From the Easy Chair

Romanticism

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 203-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161U37

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161U37, Romanticism, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 134, November 11, 1986.

This evening Otto Scott and I are going to discuss Romanticism. Now before we get into the discussion I want to give a general survey, because, too often people think that Romanticism and Romantic are cognate terms. Actually, a great deal of what Romanticism has meant throughout its history has been decidedly unromantic, although the romantic mood has been a part of the movement.

Now, basically, Romanticism must be understood in the context of a departure from western culture from a Christian perspective. The first major step was the Enlightenment with its exaltation of reason. Man was no longer seen as a creature made in the image of God with knowledge, righteousness and holiness together with dominion over the creatures, but as a rational animal. Reason was seen as the paramount characteristic of man. And I should say autonomous reason, reason that separated man from God and isolated him as a kind of God over creation.

One of the consequences of this rationalistic temper was that because women were regarded as emotional creatures, the classical or Enlightenment movement immediately resulted in a put down of women. They were seen as inferior. However, subsequently, in the latter part of the 18th century Romanticism began to develop.

Cornelius Van Til has described all movements away from God as integration downward into the void. Well, Romanticism instead of seeing man as reason, saw man basically in terms of his emotional nature. Progressively this has resulted in a downward integration into the void so that very quickly as Mario Praz in The Romantic Agony pointed out, horror and depravity became permanent characteristics of Romanticism.

In our time we have seen the development of rock and roll. Rock and roll is a further decent downward because it emphasizes, to the exclusion of all else in man, a type of feeling. The owner the type of feeling the more successful rock music is. So we have a continuation of this downward decent towards the void. Romanticism, therefore, has infiltrated into all aspects of our culture. Its most sensational aspect, of course, is rock music, punk rock. But there is scarcely an area in which it is not present.

Well, with that general introduction, Otto, do you have some comments to make about Romanticism and its impact on culture?

[ Scott ] Well, I would go back a bit further than the Enlightenment. It accompanied the Renaissance.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And you... as you know, the Renaissance had a pornographic side. And also by reviving the pagan attitudes as we know the pagan attitudes toward women were that they were very, very much inferior. So you had, of course, after the Renaissance and overlapping with it you had a reaction. You had the Reformation. Then, because there is, or there seems to be cycles in civilization similar to the cycles of generations, the Renaissance reappeared in the form of the Enlightenment, pure reason. And then a romantic reaction to the excesses of reason. And in the beginning, I think, it was of mixed value. For instance, Sir Walter Scott’s historical novels did a lot to change people’s attitudes towards the past. And the novels of the middle 19th century, late 19th century, the Russian novels, for instance, which appeared to come out of no place, played a... a good creative role and portrayed society’s—certainly the Russian society—with considerable realism.

What we are looking at now, however, is all these particular genres carried to the point of decadence, absolute end of the line. We are looking at novels, now, that are incoherent, that have no narrative flow. They have no plot. They have no climax. They have no catharsis and the critics love it. They keep promoting Joyce Carroll Oates and Joan Didian and people whose only expression seems to be a prolonged moan of some sort. So we are in a very peculiar position.

Classical music has been pretty well demolished into modern music, as you mentioned, rock and roll. It... just serious efforts have been made to destroy melody. We have composers like Philip Glass who will compose an entire piece using only four notes. I mean, it... it is... it. it almost passes understanding.

Then, of course, we have the attempted demolition of painting with the so-called modern school which is now 100 years old. And modern dance which destroyed classical lines and movements, choreography and so forth.

So I would... I would say that we have gone... this particular dip has gone farther down than any of its predecessors.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, that is very true. The Enlightenment revolted, of course, against God in favor of reason. Then there was a revolt against reason in favor of emotions. And with it a revolt to a great extent against history, against the past, against the meaning of life in terms of Christian faith, the family and other such ancient categories that men have always prized.

Now the age of revolution has been a product of Romanticism so that when Romanticism was born one of its first products was Revolution. And I think it is very interesting that revolution is a war against history, as it were, because revolutionists want to reach a humanistic paradise over night. They deny historical process. This was Burke’s great argument against the French Revolution and it is still valid, although Burke failed to base it sufficiently on Christian categories of faith.

