From the Easy Chair

The Breakdown of Law

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 190-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161M24

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161M24, The Breakdown of Law, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 104, August the 24th, 1985.

Today we have here myself, Otto Scott, Mark Rushdoony and John Saunders and we are going to discuss a very important subject, the breakdown of law.

Before we begin the discussion I want to share with you a few things that tell us why the subject is so relevant. For example, the Washington Times for Wednesday, August the 21st tells us that the novelist Dominic Dunn is in a rage, is writing a novel to express his feelings. His daughter was murdered a few years ago in 1982. His daughter Dominique Dunn who was an actress was murdered by someone who was taken to court, convicted and now may be free fairly soon. In fact, the man will be getting out probably in a year. And what Mr. Dunn says is that he very often feels murderous. He would like to murder that young killer when he gets out of prison next year, but he says he realizes only too well that if I really murdered Sweeney, I would get a bigger sentence than he got. He is also sickened by the fact that the judge decided to keep Sweeney’s record of physical abuse against women from being introduced into the court trial. Mr. Dunn has written about the matter in Vanity Fair as well as now in this interview in the Washington Times.

Is this unusual? Far from it. I have encountered in my travels all too many cases of young women, virgins who are raped. The rapist either got off scot free or with a very light term. Records of previous rapes by the men would not be introduced at the testimony, but every effort was made to impugn the morality of the raped girl, to imply that she was probably promiscuous and much more.

Now this is hardly justice. Let me share a few things more with you. In the National Review for August 23, 1985 an article that I am going to read. The title is “Liability Nightmare.” Quote, “Item: A man sticks his two year old son’s head between the running blades of a ceiling fan and then sues the manufacturer for failing to warn him the child might be injured. "Item: A company that had manufactured textile machinery for 136 years goes out of business because of the costs of liability lawsuits over equipment it had manufactured decades earlier. Item: After deciding that a drug a woman had taken during pregnancy was not responsible for her child's birth defects, a jury awarded her damages anyway—to help defray medical costs of the child's future care.

“These horror stories, culled by a Heritage Foundation researcher, show why product liability law has become a menace to more than just the Manvilles and Union Carbides of the world. Even without a single obvious disaster, the case-by-case costs of litigation can drive small companies to the wall. Heritage analyst Milton Copulos says 20 per cent of the cost of

an ordinary stepladder is traceable to past, present, and future liability.

“Sad to say, the horror stories are not mere flukes; each one illustrates a principle of law. The ceiling fan case is just one example of how courts are disallowing the traditional defense of contributory negligence. Another such case involved a man who strapped a refrigerator to his back and ran a stunt footrace. One of the straps failed, and he collected one million dollars from

the strap manufacturer.”

And so on and on. And the point made is that the big winners are the lawyers, not the plaintiff. Worse yet the article goes on to call attention to the fact that some vaccine, old standard vaccines do have side effects. These side effects appear in a small number of cases.

Well, because of the lawsuits in those cases, now the are all kinds of law suits. And so what we are seeing is a problem of orphan vaccines. And these are likely to be so watered down that they will neither create side effects nor cure anyone. We have to grant that there are risks in this world. We cannot have a risk free world.

Let me give one concrete personal example. The small pox vaccine has apparently been a major factor in eliminating small pox. There are no cases now. On the other hand, over the years there have been side effects from the small pox vaccine. I was vaccinated as a boy. I think I was about five or six. It made me very ill. My arm where I was vaccinated the whole arm swelled to the point that I could not fit into my nightgown. I had to wear my father’s shirt and I filled it.

Now it was serious. I was in a critical condition. There were such instances. Mine was not isolated. But small pox is eliminated. Perhaps it may have killed me. Perhaps it killed a handful across the world, but it saved millions of lives. Today this will no longer be possible in the future if the present type of liability situation continues.

One more item and then we will open up the discussion. This is from the Reason magazine for September 1985. A judge in Paulsboro, New Jersey presented an interesting choice to the parents of two hooky prone goys. Either spend 273 days in jail because of their son’s truancy or have them declared incorrigible and let the state teach the kids the value of an education.

The parents opted for prison and kindly judge David Tako released them after a week saying they had learned their lesson. The boys 13 and 14 stayed in foster homes while mom and dad learned all about compulsory education.

