the return of my money. And ... and so in an inflationary environment, if you put your money in the owed assets or in dollar denominated assets such as bonds where there is a promise to pay, that is a very foolish thing to do, because the issuer of the security is at some point in the future either going to renege on his promise to pay or will not be able to and either way it has the same effect on you. You will lose money and you will lose the purchasing power of value that you need to provide for your loved ones, your family and... and to participate in the work of the Church.

So I come down on the side of inflation being the prospect for the foreseeable future partly because there is no evidence to the contrary and I am very evidence oriented and facts... fact... fact oriented. And everything that I see, almost without exception, I guess, the only exception would be an accidental deflationary crash that, you know, might come out of the blue, but with that one exception I see all the governments of the world participating in a coordinated, deliberate policy of destroying the purchasing power value of their currency, whether it is in Britain driving down the pound to a dollar fifty recently for the purpose of stimulating exports or whether it is some other country to—I won’t name them—to pay for arms purchases or whether it is in this country for the purpose of making it easier for overly committed debtors to pay off their debt obligations so that the institutions that they borrowed from don’t go under and bring down the whole economy.

Whatever reason you might give or they might give for doing what they are doing, this is the reality of the policy and I think that, as I said in my September 81 letter, that the government of the United States will use all the anti deflationary fire power that it can to keep the economic and financial ball of wax together and if that means driving down the value of the currency the U. S. Dollar, the so-called dollar, it is really a federal reserve note which is neither federal nor reserve nor really a note because it is not a promise to pay, by a factor of 10 times, say, in the next five years where it took 50 years to do the same thing in the past, I think that they will do it because if for no other reason it is the easy way out and we were just talking in the previous session about this being the age of irresponsibility. That is the irresponsible thing to do and so therefore you can count on them to do it. The obverse of that coin is to say that you should be in gold or in gold related assets when you are facing an inflationary prospect because, again, going to the responsibility thing, being long gold or owning gold is the same as being short human nature, you know, selling short is to sell something you don’t own at a high price hoping to be able to buy it back at a lower price. And I think that being short human nature, counting on human nature to be bad or to be flawed, at least, is about the closest thing to a sure thing that the markets ever give you.

So that, unfortunately, is the prospect. I don’t like it. I don’t endorse it. I have been vigorously opposing these policies myself as a citizen, but as an investment advisor and a newsletter editor and a publisher, I have to give my clients and subscribers good sound advice based on a realistic assessment of the situation and not some fantasy world hope, an unrequited and false hope about maybe interest rates will go down or maybe bonds will be restored in market or purchasing power value. But I just can’t ... I can’t tell them something that isn’t true and the truth is that we are heavily, heavily committed the other way and I could give you a long list of reasons including specific statutes and executive orders of the president and other tools which the government now has particularly the monetary control act of 1980 to carry out this policy as I have described it.

[ Rushdoony ] How soon do you expect hyper inflation and how long would you estimate this age of inflation will continue.

[ Stafford ] Yeah, I am glad you mentioned what is the title of Hans Senhold’s book, because I think professor Senhold is one of the great men of our time. Hopefully he will be recognized as such and people will start applying the principles and ideas that he has been expounding for, oh, many, many years now at Grove City College and elsewhere.

In terms of how soon we are going to have hyper inflation, I don’t really think that that is the question. I think the question is at what stage of the hyper inflation are we already in? And I would recommend to the hearers of this tape that they get a copy. It comes in paper and costs only two bucks or so from the foundation for economic education and other such organizations, the Northwood institute, Grove City College and laizzes faire books. Fiat money, inflation and France, because we are basically doing... that was by Andrew Dixon White was the...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] The first president of Cornell University. He outlines just historical pattern of how the French {?} currency was wiped out at the time of the French Revolution before the rise of Napoleon. And we are basically following exactly that same pattern. And I believe that the last two years were just a normal cyclical temporary pause in the longer term process. How long this can go on no one knows. I don’t know. I don’t know anyone that can tell you with certainty. But there is a principle which sounds a little strange, a little crazy, but it really actually works when you are dealing with markets and that is that a trend once set in motion continues until it ends. And what that means is that you have to go with the flow, as Richard Russell says in in the Down theory letters. You have to stick with something until you see signs that it is changing and so I see no sights at this point and no prospective signs for the next few years that anything will be done to change in a radical way from an inflationary prospect to a deflationary prospect. So I would basically count on this to be the case for the foreseeable future. Now of the foreseeable future I see... I mean the next many years. I do see the possibility, based on economic studies of wholesale prices and the long wave economic cycle that we could well have a very scary recession which might even be called a depression in the late 80s which a lot of people would talk about as being deflationary. And, again, in the mid to late 90s it could well be that we could have a very scary economic decline which could, in fact, be associated with a debt collapse and actual deflation or restoration of purchasing power value of money.

