From the Easy Chair
Cultural Decay
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons
Lesson: 206-214
Genre: Speech
Track:
Dictation Name: RR161V40
Year: 1980s and 1990s
Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161V40172, Cultural Decay, from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.
[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 172, June 7, 1988.
Otto Scott and I are going to discuss now cultural decay, a very relevant subject because that is exactly what we face in our time.
Back in the 1950s Henry Van Til, the nephew of Cornelius Van Til, wrote a book, I believe, entitled Christianity and Culture. In the course of that book he made an observation that was very telling. He said culture is religion externalized. It is the manifestation in every day life, in the arts, in the sciences, in every aspect of living of the faith of a people. Well, when that faith decays in any culture, you have decline. When the religion of the Greeks waned in its significance they became decadent, degenerate. The same happened with Rome. The same happened in the late Middle Ages and the same has happened with the modern age. So we are in an era of dramatic cultural decline. When you have cultural decline, because the religious faith is no longer seen as relevant or is no longer believed, you have a rise of lawlessness. You have a return of barbarism. You have increasing violence and all kinds of social unrest. Society requires a harmony or it is not a society, because the word society and community or communion are cognate words. In fact, when you go back to the older English versions of the apostles’ creed, where we now read, “And I believe in the communion of saints,” it read, “I believe in the society of the saints.”
Well, what we have today is no longer a society in that sense, because we have warfare, warfare between the various persons in a society. You have a break down of society into individuals, each out to get what they can making no contribution to the future. And this is our problem today.
Otto, would you like to comment now?
[ Scott ] Well, I agree with you have said. And this happened, the slide... we probably... this generation, we probably know more about more cultures and civilizations and societies and we know more about the experience of the human race than any generation that has ever lived, because for the last couple of hundred years the archaeologists have been digging and uncovering old cities. They even found the birthplace of Abraham. And we have unearthed and examined and translated the very ancient languages and tongues and so forth. And so we have a glimpse of their religion, their literature, their manners and their decline. Of all the generations that have ever lived, we have the lease excuse for imitating the failures of the past. And yet we are imitating most of them.
Now, of course, the signs... the signs of decadence are, I suppose, as revealing of one’s own standards as anything else. W hat one fellow may consider decadence somebody else may think, “Oh, well, that is nothing very important.” But my understanding now is that students in school feel they have the right to cheat. They have a right to cheat.
[ Rushdoony ] And welfare recipients feel they have a right to welfare.
[ Scott ] A right to charity.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes
[ Scott ] Well of course that carries back with that business I mentioned before from the American Spectator when needs are translated into rights.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] And there is a difference between need and right. One may can need a great many things, but you don’t necessarily have a right to take them from somebody else.
[ Rushdoony ] No.
[ Scott ] The signs that strike me most particularly are the attitudes of Americans now towards women. Women are no longer to be protected. And, in part, of course, this is due to the fact that they have said they don’t want to be protected. Well, they are not being protected. And unfortunately the ones who said they don’t need men are the ones who wouldn’t have men anyway. And they have been accepted as the voices of all women and they are not.
But putting that to one side, the fact of the matter its hat there is practically speaking an undeclared war against women in the United States. They are being murdered in tremendous numbers, murdered and tortured. They are not safe at night. They are not safe alone. They are not safe in the city. They are not safe in daylight in New York and other places. And certain areas are not safe.
Then we have the very peculiar development of minority enclaves in the middle of our cities, some of our cities. We have black communities in some of our cities in which no white man can go.
[ Rushdoony ] Or not even a successful hard working black.
[ Scott ] Or not even an upper class black.
[ Rushdoony ] No. If you are a hard working you are hated. You are the enemy.
[ Scott ] Now this means that there is a separate group of law growing up in those areas.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] I just read recently, for instance, that there are 70, 80 gangs in Los Angeles that are turning that city into a barbarian battle field. There have been almost 400 killed by these gangs in this year alone. The year is only half over.
Well, when you were talking about atomizing the individual, separating everybody from one another and I think in terms of the manners of young people. When I go into the doctor’s office or the dentist’s office and what not they generally call me Otto. I remember when we called porters by their first name and servants. We didn’t call elderly men by their first name. And I still don’t like. I don’t really like the name Otto to begin with and I don’t like anyone but friends to use it.
[ Rushdoony ] Well, it is curious that we have an equalizing now downward. Previously it was an Equalitarianism upward...
[ Scott ] To rise....
