From the Easy Chair

Property & Taxes

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 177-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161F11

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161F11, Property & Taxes, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 57, October 14, 1983, still at the Beverly Garland, because we have the opportunity here to talk with some of our Chalcedon friends. This hour we have with us Dr. Horace Chapman.

Dr. Chapman, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? And then we will get on to the subject at hand.

[ Chapman ] I am a general practitioner in {?}, Michigan and I have been, of course, very interested in the conservative movement and I have been a fan of Chalcedon for several years and I have been in the Libertarian movement and now in the tax movement that developed in Detroit, Pontiac area, Flint recently.

[ Rushdoony ] Otto, do you want to lead off?

[ Scott ] Well, as I understand it, part of your objection to the Michigan tax system is based upon the fact that, first, you think we are using funny money and you don’t believe that that really qualifies with which to pay debts. And, secondly, you are of the opinion that because land is taxed in the United States the government of Michigan and other states have placed themselves into the position of being the landowners to whom we must pay, in effect, rent, which they call taxes. Is that true?

[ Chapman ] Yes, indeed. I think that this has developed over many years. The concept of allodial title was introduced at least in a grand scale in this country where the holder of land in an allodium bears no tenarial obligations and he owns it outright. The term allodium is new to just about everyone including most lawyers I know. It comes from the French allure meaning freehold. And a true freehold is land held without any other obligations to anyone and that the individual holding that land is sovereign.

Now the taxation in lands is an implication that the state is paramount title holder and, in my particular state, there are no titles, land titles that I can find exist. The lawyers will tell you that the deed is the somehow bound up with title. But, you see, title has gone the way, somewhere along the line, and we are not certain where, but my ... my 1855 dictionary describes an allodium as a freehold without tenarial rights and that an allodium is the opposite of feud. All lands in England are held in feud and most lands in the United States are held in allodium. Now the state has no claim and cannot tax or rent, if you will, lands held in allodium. Titles have disappeared. The state does not ask, getting at the other end of things that we discussed, does not ask for money in any form on a tax bill. It asks for a number. It has no dollar signs and I believe it is because they know if they ask for dollars they would have to describe the substance of those dollars.

Further investigation I found that the only law describing the substance of taxation in Michigan was no law at all. It goes something like this. No receiver shall be required to receive anything but gold and silver coin, treasury notes, federal reserve bank notes, silver and gold certificates.

Now all of these at one time were redeemable in gold, these paper instruments, but do not exist today and this ... but when we look at that for a second we find out let’s go back. No receiver shall be required. Does that tell us what the receiver is required to receive? It does not. So since the laws previous to this law that were... had substance and asked for substance were rescinded each time the new law was in place the ... the present law, having a ... a .... a limitation only on future obligations of the state would be null and void anyway when they make another law, whatever substance they require. In effect, there is no substance required for taxation in Michigan and, hence, the government is really operating out of law.

[ Rushdoony ] You dealt with the matter of ownership. Very brilliant younger historian Jonathan Hughes has dealt with this matter. In the colonial period ownership was feudal. The lands were granted by the crown to the colonists subject to the prior and final ownership of the state so that the title holders had the right to pass on the use of the land or to trade the use of the land that the ultimate title resided in the crown. Now the crown, of course, had the right to eminent domain over the land. It had the right to designate certain timbers as to be used by the king’s navy as masts and the like so that any piece of timber so marked could not be touched by the owner of the land or anyone but a crown agent.

Subsequently this kind of language while remaining in the law disappeared in its meaning and chancellor Kent in his commentaries, in speaking of this, referred to the language as a relic without meaning and said that the title was vested in the individual who owned the land. However, subsequently, the U S Supreme Court in a grain elevator case, I believe a Michigan case or Illinois, I believe, reasserted the old premise asserting that the federal government was the true holder of title to the land, that it replaced the crown.

Now, since then that premise has been greatly expanded and to me the important premise here is the question of sovereignty. In terms of Scripture the Bible says, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein.” As some of our listeners know in our Sunday studies, I am going through a theology of the lad in which I am dwelling on the implications of this.