[ Scott ] I agree with that, but I also point out that where.... when Burke produced his masterpiece against the French Revolution, he did it before the terror.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] He pointed out at the end of the avenue, he said, lies the gallows. But the gallows were not visible to other people when he spoke. Today the age of revolution, we all know, including the revolutionists, that a river of blood is opened up. We know there are mountains of cadavers. We know that people being burned alive is part of the revolution in South Africa and it is condoned. Now the initial promise of the Revolution was utopian. They were going to bring in a better world. But now the promise of the revolution is power into new hands. The utopian, the compassionate, the societal promise is now being discarded. So therefore we have reached a very sinister period. This is the only period, so far as I know, since the pagans, since, let’s say, the Babylonians and some of the old empires, the very old empires, the Aztecs and others who were drenched in blood and who believed in it. We have gone almost full circle...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... back to the pre Christian attitudes.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, that is very, very true. The fact that in the quest for feeling, for sensation without relationship to any moral concern marked Rome to the point that if a murder were in the play the actor was murdered on the stage.

[ Scott ] They reached that point, yes.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] They had actual murders.

[ Rushdoony ] And some recent reports indicate that there is now a market for snuff films.

[ Scott ] Well, of course, they claim that this is not so. They claim that this is imitation. But psychologically...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Psychologically there is very little difference between these cunningly reenacted fake murders. I understand that children today will be exposed to maybe 10, 15,000 of them via film and ... and television. The psychological reaction is the same as if they were real. And, in fact, in some parts of the world they are real.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. One of the most vivid recollections I have is of an instant of about 30 years ago. A distinguished professor of economics who had been active with a foundation whose concern was economics spoke on the death of freedom at Stanford University. And it was an excellent address because he went into what was happening on the political scene, looked down line and could see nothing but tyranny and Totalitarianism ahead. So he spoke very eloquently and feelingly about the death of freedom.

The students who came to hear him were, in the main, moderately conservative. But when it was over the first question he was asked was: You talked very eloquently about freedom, but what is so wonderful about freedom? He was startled by that and could not get over it.

In other words, Romanticism means, ultimately, the destruction of all values. Nothing is important. Nothing is worthwhile, except accomplishing what you want, getting what you want, realizing yourself.

[ Scott ] Well, that is... that is unfortunately true and, of course, people who are not locked up don’t know what freedom means or I remember somewhat along a similar vein at the ... in the closing months of World War II was in France and ... a seaport in France and the streetlights were still out and ahead of me who walked on this dark street was a young soldier. And on this particular street every shop window had been shattered except one where the proprietor had buttressed it by crisscrossing various boards and the glass was still intact. And this particular soldier stopped and looked at it for a minute and then kicked it in. And he went on and ducked into a little café. You could tell because there was a small light outside. And I went... followed him in and sat next to him at the bar. And we both ordered drinks and then I finally said, “I saw you kick in that window. Why did you do it?”

And he said, “Well, I just felt like it.”

And I said, “Where do you come from?”

And he came from a small town, one of those places where they rolled up the sidewalk at nine o'clock before World War II and where you did not get out of line if you knew what was good for you. And I thought it was the first time, probably, that he had been alone and free of fear of arrest and his only reaction was to kick in an empty window.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. The gravitation of modern man to a situation where he can be anarchistic, that is, a very, very powerful force in the modern world, I think it is very interesting that precisely at that point in history when the city was no longer a necessity, the city grew phenomenally. Up until not too many years ago, just a few generations back, cities had to be at a seaport or on a river, somewhere where there could be a movement of freight readily and easily.

[ Scott ] Or a railroad division.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. But with railroads plus highways and automobiles and trucks and airlines, there is no longer the same necessity. And yet the decentralization has been greater since the development of these things which have destroyed the need for decentralization. And the reason for that has been the... the lust—that is the only word for it—for depersonalization.

[ Scott ] Well, that was one of the great lures of the city to begin with was the anonymity of the city.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes

[ Scott ] As opposed to the small town where everybody knew who you were and who your family was and knew what you were doing and so forth. You couldn’t hide. But the city allowed people to hide. So in the anonymity of the city they could lead secret lives as well as official lives and they didn’t have to account to their neighbors and so forth.

