From the Easy Chair

Christian Colloquy on U. S. Constitution

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 175-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161E9

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161E9, Christian Colloquy on U. S. Constitution, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 54, September 29, 1983.

Today on our Easy Chair it is going not be a bit different. With me here are Otto Scott and John Saunders Quaid. And the three of us are going to discuss the Constitution of the United States.

Our feeling is that there is a lot of erroneous thinking on the subject that many well meaning Christians and conservatives are going astray because they are emphasizing a return to the Constitution when, as a matter of fact, such a thing is virtually impossible given the climate of opinion in the country today. The Constitution is a product of centuries of thinking in Christendom. It is far from perfect, but it represents a tremendous achievement in the history of the world.

On the other had, what the Constitution posited as a background, even a liberal commentator, Corwin, called attention to. It was the higher law of God. And when man abandoned that higher law, the Constitution is meaningless. It becomes a document which can mean whatever the courts choose to make it mean. And that is exactly what has happened.

To give you an illustration from California. California has a supreme court that reflects the thinking of Jerry Brown. As a result, Proposition 13, the tax limitation law is now being interpreted out of existence. The people voted in an amendment which was the victim’s bill of rights in criminal cases. That has been thrown out. The people called for a reapportionment when the state legislature twice went against the will of the people to ram through something that would give the democratic party an overwhelming advantage. When an initiative measure overthrew that, the courts through out the initiative. When a bill was introduced by Sebastiani or another initiative, again, that was thrown out.

I could go on at some length to call attention to the fact that the California Supreme Court, like the U S Supreme Court, has done everything to frustrate the Constitution and the will of the people. So as long as you have that kind of judicial activism there is not much that you can say for the safe guard of the Constitution.

On top of that we have another fact. Behind that judicial activism is the attempt of the state to replace God and to impose its fiat will upon society.

Well, I have had my little say and now I am going to ask John to tell us a little bit about a subject that he bearded a Congressman about recently. And the congressman just brushed the Constitution aside saying, “Well, I am not a lawyer.” In other words, it wasn’t relevant and he didn’t care.

[ Saunders ] Well, basically, the ... the whole question was over Article I, section 8 of the Constitution which has to do with what land may the federal government have jurisdiction over. And as the Constitution is very specific in terms of forts, magazines and other needful buildings specifically of the purposes of running the government. In other words, for the United States government the federal power to control vast, hundreds of millions of acres in the interests of the people or in the name of the people or to protect for the people or to hold of the people or for the future or for any other reason is totally unjustified. It is a fiasco. And when Congressman Lehman gave me... gave for me in his district here came to town with... for one of his local town meetings, I asked him. The first question I asked him was: Congressman, how much longer is the Congress of the United States going to continue violate Article I, section 8 of the Constitution?

And the first thing he said was, “Does that have anything to do with Lebanon?” That was the very first question he asked me.

And I said, “No, Congressman, it has to do with the management of the public lands in the United States, the so-called public lands.”

And he said, “Well, is there a bill coming up that I have to vote on?”

And I said, “No, Congressman, I am simply asking you a question. How much longer will the Congress of the United States continue to violate Article I, section 8 of the Constitution in having jurisdiction over public lands when the lands were given to men by God and not by this fiat will of the state?”

And he said, “Well, you have to understand, Mr. Saunders, or I am... I am not a constitutional lawyer so I don’t know about these things. Next question please.”

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.’

[ Saunders ] Well, now as it turned out in this community there is currently going on a major, major squabble between developers, between the lumbering people, between the environmental elitists, between the whole community. The boy scouts are even involved, because they want a piece of ground and I won’t go into all the details, but essentially I told everyone there at this meeting that 80 percent of the questions had to do with this issue which the Congressman said, “Well, I don’t ... prefer not to meddle in local affairs.” And yet every single question was related to that. And he refused to deal with them.

And the point is that all these different groups of people are fighting over a few hundred acres of land for the United States government has almost a million acres of land sitting up there locked up in a forest, you see, which no one can touch. And every one in this county is at each other’s throats over a couple of three hundred acres of land when there is a million land sitting up there wide open. And ... and the whole problem is created by the federal policy and, you know, we could go into the fact that the environmentalists have used their own special interests to block the development of our nation’s resources because right now, for example, we have talked before about the fact that there is enough chromite in California alone to supply all this nations’ needs for the next 500 years. It is one of the 37 strategic metals and without it you don’t make high quality steel. And yet the eight major areas where chromite is in California were all tied up in wilderness areas 10 years ago.

Now the Congressman comes right back and says, “Well, but, you see, just because they are wilderness areas that doesn’t mean that you can’t mine there.”