So basically the ownership of the land is a religious premise. If the state is God walking on earth, the state is the true owner of the land. If the God of Scripture is what he says he is, then he is the owner of the land and the taxation of one or the other will prevail in terms of the faith of the people. So to me this is an important issue because what we have today is a humanistic social order and, therefore, we are compelled to render unto caesar.

[ Scott ] Well, now, if we were to continue this, well, people in the Soviet Union have to pay taxes to the Soviet government to occupy a house in the country. And what precisely is the difference between somebody occupying a house in the country in the Soviet Union and occupying a house in the country in the state of Michigan or California or any part of the United States?

[ Rushdoony ] I think the difference is essentially one of degrees. I believe that because of our Christian background, our people still regard property differently. The states and the federal government are not ready to state the full implications of the present laws of land tenure. However, unless we get back to Christian premises, Christian faith we are going to go in the same direction as the Soviet Union. Our difference is essentially one of degree. We are two humanistic powers. This is why I believe the federal government is much better in its treatment of the Soviet Union than it is of the people of the United States.

[ Scott ] You mean the federal government of the United States has more respect for the Soviet Union than it does for the citizens of this country?

[ Rushdoony ] I feel that it is more readily in alliance with the people of the Soviet Union or the government of the Soviet Union than it is with us. In a sense, we are treated as the enemy. We are taxed. We are badgered. We are at every turn treated as people who are the enemies of the bureaucracy.

[ Scott ] Well, let’s expand it a bit. We are talking now... we should, really, I think, not just be talking about the Soviet Union and the U S A, but the entire globe. For instance, in Britain until recently they had exchange controls and you could only take out a certain amount of money from Britain which meant, in effect, that the British money, as far as the British citizen was concerned was really only useful as a means of exchange within Britain itself. We all know that the Soviet Union’s kopeks or rubles, rather, are to exchangeable anywhere in the world. There is no bank that will exchange them for anything because outside the Soviet Union the ruble doesn't seem to have any value. I believe the have a gold ruble that does have a value. I am not positive about that.

Now the United States government under Lyndon Johnson at one time was going to limit the amount of money we could carry out of the United States to something like 200 dollars. That as shouted down. But right now there is a limit. It is 10,000. If you go to the bank and draw out 10,000 or more dollars you are violating the law if you take it out of the country. You can only draw 9999 dollars and 99 cents. That is the limit.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, in Britain the today small farmer is beginning to disappear. Taxation, death taxes, I particular, are wiping out the small farmers. The same thing is happening here. Taxation is leading to the destruction of family holdings, family farms. For example, north of here one rancher who bought a couple of thousand acres in the Depression worked hard then and subsequently to pay for it and he paid something like a dollar or two per acre now finds that that land is priced from 500 to 1000 dollars an acre and there is now way his sons can inherit it.

[ Scott ] They can’t pay the tax on that sort of a value.

[ Rushdoony ] That is right. All it does is to provide a modest income for himself and his sons. Now this is confiscation.

[ Scott ] Well, this, of course, applies to corporations and companies as well.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] So families have to sell the company business in order to pay the tax.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And due upon inheritance. Now they have relaxed the inheritance laws to some extent, have they not?

[ Rushdoony ] In California they have abolished them.

[ Scott ] They have abolished them.

[ Rushdoony ] But...

[ Scott ] Here.

[ Rushdoony ] But the federal government still has estate taxes, death taxes.

What is the situation with regard to inheritance and the small farms in Michigan? Because that historically has been a state of small farms and very fine ones.

[ Chapman ] I can’t tell you that. I think that the state inheritance taxes—and I was executor of my parents’ will at the death of my last parent—and as I understand the state inheritance tax was much heavier than the federal inheritance tax. And I think they tended to be that way, but I have no familiarity with the farms. I have... merely would like to get back to your comment on sovereignty. And that is an interesting definition. I believe that a person must be sovereign on land to occupy as God instructed us to do. In other words, we acknowledge God is sovereign over the world, but he intended us to own property and our declaration, although somewhat muddled in the area of property by the muddle minded, often muddle minded Thomas Jefferson, never ... he... he replaced property with the pursuit of happiness which is a really and truly a meaningless thing. But, of course, our Constitution in two places acknowledges life, liberty and property as a right of man. And therefore sovereignty is a right of an individual. It cannot be a state, a collective, because it is a right. And the Ninth Amendment applies.