[ Rushdoony ] ...to elevate people.
[ Scott ] Yes.
[ Rushdoony ] ... to a higher level and have them all on this higher level.
[ Scott ] That is right.
[ Rushdoony ] But now we...
[ Scott ] They are down.
[ Rushdoony ] ... we equalize downward.
[ Scott ] Yes.
[ Rushdoony ] And Charles Hodge, the reformed theologian spoke of that in the 1880s as the triumph of the lowest common denominator.
[ Scott ] Well, you see that in every committee meeting you ever attend. Every proposition that is ever put to a group has to pass the lowest common denominator who is searching diligently for something wrong with it.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes, yes.
[ Scott ] Not for what is right and not for what can be done with it, but for a flaw. The lowest common denominator has the lowest common opinion of everyone else’s motives.
[ Rushdoony ] Well, one of the marks of cultural decay, I believe, is to separate life from morality. And this is a deadly fact, because every atom in this universe is God created. There is no escaping God and his law, his moral order in any area of the universe.
Van Til in one of his writings said that if there were a button people could press and disappear from God’s sight and governance for a second or two or as long as they had their finger on that button, he said, fallen man would always have his finger on that button.
[ Scott ] Of course he would.
[ Rushdoony ] But he said no such button exists. Well, people act, however, as though they have that button and they have got a stone on it and concrete paved over it and therefore they are invisible to God.
[ Scott ] And even invisible to others.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] There are people, you know, who actually think they can fool the others, who can fool the world. And I regard this world as not containing any secrets whatever. There are too many other eyes, smarter than your own, on you for you to ever be concealed.
[ Rushdoony ] Well, consider, for example, how supposedly something can be concealed and made therefore irrelevant. The Reagans and astrology. Now supposedly it was harmless because it was not public and it was not affecting the public. They have enough elementary knowledge of what the Bible teaches to know how hostile the Bible is to astrology. What are they saying when they resort to astrology other than that we have a button in view of our position that exempts us from it?
[ Scott ] Well, let’s go back just a minute and take a look at Nancy and Ronnie.
[ Rushdoony ] First names?
[ Scott ] Yes. His... that... you caught me. And that is because I am expressing actually a lack of respect.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] And that is the way it came out. All right. Well, look at the president and what Pataki calls Nancy the first. Now neither of them came from a religious home. I am not sure that either of them have ever read the Bible. They are both theatrical people who have been in the theater for a long time and you know the nature of the American theater in our time and in their time.
Now Gary Wills the apostate conservative who is now a liberal writer and professor did a long review of Donald Regan’s book on the Reagans. I will use the first names again because they are irresistible. And he argues in his review that Mrs. Reagan used astrology as a means of not admitting to herself and to her husband his inadequacies and {?} referring to her friend in Los Angeles as having to buy something because she didn’t want to say directly this is what you should do. And this is what you should not do. When, for instance, she advised him on the Contra hearings to say nothing, that actually was pretty good advice, because if he had been encouraged to speak freely he would have just made a fool of himself. And I think that is rather astute. I don’t really think that the astrology, then, in that light is as serious to the Reagans and the need to maintain the proper façade, the act. Nothing could interfere with the act. And I believe that they saw the presidency as an act.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Incidentally, to go to the name Otto, I read a book when I was quite young about...
[ Scott ] Otto of the Silver Hand.
[ Rushdoony ] Otto of the Silver Hands. That has always been a very dashing name in my eyes. That was quite a story.
[ Scott ] I can’t separate it from sauerkraut and I ...I ... I ... I have never cared for it. If it... if it wasn’t my legal name I wouldn’t use it. And I didn’t have an alternative, you see?
[ Rushdoony ] Do you have a copy of Otto of the Silver Hand?
[ Scott ] No, I don’t.
[ Rushdoony ] I have often wondered if I could pick that up somewhere and Tonte of the Iron Hand. Those are two that I enjoyed.
I have gone back to a few of the books I read years and years ago and found that I like them.
[ Scott ] Well, now, because of my disastrous experience at old movies, I haven’t gone back to old books.
[ Rushdoony ] Well, I was making a point a while back about Van Til and the button obliterating God. That is how all our politics is carried on. For example, the June 6, 1988 U S News and World Report, “The Keystone Cops of Arms Control.” Just read a few things. You are familiar with this, but let me read them anyway.