The parents had claimed they brought their boys to school each day, but the slightly built youngsters would cut out, because they were routinely assaulted by other students. Kiko told the parents the kids had brought the assaults on themselves because they had wise mouths. No one will accuse Kiko of that, unquote.

One of the remarks I hear as I travel across country and meet with various groups and hear horror stories about judges is the remark: Somebody ought to start shooting the judges. Well, the tragic fact is that violence against judges is increasing. I was in a court room in a Christian school case. It was a new courthouse building built with federal funds. The seats for the spectators occupied the back third of the room. The table of the counsel and the state attorney were towards the back end of the room. And across a great empty space sat the judge on his bench. And I remarked about that, all that empty space. What was the reason for it? And I was told this was because increasingly judges were being assaulted and by having a large empty space before some angry person could get to the judge, the bailiff had a chance to stop him or knock him down with his billy club.

Well, that its eh situation. And in a sense the judges, buy departing from common sense have brought it on themselves. The roots of this are, of course, in the transition of law from a biblical to a humanistic foundation.

Otto, as we go around now, why don’t you begin with what you would like to say about this whole breakdown of law.

[ Scott ] Well, it is not unprecedented. The great major historical example is the French Revolution. The pre revolutionary period was marked by a shift in the French judges. When agitation started against the powers of the crown, the judges in the courts of France began to side with the demonstrators against the king. And that made the judges and the courts of France very popular for a time with the revolutionaries just as the Warren court here in the United States was very popular with the left wing because it sided with the left wing in many of its rulings.

Now as the courts went along with the revolution in France, the disorders increased. They didn’t abate. They increased. The judges were the heroes of the fight against the autocracy of the crown. The judges were paraded around as fighters and defenders of the rights of the people. But once the king was deposed, one the king was set aside the courts were astonished to find themselves under attack and what was established was people’s courts and the people’s courts began to apply the terror.

Now the same phenomenon arose again in Germany in the 20s. The courts began to give way to the pressures of the Socialist government of the Weimar Republic. And before a judge would sentence a criminal... and you have to understand that crime in the 20s in Germany became phenomenal.

Bolitha wrote a book very interesting book called Murder for Profit. And one of the cases in it was a butcher of Hamburg and he described in passing the condition of Hamburg at that time and it reads like New York. It reads like Los Angeles. It reads like Detroit. Unbelievable pornography, vice of every sort and a great many hundreds of thousands of homeless young people wandering around serving as prostitutes both male and female. One of the individuals who preyed upon these people was the murderer who was known as the butcher of Hamburg because he sold the meat from the cadavers to the butcher shops in Hamburg.

Now at that point in the Weimar Republic which is now being called by some as a period of great creativity and intellectual advancement, the Athens of the period and so forth, at that point the psychiatrists had such an influence in German law and German courts that before the judge would apply a sentence he would confer with the psychiatrist and it wasn’t called a sentence. It was called treatment.

When Adolf Hitler was arrested for leading an aborted rebellion in, I believe it was Munich. I am not sure. He was allowed to use the court as a podium for political speeches and he was sent for a very short length of time. This is for mounting a rebellion in which men were shot dead. The beer hall putsch they call it. He was sent to Landsberg Castle to serve his sentence. And in the castle he occupied an opulent suite. He had secretaries. He was able to dictate his book to, I believe it was Rudolf Hess and so forth. The courts, in other words, became places where revolutionary, rhetoric was mounted with the permission of the judges. And, of course, we all know what happened to German law and we all know what happened to the German society. Because the function of the courts, the function of the judiciary is to protect the people against people like Adolf Hitler, not to allow them a place from which to promote their policies.

Well, the courts of the United States in my opinion have joined the social revolutionaries here. They have promoted, they have used social scientific studies, some of which have later been proven to have been doctored and the authors of some of which have recanted. They have used some of these studies as a basis for sweeping changes in our constitutional rights and regulations. It is now an open and accepted thing that the Constitution of the United States is whatever the court decides it to be. So therefore we have a rubber constitution which can be stretched or distorted to cover anything whatever that any Supreme Court wants to rule.