The Ninth and 10th Amendments, as you know, the Supreme Court just doesn’t like to use at all, because it is the limiting of powers and rights or... or the... the distribution of rights.

Now sovereignty has to apply to a man owning land. And if we Christians are going to occupy it, we are going to have to own it as earthly sovereigns of the sovereign God. Now this is my understanding of it and since sovereignty is a right, only an individual can possess it and a king, for the divine right of kings and so on and that struggle between the nobles and England went on. We still have the concept of sovereignty as control over land. Otherwise God is... he didn’t intend us to own property. He wouldn’t have commanded us not to steal, because everything is his. How could we steal from him?

So obviously he intended for each of us to own property and to be responsible for that property in his name.

[ Rushdoony ] Well I would prefer to drop the use of the word sovereignty where it applies to man, because sovereignty is another word for lordship and only God is sovereign. Only God is Lord. But we are stewards and our title to the land is as stewards under God. And we hold it as trust from him. So we are trustees over a piece of property and, therefore, because we are trustees, we have to use that land or that property or whatever it is that we possess with a sense of responsibility to God who alone is sovereign. We are stewards, trustees.

[ Scott ] But wouldn’t you say that the government has intervened and said that the government is the steward? The government is going to see to it that land is sequestered away from human beings lest they injure the environment.

[ Rushdoony ] I would say the government says we are the sovereign and our bureaucracy are the constitutes the steward class.

[ Scott ] That is a ... that is true, yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. So they are there to tell us what the word of the new lord, the new god is.

[ Scott ] Well, they come in with a sort of a priestly assumption...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Don’t they? Of their role. They assume that whatever they do is for a higher power and a greater cause and a nobler line of reasoning than the selfish interests of individuals.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. There was a very important little book written well over 100 years ago in Germany by a Catholic writer and the title of it was The New God. And what he predicted, writing—and it may have been before 1850—it was well over 100 years ago—he predicted that the world seeing the development of a new god who would command them and wage war against all other gods, that the whole world would fall down before this god who would command all property, all children, the total lives of people. It was a remarkably prophetic little work.

[ Scott ] It sounds very like a ... a version of the apocalypse, doesn’t it?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And I think its predictions coming much earlier than George Orwell were remarkably perceptive. I read that book about 45 years ago, I think, and I have never forgotten it.

[ Scott ] What an impression. Well, how do the courts of Michigan take to this argument, Dr. Chapman?

[ Chapman ] Well, I have argued the money question in the lower court, in the circuit court and, of course, the judge was very not ignorant, but he certainly didn’t understand that the state of Michigan and all states are bound by Article I, section 10, no state shall make anything but gold and silver coin for the payment in tender of debt. And that was, of course, Roger Sherman and Wilson’s guarantee that we would never suffer inflation. Now we... of course, the government, the federal government, the state government was also forbidden to coin money and to emit bills of credit and... but the federal government was given the power to coin money. And the interesting thing about how this perversion of the constitutional intent and where it happened was in early 1791, you know, to put this in perspective, the minting act of 1792 hadn't come about where the dollar was defined yet. And in 1791, late 1791 the Bill of Rights was ratified. So we have Washington asking three gentlemen whether he could organize and incorporate a national bank. One of them was Thomas Jefferson. One was Edmund Randolph. And the third was Alexander Hamilton. And this is where the issue of state sovereignty first was mentioned. Both Hamilton and Randolph answered in the negative. You can’t do it. But Washington, listening to his friend who had much more influence, who wrote a long, long statement. It was almost a brief and in this language of Alexander Hamilton is some of the lessons the Marxists could have learned for deception. He brought in the issue of sovereignty.