“The team in Moscow,” and I am quoting, “of President Reagan will tell you it as it presumably tells him that arms control is not an end in itself, but a means to safety and security, a devise for diminishing the threat of war. Arms control follows from and is intended to support our defense strategy. That, at least, is the theory. In practice, arms control now has little if anything to do with national strategy. Agreement for agreement’s sake, preferably signed at a summit, has become the principle motive behind the arms control negotiations now underway.”
And then he goes on to say that, “The whole idea is theater, as it were, although he doesn’t use that word, because he says, in all this it was somehow forgotten that the point of the negotiation was to improve the security of the NATO allies. A treaty that prevents us from developing advanced weapons for conventional defense is hardly likely to do that,” unquote.
Now what we have is a loss of reality, because when you depart from morality and a moral perspective, your culture is dying.
[ Scott ] Well, we got onto this subject, you remember, because you and I were talking on the phone and Byzantium came up.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] In this respect. And I said that it reminded me of the machinery that the Emperor of Constantinople or Byzantium used to elevate the throne, to have the throne rise up in face of the barbarians who had come to the court to awe them.
[ Rushdoony ] And mechanical birds singing.
[ Scott ] Would sing... yes. Mechanical birds would sing. They had all these mechanical marvels, all this glittering pomp. And the emperor would appear as almost a super human personage.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] And so forth. So this... and now we have got the red carpet. We have got bugles. We have got all kinds of pomp and ceremony for the President of the United States. Now when Mr. Lincoln was in the office he wasn’t called the president. He was called Mr. Lincoln. They used his name.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] And when Calvin Coolidge left the office he rented a couple of small rooms, an apartment over a general store in New England.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] And when Harry Truman left the office he got on the train by himself. There were no secret service men and he took the train back to Saint Louis or wherever it was that he lived. I have forgotten now.
[ Rushdoony ] Independence, Missouri.
[ Scott ] Independence, Missouri. That is it. So as we have had a series of very weak men in that office and the weakest right now...
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Mr. Reagan. And the weaker the man, the greater the pomp. Well, the more he needs it, I suppose.
[ Rushdoony ] And the more unrelated they become to morality, to a moral position. It becomes theater.
[ Scott ] It is theater. It is the theater of the world. The world has always had a certain theatrical element to it. I notice the same sort of phenomenon has developed in American corporate life. And I began to notice it as the years extended after World War II.
Before the war the only thing that mattered was whether you could do the job and do it well. The man that you reported to didn’t call you by your first name and didn’t want to know anything about you. All he wanted was your work. At five o'clock, out. Go home. If you had private troubles, he didn't want to hear them. It wasn’t his business. It was none of this call me Jim stuff.
However, I noticed after the war increasing numbers of what you might call corporate courtiers, men who had just the right appearance and who could come forward with just the right remark at just the right time and it didn't seem to matter whether their departments were functioning well or not, as long as the boom went on.
Now, of course there isn't a boom right now, so it possible that that is fading. I don’t know.
[ Rushdoony ] Well, that is a very interesting point about corporations, because I think one of the most impressive men in this century in corporate history was Walter Chrysler. Walter Chrysler came up out of nowhere, a journeyman mechanic. And he never stood on his authority and neither did the men around him. He never allowed anyone to take liberties with him, but he was always ready to be on the level with everyone and so were his associates. One of his very closet, B. F. Hutchinson. I met just shortly after the war at a conference and he came up to me. I had made some remark in a discussion session and chatted with me. It was, I felt, quite an honor. But he sent me books and things after that and maintained a contact until his death.
Now, it was never condescending. There was a general Equalitarianism there because he knew who he was and I knew that I was a young man...
[ Scott ] Ok.
[ Rushdoony ] ... who was just no one. Now when each of us knew who we were...
[ Scott ] No problem.
[ Rushdoony ] There were no problems. And there was a camaraderie and a ... an Equalitarianism of a different sort.
[ Scott ] Yes, well, I...
[ Rushdoony ] There was no decay to corrupt the situation.
[ Scott ] No. None whatever. I remember meeting Paul Glaser. He was 75. And I was, I think 49. And we had a conversation that lasted about three hours in front of all the vice presidents in the company and one of them said later they thought the old man had finally gone crazy because he was spending all this time with the editor of a little unknown magazine. But the fact of the matter was we shared a number of observations. And it was very interesting, I think, to both of us. And we lost sight of time. We kept talking and talking and back and forth and he had his courtesy was tremendous. He spoke to me as ... as to an equal, but, of course, he was much more intelligent and somebody said afterwards, “Well, you ... you met Mr. Glaser.” And I said, “Yes.” And he said, “And did you talk to him?” I said, “Yes, for quite a while.” He said, “Quite a while? How long?” I said, “Three hours.” He said, “Well, and how did you feel?” I said, “Well, I felt like somebody who sat under a great light.” And the whole landscape was illuminated and I felt very bright because I could see everything in it. And then after I left I said the darkness descended again and I realized it was the proximity to Glaser that made me temporarily intelligent.