However, the matter has descended from the Supreme Court to the district court. At one time a constitutional ruling was so rare by the Supreme Court and had such wide spread influence that Theodore Roosevelt when he ran for the presidency in 1912 on the Bull Moose Party had in his program one platform calling for a national referendum to either vote up or down any constitutional ruling by the Supreme Court, because, he said otherwise we are going to be dictated to by nine people who are not elected.

Now he called that the law of constitutional return, I believe. I have forgotten now just exactly how he expressed it. But Lincoln before him had said we cannot allow the court to be the final determiner of anything that is very crucial. The courts, he said, the courts have changed their mind in the past and will change their mind in the future. But he said we cannot allow the courts to determine the course of the nation. That is up to the judgment of the people.

Well, of course, now we have district judges making constitutional rulings. This is the lowest level of the supreme.... of the federal judiciary. We have judges across the country who most people don’t even know who they are, where they came from, what they do. There is no general and popular record of what the courts are ruling. The press covers the White House. The press covers Congress. But the press doesn’t cover the courts. When it gives you an item, a news item saying a federal courts ruled today... most of the time they don't even say who the judge is, where he came from or anything else. None of this is covered.

We have a judiciary which is operating, practically speaking, in the shadows. And, of course, the is a very good reason why the people are angry at ... at the outcome of the case, because you cannot say when you go into a court whether you are a victim or whether you are a complainant, whether you are a defendant what the out come is going to be.

Now we... this carries us back to the whole question of equity and justice in my opinion. There is a... there is an old historical theory to the effect that when a civilization becomes so complex that the average man can no longer see the workings of justice, when he can no longer see the evil doer punished, he can no longer see the innocent protected, he can no longer see people of substance and equity become successful, when he sees the unworthy elevated, when he cannot see the connection between right and wrong and the results of right and wrong in the society around him, he tends then to believe that everything is manufactured out of connections, out of influence, out of secret forces and conspiracies, out of fickle destiny, out of fortune, out of chance.

When a civilization is in that situation it is in very serious trouble because what the average man cannot rationalize, he cannot defend. And what cannot be defended cannot be maintained.

[ Rushdoony ] Mark, would you like to comment now?

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, it is something that has already been touched on is that when you hear this subject talked about in ... in barbers shops, around coffee tables, people recognize that we are in a problem. They see liability cases or they will know of somebody who won a ... a judgment or very often a settlement because companies don’t want to go to court or they will settle for a ridiculous amount in case they don't to spend legal fees on. They will talk about murderers who are released because they hear about it and everybody recognizes it. But they look at ... they look a the wrong thing. They look at crime. They look at a violence instead of looking at it as the breakdown of law, which is a symptom of the breakdown of civilization. And that is why it... at the heart of the problem with our law is ... is the problem with our civilization which is a moral one. It is a breakdown of the Christian influence on our culture as a whole. And that is, of course, that is part of the function of ... of Chalcedon is to approach this from a Christian perspective in rebuilding society.

It ... you... you mentioned New York. I was reading just a short time ago on the optimism of people viewed America 100 years ago. And that American was viewed as a new civilization. And with one of great promise. New York was looked to as the city of ... of the civilization of the future. And now it is looked on as a moral and political quagmire. It... it is looked on as an embarrassment to America. And so we have to see the problem in a larger perspective as a break down of our... of our culture as a whole.

[ Rushdoony ] John?

[ Saunders ] Well, sir, I ... I have been doing a lot of study recently in history of philosophy and theology. And I have noticed the connection between what... what you and Otto and... and Mark have said in a... in a very long term sense, a connection between ideas and consequences. And it is not only... it is not important that a person merely believe that absolutes exist. It is more import that he believe that the ... that the absolutes are at... are authoritative and apply not just to the other guy, but to himself as well. And that is the key to what Otto was talking about when he mentioned equity. Most people today don’t think... don't think in terms of equity any more. You ask the average person what equity means, you know, he thinks that is how much money he has got tied up in his home. You know, he doesn't understand the concept of equity and the golden rule which is ... and the golden rule is simply one case law application of the concept of equity. He doesn't understand that anymore. It hasn’t been taught in the churches. And it hasn’t been taught in most ... in most of... of the popular writings on the subjects, you know, in the newspaper articles we read and things of that nature. People think it... think of it as just an intellectual concept and idea which has no real relevance or no real consequences for their own lives.