No. But the qualifications and regulations on wildernesses are so stringent and so tight that it is virtually impossible to ever set up a mining operation in a wilderness. It is ... it is... it costs you immense sums of money just even before you ever turn a single spade of dirt on the ground.

So the whole problem is that the land has been pulled out from under the people because the Constitution is not being used as an instrument of protection, but as an instrument of oppression. And the federal government can use these public lands, for which they pay tax reparations to most states, they can use those federal lands as a club over the heads of state legislatures. And that is just one aspect, though, of the problem that you must mentioned.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, let me read the concluding paragraph of Article I, section 8 of the Constitution. It limits the federal lands to the District of Columbia and such places as are purchased by the consent of the legislature...

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] ... of the state in which the same shall be for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock yards and other needful buildings.

And that is all the federal government is allowed to have. All the federal forest land in this county, which is the bulk of the county, should be in the state’s hands or in private hands, not...

[ Saunders ] Or in the county’s hands, preferably.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, or the county’s hands. But the United States federal government owns 42 percent of the United States today in plain violation of the Constitution. And you mentioned the chromite and where are we getting our chromite now?

[ Saunders ] We are getting it from Russia and Zimbabwe.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. So we are dependent upon people who can make us very vulnerable...

[ Saunders ] And that is...

[ Rushdoony ] ... in war time.

[ Saunders ] And that is precisely why President Reagan could do nothing over the murder of Congressman Mac Donald in the downing of Korean Air Lines flight 007, because all he has to do is get to tough with the Russians and since they supply us with 16 of our strategic metals and minerals, all the Russians would have to do is just shut off our strategic metals and minerals and the entire steel and metals industry in the United States would be down the tubes or close up within six months.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Now in the strategic minerals when it comes to the geological survey, what kind of data do we get about that from the federal government? Why don’t you go into that, John?

[ Saunders ] Well, it... it is... it is really a joke, because I had two independent ... I should tell everyone that I have....

[ Rushdoony ] Don’t mention any names.

[ Saunders ] I... I... I... but I...’

[ Rushdoony ] Washington has a long arm.

[ Saunders ] I have... I have... I have interests in some mining properties of my own and I have had independent consulting geologists look at the properties and give me their opinion. And when I cited the fact that the U S Geological Survey and the Bureau of Mines had conducted surveys in there both of them, both of the geologists that I talked to kind of looked at the ground and kicked a piece of dirt around. And I said, “What is the problem?” And they said, “Well, it is the policy of both those agencies to give negative results.” And I said, “Why is that?” And he said, “Because it is just like the newspaper journalists, you know, who claims that he isn’t censored by his editor and by the owner, publisher of the paper. He nevertheless knows what the owner, publisher of the paper wants in the way of data and story.”

And the same thing with the federal agencies. They know what the Bureau of Land Management wants, because the Bureau of Land Management doesn’t want to find minerals there. If... they don’t want to create a situation in which the environmentalists are going to get upset. They don’t want to tamper with too many special interest groups. And then he also told us that out of the region where our properties were, there would be over 400 pages of detailed data on that region which would never be published. They will sit on a shelf in... in the federal agencies bureaucracy for the next 100 years. And what will be published, however, is a summary which will be boiled down to about 25 pages which, again, will be summarized by the Bureau of Land Management when it makes its report to Congress. And what will eventually happen is that it will loo like in this region there is not the slightest possibility of mineral development when, in reality, there are two operating mines less than a mile from where I am who are pulling out very, very commercial gold and precious metals products.

But the... the report will, of course, say that there isn't’ any. And that is... that is the way they manipulate the data.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And make us dependent upon our enemies.

[ Saunders ] Well, see, that is... that is also part of a... I think it is very strange that ... that... that people don't tie together the fact that many of the major media powers, the on camera personalities and other ones are involved with various environmentalist groups across the country and the basic feeling of these groups is that with respect to foreign policy the United States should be forced into a position of dependency because that will thereby, quote, reduce the likelihood of war, unquote. And when, in reality, what it does is it ties the hands of the United States Congress as well as the president and we cannot function in foreign policy. And I think the last 15 years of our foreign policy is... is graphic proof of that. Reagan doesn’t have near the liberty in foreign policy that Kennedy had for just precisely that reason. There is not a thing he can do without having the entire rug pulled out from under us.

[ Rushdoony ] Very good, John. I won’t ask you to go into some of the details, because we don’t want to get deeper in trouble. Start meditating upon some other things, John, and let’s ask Otto to develop his point.