[ Rushdoony ] Well, at that same meeting—and I totally forgotten this and our discussion brought it out—after the meeting was over that evening someone else asked me to go and take a walk with him. It was Dr. Milliken, the great...
[ Scott ] Oh, the scientist.
[ Rushdoony ] The scientist.
[ Scott ] Yes.
[ Rushdoony ] And we walked all over with our overcoats. It was a cold, brisk evening and it was at a university campus. And had quite a discussion. I annoyed him a little bit because of my Christian faith and he expressed a hope that I would out grow it being an intelligent young man. But apart from that it was a thoroughly delightful session, because each of us knew our place. And knowing that, we could have a fellowship that was very, very rewarding.
[ Scott ] Well, somebody described the old class structure of England in similar terms. He said, “The baron and the man who handled the stables could sit down and have a glass of ale together and talk in perfect harmony.”
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Because neither of them was in nay doubt as to where he fit in the world.
[ Rushdoony ] Addison and Steele in the Spectator papers in the 1700s dealt with that fact.
[ Scott ] Now this same observation came to me regarding the black people of Africa, in South Africa. When I was in South Africa I noticed that they bore themselves with considerable dignity. And, you know that the native tribes are very moral and have very strict and puritanical, not to say prudish rules. Now a black man in South Africa coming in collision with a white civilization can either try to accept it and advance within it, or he can remain where he is with his own tribe or he can go back and forth. But the thing that gives him his dignity is the fact that the he has a status in his tribe that no white man can give him and that white people are extraneous and unnecessary. And when a man has a place in the world where he feels he belongs, then he has a dignity.
Now one of the great problems to the American civilization today is that people who are traitors to our culture have been destroying the feeling that we belong.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] And therefore they have destroyed the dignity of the American people. And as the dignity and self respect of the American people is being damaged, their morals loosen because a man who loses his self respect cannot keep his morals.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, not only are they destroying our culture, but they are doing everything to exclude those who disagree from the common life of the United States or this is true in other countries as well. As though we belong to an obsolete world.
[ Scott ] The Christians.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Yes, yes. We are part of the past.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Post Christian era. You and I don’t belong on earth.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes. These men, scholars, can write books about the Middle Ages without ever mentioning Christianity.
[ Scott ] Isn’t that remarkable?
[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Amazing. Or write about the history of the United States as though Christians never existed.
[ Scott ] Well, if you say this was a Christian country you will get quite an argument.
[ Rushdoony ] Well, we were discussing this morning at breakfast the fact of the front page story in the Stockton Record about Ripon, California, the city that crime forgot. And the whole point of the story was that here was an amazing fact. A community where there was very little crime and the article never said anything about the fact that it is a strong Christian, reformed, Dutch community where laymen still have a great deal of power, where they are very conservative in their faith, where the Christian school tends to dominate the youth community and, as a result, there is a character and a moral standard in the community, precisely because of that Christian character of Ripon. That was never once mentioned. It was as though the police were responsible for it or something about the structure of the downtown area, they said.
[ Scott ] Maybe it was in the water.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Anything except Christianity. That cannot be given any credit for anything.
[ Scott ] Well, if you have astigmatism you might say, intellectual astigmatism and you just simply can’t see it. It isn’t that ... it isn’t that they deny it, it is that they literally cannot see it.
[ Rushdoony ] Well, culture to them has become art and this is why modern art is so objectionable, because it as anti Christian and it is a substitute religion.
[ Scott ] Well, do you remember the fellow who was showing a photograph of some... of someone else’s girlfriend and she had three eyes and a nose that was in the middle of her cheek. And he said, “I don’t think she is very good looking.” And the fellow said, “Oh, you don’t like Picasso?”
[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, you remember I was in Cleveland a couple of years ago for an inner city conference. And here is a city that from 1960 when it was close to a million has dropped by 1980 to about a half a million.
[ Scott ] Really?
[ Rushdoony ] Because of its anti business policies, making it almost impossible for industry to remain there.
[ Scott ] You know, they have never rebuilt the area that was gutted during the riots.