Well, naturally it doesn’t, because everyone has rejected the absolutes. They have rejected equity. Now everything is relative. Now everything must be equalized, not equitable. And so y our end up with a situation in which we see a continuous slide from the absolute to the relative and in that slide the opposition, non Christian thought, often with the aid of many Christians, unknowingly, non Christian thought systematically redefines all the terms of ... of law. They redefine the terms of truth and everything else.

On Monday, for example, it is illegal to murder. On Tuesday there is extenuating circumstances. On Wednesday there is certain psychological factors that must be taken into consideration by the court. On Thursday the victim is accused of the crime. And on Friday the judge hangs up his robes and goes fishing because it is legal to murder. And that is... that is in a nutshell the... the way in which once you reject the absolutes of God as binding on all men including myself as well as... as my neighbor and you being to abandon the concept of equity and justice, you slide from the absolute to that which is relative and you end up in a situation in which everything is valid. And that this what we have got now.

I... I see time and again on these television talk shows on the late night news programs, where they are interviewing people. I see more and more and more the idea in the media that the accepted left wing liberal view is the true view and the only one that any sane man would ever possibly consider. Anyone else who denies that perspective is, of course asserting absolutes. And those, we all know, as far as the liberal media is concerned, are not longer accepted, the traditional values. Those are old hat and passé. We are now new and modern and we see law and the things of this nature in a very different light.

And you see, for example, deliberate... deliberate manipulation of quotations and statements that are being made by the media. As far as I am concerned the courts really don’t exist anymore. The media decides the cases long before the courts ever deal with them.

[ Rushdoony ] I think this would be an appropriate time to call attention to a book written 40 some years ago, John Hallowell, The Decline of Liberalism as an Ideology and the subtitle goes on to say that it is with reference to National Socialist Germany. And it was written, I think, in the early days of the war or just before the war. The book is an extremely important one which disappeared almost with attention unfortunately. But it calls attention to something that you touched on, John.

It used to be that confronted with some problem men would say, “Well, God says thus and so,” while those who were not Christian would say, “Well according to the laws of nature thus and so should clearly follow.”

Now whether it is in a personal discussion or a talk show or on television it is, well, I think. The individual has replaced and any natural law that men may once have believed in. Hallowell in his book traced the rise of Liberalism, Liberalism broke with Christianity, but it still had a Christian hangover. And so it concerned itself with ideas of justice which it felt were a part of the universe, natural law in some sense. But very quickly, especially after Darwin, all that disappeared. And men began to replace God’s law and natural law with civil law, positive law.

So that law was what the state said it was. So Hallowell concluded and documenting it very carefully and meticulously the liberal views of law and society prepared the way for Hitler, because they removed anything in the way of content from the law except the will of the state. And as a result National Socialism exploited precisely what all the liberals believed in.

Moreover, the one could say that the mistake Hitler made as a true, blue liberal, in fact, a radical, he was a Socialist, was in turning racist, because his goal was to abolish Christianity and create a scientific socialist state. He had a city picked out which was going to be rebuilt from the ground up to be the scientific center for the scientific high priests from which scientific socialist planning would govern the nation and the future of the nation.

So to get back to Hallowell, he made clear that law, if it is denied a foundation in something transcendent to man and society inevitably becomes what the Marxists have made of it, what the Fascists and Nazis have made of it and what we in this country—let me add—are making of it today.

[ Scott ] Well this comes from Mr. Marx who was a classical scholar. He was trained, he studied and he did his thesis on ancient Greece and Rome. Now Roman law was very famous. And people still refer to it. But what happened as the Empire continued and began to decline was that the forms were retained, but the essence was leeched. And the law became an expression of class supremacy and certain categories of Roman citizens were differently treated according to their position in the pecking order. Slaves, for instance, had no soul. They were not persons. And so they had no rights whatever.