[ Scott ] Well, the point is a bit different. There was a period in the history of Britain when the revolutionists began to cite the Magna Charta and they ascribed to the Magna Charta all sorts of rights which were presumed rights of Englishmen. Unfortunately for the truth of the matter, as against the legend, the Magna Charta gave no rights whatever to the common people. It was a document extracted from King John by the nobility and it gave the nobles certain rights.

Now that reminds me of the American Constitution. People are always talking about the constitutional rights and very few people know what is in the Constitution or what the rights are. They ascribe to the Constitution magical qualities which it obviously doesn't contain.

It has, I am not sure about this. I meant to look it up earlier and forgot to. I believe 23 Amendments so far. It is hard to believe that a perfect document had to be changed 23 times. And some of the changes were very basic.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] The change, for instance, which introduced the income tax eliminated the idea of equal taxation and introduced the idea of unequal taxation which is, of course, inherently unjust. No man should pay more taxes than another man on his income no matter what his income is.

We could go down the road on the 13th and 14th Amendments, I believe it was, that were enacted during the radical Republican reign in the middle of the Civil War when the South had no vote or right after the Civil War, rather, when the South was told that unless these Amendments were ratified without objection the South would not be allowed back into the union politically speaking.

Those amendments, incidentally, are being used by the courts today to intrude upon all sorts of personal details regarding the inter relationships of the American people.

And we can go on down the line. The idea of the separation of Church and state isn’t in the Constitution. It was contained in a private letter by Thomas Jefferson who managed to speak on all sides of his mouth on that subject at various times in his career. Right now it is taken as sanction to outlaw Christianity in the American political scene. There are right today a number of people who become indignant at the idea that Christians have political positions or dare to express them. And they will actually use as a counter argument to a Christian position the idea that it is Christian motivated. And that is considered sufficient for it to be ruled out of discussion.

Well, we are in a very peculiar position then. We are talking about a Constitution which doesn’t do what the people think it does, which doesn’t protect us as it is supposed to or as it used to and which is now being used by the courts in many instances as an instrument of tyranny.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, you cited the 16th Amendment. Let me read that. “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived without apportionment among the several states and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

There is not a single restricting clause in the 16th Amendment. It makes our total income subject to confiscation by the federal government. This is why whatever we are allowed is called an exemption, because our entire income in terms of that belongs to the federal government.

There is another factor. It is a principle of law that the last codicil, for example in a will governs everything that precedes it. So each new amendment governs everything that precedes it. The 16th Amendment has been used—and I have been involved in cases in the past few years since 78—where it has been used to nullify any religious freedom as granted by the First, because according to top state and federal attorneys and the IRS, the 16th Amendment places churches and religious trusts and institutions totally within the taxing power of the federal government. They have, therefore, no constitutional immunity, only, they tell us, a statutory one, which is revocable at any time. As a result, I have heard more than one state and or federal attorney say in cases that the First Amendment is of historical interest only.

Now this is something very important for us to recognize, because it means that the 16th Amendment has wiped out—if these people are right—previous amendments. And, in terms of the fact that comes after these other amendments, they have a point to their argument. Yes.

[ Saunders ] Well, I think the difference we are talking about here in terms of the presuppositions of the framers of the Constitution and modern presuppositions are radically different. They are coming from two entirely different schools of thought. Earlier it was more Christian. The latter is, of course, totally Humanist. And I think that in the very first phrase of the 16th Amendment where it says, “Congress shall have power...” that that should become, which is a positive statement of law, that should be contrasted with the First Amendment in which it says... in which it says Congress shall have no power, you see?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] And the difference is the first one, then, is stated I the negative, you see. No... no power to enact laws against the Church, you see, and the establishment of religion. Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. That is stated in the negative. That negative comes from the Christian historical interpretation in the 10 Commandments structure, you see. The positive law of the 16th Amendment gives total license, you see.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] And nowhere is exempt. But that points out the difference in the thinking in... in... in the same amendment.

[ Scott ] Well, there is another aspect and that is that the 20th century some writer made the observation that the 20th century had substituted money for God. The 16th Amendment has substituted economic reasoning as a ... an excuse to take away the liberty of the people. Under the protection of the 16th Amendment, the IRS can introduce an ex post facto regulation.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And it can also invade without warrant or with warrants that any agent can write with a ball point pen in his car without going not a judge. He can have... he can look at your records. I recall under the old regime in Britain that a minister was arrested and the searching parties went through his desk and in his desk, in secret drawer they found a sermon that took issue with the Church of England. Now on that basis he was tortured and executed. That became a very famous case later in the creation in Britain of laws against undue search and seizure. But these laws don't apply to the IRS. Neither do the laws against self incrimination.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, just to glance at some of the things that have been summarily set aside, the Constitution says also in section 8 that there shall be a militia which is an old fashioned term, a draft army it can be called, to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrection and rebel invasions. Now until Woodrow Wilson it was held by the courts that there ewer only three reasons for a universal or any kind of military conscription: to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrection and repel invasion. Only draftees could be used in foreign wars. But Woodrow Wilson set that aside.