But that is a long way off. I think you have to monitor these things on a day by day, week by week, year by year basis, but still have the overview. I think overview is important to have a context within which to work and then make reasonable modifications in your scenario as you go along.

[ Rushdoony ] What you are saying is that we are going to go on having inflation because both the civil governments and the people want the kind of debt living we have had.

[ Stafford ] Exactly. It is the easy way out. It... it allow the home owner to pay off his ... his home in cheaper dollars. A perfect example of this would be just to look at the statistics of the decade of 1970s. In nominal dollar terms, which everybody looks at and no one should really care about in my opinion, the average worker was getting about 10,000 dollars a year in 1970. In nominal dollar terms he was getting about 30,000 dollars in 1980. In real purchasing power terms he actually had two or three hundred dollars less at the end of the decade, 9000... well, pardon me, about 60 dollars less, 9930 some odd dollars in terms of real purchasing power. And so he actually had a decline in real income.

However, if he had bought a house for, let’s say, 30,000 dollars in 1970 and maybe he had a six percent mortgage when in 1980 the mortgage rate was 18 and the house had appreciated in nominal dollar terms to 90,000 dollars, well, at least on paper, yes, he was better off, because the effect of the government policy of destroying the purchasing power of the dollar was that he beggared his creditor neighbor. He was not paying back the creditor, the savings and loan, the bank, the mortgage company in honest dollars in... in terms of purchasing power of the same value as he received to purchase his house in the first place. And that is basically what we have been doing the last 50 years. We have been beggaring our neighbors. We have been taking, in effect, from others something of particular value today and paying them back in, say, a currency unit which is worth much less a few years down the line. And we are beginning to see many of the negative effects of this. I could talk about social security. I could talk about a number of specific areas if you wish. But that, I think, says in a phrase what the basic process has been and that is really, if you want to get down to it, it is theft. And you are the expert in that area as far as biblical law is concerned.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, in 1936 a book was published A World in Debt by Tilden. And in the course of that what Tilden said was that Roosevelt was trying to inflate the economy.

[ Stafford ] Right.

[ Rushdoony ] But it wasn’t working at the moment, because, he said, inflation can only work when people have larceny in their heart.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] And he predicted that that was going to come before very long. And, of course, when the war ended that is exactly what did happen. You had a different moral outlook and people did have larceny in their heart. And in terms of that what we can say is that when people stop having larceny in their heart inflation will end. But you have a great many people today saying, “Of course we know inflation is larceny, but let’s practice some larceny in the process.”

[ Stafford ] Exactly. They say, “Well, this is the given. This is the environment we are in. We will just take advantage of it.”

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] And hang the moral aspects of the problem. We are... we are just not interested.

[ Rushdoony ] And the result, of course, is that the whole world is going to under because everybody is going to get into the larceny game.

[ Stafford ] Exactly. Why not? I mean the people who have been on the outside looking in are going to join in and say, “Why not?”

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. So we have the foreign states who are borrowing from our banks with larceny in their hearts. Bankers have their own version of larceny in the process.

[ Stafford ] Yes. I think it was the Citi Corp officer that said, “We don't care if we never get the principle back as long as they give us these high interest...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] Interest payments.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And the people in the street have larceny in their hearts. And then they wonder why the country is falling into more and more lawlessness.

[ Stafford ] Exactly.

[ Rushdoony ] But every age of inflation has been marked by a decline in ordinary law and order.

[ Stafford ] Absolutely. Well, if you destroy the basic accounting unit of society which is the currency unit, the money, you ... it has a... a negative effect on all other values and they are all pulled down into the pit.

[ Rushdoony ] We... one could almost simplify it by saying you either take the Lord and his Word seriously or you have inflation.

[ Stafford ] That is right.

[ Rushdoony ] You are going to a pay a price for larceny in the heart.