[ Rushdoony ] Well, here is a fine old city, magnificent old hotels, churches, public buildings and so on dying. And what was their solution? While I was there they were discussing how to revive Cleveland through art festivals, music festivals, that sort of thing, bringing in ...
[ Scott ] Now this what the Renaissance did. The Renaissance substituted art for the church.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Remember?
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
I would like to read something form the Wall Street Journal for Tuesday, May 31st, 1988, Otto. The title is “Thatcher: Sow and Ye shall Reap for All.” It is a portion of a speech which Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of Britain gave to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. And she began by saying she was speaking personally as a Christian as well as a politician. Some of the excerpts, I think, are choice. And I quote.
“We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth. ‘If a man will not work he shall not eat,’ wrote St. Paul to the Thessalonians. Indeed, abundance rather than poverty has a legitimacy which derives from the very nature of Creation. Nevertheless, the Tenth Commandment—Thou shalt not covet—recognizes that making money and owning things could become selfish activities. But it is not the creation of wealth that is wrong but love of money for its own sake. The spiritual dimension comes in deciding what one does with the wealth.”
Later on in the same address she spoke of the basic ties of the family which are at the heart of our society and the very nursery of civic virtue. But I like this especially and I quote, again.
“When Abraham Lincoln spoke in his famous Gettysburg speech of 1863 of ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people’, he gave the world a neat definition of democracy which has since been widely and enthusiastically adopted. But what he enunciated as a form of government was not in itself especially Christian, for nowhere in the Bible is the word democracy mentioned. Ideally, when Christians meet, as Christians, to take counsel together their purpose is not (or should not be) to ascertain what is the mind of the majority but what is the mind of the Holy Spirit—something which may be quite different,” unquote.
While we have been talking about social decay, and I think if Britain continues to look to Margaret Thatcher, they re going to see a reversal of the social decay they have experienced.
[ Scott ] No question.
[ Rushdoony ] I the past 28 years since 1960, Britain has seen 100 churches a year closed permanent, churches that have been functioning form 100 years or more to many, many centuries, magnificent old buildings, empty, sold, turned into bars and nightclubs or antique shops. Now they have someone who can reverse this social decay who is speaking as a Christian and applying it to every day life.
[ Scott ] Well, they chose her and she has served and is going to serve longer than any other prime minister in this century.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] That speaks for itself. The only thing.... the only people against her are those who operate the media, the universities.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] They are in a rage and, you know, the... these are people whose pretentions to democracy always collapse when the vote goes against them.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] But I think it is quite possible that England will come back. England has suffered a devastating fall. The loss of the greatest empire on the face of the earth, I remember, and so do you...
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] ... when we were boys that most of the of the map was salmon pink. And it was represented British territories all over the world.
[ Rushdoony ] And the saying was the sun never sets on the British flag.
[ Scott ] All right. It set on the British Empire. It went bubbling down under the surface of the waters. It was an empire that was talked to death by Mr. Roosevelt and the liberals of their own camp and so forth. But it is quite possible that England will come back. I wouldn’t say as an empire, but it will come back as a society. Societies do come back. I remember reading about the sons who inherited the throne of France. The sons of Mary d Medici and was it Mary or Catherine? I have forgotten. At any rate they were the most terrible group.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] In the 16th century. You remember this is the time of the Saint Bartholomew’s massacre.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes, Marie d Medici.
[ Scott ] Marie d Medici, not Mary. And one was a transvestite and others had equally odious problems. And France was divided in three parts in the civil war. Spain was subverting the government of France and pouring money and agents into it. The princes of Conde were out to overthrow the dynasty. The Protestants and the Catholics, the Calvinists and the Catholics, we should say, were involved in a spiritual war. The nation was totally degraded.
[ Rushdoony ] [ affirmative response ]
[ Scott ] ...totally and inconceivably degraded. The court from which Mary Stuart came, Mary Queen of Scots matured in that court, a, real cesspool.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] And yet France came back to lead all Europe. I think of Spain. And the history of Spain is not taught in the United States as far as I recall. It is a very interesting history. It is a history of the great empire, but it is the history of an empire that didn’t begin in triumph. Spain was divided, all over. It had three different races and religions. It had Judaism. It had Catholicism or Christianity. It had the Muslims and Islam, a horrendous struggle to release Spain from the Mohammedan grip and finally achieved and at one point I recall Seville was in such a degraded condition that you weren’t safe at night outside your house and you weren’t safe in the daylight inside your house. Those iron bars that are outside the windows of Latin homes are an inheritance from that period where you had to have iron bars to keep the brigands out and even then they did what they still do in Latin America. If they ever get into the house, they kill everyone in the family and leave no witnesses.