And the courts sustained him subsequently. They waited until was well over before they heard the case.

[ Scott ] You meet volunteers could only be used overseas.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, yes. Now, again, the requirement that only gold and silver can be legal tender is not only in the Constitution, but in Amendment 14, section four. The validity of the public debt of the United States authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection and rebellion shall not be questioned.

The point of that was to make sure that the paper money issued had to be redeemed and made good and all payments for services, pensions, bounties, et cetera, had to be in legal tender, gold and silver. So you have, again, something that has been set aside, the requirement of gold and silver as valid money.

[ Saunders ] Well, one of the reasons why they do that, one of the reasons why they get away from gold and silver and all civilizations try to do that is because of the fact that as the politician starts to buy more and more votes... votes with his pension and welfare plan—and it think the latest numbers I have heard are that one out of every three adults of voting age is now on welfare—as the politician needs to buy more and more votes with more and more social welfare programs, he cannot very well do so with a limited currency base. And since gold and silver is tough to get out of the ground it is tough to inflate the economy when you have a... a... a precious metals base. When you eliminate the precious metals it gets very, very easy then to just pump more paper into a machine and crank out more paper with pictures on it than it does to go into the ground and bring out a ton of ore and grind it and pulverize it and process it for precious metals.

And... and so precious metals as a basis for currency become ... they... they put chains on ... on the politicians in terms of their rights to spend. Well if they are going to institute a social welfare program of some kind and they want to hide that in any way, shape or form from the people and its inflationary effects. The first thing you have to do is abolish gold and silver as a basis for currency. And that is exactly what Roosevelt started, you know with this... with his fiasco.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Now I am going to read a couple of statements by men who were involved in the writing of the Constitution. Pinckney said, quote, “By delegating express powers, we certainly reserve to ourselves every power and right not mentioned in the Constitution.” In other words, express powers only. And Wilson said that the United States was a limited government which had no powers except those which were specially granted to it.

Now those were set aside very, very early. I think one of the most dangerous terms in the Constitution was deliberately left out, the word sovereignty. It was left out because it was held it belonged to God alone. And yet Marshal began to use the language of sovereignty and, of course, especially in the past generation the federal government has very, very freely and readily claimed sovereignty. And today I find in courts when I challenge the concept and say the word is never mentioned in the Constitution, and it was deliberately left out, some of the judges express amazement. And it is amusing.

But, of course, when they look at the Constitution, they are not looking at it from the perspective of the framers. They are looking at it through the eyes of the contemporary Supreme Court. As one federal judge stated very flatly, he did not want, he said, any of the witnesses to refer to the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, because, he said, what that document means will have validity in this court in terms of the latest word from the U S Supreme Court.

So this is the Constitution today. It is a humanistic document because the courts say that is what it is. And as a result, without a change in the country, you are not going to get back to the Constitution. In fact, there is probably a need to rewrite something now.

[ Saunders ] Yes. I would...

[ Rushdoony ] A drastic overhaul in terms of the serious departures we have had in the past century and a half, especially the last century and a quarter.

[ Saunders ] Well I think, you know, you mentioned earlier that... that...that very early on people started violating the Constitution and I... and I think we have seen I conservative circles a ... a great deal of... of praise of... for example of Thomas Jefferson and yet if the conservatives ever bothered to go back and read exactly what Jefferson did to the Constitution of the United States, they would renounce any involvement whatsoever with Jefferson, because it was Jefferson that first instituted the Louisiana purchase which, in our history books is never mentioned as being a specific violation of the Constitution, which it was and Jefferson knew that it was, but he said at the time that getting that great mass of land was simply too good a deal to pass up. I am paraphrasing, but that is exactly what he said.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] It was just too good a deal to pass up. And so it... it... Jefferson established the precedent that... that the federal power could just set aside the section 8 of the Constitution. And we have seen continually we have seen that whole process continually promoted.