We see the same distortion of law arise in ... in the Soviet Union where people whose background is bourgeoisie or aristocratic, for instance, cannot be allowed into a higher university or a school or learn a profession. They have to come from an origin of workers. This is in the Soviet law today. So in the name of eliminating hereditary position, they have changed whose heredity is important and the National Socialists, of course, did the same thing. The courts of Austria set up the quota system. The Austrian government set up a quota system. So many jobs in the government for Jews, for those of German origin, for those of Slavic origin, Hungarian, et cetera. And then, of course, an individual was no longer an individual but a representative of a group. We have gone... we are going down the same line and we started it, of course, when we decided that the idea of equality before law no longer applied to your money so that people could be unequally taxed. The income tax law destroyed the idea of equality before law in American courts. Once your money could be unequally taxed the fruits of your labor could be unequally taken away from you.

[ Rushdoony ] Excellent point.

[ Scott ] Everything else could be unequally treated. And this is what we are now encountering in the courts. We have a different application of law traditionally against women than against men, because, presumably the courts have to protect women, the weaker vessel. However, some of this unequal treatment is retained in the days of rampant Feminism. None of the laws requiring a male to be responsible for the support of children have been relaxed even though the Feminists are demanding equal incomes or compensatory salaries and so forth equivalent salaries.

Everywhere we look at the American law we see the forms remain, the essence is being evaporated. Unequal treatment is now the earmark of American courts. I don't think we could say much worse.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] Yes. I think it is an exception that ... an exception rather than the rule, you know.

[ Rushdoony ] Mark, any comment?

[ M Rushdoony ] No, only that one example of this emphasis on, for instance, the ... the victims of the ... excuse me, the criminals and criminal rights and ... in the courts is that the courts have made so many rules on ... on the police, even some of the traditional advan... advantages the police have had have become useless. For instance, now the police when they bother to take finger prints at the scene of a crime, if they think it is a serious enough crime to take finger prints, they don't automatically check that unless they know have a specific suspect in mind they will check those finger prints with finger prints on record. It is crime now is so widespread that ... that they... they... they can’t... they can’t be bothered checking and go looking for criminal unless they have a specific suspect in mind. And then they will check the finger prints they find at a scene to see whether they match that... that suspect.

[ Scott ] Would that be true even in a murder case?

[ M Rushdoony ] In a serious case they might do it, but in a... in a... for instance, a major robbery I... I heard a case not long ago where they... they just... there is too much. They can’t... they can’t...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ M Rushdoony ] ... they can’t handle it all so they won’t bother unless they have a specific... and, of course, many, many cases they won’t bother to take finger prints. If somebody steals your television set, you know you can give them the information on the set if it had your social security number of serial number that you recorded and they will file a report, but very often—and this is even more true in a big city such as New York or San Francisco, they will file a report, but you and the police both know that... that it is going to end there at the report.

[ Rushdoony ] One high ranking police officer told me within the past two years that counseling in a department is sometimes now a very important task of superior officers and some have chaplains because police officers are so often suicidal. They are so totally discouraged and frustrated and feel so hopeless.

John?

[ Saunders ] Well, I was... I was... there was a thing that Otto was talking about there in ... in the law that really comes out in the amendment to the Constitution that deals with taxes and the change in the content of the law. And this is ... I remember several years ago many years ago I was sitting down reading The Institutions of Biblical Law. This is one of the first times I had read the book and I was reading it in a restaurant in Los Angeles, a little coffee shop where I used to go and hide out for a while and study for two or three hours.

And there were a couple of guys that used to come there regularly and sit down and always interested in what ... what... what the actor fellow had to read that day and all that stuff, because most of the titles they couldn’t even pronounce, much less understand. And anyhow they sat down. They saw this Institutes of Biblical Law and all right away the hackles went up on their neck, you know. And they started trying to find reasons and excuses and justification for denying the validity of biblical law, excuses.

And one of the principle arguments that this one gentleman made is an argument that I have heard time and again from many people, is, “Well, the biblical law is all right, but it is so negative. I mean, you know, I just can’t stand all that.... those thou shalt nots and stuff like that.”

And I got to thinking about that. And it occurred to me that those people how make that statement don’t understand the relationship between law and the meaning of words and grammar. And one illustration of that is in the Constitution if you compare the First and 16th Amendments, all right? In the First Amendment it says, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion and the free exercise thereof and so on.” It is stated in the negative which places limitations upon the government. You see? Whereas the amendment on taxation says, “Congress shall have power.” It is stated in the positive. And therefore it grants power to the government. And the first is negative, the second is positive. The first limits government, the second grants power and gives virtually no limit to government. And just that subtle change, that fundamental difference, when people see biblical law as negative and for that reason should be... should reject it, they don’t understand the obvious implications to their idea when applied to their own law. And now as Mark insisted and as Otto pointed out, you break the back of the middle class through progressive taxation in which all people are treated differently why the next thing you know the entire core of law must go down the tubes.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Were you going to comment?