In fact, when I was a boy I remember one of the rules of apartment living in New York City was that you did not speak to other people in the apartment building. That is, of course, long since forgotten, but now I don’t think it is necessary to pass such a rule. They don’t anyway.

But the point being that it was a complete departure from small town life, country life. Now... but today we are looking at something a bit different. We have got the romantic... the so called romantic genre being carried through in the movies and in literature. If you read the short stores in The New Yorker, for instance, which is always a chore, you find that they are domestic situations now. There a young man and his wife and perhaps a child and the whole scene takes place in the kitchen or the living room or, perhaps, in an automobile. The greater world does not exist. This is almost a domestic drama cast in modern idiom.

The movies, also, are very small plots regarding individual interplay without respect to the context of the times or the period with very rare exceptions. And then, of course, the camera and the books and the novels carry them into the bedroom, strip them, put them into bed and describe what they do in the bed as though nobody could imagine, as though no adults exist, as though they are giving sex education lectures in the guise of fiction or in the guise of movies. And the overall effect to me is institutional. It is almost as if you are sitting in the classroom and the professor is telling you or reading aloud to you what his idea of what a novel should be. And, in fact, many of our novelists now are professors.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. This isolation you spoke of. You see it in modern dancing. Every now and then when I am flipping stations on the TV and see some of these groups dancing, each in isolation from everybody else. It is the end result of Romanticism, your own private world. And narcotics also, your own private world. You don’t need people. You flee to your inner world. You dance alone. You live unto yourself.

[ Scott ] It is an interesting thing. Now if we wanted to enlarge the... the subject just a bit, there is an interplay between power and authority and art. One of the most interesting aspects of the Soviet revolution was the role of Lunacharski, the commissar. Lunacharski had been an associate of Lenin’s since before the revolution and he was commissar of all culture, you might say. Now he liked the ballet, the classical ballet and he had as mistress the leading ballerina. Therefore he determined that the ballet would remain unchanged, the traditional ballet. Every other part of art had to go with the czar except the ballet and they put on the {?} traditional ballets for the Soviet troops to this day and it is the accident of Lunacharski’s {?} which has made this possible.

Now he also was the architect of the Lenin... worship of Lenin cult. When Lenin was dying Lunacharski decided to enlist the service of art and architecture and music and painting and literature into the cult of Lenin and the revolution. So Lenin is a Russian speaking American professor, a female, has written a book called Lenin Lives. And it is a very excellent portrayal of how the tomb was selected, how they had a great contest, how the parades go down the Red... to Red Square carrying the great images, the icons of Lenin and Stalin and all the rest. The ... all the trappings of religion and all the instruments of art, painting, all these pictures of Lenin carrying a flag or exhorting the crowd and so on and so forth.

Now, let’s switch across to the West. At the end of World War II Adorno’s adored modern artists began to appear. And if you remember in the Adorno theory he connected a dislike of, quote, modern, end quote, art with Conservatism and with all kinds of evil attitudes.

Well, at the end of World War II we had the great flowering of abstract expressionist art and galleries which absolutely refused to accept anything else and now I understand it is a two billion dollar a year art market supplied by a tiny coterie of artists, handled by an even tinier coterie of dealers, pushed down the throat of the American people who are absolutely nauseated by it, promoted by every art professor in the country and it is an exhibition in my opinion of raw, commercial and cultural power by a relatively small group.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, but at the same time it can survive because the people of the country in having isolated themselves from God have no ammunition, no armor against these people.

[ Scott ] Oh, how well, how nicely put.

[ Rushdoony ] I think that the only way that we can eliminate this whole romantic culture is by a return to a biblical faith with its realism and with its insistence that we are under God and we must be members one of another in Christ so that instead of the anarchism of Romanticism, we have the community that only Christ can give.

[ Scott ] Well, look at the difference, the great difference. When we look at the literature that has come out of the furnace of the Soviet. We look at Solzhenitsyn and we look at some of the other Soviet escapees or refugees or whatever you want to call them. I was trying to think of the name of that engineer who wrote The Socialist Phenomenon, the Soviet engineer.

[ Rushdoony ] Ah, yes, I know the one you mean.

[ Scott ] And he wrote it is...

[ Rushdoony ] Excellent.