I want to make one reference about something Otto mentioned during the war between the states. Afterwards he said that there was the... there was a series of phenomena that occurred with the reinterpretation of the Constitution. I might also mention that in the modern day and age as there were in his age, a great deal of regulators who crop up during these periods of reinterpretation. Now during the war between the states we call them red legs. And because the military wore red stockings over the lower parts of their leggings and boots and they were the regulators who ran around passing all these regulations that Otto says the IRS can pass with the stroke of a ball point pen. We have the same phenomena today. Everyone is trying to regulate everyone else’s conduct and no one ever bothers to pay any attention to the Constitution.

[ Scott ] Well, they are coming pretty close to being able to do it. There are no names that pass though the regulations that come out of the agencies. Nobody knows who formulates these regulations. They come out anonymously. And the Reagan administration has congratulated itself for reducing the number of regulations from over 80,000 a year under Carter to a little over 60,000 a year today. Now this is a great accomplishment and it was very difficult to do because obviously everyone that gets into a government office gets creative urges regarding holding down everyone else.

But these regulations have the force of law.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And they are put together by individuals inside agencies. The agencies serve as legislators, administrators and judges over their own regulations, which, of course, violates the basic trinity of doctrine theory that set up through the Constitution in the first place.

Well, we could go on. The courts use sociological reasoning and psychiatric reasoning instead of traditional reasoning. And it brings a number of questions to mind. One, for instance, is a growing disillusion—and I think well based—on whether or not democracy is as good as it is cracked up to be. The founding fathers never thought democracy was good to begin with. They were against it. They said it always led to anarchy and to dictatorship. So they wanted a republic. We have the republican form, but we are like the Romans. The essence has been leeched away.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] Concept.

[ Scott ] Now the Romans didn’t change the façade. It turned into Caesarism. And I have met people recently in recent years, especially wealthy people who have said to me, “I hope somebody will take control.”

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] There is a sort of a feeling in the American air that we want a strong man to take over. Some of the sentiment over the downing of the Korean Air Line, for instance. They wanted a dictatorial action. When we have a economic crisis like the OPEC oil embargo then the government placates the people by saying, “We will create an energy... an energy czar.” This, of course, came in with Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson was our... our ... our most famous exponent of what a South African theologian described to me as the liberal tendency to believe that anyone who disagrees is intolerant.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] Yeah. Well, you know that interesting... a very, very interesting premise or a very... not just a premise, but I think... I think it is a... a fairly well rounded fact now with {?} and Rothman reports and then a number of other things. I think that one of the major instruments that is being used I that rewriting of the Constitution and reinterpretation is the press. I think the press has exploited that almost... almost better than anyone else around for their own end and their own reasons. And as {?} and Rothman pointed doubt, the press have a very clear ideological motive in their manipulation of the facts and data.

But I think that one of the striking contradictions in that whole thing is the fact that the First Amendment with respect to religion is followed by the same ... that same First Amendment the clause concerning the freedom of the press. And what the press has failed to realize in all of its brilliant wisdom is that the Constitution presupposes a world view which produced the clause about religion and the same clause about the free press. And if the press continues to attack the conservative position and continues to attack the Christian position, eventually if it is succeeds in suppressing both those viewpoints it also destroys the foundation for free press in the process. And on...; what is going to happen is some day the press w hen the government starts reinterpreting the second and third clauses about free press, the press is going to look around for support and it is going to find that it has alienated the very people that it needs in order to ... to restore or bring back or ... or properly interpret the Constitution. So it is... it is ... it is a very, very self destructive tendency in journalism.

[ Scott ] Well, the history of revolutions in this century even beginning with the French Revolution is that the journalists who led the French Revolution, for instance, locked up the press once they succeeded. And every revolution so far has locked up the press.

I interviewed Pedro Chamorro in Nicaragua when Nicaragua was under Somoza. He was the great opponent of Somoza. But Somoza’s government furnished him with all the news print he needed and never closed his newspaper down and Chamorro who fed information to Jack Anderson never explained to Jack Anderson that he had the most prosperous newspaper in all Latin America. He was immensely wealthy.

At any rate, after the Sandinistas took over and Somoza was gone and Chamorro, by the way, was assassinated by three Cubans that paper has been closed down. And not a single editorial has appeared, so far as I know, anywhere in the United States regarding the suppression of that paper whose liberties were so often extolled when Somoza was there.

[ Saunders ] Very clear double standard involved there.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. The press today is all too often an enemy of the freedom of religion as John pointed out.