[ Scott ] Yes, I was. I think John has put his finger on a very, very important point. One of the causes of the English Revolution, the real revolution under Cromwell, not the false revolution that they talk about today was precisely on that question. What Elizabeth did, what Henry did first and then Elizabeth and then James I and finally Charles I was that the King appointed agents to whom he delegated his powers. So you had the proposition which we have here in the United States.

For instance, we have a sort of a senate hearing or a house hearing in which they operate like a high commission. They ask you questions and you are not allowed ... your lawyer is not allowed to answer for you or defend you. And you are not being charged with anything, but you must answer all the questions under pain of penalty, contempt of court or contempt of senate, rather, or the house. And you can be ruined by the publicity of the hearing, but it is not considered a trial. So you can be punished. You have no... limited right of self defense and yet it is not a trial because it is only hearing.

[ M Rushdoony ] It may even be televised.

[ Scott ] And it may even be ... oh, yes, the publicity...

[ Saunders ] The Mc Carthy hearings.

[ Scott ] ... it is... it is... it is... it is a lynch thing. You can be held... hung up. However, then when the Congress is finished with you the various agencies of the government can come after you, the SEC, the IRS, the ICC, you name them. And each one of whom can com after you on the basis of testimony that you have been forced to give.

[ Saunders ] Exactly.

[ Scott ] ... in ... to the Congress. Now in the 17th century the argument was that the king could not delegate his powers, because there is only one king. And if every agency of the government can come after you on the same body of charges each one claiming the right of the king, you are violating an essential protection, an essential privilege which the English had to buy with their blood. And this is called delegated powers. And part of the purpose of the American Constitution was to stop the king from doing that. you recall in the Declaration of Independence they said he has sent his agents and set up agencies and commissions to harass the people. So this was one of the things that the Americans broke with the crown on because they wanted the rights of Englishmen not to have multiple powers of the king, agents of the king operating as though they were kings. Each one of the agents, in other words, has to be limited. And what we did is that we have opened the gates to unlimited delegation of power. The checks and balances have failed us and most striking of all the courts have failed to intervene. The courts have never ruled on the constitutionality of the agencies created by Congress who administer, how first formulate their own law, their own regulations and then administer those regulations and then rule on the complaints against those regulations.

[ Saunders ] Well I think, Otto, I think that one of the keys to turning this entire situation around is really very fundamental and very basic and very simple. Right now the average person has no fundamental concept of law. What is its nature, ok? The concept of law in the western world was originally Judeo Christian, actually Old Testament law and New Testament law. And out of that developed a body of thought which was very fundamental and very simple in terms or law. That body of thought was taught by the Christian leadership. And when that Christian leadership then went out into the world it sought to put that body of law to work in various ways. I think that the greatest single antidote to the tyranny of.... of the United States Supreme Court and the lower courts to the tyranny of governments, to the tyranny of... of special interest groups that are manipulating billions and billions of our tax dollars with and without our consent, I think the key to that is if the Christian pastors in America go back to teaching the nature of law, from biblical case law, if they ... if they just did one sermon a month on the nature of biblical law, I think that more than anything else would tell the average person and... and provide the average person with the ability to go in the Scripture and find that authoritative ground for what he should support and assert. I think that would go ... do more towards restoring, for example, a... a... a... a ... an equitable tax system. I think that would do more to checking the power of judges tan you can possibly imagine, because then when a judge ruled incorrectly the people would then know instantaneously that he did wrong. They wouldn’t have to have the media tell them and interpret it for them. You see?

Right now we have a major movement going on in California to throw out Supreme Court justices in California that are coming up for election next year, Rose Byrd, for example, and three or four associates of hers. They are called Rosie and the Supremes by the... by the... by the... by her enemies. And because they have danced around all the issues and... and... and sang a different tune.