[ Stafford ] Exactly. And it shows up in all kinds of ... of different ways. I think it leads, among other things to a .... a feeling which we touched on earlier just of taking the easy way out and I am quite concerned—this is a little bit off the topic of investments, I guess, but I think it is connected—with this problem of abortion on demand and I understand that in the District of Columbia over 600 pregnancies for thousand pregnancies are terminated by abortion.

Well, that is horrible.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] And... but it is a perfect example of taking the easy way out. And with my investment clients for a number of years and trying to explain these principles to them, I told them that yes there was a tax revolt brewing and yes proposition 13 in California and two and a half in Massachusetts and so forth were evidence that the people were getting fed up with taxation and high general price levels, but I said that this type of attitude on the part of the public would only continue until such time as the price of the average single family residence held up or continued to go up. But once it leveled off or started to go down, you would have a tremendous demand for reflation and I think that is exactly what we have had.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] And in a... even though I have been critical of the Congress and critical of the federal reserve and others, I think that they basically are responding to the wishes of the people. I remember Paul Volker was on television and quoted in the papers the other day when he went to the small town in Kentucky and they also quoted some of the merchants and the local small town merchants were all telling Volker, “Keep the money supply up because we can make inventory profits on it.”

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] We can raise prices and it is easier to cover our costs and amortize our mortgages. So I think really one of the other angles to this whole problem is that the people are... have been systematically illed and mislead by their leaders because we have few leaders who will stand up for the truth and to have a sound economy ...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] And sound financial markets and a sound society. Rather they have been pandering to the wishes of the people as expressed, for instance, in the public opinion polls.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, you mentioned abortion earlier. I think it is very, very interesting that when Rome went into an age of inflation it also went into an age of abortion.

[ Stafford ] I see.

[ Rushdoony ] And the two continued side by side until the whole thing collapsed. And, when we got rolling into inflation in the 70s also went into abortion.

[ Stafford ] Right.

[ Rushdoony ] Both have a common origin in sin, in the moral failure of man. So it wasn’t a by the way subject. They are very closely related. And you have to deal with the heart of both problems which is the moral problem of modern man.

[ Stafford ] Well, I think you are absolutely right and I have been reading your book The One and the Many to try to get a better feel for the history of the philosophies of Utopianism and so forth and Humanism and Secularism that have infected the world over the years.

There are... there is another angle to this which my professor Scott Hannigman in seminary is very big on and that is the concept of the family and the importance of the family on the fact that the family is a reflection of the trinity and the communion and in a relationship that exists there. And what he is saying is that the abortion problem is partly caused by the fact that the high inflation and the high taxes have put such economic pressure on the family that many people are inclined to use abortion as a way of ... of trying to escape from, let’s say, both parents having to take two jobs or...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] ...to escape from having to, you know, earn more money or do without other things that they would like to do with money that they do have. So it is really destructive of the family which is the central unit of society.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, of course, we were dealing in our last hour with the escape from reality. And what inflation is saying is that we don’t want to face reality. We will postpone it. We will continue inflating the currency to pay off good debts with bad money.

[ Stafford ] Right.

[ Rushdoony ] Refusing to acknowledge that there is a day of reckoning. An abortion is also a ... a flight from reality. We have a drug culture. Again, a flight from reality. Everywhere you turn you have a common problem. They want the world to be what their imagination says it should be, not the world of God and God’s law.

[ Stafford ] Absolutely. And this shows up in many different areas, specifically this problem involving social security which is, I think, should be labeled social insecurity.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] And...or social false security, because it gives people a false sense of security. I tell people. Do not rely on the representations of the government that you will be paid anything. It may well be that they will be paid something, Senator Proxmyer was quoted some time ago as saying, “What do you mean we are not going to pay off social security? We will pay off social security. The dollars we pay off won’t be necessarily worth anything, but we will pay.”

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] So maybe instead of 800 a month top maximum for a couple you will be getting 8000 a month in the year 2010, but maybe the price of bread will have escalated by 10 times to six or seven dollars a loaf. So, you know, you ally haven’t gotten ahead.