And, you know, it wasn’t John Marshal, of course, who brought it out in his famous case, I believe it was Mc Cullough versus Maryland and mentioned the sovereignty of the United States. Nowhere was anyone, any state or the national government given sovereignty by the Constitution and, of course, when you can presume sovereignty, Statism, God walking on earth, Mr. Hegel and so on came in the picture and that is where we are now.

The Constitution, in my way of thinking, because of the importance of the money issue which is never emphasized in school that the continental as... as you know, 1791 is 350 dollars for a haircut. And originally the continental was backed by what? The Spanish milled dollar, first issues. And, of course, there was never that much silver mined in the... in the... in all the mines in the world after they got through printing these things. So what happened was the government of the United States became ... and lost the real ball. I grant you, sir, stewardship. I think that is a better term, but since they are using sovereignty they are usurping it even further because the idea of the intent was the abolition of the king was to give us kingship and rulership over our property as stewards of God. And I... I will agree with that language, but this concept of... of sovereignty still exists. And, of course, state has usurped it all and making us pay a rental now on our own property and we have to do something about it and I am in court over it anyway.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, you know the Constitution makes no reference to sovereignty. It regarded it as an illegitimate term, a theological concept. And this is why what first Hamilton and then Marshal did represented a very real break with the Constitution.

It was a part of the drift of the country from a theological to a political framework. We are in that drift today and far gone in it and that is why, of course, our basic path back has to be, first of all, theological, because this is the gut issue. If we will not have God for our sovereign, we either make ourselves sovereign or the state. And those are the two governing alternatives in our society today. Man and the state as sovereign. So I ... I do believe that our struggle is a religious one. It is a theological one. God has to be made Lord again.

Now title to property is in three forms or ownership. It can be state ownership, which is Communist. It can be private ownership or it can be, as the Bible has it, family ownership under God. We still have relics of that in this country in that, for example, in California, community property laws prevail. Husband and wife own property in joint tenancy. And that is a healthy relic. We need to restore it. What we have done, however, is in state after state is say, yes, husband and wife, but we cut out the children. We make the state the primary heir through taxes. I am glad to say that with a concerted effort here in California, that was defeated.

Now there is—and you may be familiar with it—it is California based—a group named Estate whose purpose is to abolish all federal death taxes, estate taxes. And the strongest group in fighting for that is your farm women. Now city people are not aware of what is happening. But the farm wives were responsible for the changes in the taxes which raised the tax exempt level to 600 or 650,000, I believe, for an estate. That was entirely the work of farm women. Now they are working for the abolition entirely of any taxes on death. So that is an important step and let me add, that movement is gaining ground.

[ Scott ] Well, I think this is very interesting. I think theology, Rush, is an awfully long step for the average person. I think an intermediate step which would help toward that goal would be the restoration of history as a subject in the American educational system. Now history contains all these lessons. In ancient Rome families began to sequester part of the estate and give it to caesar in the hope that caesar would let them keep what remained. And then, of course, after enough families did that caesar said, “From now on you all do that.”

Now this is Caesarism here does the same thing. And all your... what you have both said about sovereignty, the difference in the definition of sovereignty and so forth, is part of our history. I mean, you... you recommended to me the 1828 dictionary of Noah Webster, I believe, in which sovereignty was allied with theology and with God. But this is not taught. And here we have a population who is being taught in the contemporary sense, in the here and now and whose historical sense has been destroyed. This applies to judges. It applies to lawyers. It applies to our scientists. Scientists discover something new and there is always a big argument about it and then finally the argument straightens out and they accept what is new, but when they teach a new student about science they never tell him about the argument. So they make it seem as though it is a natural progression from one advance to another. The same is true in medicine. The same is true in law and so on and so forth.

So history, in my opinion, is the easiest way to get people back to the nub of the discussion.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Otto, that is being done now, because the Christian school movement is growing by leaps and bounds including more children within its province every year and is teaching history and is working to develop newer texts in history that will teach this sort of thing at the same time it is teaching theology. So things are happening.

Now you remember the open house at our school.

[ Scott ] Oh, yes.