[ Saunders ] Well I think that book that you ... that you gave to me once Fire in the Minds of Men...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] I think while he is not following the greatest history ever written of that particular... of the concept of Revolution, I think the mere fact that... that the author continually points out that so and so was a journalist and so and so was a journalist, was a newspaper publishers, a magazine publisher, a book publisher. It seems like that... that if I had to go through and list all the occupations of the principle revolutionaries there, I would probably see two out of every three of them were I journalism, in the press and media. And it appears that there is a... a historical parallel involved there between the modern age, because we look at everyone who is rewriting, who is promoting the propaganda to rewrite the Constitution. And... and the vast majority of them have major connections either in owning press outlets of the press and the media or by having alliances with the press. And I think the most liberal politicians recognize the fact that their view is particularly amenable to exploitation in the press. They are bound to get coverage because of the inherent controversial nature of what they are trying to do. That makes good copy. So the press cooperates with them.

The only thing that conservative can do is be the brunt of the argument in so far as the press is concerned. And that is... and that is why they are painted as such.

[ Rushdoony ] Some years ago I read a very interesting study of architecture. The point of the author was that a lot of modern architects being radical humanists want to build buildings that appear to float in air. And as a result, they are averse to foundations. They try to conceal them. they try to give the appearance that the building is different from anything ever before made.

Well, I think Humanism is that way whether it is I the Church or the state or the in the press. It doesn’t want foundations. And therefore it works to create a social order as the press is doing and as the state is doing and as your liberal churches are doing without roots, without foundations. And, therefore, they are working to create that which will destroy them and everybody else with them.

[ Saunders ] Well I think the point Otto made about the ... the... the people and various other entities wanting an individual, a strong individual ...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] ...who is going to step forward and take command. I think that is a quite logical expression of the idea that when the individual’s ability to govern himself declines he invariably seeks someone else who will do it for him.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, if you are not going to have God, you are going to have man as your god. So you will work first towards a world state and, second, towards a dictator, because you want to unify your faith.

Yes, Otto.

[ Scott ] Well, the press of the United States is its own best admirer. It is constantly...

[ Saunders ] And critic.

[ Scott ] ... and it is constantly telling the people about the glories of the free press. But as the New York Times overlooked the greatest story in New York which was the bankruptcy of the city, the American press has overlooked a great many developments of which it has kept the American people largely unaware. For instance, the Mexican revolution which took place over a long period of years right next door to us eliminated Christianity in Mexico officially the same year that Lenin achieved power in the Soviet Union, in Russia. Now it is illegal in Mexico for the priest to wear his collar backwards, for nuns to put on their habit and for the mass to be said. They maintain a few façade churches where in areas where tourists appear, but throughout most of the country these regulations are rigorously enforced.

Yet the average American has no idea that he is next door to an officially Atheist country which is officially anti Christian. Neither does the most average American seem to have the idea the entire Soviet and Chinese empires are anti Christian. Not since the early days of ... of Rome have Christians been persecuted as avidly and savagely as they are today. How many Americans are kept aware of this. What sort of press do we have?

[ Saunders ] None.

[ Rushdoony ] Just this past week on the telephone someone---and I have forgotten who it was—we get so many telephone calls—said that a relative of theirs had been murdered in Mexico where he was on a trip to help some of the Christians there.

Now we don’t read about things like that, but that sort of thing is not uncommon.

One of the things that indicates the bankruptcy of the press is the fact that whereas when you and I were younger, Otto...

[ Scott ] I appreciate that.

[ Saunders ] And I appreciate the fact that I wasn’t included in that.

[ Rushdoony ] A few more years and we will include you. We will have to... you had several newspapers in every community virtually and that was it. Today just about every group in the country has a newsletter or a tabloid paper and the count is astronomical. All of these are providing information on specialized subjects. They are doing it because the press is to doing it. And also because the general public is increasingly aware of the inadequacy of the press. All these ... there must be a few hundred thousand tabloids and newsletters and the like would disappear if we had an honest press that gave an honest coverage of the news and represented a variety of opinions.

[ Saunders ] Well, see, I... the new... the new post office amendments and regulations that they are trying to get passed which gives the post office the right to censor mail not in the public interest. The whole regulation is being propagated that it is a means of protecting the American people from criminals and what have you when, in reality, the law... the law is written in such a manner that the Chalcedon newsletter, for example...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] ...if it expressed ideas which were contrary to public policy the post office could just refuse to send it and could... could charge every single one of us involved at Chalcedon with criminal violations, penalties and jail sentences.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. I am glad you bought up that point, because it tells us where we are. The real Constitution of the United States was enunciated by the U S Supreme Court earlier this year in the Bob Jones case. Public policy governs us. Anything contrary to public policy has no right to existence. This is the implication and you are going to see it put through by court action in the next decade unless we turn this thing around.