But I think it is even worse than that, because social security is basically a Ponzi scheme or to look at it another way a chain letter operation. And those who got in early, who paid in very little get the greatest reward. But the people out at the end of the geometric progression who put in a lot will get nothing because there isn’t anybody behind them to put up the wherewithal to pay them off.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] And unless there is a radical restructuring of social security, not this little pitty pattery of changes that were made as a result of the appointment of the social security commission a year or so ago, unless there are radical changes this is going to be a ... a ... a deception because people are not going to get what they think that they are entitled to which they are not, by the way, under the law. Social security does not exist but for annual appropriations of the Congress.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] If the Congress decided in any particular year not to appropriate the money that would be the end of social security, at least for that year, because there are no trust funds.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] Or if they are they are unfunded just like the military pension fund to a large degree and to a certain degree the civil service employee pension fund. So you ... you have the illusion, you know, the king has no clothes. You have the illusion of having money and security when, in fact, the opposite is true. So what I have stressed with my friends and clients for a number of years is to be as totally self reliant as possible and not to look to the government as big brother or let George do it for you, but rather do it for yourself and when you do for yourself base what you do on sound principles and as you have pointed out, Rush, and you have done so much good work in this area showing what the sound biblical principles are, say, for preparing for your retirement.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, one of the things that is necessary here is to restore the integrity of the family and its responsibility here both in the area of education and in the care of its own members. In the second volume of Institutes I call attention to two rural counties in Alabama predominantly black but with no problems about the care of needy children or anything of the sort, because, believing in the old time religion when parents die and their children are left homeless, somebody takes them in. If elderly people are left without anyone to care of them, they are taken in by someone and they become auntie and uncle in that house. And they try to avoid letting the authorities know of cases because they don’t want those people messing in.

[ Stafford ] Right.

[ Rushdoony ] Now if poor blacks in a rural counties can do that, why not the rest of us?

[ Stafford ] You know, it is really interesting you should say that. I hadn't thought about it specifically in these terms before, but here I have been in Florida, was for several years prior to coming back to Washington to serve in the administration at the interior department. And I was basically dealing with the wealthiest people in the world. I think in Boca Raton, Florida where I was in the investment business there was something like 832 millionaires just in the one town. In Palm Beach, Florida, or at least Palm Beach County, I have no idea what... you know how many millionaires the are. And it was ... I mean it was almost insane. It was insane the kind of money that was floating around. I mean, I made it a... a practice as a... as a stock broker when I started out to reduce... reduce my list of customers to only those people who had at least a minimum of a million dollar net worth. As a matter of fact, there was one, a customer that I had that just was pretty obnoxious and he had more than a net worth of a million dollars but he had a million dollars worth of securities which, you know, I could have bought and sold and made a commission off of which would have been 10,000 a year more, 20, 30 in my pocket each year. And I went to the branch manager and said, “I don’t want this account. Give it to someone else,” because the people down there, well, I call it the... in south east Florida the me, me, me, go, go, go, get, get, get mentality. And you have these poor pathetic people, really is the way I look at it. They might have a lot of material wealth and a lot of money and stocks and bonds and beautiful houses and so forth and so on. They really have nothing to live for.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] They don’t have any purpose. They are not an auntie or uncle who are part of a ... a larger family and they have responsibilities and something to do and someone to care for unless, maybe, their children visit them from New York or New Jersey or Pennsylvania on occasion and so forth and so on. They... they really have very empty lives. Many of them take to drinking or hanging around the country club or playing golf every day. Well, I mean, how many times can you play golf? Three hundred and sixty five days a year? What have you done when you have done it?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] You... you have played golf. Well, how productive is that? It is not productive at all. I think these people have deluded themselves into thinking that this is a rich life. And I was even told by a number of people that it wasn’t even so much the men, but he women that recognized this who miss the interpersonal relationships and friendships that they had up north and, you know, even though, yes, it was warmer and yes there were always various advantages to retiring in Florida that they weren’t necessarily happy. And I saw a great, a gross amount of unhappiness in the face of great material abundance. It was quite a lesson for me.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes and people have made a religion of material satisfactions and they are finding that it is a god that fails them.

[ Stafford ] Precisely. No question about it. I ... I had some of that same experience on a... on a much more limited scale. In my mid 30s I made enough through some fortunate investments to basically semi retire. And fortunately I used most of that time for learning travel and reading and doing a lot of thinking which most people, because they do have families I wasn’t blessed with children and what not in my marriage, but I did get an opportunity to ... to do that at a time when other people, you know, have mortgages and diapers and change and... and so forth and so on. So it has given me some insights, but it... one of the insights was that, really money does not buy happiness.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] That is not the way to go. It cannot buy love. And it cannot buy love, by the way, on the governmental level. We were talking about this yesterday. That where you have a third party entity like government taking by force from one group of people and handing over to another group of people for ostensibly charitable purposes—and we are defining charity, I think, from Scripture as love, well, then, if you are taking by force to give love that is forced love and so the people from whom the money is taken don’t get any satisfaction being participants in a charitable enterprise and even the recipients who are getting the goodies who... how should they even be expected to be grateful to be the recipients when they know that what they are receiving is a result of taking by force. As a matter of fact, I think it might be to their moral credit to ... to be unhappy about being such recipients because it reflects at least a twinge of conscience in there somewhere. You were talking about conscience just recently.