[ Rushdoony ] And you saw the caliber of the students and what they were doing. Now those students are going to be a different breed 20 years from now than the average citizen is today. They are not going to take readily to the kind of thing that is coming from the state house and from Washington, DC.

[ Scott ] Well, of course, if we have lawyers like that then we have a chance in the courts. Right now I believe it is... from what I have been told I am not sure about this. A man goes to law school, the first year is terrible. And the second year is very easy. If you survive the first year you can say that you are going to get out of law school all right. But what are they taught? They are taught case law. They are taught what the judges have decided that... they are not taught in terms of the principle and they are not taught in terms of history excepting that in the year 1960 the Supreme Court this... in 1972 they decided to do something else.

So they come out like Abraham Lincoln who, when he was asked about the Supreme Court on the Dred Scott case said, “Well, the court has been wrong before and it has changed its mid before. So it is really nothing to worry about.”

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, we are ... we are going to get a different kind of law school before too long and, in fact, at the University of Notre Dame law school professor Charles Rice and Professor Ed Murphy are teaching what law is about from a Christian perspective and this kind of thing, I believe, is going to spread.’

[ Scott ] What you tell me that some of the judges you have gone before as a witness in some of these church cases have been disdainful of the historical presentations.

[ Rushdoony ] Oh, yes. This is the kind of thing you have encountered, Dr. Chapman. I have heard, for example, one federal judge say that he wanted no reference to the Constitution or the First Amendment. This was in a Church and state case because his decision was going to be governed purely by the last word from the Supreme Court.

[ Chapman ] Incredible.

Now that kind of thing is not uncommon in the courts.

[ Chapman ] These people have relieved themselves of moral responsibility by case law. You see, the law is to obtain justice. And they have forgotten justice. It is what the Supreme Court has said on the last time they made an issuance. And he... he had the brazenness to tell you this right in front of the whole group and I don’t think there was one... one person outraged outside of yourself and your... your team. And I am sure that by... by that opinion. But this is what the law is all about, to establish justice. And they have forgotten justice.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Chapman ] The law is so complicated and, you see, they are not looking at what this fellow deserves and what he deserves in equity or in law. And another thing we discussed a while ago was when the money system was completely reverted back to paper currency, you see, no one can pay any debt at law. And if you do not pay your debt at law, but hand them this cent and ay quarter worth of paper, you are not paying at law and you go into the court of admiralty. And this is why so often the judges look at you and say, “Well, the Constitution is not at issue here.” It is not, because admiralty law supersedes the Constitution in... in... in time and there is a question of how far it goes, but the estimates have gone back as far 900 BC. And admiralty law is interested in equity only, not in punishment. And the fact is that since you cannot pay a debt at law, we have no ... we cannot extinguish a debt. We can only discharge it. And if you look on you money it doesn’t say that this note is legal tender for all debts public and private. It says... that is what it says. It says for all debts. It does not say in payment of debts. And unless you can pay a debt at law, you do no extinguish it and that is why Americans have built this huge debt pyramid. You can get into debt, but you can never get out. These are concepts that are just being researched by our group in Detroit, tax group. Very sophisticated fellows are showing the lawyers the way around and it is fantastic to be in on it.

[ Scott ] Well, of course if your taxes are eternal, your taxes run every day. You pay at the end of the year, but the clock keeps ticking because you are already in the new year when you pay last year’s taxes. So that every time... every... every waking moment that you get up, you owe money to the government.

[ Chapman ] Well, what big money... but what are the...

[ Scott ] In that sense, I guess, we never get paid off.

[ Chapman ] Big taxes and the taxes you feel are ... are the more direct taxes, the taxes on your lands which you ... once you have paid for those lands shouldn’t be. And also your so called income tax, which is a direct tax that is not levied equally. And yet the courts have stated that the 16th Amendment did not change the Constitution and nobody was listening. Some of us have researched this out and we find that the government is quite truthful when it states that the income tax is voluntary.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, I can’t believe that. First of all, you see, I think there is a fallacy here in the entire tax movement, because it takes the letter of the law and says, “This is it,” as though here there was an eternal verity. But the point is we are a humanistic country now and there are no verities. There are not truths. So you cannot go to any court and say, “I want the truth. I want justice.” Because what is justice?