The post office is following the same policy. Public interest or public policy, the same thing so that the legal groundwork for a dictatorship is already there. And it is there in the name of the U S Constitution via the U S Supreme Court. So that Christian conservatives had better wake up to that reality and stop their pipe dreams about the Constitution.

[ Saunders ] Well, I think... I think, you know, as the individual’s ability to govern himself declines, then he is going to seek the kind of dictators that... that we are all talking about.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] And I think that the... the solution to that problem is that pastors and teachers and Sunday school leaders and community leaders and people of that nature must get back to teaching biblical law and the basis of biblical law.

I mean, I have asked ... to show you... to give you an idea of how ignorant the average Christian is with respect to biblical law, I have time and again I will ask a Christian about equity. And they come back with ... I didn’t know he was talking about real estate. And I says, “No. Do you know what equity is?”

He says, “That is how much money I have got hung up in my house.”

And I said, “No, no. I am talking about equity.” The Scripture says, “I demand equity.” The Lord says, “I demand equity.” You see? The modern Christian doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what equity is all about and yet it is integral to understanding the Constitution, to understand what equity is all about and what it has meant in terms of law.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] If a pastor doesn’t teach equity then he may as well throw the golden rule I the New Testament out, because the golden rule is based upon the biblical concept of equity. And you may as well just throw it right out.

Well, the point is... is that the pastors if they would... and I ... and I realize that evangelism is a major, you know, element in 99 percent of everything that is... you know, that and prophecy is ... is... is the backbone of modern pulpit work and things of that nature. But they are going to have to learn that they have to teach the average Christian in the pulpit again how to govern himself according to the law of God.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] And when the Christian learns those forms of government and how to institute those kinds of laws, then he can recognize the constitutional errors and he doesn’t have to be a constitutional attorney.

Everyone’s today that I talked to at the colleges and universities, I mention the Federalist Papers, you know, and everybody says, “The what?” And I said, “Well, you are a history major, a government major, a political science major and you have never heard of the Federalist Papers?” Oh, yes, we get that at the PhD level. And I said, “That is very, very interesting. That tells me where your education is at because originally those were editorials in the New York newspapers and everybody understood them.”

And so I... I get...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] It is... it is a... it is a... it is... that ... that is one of our ways of... of turning the situation around.

[ Rushdoony ] Right. Just as people don’t know, for example, the Constitution forbids the federal government from owning lands in the states...

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] ... so they don't know what the Bible teaches. They are ignorant. And they are not worried about their ignorance. All they are interested in is their pay check and fire and life insurance from the J C Life Insurance Company.

[ Saunders ] Well....

[ Scott ] Well, I think actually they have been misled to a considerable extent. I did an article some years ago on psychological testing and, as a result of the article or in order to do the article I undertook to take a number of these tests. Some of the questions were clearly impertinent. I didn’t answer them. And I was very surprised in one instance where the company psychologist interviewed me and congratulated me on having a high score. And I said, “How could I have a high score when I didn't answer all the questions?”

He said, “Well, some of those questions were only ... were phrased so that no one but an idiot were answer them and we are not in the business of hiring idiots.”

Well, obviously if you can defend yourself you have a high score in almost every... any kind of confrontation.

[ Saunders ] Yes.

[ Scott ] If you can’t defend yourself you are going to lose. And what the American people have been talked out of is their right of self defense and I don’t mean by that that they have forgotten to pick up the phone and call a lawyer. But to stand up on their own feet, to think of themselves, to speak for themselves and to stop sharing in the theft of their own rights.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] Well, equity, you know, I mentioned equity a while ago. And you mentioned earlier the... the income tax measure. The income tax measure, if the average Christian today had been taught what the meaning of biblical equity was all about he would have just raised a furor when that... when that concept and idea was even proposed, because, clearly, it is a violation of ... of equity to tax one man at one rate and another man at another rate solely because of some condition that can arbitrarily change from week to week and month to month. It is clearly a violation of equity for bussing to take place. It is clearly a violation of equity for ... of the vast majority of the ... of the... of the Supreme Court decisions that have come down in the last 25 years. The Supreme Court doesn’t .... doesn’t... no longer recognizes equity, except in... in terms of a social equity which can change depending upon whose definitions you want to read and whose numbers you want to read from the census department. And... and so just that one concept alone is enough if... if... if... is ... is enough to illustrate the paucity of ... of Christian learning.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. You know, Otto, you mentioned those tests. One of the men on our mailing list, a good friend of many years standing, was being considered by a Texas corporation for an executive position and he had to take a battery of tests and then meet with the psychologists or psychiatrists hired by the corporation. And he looked at the tests and read through them and being a lawyer he immediately picked them up and walked into the psychiatrist and said, “I am not taking these. They are impertinent. They violate my privacy and I know what kind of answer you want and it means you are going to get another rubber stamp in the corporation.”