And so you can see this not just on a personal level, but on the... the cooperative level in the sense of the larger...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] ...organizations of society where these same principles operate.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, you know, John, one historical fact I often cite, so people may be getting tired of hearing me talk about it, the early Church had its share of problems, its share of conflicts and, of course, it was being persecuted. But one of the first things it tackled in the Roman Empire was the abortion situation. Abortion had come in. It was crude, so not everybody who was able to get an abortion successfully. So when the unwanted child was born they would, for example, in Rome, abandon it under the bridges. Elsewhere it would be a different place. And the Christians would go around to these places where they were abandoned and wait for these babies, because if they didn’t the wild dogs would devour them.

And they would take them and parcel them out to the church members. And this was one of the critical ways in which the church grew so rapidly.

[ Stafford ] I was going to say.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] That is a great way to build up your membership.

[ Rushdoony ] And can you imagine what would happen in the church today if, let us say, the pastor or his representatives would knock on the door and say, “Here is a baby for you,” and go to the next door and see them and say, “Here is a baby for you.” It would create an explosion.

But it was done routinely there, which means they had a sense of responsibility.

[ Stafford ] Right.

[ Rushdoony ] They had a concern for that life. Now beyond occasionally getting them to sign a petition about abortion you only get a minority of Catholics and Protestants who are ready to fight the ... the ... on the issue.

[ Stafford ] That is an interesting contrast because here you have a voluntary taking in of children versus what the government is doing with social security.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] With social security when it started there were 30 contributors for every recipient or beneficiary. Today the ratio is three to one. So there is ... there is only a tenth as man people contributing as there are beneficiaries and by the end of this century the first part of the next, assuming we get there, which I do, that there will be only two payers in for each taker out.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] Well, a look at that in a family way what that means is that a couple, let’s say in their 40s or maybe even 50s whose own children have been brought up and have left the nest and they have, you know, paid for in spades especially through excessive taxation and public schools and so forth and so on, will then be forced, in effect, to take into their homes if not literally at least figuratively though the social security tax, because they are still wage earners, or at least one of them is, a full fledged adult...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] ...of 65 years of age or older whom they don’t even know.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] ...who may have lots of illnesses which will be an additional strain on their budget and interfere with their lives.

So if people would only take their blinders off and see what the obvious actual consequences are going to be of the actions that they are currently taking and have taken in the past, I think that there would be a tremendous response in the form of a revolt.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] Against the way that we are going. And it is really said. Bob Liburg of Barons has pointed this out editorially many, many times that during the 30s when all of these crazy social welfare programs were being initiated and even such things as federal deposit insurance and so forth that many intelligent people pointed out at the time on the floor of the Congress sand elsewhere that this would be the natural and predictable consequence of the passage of these laws and given basic human nature being what it is and the nature of government being what it is that these would be the adverse consequences down the line and the purposes for which these programs were set up would not, in fact, be served. And yet they went ahead and did it anyway. And it almost reminds me of 1 Samuel eight where the king was called for by the people and Samuel tried to deny it and the Lord said, “No, let them have the king, but tell them what it is going to be like when they have it.”

And he outlined exactly what was going to happen that in contrast to God who is a great provider that the king would do nothing but take.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] He would take their money. He would take their first fruits of their harvest. He would take their children, their sons and send them to war. He would take their daughters and make them bakers and so forth and so on and perfumers, but he would do nothing but take. And yet what did the people do? They still demanded the king. For what reason? Just to be like everybody else.