[ Scott ] Excellent chapter also in Under the Rubble. And I understand he is under the rubble. He disappeared into Siberia which is no surprise. And the power of their writing, because each of these men went through the furnace, came out like Daniel, strong in their faith and therefore what they have to write is powerful and moving. And I think the most ridiculous reaction was in some of our intellectuals who said, “Well, if we had had similar experiences, we, too, could write that well. And, you know, they wouldn’t survive enough to write anything.

[ Rushdoony ] No. We have an establishment in this country that is dedicated to the destruction of Christianity and everything in our culture that smacks of law, morality and order. As a result, we have the exaltation of the worst kind of thinking, the worst kind of art, the worst kind of novel and much, much more.

I think it is not all together surprising that one of the all time favorites on the screen was a woman who said, “I want to be alone.” That is the essence of Romanticism.

[ Scott ] She... she attained her desire.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] She has been left alone for a good many years now. And I don’t know how may young people know the name of Great Garbo and if they do see these old movies played on television—and I must say that it is one of the most horrifying experiences of my life to see some of these old movies again in my maturity and to marvel at the fact that I thought some of them were good.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, the fact that makes for that temperament, I want to live... to be alone, is that it is not easy to live with people. We are all of us sinners. We can be problems to one another. Life in community requires patience and faith and work.

And so the Romantic temperament exalts the individual, sees society as essentially something to avoid and, therefore, says that isolation is the goal. It is irresponsible, of course, but this is the goal.

[ Scott ] Well, the free play of the imagination which was the lure to begin with and the whole idea that writing a novel is an act of creation, whereas writing a historical book or a factual book is not, is part of this nonsense, because certainly it is as much an act of imagination to conceive of how real people were moved as it is to move around imaginary creatures of your own devising. But the thing that strikes me about this so-called imagination world, the imaginary world is that in my experience one of the first lessons I had to learn was to control my imagination.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] That if you cannot command your own mind, you cannot command anything. You...

[ Rushdoony ] Very good.

[ Scott ] You have to be able to say to your mind when it wanders off the track, “Stop that nonsense.” You cannot allow yourself to go down forbidden pathways of supposition. You must think clearly. You must be realistic. You must face up to facts, both about yourself and about the world. And the one terrible aspect of the Romantic movement today is that diverts people from reality. Our literature does not mirror our society.

[ Rushdoony ] Modern man has a very, very short attention span which is one reason why whether in novels or on television or in films the action has to have a fast pace, continually changed, because the ability of the viewers to maintain a sustained attention to anything is very limited.

[ Scott ] Well, that has been observed. It has been, to an extent, cultivated. The television programs used to break into 12 minute segments. I think today that is even shorter. We have books now that promote only one point of view and one argument in that point of view, almost as an article used to. And the novels have a spurious complexity by scrambling the chronology, but if you have the time and want to take the time and patience to unravel that scrambling you will find that it is almost as simple in the basic structure.

Modern life is inter... a series of interruptions. People don’t have time for long conversations, long visits, long works of art, long books and so forth, although I will ... I will draw back on the books. Occasionally you see some terrifically long books repeating ad infinitem the points made in the first two chapters.

So it just adds up to an increase in detail and a decrease in profundity.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. When I was a student two writers rubbed me the wrong way, poets both of them. The one who most... was most distasteful to me was Shelley, the poet. And after him Lord Byron. As a result, I did quite a bit of reading on their lives, because they were being so highly exalted by the professors I wanted to have good reason for thinking of them as no good. What I found out very quickly was that neither of them could get along with anybody. Both of them saw themselves as the epitome of wisdom and of righteousness, of justice, of learning and of truth and of everything else, so that they were a couple of mangy gods walking on earth who had good reason to isolate themselves from the common herd.

Well, that attitude, I think, has become routine since then in the world of art.

Just recently, Otto, you did an excellent article in The Conservative Digest for November, 1986 on Hemingway. And the title, “Why Ernest Hemingway Fascinates Liberals.” Let me add I think it is well worth reading by all our listeners and if they would like to get it, copies cost 2.50 each or 19.95 for a year’s subscription if you write to P O Box 2246, Fort Collins, Colorado, 80522.

Otto, would you summarize or expound further on what you had to say about Hemingway?