Pilate asked that question. What is justice? What is truth? It doesn’t exist under Humanism. And anyone who is going to court to seek it in terms of a humanistic faith is wasting their time.

Now I say that and I am one who is going to court continually as a witness in church and state cases. But what we are doing at one and the same time is to try to establish a counter faith, Christian faith. Then we can have law. But what the law says is totally meaningless.

In the Bob Jones case there was a decision of far reaching implications that did not even attempt to, I think, to find a real justification in the First Amendment. It was arbitrary. It was sociological.

[ Scott ] It had even...

[ Rushdoony ] ... of good policy.

[ Scott ] Did it even refer to the First Amendment?

[ Rushdoony ] I have the decision. I have read it and as I recall there was not even anything more than perfunctory reference to it. It was built entirely on humanistic premises of the sovereignty of the state and the fact that public policy should prevail. That was the essence of it.

[ Scott ] An undefined public policy.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. A public policy which is so elastic that now there are efforts to remove the tax exemption, for example, of the Catholic Church for its anti abortion stand, to remove the tax exemption of all churches for their stand against homosexuality. In other words, to reconstitute law as having some validity we have to reconstitute Christian faith in this country, beginning with the sovereignty of God.

[ Chapman ] No question, no question.

[ Rushdoony ] And until we do that, we are really indulging an exercise in vanity.

I want to jump back again to some of the remarks about case law. Case law comes from the Bible. It is not that case law is bad it is that we have nothing behind the case law as a principle of justice so that today case law is developed in terms of a sociological concept in terms of the absolute justice of God.

[ Chapman ] In other words, it is which cases you are selecting for what purpose. In other words, there is all kinds of cases out there and it is the interpretation placed on those cases and the combination of them. There is in it how you look at it. And if it is not from a Christian perspective we are going to get a perversion of justice. And I agree and I agree...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Chapman ] That anyone in the tax movement is at risk. I am ... I didn’t say that I wasn’t at risk. I am risking my property to make a point. But I have a point that the Michigan state of Michigan has not made a law and requiring any substance for taxation and therefore—and I mentioned that in a republic nothing can be compelled unless mandated by law. This is so basic that I think they are going to have a hard time walking around that and if they do, I agree with you, but I just want to see how they do it and I am spending a lot of money and risk doing this.

[ Rushdoony ] Good.

[ Chapman ] But I think if we don’t take the old jenny off the ground and fly her, we can’t go down in flames and glory either. We have to try. The courts... because, well, after the courts it is the rifle, I believe that. And I am... Lord knows, I don’t want it to ever get that far, because we are going to lose, because they have got all the guns right now. And I think that ... but we have to educate judges. And that is a very difficult thing.

[ Scott ] Well, I think, you know, we come onto these topics from different angles. One of the things that is really remarkable about the average man in the modern world is that he has had to accept things on faith in scientists that he cannot understand, he cannot prove, he cannot disprove. He cannot, for instance, really fathom or understand nuclear energy. Yet he knows it works. And he was told that it works and he has seen the effects of it. In the same way we have all sorts of mechanical marvels and then we have on top of these mechanical marvels we have sociologists and psychiatrists who tell us... tell the average person things that are not provable or disprovable about human motivations and behavior, about the nature of society and so on. So we have here an entire population which includes the professional classes, by the way, who have already accepted a great many impossibilities like Alice in Wonderland, they have accepted seven impossible things before breakfast. So therefore they can make impossible rulings and they know that they have a population that will accept the impossible judgment.

Now we have... we have a case just the other day of... a week where a man was taken into the execution chamber in Texas. He had his last supper and then he was reprieved and taken out of the execution chamber and put back into the cell. And the reprieve, I guess, was considered merciful and so forth. So in this kind of irrational atmosphere you go to court to see what you can do. I think it is a good thing to go to court. I think one should try to dispute what he does not believe to be true. And I do think that if there are enough disputes that it will be repetition of the rebels before the high commission. The government is going to have to present a more plausible case, because people are beginning wily nilly to think for themselves despite the fact that they are told in so many words to leave it to the experts, we know better than you do.