And yet within a single generation, Spain was unified and released and then began its rise to empire.
[ Rushdoony ] Well, for 30 years war was a nightmare. It leveled many areas of Germany. Towns disappeared. A very, very high percentage of the men died. For 30 years these marauding armies of mercenaries who didn’t care whom they killed marched across the face of Germany and yet in one generation a totally ruined and demoralized country recuperated.
[ Scott ] Yes. Well, look at the Hundred Years’ War.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] And yet France came back.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Italy has never come back. It has never come back as a nation. When you talk to Italians from Italy today and you say, “Where are you from?” They say Roman or Genova or Florence or whatever, Milan, Milano, never Italy. There is no national idea of Italy. And this prospect is confronting us that people are now ... you don’t hear anyone describe himself as an American. I haven’t heard a man say I am an American. He will say, “I am Irish or I am Italian.” They have never been to Ireland. They have never been to Italy and they can’t speak Gaelic. They can’t speak Italian. They don’t know a damn thing about either of those places, but they are adopting the allegiance of their forebears...
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Because what used to unite Americans is being denounced. And recall that I always feel I remember my dad’s comment that disloyalty, he said, begins in the mind. And when intellectuals turn against a culture then you have the real treason.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes. There was a book written by a Frenchman The Treason of the Clerks, that is...
[ Scott ] Yes.
[ Rushdoony ] ... of the intellectuals. And while the book today would no be too impressive, the point was essentially sound, namely, that the great treason of the modern world has begun among intellectuals as they have abandoned Christianity and as they have looked with contempt on Christian faith, on the common man and felt that the only intelligent course is for society to listen to them.
This is a revival of the Renaissance attitude...
[ Scott ] Well...
[ Rushdoony ] ... because the Renaissance thinkers were very heavily influenced by Plato.
[ Scott ] Yes.
[ Rushdoony ] And they believed that kings should listen to philosophers if they could not themselves, the philosophers, be kings. And .... but one of the ironies of history is that some of the humanistic scholars who had a great deal to do in shaping Henry VIII were horrified when he decided to be his own king. And one of the chief of these was Thomas Moore who could never forgive Henry.
And the irony is that because Henry turned against the Catholic church, Thomas Moore who had counseled that earlier, now resented that because it was done in independence of him. So out of contrary feeling he became militantly pro Catholic. He died nobly, but his life was one sick sorry mess. He resented the fact that this king did not listen to an intellectual like himself.
[ Scott ] Well, you have this Voltaire setting off the wave of ridicule against religion and Christianity and calling the French history a record of criminality. But, you know, Voltaire picked this up in London when he went to London and because the English were still killing off Cromwell and the Puritans, even in the early 1700s. It was endemic in the English aristocracy.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] And that was a period that Mc Cauley said that there was a period, he said, of almost 70 years in which there was not a single honest man in all of England’s public life. The king, Charles II was on the payroll of Louis XV, XIV.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Now they came back.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] They were sliding straight into the stews. They had the restoration and you remember the level of the art in the restoration. They had pornography on the stage and off the stage and everywhere else. And everything was going to hell. And any sensible person would have said England is finished. And yet thanks to Wesley and others...
[ Rushdoony ] Whitefield.
[ Scott ] Whitefield.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] England was restored and...
[ Rushdoony ] And...
[ Scott ] And went on to greater heights.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes, that is an interesting fact. Wesley, militant Arminian and Whitefield a militant Calvinist. And their work together saved England.
[ Scott ] Yes.
[ Rushdoony ] Otherwise they would have gone the way of the French Revolution.
[ Scott ] Before the French Revolution.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Before.
[ Scott ] Before the French Revolution. They would have led the way.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Well, so countries come back. Countries come back. Now we have—I am repeating myself. I guess it is inevitable on these tapes to repeat yourself. Such a skilful and highly specialized population we have more experts in more areas that any other country has ever had. And yet we have a nation that has almost a disdain for thought, a contempt of thought that is beyond the job, beyond the project, that the sort of generalities that you and I exchange on occasion are considered to be much of a waste of time.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Where does it lead?
[ Rushdoony ] Except, what we are finding as a result of our work is a hunger for this sort of thing so that we find when we have our conferences, for example, a different kind of population. For example we were discussing a little while back Monty and Naomi Hitton who will be here this weekend.