And the psychiatrist was very offended and he said, “Well, with that attitude you will get nowhere.”

Well, of course, the man is now a member of the ICC and I wonder what will happen if that corporation ever appears before him.

[ Scott ] It takes two to tango.

[ Saunders ] Yes, it does.

[ Scott ] And people who surrender their liberties learn the hard way.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] Yes, very true. I think... I think one of the ... one of the great joys that I have had I working at Chalcedon is the fact that after so many years of frustration in seeing so many Christians not caring about the Constitution except as it... except in an emergency when they... they felt that their rights had been violated that I have seen so many more Christians who have begun to take seriously their responsibilities in terms of what they are reading now and what they are committed to and... and reading the whole of Scripture from Genesis through Revelation. And that has been, I find that since I have ... I have been here working with you that that has been... that has been one of the greatest joys I have had. I think... I think that we are going to see an... an awful lot more difficulties before the situation...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] ... turns around. But it is like everyone said, well, there aren’t enough of us. Well, they ought to read Patrick Henry’s “Give me Liberty or Give me Death,” speech.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] Because Patrick Henry said, you know, “How many of us are going to have to be laying, you know, supine, you know, with the oppressors knee and... or foot on our neck in chains and things of that nature before we wake up to the fact. Gentlemen try peace, but there isn't any.”

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Well, the rebellion in England which established most of the English liberties and which was mounted by the Puritans and the Presbyterians, was really launched by individual men standing up before ....

[ Saunders ] Exactly.

[ Scott ] ... the high commission.

[ Saunders ] Exactly.

[ Scott ] And challenging the right...

[ Saunders ] You are right.

[ Scott ] ... of the high commission.

[ Saunders ] Exactly.

[ Scott ] ... to push them around. And they gave unanswerable arguments. It was those individuals who laid the basis for our liberties.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] Exactly.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, John, you spoke a little... a little before Otto of your great joy in working for Chalcedon. I am glad to hear you say that. We will feel safe to ... at working you a bit harder then.

[ Saunders ] Well, I .... they... you know, I don’t mind working a little bit harder. I... I will somehow or another collect for it in one way or another.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, our time is nearly its end. Is there a last word from either of you that some little bit of wisdom to add to what has been said so far?

[ Scott ] I don’t think it would hurt to consider alternatives. If we are talking about a document which was originally well founded, but it has been distorted out of all recognition, I should think we should begin to think in terms of something more reasonable, not necessarily a complicated thing. The 10 Commandments, the Decalogue is rather brief. It isn’t necessary to write an encyclopedia. And despite what the people in Washington are doing and I think we could come up with some reasonable alternatives at least discussable alternatives.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And the Constitution does have one great virtue, or a very remarkable one. It provides the instrumentation and the road map for its own reform.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Then we need to recognize, too, that the federal government today is a national government and the federal government, as it was intended by the Constitution, was simply a federal government and the basic government was on the local level and the state level. It was only in a few limited areas that the federal government was to function. And today we have a totally different type of country. We cannot restore the local element until self government begins to predominate.

[ Saunders ] I... I would just add this. I have asked many senators and congressmen at the local and national level and federal levels to say I was counting on, et cetera, what is the definition of civil government in one sentence or less. The biblical definition, of course, is that government is to be the minster of justice.

The framers of the Constitution in a philosophic sense phrased that as government is only of the protection of lives, liberty and the states, not for the provision thereof.

When... when governments begin to provide you with something, regardless of how tempting it looks or how needful it appears to be temporarily, we know that all temporary laws become permanent because they are always forgotten. FDR’s administration is an illustration of that. But the minute a congressman begins or a senator or the President of the United States, a governor, a local legislature, a county official, they minute they begin to promise to provide you with something, with anything other than the protection of life, liberty and the state, they have immediately overstepped the limits of the constitution as originally intended. And red flags ought to go up everywhere.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Very good.

[ Saunders ] Because providing always means that a politician is going to buy votes by providing one group of people something with somebody else’s money.

[ Rushdoony ] Well thank you both, Otto and John for your contributions. And those of you who are listening, if you have any ideas about a subject you want the three of us to discuss, let us know. We will be very happy to oblige. We are always ready to settle the world’s problems, in order.

[ Saunders ] And... and this young man is... is always pleasured and always ... I always enjoy sitting with two older gentlemen in these conversations.

[ Scott ] Thank you,... thank you, sonny.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, we will see you again. We will be with you again very soon. Thank you for listening in.

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