[ Scott ] Well, Hemingway, of course, was the great writer of my youth. And I remember the Spanish Civil War very, very thoroughly. It was from 36 to 39. And it was a ... an engagement which engrossed practically my whole generation at that time, at least the part that I knew in New York. And we all knew that Hemingway was going to write a great book about the Spanish Civil War. I couldn’t wait to see it. It finally came out. And it was a Hollywood love story using the Civil War as a back drop. And I will never forget my disappointment at that terrible sell out.

Then about the same time that I felt that he really not only had feet of clay, but entire limbs of clay, I began to learn a bit more about Hemingway individually, personally, one, about the way he was treated over in Spain. The Spanish communist government, which called itself loyalist and which was loyal to nothing decent provided him with a chauffer and a limousine and luxury suites in the hotel, all the booze and girls he wanted and carried him around on their back practically because they knew he was going to romanticize their side in the war.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And that was the side that turned the stomach of Orwell, because he saw the executions. And I remember some of the arrogant little bastards that came back from the Abraham Lincoln brigade and I was very sorry they survived the war to come back, particularly the Wolfe brothers who changed their names.

In any event Hemingway I then looked at with a different eye and I began to read some of his material with a different view. And, of course, he wrote like a 12 year old boy. I mean, the idea, his ideas of women, his ideas of men were juvenile. Physical courage. When I was ... got involved in World War II and, of course, I wasn’t as deeply involved as many others, I came to the conclusion that Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage and all these kind of writers, Lawrence Stalling’s What Price Glory and some of the others were absolutely off the mark. The commonest thing in the world is physical courage. It is as common as dirt. Everybody is physically brave. All you have to do is get your blood up and you are willing to fight. It is moral courage that is rare. And then I had to stop and review Hemingway and all this emphasis on courage and I don’t think it takes courage to fight a poor bull. The bull doesn’t have an knife. I don’t think it takes courage to shoot animals that don’t have guns. And I thought Hemingway was wrong in his estimate of people. And then I began to consider this individual, many times who never once wrote about being a husband, many times a father who never once wrote about being a father or having a child or being concerned about a child, a man who made a great deal of money and who bragged only about how much he could eat and drink and how much sex he had. And you could see the wish fulfillment in all his heroes. It was Ernie himself doing these things in his books. And in the end, he never wrote about the great themes. He never wrote about what happens to a man who loses the fight. What happens to a man who falls? What happens for an encore after you are knocked out of the ring? Do you come back? Do you get up? Do you continue? What happens to the fellow who stands against everybody else? What happens to a person who calls on a higher power? Is there a higher power?

Well, in the end, there was no higher power but his appetite. And, of course, the end was what you would expect {?} individual who had no faith, no standards, no moorings and, in the end, no friends, nothing, nothing, a tragic end, nobody. Somebody should put on a play of Ernest Hemingway. What a great opening act they would have. What a wonderful middle. And what a great and unforgettable climax it would lead to. That, to me, would be American theater.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. When his For Whom the Bell Tolls came out I was a graduate student at the university. You would have thought it was one of the greatest literary events in all of history.

[ Scott ] Sickening.

[ Rushdoony ] The way the professors haled the book. Every student was going around with a copy of it or with a borrowed copy of it reading it because it was the thing to do. You were really not an intellectual if you didn’t read Hemingway.

Well, Dorothy and I didn’t know each other at the time and we were at opposite ends of the country. And Dorothy started reading it and got to that one classic scene which I think is the point beyond which it is very difficult ever to go.

[ Scott ] You mean when the earth...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. When...

[ Scott ] When the earth moved...

[ Rushdoony ] When the earth moved. Now here was a man whose vision never went any higher than his loins and he figured all people were like that. And so when the ... this one character and the woman have sexual relations the earth moved and you were made to feel this was some super normal thing that happened whenever a couple had great sex together. And he goes on and on to develop the greatness of that moment.

Well, how anyone in their right mind could read that and take Hemingway seriously is appalling. I am not surprised that when in his last years before his death he talked with people he was full of paranoia. He felt the whole world was focusing on him, that the FBI and others were out to get him and he was very much an impossible person to be around, because he was not mentally coherent. And I don't think he ever was.