[ Scott ] Right.
[ Rushdoony ] And the fact that they read to their little children your books. Now, that is creating a different type of people. And we had more and more of that all over the United States.
[ Scott ] Now if a country, if a nation of a civilization gets to a certain level of peril, internal and domestic peril, I would compare it to the decline of an individual to the point where he suddenly realizes that his continued existence is imperiled. Then very often you turn around and see a struggle. And that individual then begins to come back and to proceed in a new and better way.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] This is almost a ... a thumbnail description of conversion, but we know what leads to conversion is failure.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Since people don't convert because they succeed. They convert because they failed. And in the humiliation of the failure they turn to God.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] And God takes pity on them and they convert. A nation converts in the same way when it first goes through a long walk through the desert, when terrible, awful things happen. And then it comes back.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes. The Chinese ideograph for crisis means dangerous opportunity.
[ Scott ] Yes.
[ Rushdoony ] And we are moving now into a crisis that is a dangerous opportunity. We are going to see the disaster strike the whole world and it will be the opportunity now for the God to work in their lives because they will be broken and humbled.
[ Scott ] Well we see this Tom Paine certainly not one of my heroes, but a very good writer used two things which struck me years ago. One was the man standing in front of his cottage who put his arm around his young son and said, “I want peace with the thick of my son.” And Paine said, “That man doesn't realize that his son will have no peace unless his father fights.”
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] And the other was these are the times that test men’s souls.
[ Rushdoony ] Try men’s souls.
[ Scott ] Try men’s souls.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Yes. Well, all this decadence in the final analysis, you know, I have a book on it. And the author’s definition there was that decadence is when a country loses the will to fight. Carthage, before Rome in order to prove its peaceful intentions the Romans said, “Turn over your instruments of war to us.” And they did. They disarmed. They had an IMF treating that covered all their weapons.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Reagan is a good Carthaginian.
[ Scott ] And then...
[ Rushdoony ] Not like Hannibal, though.
[ Scott ] No. They said, “Turn over the children of your leading families for us to hold as hostages so that we can be safe from the fear that you will attack us, just as the Soviets are always supposed to be afraid that we will attack them.
[ Rushdoony ] And Cato would get up in the Roman Senate and say, “Carthage must be destroyed.” Day after day.
[ Scott ] But...’
[ Rushdoony ] The Carthaginians did not believe him.
[ Scott ] What do you suppose they are saying in the Soviet Union every day?
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] What do you... what do you suppose the avalanche of denigration that comes boiling out of their journals and their newspapers and their magazines and in their movies every day?
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Well, then, they ... they did turn over the children. And when the ship took them to Rome the women, the mothers jumped into the water, into the ocean and swam after that ship as long as they could because the last sight of their children going over to Rome. And then finally they said to the ambassadors of Carthage, “You will have to abandon you city.” And when the ambassadors went back to Carthage the {?} told them that message the Carthaginian people, “Kill the ambassadors,” and prepared for the last siege. Well, of course, as you know it was too late.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] ... for them to maintain themselves.
Now we are listening to this sort of Cartha... ambassadors, state department that the Carthaginians would have recognized. But we are not Carthaginians. We know more than they did.
[ Rushdoony ] And we have a substantial Christian population.
[ Scott ] That is it and that is going to spell the difference.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Yes.
[ Scott ] It is going to save this country.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes. One of the first things to do is to get rid of the Carthaginians in the White House and in Washington generally.
[ Scott ] Incidentally , the elephant fits the Carthaginian symbol, doesn’t it?
[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, that is going not come in time. God is going to destroy their credibility. Events are moving rapidly towards that.
[ Scott ] Interesting, because there is no reason for people to pull themselves together until they have to and they never do. They never do. We have been very fortunate in the past. We had when World War II started a smaller army than Yugoslavia or even Hungary. We still had horses. We still had a cavalry.
[ Rushdoony ] Well, to me one of the interesting things about a crisis is this. We had one in 1929. Now that crisis led to some very interesting results. It was wealthy people who jumped out of sky scraper windows and committed suicide and they were not stripped of everything.
[ Scott ] I thought it was amazing.
[ Rushdoony ] They had...’
[ Scott ] ... at that.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Yes said they still had money.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] And they jumped out the window.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Yes.
[ Rushdoony ] But it was the people who lost their homes, lost their jobs, who had everything, who went on living and fighting.