And that move is coming about because the media can no longer hide the liberal movement in terms of the California state Supreme Court. I have over in... on my desk over there right now. I have three supreme court cases in which Rosie and the Supremes have ruled and I have to tell you. The ... as a layman, even I can see the deceit and the contradictions and the arbitrary rulings, the arbitrary ideas in these Supreme Court {?}. I have the complete text of the opinions and it is... and it is... and it is ... it is ridiculous. It is ludicrous. You wouldn’t buy a car on the same laws and principles that the Supreme Court is applying to the interpretation of the law.

[ Rushdoony ] I would like to interject something here. Some very interesting comments have been made with regard to the 16th Amendment, the income tax amendment. As you pointed out, John, there are no restricting clauses in that amendment. In terms of that amendment today, the country could be turned Marxist over night because Congress has the right to expropriate all your income. It can do what several European countries have done, raised the income tax to 120 percent to compel you to liquidate all your assets and then to step in and take them.

This is not all. In all the church and state trials I am involved in the 16th Amendment, from time to time, comes in for this reason. If you make out a will the last codicil you add that will governs all that precedes it so that everything is written, for example, in a will you made out last year and then you add a paragraph this year, that paragraph governs what proceeds it. Now in terms of this premise, federal and state attorneys are arguing and attorney generals as well including the man who is presently governor of California when he was attorney general, sot his type of argument is common to conservatives and liberals when it suits them. But the First Amendment is now of historical interest only by and large, because the First Amendment dealing with the freedom of press and the freedom of religion must be read in terms of the 16th. And the 16th does not give any constitutional exemption to churches, only a statutory exemption exists state by state and in terms of what the IRS and or Congress chooses to grant with regard to churches so that at any time without any constitutional change in terms of the 16th Amendment, the argument reads.

The churches can be taxed. All tax exempt groups can be taxed. They can be dealt with by the IRS as it chooses. Now I am not saying this argument has been bought 100 percent by the courts, because the courts usually nibble at a constitutional provision. But do know that this type of decision is coming in whereby the constitutional protection for the freedom of religion is increasingly eliminated. And it is recognized only as a statutory exemption. This is very dangerous. But it is a growing factor and it needs to be recognized.

[ Saunders ] And when a church is struggling financially, when a church is struggling financially, I mean, it recall intimidates them, you know, to realize that they are... they could lose their tax exempt status if they don’t cooperate with the IRS and with these various other organizations. When that is... because that is... that intimidates thousands of churches and pastors that don’t know any different.

[ Scott ] Well, everybody is intimidated by the federal government. There isn't a man in the United States or a woman of any capacity whatever who isn’t afraid of the government. The people of the United States are afraid of the government and, of course, we are also tremendously over governed. We have not only 50 states with courts of law and so on and authorities and police and so on, but we have cities, towns, villages and counties. So we have a multiple structure here. And it is an open secret that we are treated differently in the courts as we are treated differently in the media, as we are treated differently by the government depending upon who we are.

If you are a member of a popular minority and we have to make a distinction, because everyone in the United States is a member of a minority. There is no overall majority in the country. If you are a member of a popular minority you get differently treated by the judges than if you are not. If you ... it is almost as though it is somewhat like the Soviet. If you appear as the sort of an image, a WASP image of what they consider the American aristocrat, you are not going to get as good a treatment as if you come from the ghetto.

So discrimination has not been changed, it is simply shifted targets. The Watergate people all went to the penitentiary. And these were men who had never broken the law before. There isn’t a person in the ghetto who would be sent to the penitentiary on his first offense. And we could extend this. Now this is ... I... I... I ... I keep coming back to it because it arouses a sense of indignation. Inequality of treatment is the essence of injustice.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] Well, when you replace equity with equality that must happen, because the judge then becomes the great equalizer. He gives the poor a break by not sending them to jail for a first offense, but he punishes the wealthy for being wealthy or famous or what have you, and, of course, they must go to jail. And then he... but he never gives them the full extent of the law.

[ Scott ] That is if they are unpopular.

[ Saunders ] Yeah.

[ Scott ] If they are unpopular...

[ Saunders ] Yeah.

[ Scott ] ...and wealthy. Now if they are popular and wealthy he serves community service.

[ Saunders ] Exactly.