[ Scott ] Well, I have a recording that Hemingway gave. I have never been able to play it all the way through. I don’t know why I bought it. I bought it some time ago and he was reminiscing about some parts of his youth and he told the most incredible lies about himself. But he was a creature, fundamentally, of the media. He fit the media conception of a writer. It was almost like Clifford Irving.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] The fellow who faked the biography of Howard Hughes.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Nobody has ever looked more like a writer than Clifford Irving. I have never seen a photograph of him wearing a tie. His ... his collar is always open and he is always heroically poised against the landscape.

Hemingway looked like a writer, as the way people think a writer should look and acted the way they think a writer should act. I mean he was always at the banquet. He was always at the bull fight. I don’t know why the bull fight because everything that could conceivably be said about those poor bulls has been said a long time ago by the Spaniards.

In the end, the worst thing that Hemingway did was his simplification of literature, his reduction of themes to yourself and your girl, nothing else, nothing else.

[ Rushdoony ] And yet one book after another is written about Hemingway as though he were one of the greatest of writers.

[ Scott ] Well, we have others. We have others that are almost on the same level. We have Updike.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Who goes from one terrible little suburban farce to the next. And we have a host of them. We have John Irving and his Hotel New Hampshire, I believe it is, which is almost unreadable. We have Saul Bellow who has been translating some of the better writers of Europe into the American idiom for a number of years without anyone ever saying anything about it who took Louis {?} tremendous works and produced The Adventures of Augie March And everyone said, “Oh, how heroic, how unique, how original.” This makes it sound as though we have some sour oats... grapes here. And that is not really true.

If I had everything in the world I would never have transferred any of it. I would never move an inch to do what Hemingway did.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, we have book clubs dedicated to exalting these people so that though the media, through the publishers, through television, we have the exaltation of a culture that is anti Christian to the core and that represents a continuous integration downward into the void.

All this will climax in disaster for a culture. And I believe we are in the first stages of that last disaster.

[ Scott ] Well, that is possible. In that wonderful book by Auerbach Nemesis he traces the decline of literature in Rome to the point where they could no longer write a narrative history, where poetry fell apart, where speeches, their rhetoric, their great pride became just {?}, just noise.

If you ever want to hear real noise, listen to an American after dinner speech. Listen to the... listen to the average business speech that is delivered in the United States and you will hear meaningless noise. And that is... that was the stage that the Romans reached in the decadence, when nobody publicly ever stated the truth about anything, never once gave their sincere opinion, never once described the situation in a valid and realistic way in which they were living. And then you have what we have. You have noise. You have words that ... marching across print, but you have no literature that reflects the society or the culture or its problems or its people. Honestly, we have now reached the stage where people can openly talk about taboos. Imagine, a great power which has a constitution guaranteeing free speech talking about taboos and saying that they are good and we should keep them. And they are not talking about sex. They are not talking about pornography. They are talking about one another.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, recently I read a book about the Duke de Richelieu, not Cardinal Richelieu. And the Duke de Richelieu began this career under the.... under Louis XIV and died shortly before the revolution under Louis XVI. And as you read about the life of the nobility in France in those days, the thing that comes through loud and clear is how inevitable the revolution was. How could this culture continue? It was so near collapse for a generation or more. And then, of course, because there was nothing else the revolution simply made more efficient everything that was present in the culture of the Duke de Richelieu.

So the collapse came. Now, I feel that we are in the age of Louis XV, maybe even Louis XVI right now throughout the western world. It is going to collapse and the issue is not will it, but who will succeed it or what will succeed it. Will it be a renewed Christianity or will it be another Robespierre?

[ Scott ] Well, it is a race. The revolution is underway. We are, I think, in the time of Louis XVI. Don’t forget that that particular revolution took certain specific stages. The first was the destruction of the pride of the French people in their history. The second was the destruction of the mystique of the unifying symbols of the ... of the society which were the crown, the aristocracy and the church and the army. And we have reached this stage here. The onset of the actual revolutionary stage, to most historians, was with the general assembly met to reform the taxes. And we have just instituted a tax reform whose effects have not yet reached the people. But I can assure you that when the people do realize the effects, they are not going to carry Rostenkowski down the street on their shoulders.

[ Rushdoony ] He wants to be the next vice president, you know.

[ Scott ] Oh, he wants.

[ Rushdoony ] He thinks he has earned it.

[ Scott ] Of what? Of what?

[ Rushdoony ] Of the United States.