[ Scott ] That is right.
[ Rushdoony ] It was because they didn’t have the debauched culture that those people of wealth had.
[ Scott ] Well, they hadn't abandoned everything in order to ... they hadn't turned to the great money God. I have seen fellows sell their souls and when you talk about selling your soul to the devil, it sounds medieval. It sounds very old fashioned and unworldly, but it isn’t. People do sell their souls. They sell their honor. They sell everything that makes life worth living for the smallest advantages.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes, at bargain basement prices.
[ Scott ] Right. They don’t... they don’t hold out for much.
[ Rushdoony ] Although I don’t know how many people understand the bargain... bargain basement metaphor.
[ Scott ] They don’t.
[ Rushdoony ] That is gone now basically.
[ Scott ] They don’t have them as many, no.
[ Rushdoony ] No.
[ Scott ] No, not... not as many. Walk down three flights. I remember a friend of mine in New York who said, “I bought this suit in Kline’s. Would you believe that it only cost 15 dollars?” I said, “Yes.” And he got upset. They were bargains all right.
[ Rushdoony ] Well, I think we are living in the most exciting time in all of history.
[ Scott ] We are living in the time that God chose for us.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] It is an actually blasphemy for me to say I wish I had lived in some other period.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] ... because this is the period you belong in.
[ Rushdoony ] And it is the crucial point of all history, because I think a great many of the trends of history are coming into focus. The statement by William Blake, not usually a reliable guide is all the same a good one. “I saw the finger of God go forth giving the body to falsehood that it might be cast off forever.”
Every evil is coming is coming into its own to appall men, to bring them face to face with what they desired and imagined in the evil of their hearts. And they are going to turn on what they themselves have created. So we are at a critical point in history, whether in the religious or in the political or in the economic or the artistic or whatever, educational. In every realm the evils of history are coming into fruition and focus with all their horrors. And it is that they be destroyed.
[ Scott ] That is interesting. It is a very interesting concept. It is true, too.
[ Rushdoony ] Well...
[ Scott ] A lot of... a lot of old illusions are being shattered.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Universal education.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Universal suffrage.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Do you remember what {?} said about suffrage? He said, “Men will not abide by the results of a vote as long as the matter is important to them.” He said, “If 10 men are willing to give their lives rather than live in a lie and 20 men on the other side are willing to vote, but will not risk their skins, the 10 will give the law to the 20.”
When all is ... comes to fruition, there is going to be a reordering...
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] ... of civilization.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] … because the path we are on now is destroying us.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes and the humanists are really bankrupt.
[ Scott ] Well, look at the promises. I was just listening to some of the reading today, some of the promises that are being made. The Democrats are promising child universal... universal child care on one end and universal life time nursery care on the other end of the elderly.
So they re going to take care of the young and the old. And they will direct those in between to work to support all of this.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Well, of course, we have been taking care of the young and the old without the Democratic party for a long time in this world. What is happening here?
[ Rushdoony ] Well, I think one of the great blessings of living in our day is that we are witnessing God’s hand on evil, bringing it to fruition and to self destruct. All they that hate me love death, God says. And the love of death is overwhelming our society. And what we must do therefore is to be strong in our faith and in our will to live, because we are going to be the victors.
[ Scott ] Well you have extremes of culture emerging. You go into a book store now and the audio and visual department is as big as the book department, because people would rather watch or listen than read. But the ... some of the books that are coming out now are superior. I have forgotten who put it. He said, “Some of the most beautiful flowers grow on a dung hill.” And these kind of periods bring out both extremes.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] Not just the decadent, but also the heroic.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] I heard general {?} on the air the other night. You know him.
[ Rushdoony ] Oh, yes.
[ Scott ] We... we both know him. And he was being interviewed by a fellow who is usually quite supercilious, but on this occasion was very respectful because the general’s responses were so succinct.
[ Rushdoony ] Yes.
[ Scott ] And so truthful that it wasn’t possible to mock him.
[ Rushdoony ] He is a very superior man.
Well, our time is just about up. We thank you all for listening. And we urge you to recognize that you are living in, as of God’s said, your appointed hour of history, it is a time of great opportunity.
We feel privileged here at Chalcedon that we have the opportunity to work in God’s good time and we hope and pray that you will feel the same way as we face the future. Thank you all for listening.
[ Voice ] Authorized by the Chalcedon Foundation. Archived by the Mount Olive Tape Library. Digitized by ChristRules.com.