At least the laws should be understandable to all citizens, otherwise how can they be expected to respect or obey the law?

[ Rushdoony ] Well, I feel that when we fight we have to fight in terms of the future. That is why the only cases I go to court for are essentially with regard to the First Amendment, because there I am fighting for the education of the children who are going to make the future, because the Christian school is creating a new kind of person, a person who is seeing his faith applied to every area of life.

Now I think if we are fighting just for property, important as property is, we are fighting defensively and we have got to take the offensive. That is why the battle has to be fought essentially in the area of Christian education, not your income or my income, not your property or my property, important as those things are, because nothing is being done there to develop the presuppositions of a new culture, of a Christian culture. But every time we safeguard the freedom of a Christian school, we are then working to create a new future.

Now I made two trips to Australia this year and I am delighted with what is happening there, because a movement is underway. Bill Ball and I went there in June and I went again in August. And the net result of that is they have gone to court. They have won the first round for the freedom of the Christian child.

[ Scott ] Oh, I didn’t know they won the first round.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. So now there is a disentangling. For the first time you are getting children who are going to be trained in independence from the state, because up until now the state has controlled the parochial schools.

[ Scott ] Up until now do you mean Australians couldn’t have a private school? All their schools were government schools?

[ Rushdoony ] They could have a private or a Christian parochial school, but the state controlled it. The state subsidized it. The state required the teachers to belong to a state controlled union. Now for the first time that has been challenged and a victory has been won. So this means a very real freedom.

Now one of the effects of that which is going to affect a lot of the compromising schools, which means most of them, is that the state is going not start punishing by withdrawing the funds. So wily nilly ...

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] ... these other schools are going to have to make a stand.

[ Scott ] Well, if they don’t get you on Monday, they will get you on Tuesday.

[ Chapman ] Now don’t you have the feeling that the ... the Marxist graduated income tax that we all know is the second plank of the old Communist Manifesto really got its warp and woof through the exemptive process, not who it taxed, but who it didn’t tax. And you see Bob Jones, you see the situation there in Australia always a matter of exemption, never on who are you taxing so much as the exemptions, especially in a corporate situation. And I just wanted you to {?}.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, well, I think the income tax came in because it was necessary. It wasn’t good. It was evil. But it was necessary. It was necessary because you have to have social financing. Christians earlier were providing for the elderly. You had all kinds of homes, Catholic and Protestant for the elderly. I can remember some of them still when I was a child. You had homes for delinquent children and orphanages. You had all kinds of Catholic and Protestant welfare agencies, but little by little those things were dropped by the way side and people quit tithing.

[ Chapman ] At what period was this?

[ Rushdoony ] From...

[ Chapman ] At what time?

[ Rushdoony ] 1860 to about 1940 there was a steady retreat of the Christian churches form these areas.

[ Chapman ] Wasn’t it ... didn’t it follow mainly World War I? Wasn’t that...

[ Rushdoony ] Especially then, yes.

[ Chapman ] {?} You know we had a fractional reserve system in 1913 and people were getting for part of the problem here in private financing is that America is rapidly becoming poorer now. And we can all see it. But we couldn’t quite see it when the fractional reserve system. It goes back to very greedy bankers diluting out the capital available. And I am merely stating that this is when ... where you say, “Well, it was necessary, a new tax. But is a new tax necessary when you have instituted an extremely cruel, but subtle, old tax and that is exactly what happened. This is the real growth of Statism at the expense of the people and, of course, the people say, “Well, that is why we have got to have this income tax, because the other taxes, nobody will take care of these poor people now sow we have got to get government.”

I think that is the most serious error that any of us could make.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. But, you see, before the federal and the state governments stepped into welfare, the churches has withdrawn. They had withdrawn. The depression of 1907 was the last time you had major organized efforts by churches to deal with the problem...’