[ Scott ] When Mrs. Ferraro’s husband was sentenced to community service, he was going to counsel people on real estate matters and he was convicted... he was convicted of breaking the law on real estate matters.

[ Saunders ] He is going to now tell them how to either beat the law or how not to get caught or how is a law breaker then going to counsel others? I... that... that ... that makes, I guess, perfect sense to some judge somewhere, but...

[ Rushdoony ] There is someone on our mailing list, this unequal treatment, he got hit hard with it, because he was applying to a dental school for admission, one of the best dental schools in the country and he had top grades and the whole question, of course, was that this was at the peak of the influx of minority groups.

His parentage was quite unusual, half Cuban and he was born in Cuba and the other half English. Sad to relate this young man wound up looking like a Nordic hero. So he was going to get into the school on the basis of his Hispanic background, but when they looked at him, they accused him of fraud and dropped him.

[ Scott ] That... years ago, well, one of my grandmothers was part Indian and it crossed my mind as to whether I should register myself as a native American or not.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, on some reservations you would qualify.

[ M Rushdoony ] It doesn’t take much blood.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] Isn't that ridiculous.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] It’s funny.

[ Scott ] So we have a law for every group. We have... we are... we are at the Austro Hungarian stage with overtones of Marxism. Where do we go from here? What could be done about it? The courts, the federal courts are beyond reach. The only federal judges to my knowledge that have ever been impeached and removed have been impeached and removed for commercial corruption. There is no general acceptance of the idea of moral or intellectual corruption. We have all sorts of officials in office who are guilty of public lies. And there is no indignation about that.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, I believe short of Christianizing the public and the law there is no answer.

[ Scott ] There is no answer except Christianity.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Our time is very limited. Are there any last words for today? Let’s start with you, Mark. Anything to say?

[ M Rushdoony ] I think we have pretty much covered the subject. I would reiterate what I said before that the breakdown in law is part of breakdown in culture which is at its root a rejection of our Christian heritage. And short of revival I can’t see ... I can’t see about a means out. We have got to change people and their attitude towards law and their attitude towards government before we really get at the root of the problem.

[ Rushdoony ] John?

[ Saunders ] I would just take that one step further. I think the revival has to be a revival of Christian learning.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] A revival of Christian learning with proper emphasis given to the law. And the law isn’t difficult to understand. There is very few principles that you have to understand in their... in their basic simplicity. They are all taught in the Scriptures. Unfortunately they are not taught in the churches.

[ Rushdoony ] I would agree there that ... that just briefly.

I was at a conference recently and I believe as the only non lawyer there. The other speakers recently I mean within the past year. One came from a protestant law school, another from a Catholic. And they were the two farthest out of the speakers. I couldn’t understand why they even claimed to be Christian or wanted any part in a Christian conference on law. That is the tragedy. We not only have to re Christianize the United States, but the churches and their institutions.

[ Scott ] Yes, I was going to say something of the same thing. The law right now is being used as an anti Christian instrument. The ACLU is widely described as the anti Christian legal union or something of that sort. But the Christian clergy is helping its enemies.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ M Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Saunders ] I find it very interesting that the one thing that everyone remembers about Chalcedon after they have read the literature for a while and heard some of the speakers is the emphasis on the law. And that is one of the principle reasons why Chalcedon has been so successful in terms of its impact on leadership.

[ Scott ] Well it is to introduce the subject of retribution.

[ Saunders ] Exactly. And ... and... and... and... but it is... but in a general sense it has reintroduced the binding validity of God’s law and that has made Chalcedon a double threat in the sense that A) it intimidates an awful lot of people and B) the more positive aspect is it gives an awful lot of people hope because they... they again can see the validity of biblical law because of Chalcedon’s teaching.

[ Scott ] I would rather say that it enlightens rather than intimidates.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, any last words here now? If not, thank you all for listening. As always, we are happy to consider possible subjects. Just let us know what you would like to have us as a group deal with. We don’t promise we will deal with it, because we don’t feel we are competent in every field and there are some that...

[ Scott ] Don’t say that.

[ Saunders ] I don’t know anyone here who is a botanist, so I think that is one field ... botany and zoology is one field we don’t know anything about.

[ Rushdoony ] Then there are some subjects we are weary of talking about also.

[ Saunders ] A lot of those.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, thank you all for listening and God bless you.

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