[ Scott ] Of south Chicago, of Cicero? Well, the flood gates are beginning to inch open. However, we have what the French do not have. We have had a vantage point. We have had a box seat throughout this whole century for revolutions around the world. We probably have more people in this country like myself and yourself who understand every stage of these developments than ever existed anywhere else at any time. We know exactly what is happening. All we have to do is to inform enough other Christians and we can stop it. And it can turn out the door that we would prefer to see it turn out rather than the mindless totalitarian vision that animates our great liberal socialists.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And the only hope for the future is in the Christian community in a renewed Christian faith.

A week ago today I was in Boston, Massachusetts for a trial of Christian schools. That area I am told, I don’t know, harbors 100 colleges and universities. Right now they have about 40 percent illiteracy in Boston, functional illiteracy, people who cannot fill out a job application or a driving license application. In Boston, the absenteeism in the schools is 44 percent. And yet the Christian schools of the area which are providing literacy are being persecuted.

Now that is the intellectual capital of the United States. It does not concern itself with the issue of freedom and of literacy. So there is no hope in that type of leadership. They are the living dead. The hope is in the Christian community, in a renewed Christian faith, in the power of God manifest in the lives of the people.

[ Scott ] And, I think, also, the enlistment of Christian artists.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... in providing alternative literature, alternative art to this nonsense that we are being inundated with.

[ Rushdoony ] There never has been a mighty step forward or a change of direction in history without some people being subsidized to give themselves to a study of the foundations of the faith. Every great move forward has come when men have been supported to study and to apply the faith.

[ Scott ] Well, that is true. You know that when the Catholic Church had to pull itself together in the face of the Reformation, the counter Reformation really managed to survive through art.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, Christians have to learn to give to support enterprises like Chalcedon, to support Christian musicians, Christian artists, Christian writers, because we have the support of the opposition by giant foundations that pour millions upon millions into the kind of culture we have on all sides. And we are not going to change this just by wishing it would go away.

[ Scott ] Or talking just to each other.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] We have to reach the larger congregation. I always liked John Knox’s term for the Scottish people. He called them the congregation, all of them.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Not just the ones that came to his church.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, he addressed all of them and he left his mark on Scotland that in recent years they have been trying to erase, unfortunately. But there is still a continuing witness to what he did, a very remarkable man.

[ Scott ] Well, I do think the instruments of the new Reformation are within our grasp. Never before has it been possible to change an entire nation as quickly as it is possible today.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] All you have to do is get to the microphones.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And to get with them ... to them with thinking that is radically Christian. We have been a single issue people. We may be right on politics, but we are wrong on everything else. We can be right on education, but we haven’t thought through other issues.

I can never forget the time that Larry Pratt flew to Los Angeles to speak to some of the top conservatives of the West. And what he found was that except for what they wanted to do in politics to win, they were as liberal as anyone else. There was no substance to their thinking, no world and life view that had any coherence. And so he told them they were worse than the liberals, because they had no consistency in their position, in their stands whereas the opposition has a consistent world and life view of faith which, while contrary to ours...

[ Scott ] Well...

[ Rushdoony ] ...is logical.

[ Scott ] ...they believe... they believe in the devil. They believe that he will give them all the power in the world.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

Well, our time is running out. I think we have about three minutes. Do you have any concluding comments, Otto?

[ Scott ] Well, I do think that we have to be a great deal more serious. I have gone into Christian book stores and I have seen some of these new romantic Christian novels and they do not impress me.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] We must apply ourselves to a higher level. We have to... this is not going to be easy. This is a real, honest to goodness cultural struggle for survival.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And we are not going to win it with jingle bells.

[ Rushdoony ] No. Nor modified romantic novels.

[ Scott ] That is not going not do it. I mean, some of the greatest works of literature in the world have been anything but romantic.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Yes. Well, I couldn’t agree more. I hope and pray that we can in the days ahead provide an anti romantic and a Christian standard to which men can repair and can become the focal point of a revival that extends beyond the borders of the church to every area of life and culture.

Well, thank you all for listening. It has been good to have this time with you. If you have subjects that you want us to discuss, please let us know. We can’t guarantee we are capable of discussing every subject.

[ Scott ] Oh, don’t suggest...

[ Rushdoony ] But we will try. Thank you.

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