[ Chapman ] The 1907 panic was the Morgan money shift, the gold shift to Canada. Remember that? And they sent the group over there abroad and they lived. They spent a hundred and some thousand dollars. It was quite a... the committee. And then came back and, of course, said, “We have got to solve these banking problems and institute the federal reserve.” 1907 was that year when we had that panic that was solved by the man that caused it and he became the hero.

But getting... what I am getting back here is that the whole system, I believe, is because it was tampered with by government, the whole cause and to give government more is to commit suicide.

[ Rushdoony ] Man has to have a god. When he rejects the God of Scripture he is going to make the state his god and that is what we had done long before any of these people came around. So it was just the logical step to have the income tax.

Now if we get back to tithing, if we get back to doing things God’s way, we are going to eliminate that. What we are doing right now, step by step, to eliminate public education. We see now all kinds of agencies to deal with welfare and other problems like that. Now that is the only way we are going to defeat them.

[ Chapman ] The only thing is: Do you think the people who are in a downslide in their standard of living are going to be able to be able to afford to tithe on top of that ... and be willing to when their children are taught that evolution is a matter of fact? These are the things that we are coming...

[ Scott ] Well there is a ...

[ Chapman ] ...and then to....

[ Scott ] But there is a...

[ Chapman ] ...and they are very important.

[ Scott ] But there is a Christian revival going on.

[ Chapman ] Oh, I know that.

[ Scott ] Well...

[ Chapman ] But I say that I don’t ...

[ Scott ] Well, what does it mean?

[ Chapman ] ... I am not saying... I am not arguing against you, but I am trying to look at causes and the loss of faith through these ...

[ Scott ] But faith is coming back.

[ Rushdoony ] And it is the...

[ Chapman ] Well, yet I hope so.

[ Scott ] Well, you saw it today.

[ Rushdoony ] It is the...

[ Chapman ] Oh, there is no question.

[ Rushdoony ] All right. Now it is the people on...

[ Chapman ] I repeat.

[ Rushdoony ] ... the lower economic level today who are beginning to tithe. We have thousands of people on our mailing list. I get letters from them all the time. I rarely ever get anything from a man of great wealth. In fact, I don’t think I ever have. I get something from men of moderate means. I get a great deal from very poor people. They are tithes, 10 percent. And they are giving to other groups as well. So what we are seeing today is people with the least means who are creating a changed country because they are saying it has to be done God’s way.

Now this is what is creating a new future and I don’t believe it is going to be created any other way. I don’t believe God is going to bless people if they are going to fight of their incomes rather than of their children and their children’s future. So we are, I believe, at the cross roads of history. We are on the greatest crisis in civilization. The last days of Rome are nothing compared to what the world is facing between now and the end of the century and especially, probably, in this decade. And it is the people with the least means that are doing the greatest.

I could take you to some groups, some black ghetto groups who are creating Christian schools, who are creating welfare agencies to minister to people who are down and out, who are housing people who are street people. And they are doing all this when you look at them and you say, “These people are so poor. How can they help anyone else?” But they are saying, “The Lord requires me to tithe and the Lord will bless me if I do.”

Now we are seeing a major revival today in this country that is beginning to change the ghettos among blacks. There is more Christian vitality there where they are getting tremendous hostility from some of their leaders who are on federal and state payrolls and who are hoodlums, who are lawless, tremendous hostility.

But the things they are doing are dramatic. They are changing the country. There is no excuse for any of us not to do it God’s way, because it is the only way God is going to bless and it is going not mean victory.

Well, I think our time is just about up. I believe this has been a continuation, Otto, of our session on the Constitution, because it is...

[ Scott ] I think it has, yes.

[ Rushdoony ] ...basically the same issue.

[ Scott ] Right.

[ Rushdoony ] And we had an opportunity to deal with some of the same gut issues again. So it has been a delightful session and thank you, Dr. Chapman. We have enjoyed the exchange of ideas. We don’t want to discourage you in what you are doing because you have to do what you feel God wants you to do. But we have to do what we believe God requires of us.

[ Chapman ] Well, there is no argument there from me.

[ Rushdoony ] Good. Thank you.

Well, we will be with you again in two weeks. And...

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