So here we are. I mean, whenever I hear somebody say, “Oh, the United States is so backwards. We are under taxed.” Like George Will saying we are under taxed or we should be like Sweden. You know they have this wonderful welfare state where everybody is provided for. I say, “Absolute nonsense.” I mean, the people that came to this country that were driven out of the south of England by James I who is given the greatest credit, apparently for populating the colonies than any other man. And the people who came from Germany and France and all the other parts, Italy and western Europe. They were coming to flee that same kind of socialistic nonsense...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] ... and Utopianism. And then we have all these people today who go around saying we should be just like the way western Europe has been and is today.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] Well, I say, “Absolutely not.” I mean, the whole idea of this republic is to be very different from the rest of the world. We are based on different principles, Christian principles.

Well, I should get out of the pulpit. You are the one who is the ordained minister, but maybe you could follow up on that point.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, a book that both of us know and think very highly of, Dr. Charles Rice’s Beyond Abortion says that given the premises of the decision the courts now say that a person is not to be biologically defined, but legally so that a fetus is a non person. And Dr. Rice predicts that by the end of this century, given the continuation of the current trend, elderly people, sick people will be defined as non persons.

[ Stafford ] Right.

[ Rushdoony ] And it could very well be that Christians may be defined as non persons. I see that trend in the courts.

[ Stafford ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Today.

[ Stafford ] Well, the Jews in Germany were defined as non persons.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] ...for the purpose of the Holocaust.

[ Rushdoony ] Now, people are not going to change that by being arm chair Christians. It is only if they have the same kind of dedication those early Christians did who took in those unwanted and abandoned babies who were ready to say, “I am going to pay a price with my life somewhere down the road or my children will if I do nothing and I had better pay a price right now for freedom.”

[ Stafford ] Right. And now... an ounce of prevention, I understand, is worth a pound of cure.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And I think it is time for Christians to wake up to what is ahead of us. What we face is a fearful thing.

[ Stafford ] It really is and in Charles Rice’s book goes on and it is Beyond Abortion: The Theory and Practice of the Secular State.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] And tying this in to social security, I saw some statistics recently that said this that the lady who recently died at age 96 or whatever in, I think it was Chicago, who had paid in 22 dollars total in social security. That was the total tax in the first year that it went into operation and then she immediately retired and reached age 65 the following year and was on the take of the rest of her life. I think she got upwards of 100 or more thousand dollars for a 22 dollar contribution. Well, what it is today is that a young person of age 20 will pay in 320,000 dollars, not 22 dollars, 320,000 during his working life. Well, what is he going to get back for it? The government doesn't have any money. The only money government has is what it takes by force from the citizens through taxation which is a forced exaction defined by the Supreme Court.

Now if we get to that point do you think that the people will pay up? No. They will say, “Why should we pay for these older people? Besides they are already crippled and they need a lot of attention and medical care costs are high. Oh, what is wrong with putting them to sleep?”

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] And so I see the threat of... I don’t know what the correct term would be for killing the elderly.

[ Rushdoony ] Euthanasia.

[ Stafford ] Euthanasia, the same thing as infanticide at the other end of the age scale. But I see that as a... as a literal, physical, real potential threat even in the United States of America.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. I do, too. And as long as church members go on figuring all they have got to do is to fulfill their duties to the local congregation, keep a pew warm periodically, nothing is going to change. We are going to get more of the age of inflation, the age of abortion and we will move into the age of euthanasia and worse.

[ Stafford ] Well, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] Edmund Burke.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] And I think you are absolutely right, Rush. We have to get off our... our butts and get moving and do the Lord’s work.

[ Rushdoony ] Exactly. And, of course, that is what our work is all about and that is why it is so we are... we are so intensely concerned with preparation for the future not only in rethinking things, but in acting.

Well, our time is drawing to a close and I think we will end it on that note. Is there a final word that you want to add, John?

[ Stafford ] Well, I hate to quote a former Democratic congressman who I think was expelled from the House, but... and I don’t think he necessarily meant it in the same way that we do, but Adam Clayton Powell was always saying, “Keep the faith, baby.” And I really in a more serious vein, I think we, in fact, do have to keep the faith.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Stafford ] And trust God to provide and do his will and we will be taken care of just as he has promised in Scripture both in the New and Old Testament.

[ Rushdoony ] Thank you, John.

I would like to tell all our listeners that you are going to be back for a month a little later and at that time perhaps there are some other subjects we can go in together which...

[ Stafford ] Good.

[ Rushdoony ] ...if you would like.

[ Stafford ] I would like that... Sure. Thank you.

[ Rushdoony ] Very good.

Well, thank you all for listening and we will be with you again in two weeks.

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