Justice

Justice; Questions & Answers

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Track: 06

Dictation Name: RR174C6

Location/Venue: ________

Year: 1960’s-1970’s.

[0:00:00]

[introductory speaker] Okay, at this time I’d like to call the speakers up, and we’ll accept questions. I think I’ll recognize people and then you can direct the questions to whichever speaker you wish.

[different speaker] Okay. Any questions?

[audience chuckles] Ah, Victor?

[speaker, presumably Victor, is difficult to understand] Ah, did John Whitehead structure some priorities there is one issue that I keep running into and while it is certainly not central it’s peripheral mind to a number of Christians how, if at all, do you relate to the tax {?} and the payments of progressive income tax and biblical law?

[indistinguishable murmuring] I didn’t get the last part...

[different speaker] Would you repeat the question please, for everyone?

[Rushdoony] Yes, the question I believe was how does the tax rebellion relate to biblical law. In a believe the second or third issue of the journal of Christian Reconstruction I wrote a book about Jesus and the Tax Revolt. Because there was a tax revolt in Judea at that time. Most of the Jews were in favor of it even those who didn’t get involved in it. It was one of the things which led to the Jewish Roman war and the destruction of Israel and our Lord was asked a question to nail him on that: is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? And his answer, very briefly was, render (or literally give back) to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s because with this money here floating in the country he’s providing the law and order.

But render unto God the things that are God’s! In other words, if you follow God and his law you will eliminate the need for Caesar. Now I believe the tax revolt is a foolish movement, I believe it is essentially negation. I don’t believe it does anything but destroy and I’m not interested in destruction, I’m interested in reconstruction. So I emphatically feel the tax revolt movement is a dead end.

[short pause]

[different audience speaker] [recording is difficult to understand] I’d like to pose this question to John Whitehead. Are religious rights and freedoms a churches jeopardize when certain functions such as Christian education are considered, and considered just for uses in cities owning ordinances?

[John Whitehead] Is the question, I understand, is religious liberty threatened when Christian ministries as I would call them or auxiliaries like Christian schools are considered as accessory uses under zoning, sure of any church that considers a Christian school to be part of it’s ministry just as any other ministry. Uhm. Should be very careful to distinguish that ministry. However {?} may value a little wisdom here; if you live in a very quiet neighborhood and you’re starting a new school and your church is a large church and the {?} increase 150% then what some churches have done is use a little diplomacy.

Go talk to the neighbors and get them ready for it because there has been a lot of battles that have been lost over this for the simple reason that the neighbors get all up in arms. You have go down into the zoning ward and there’s the pastor versus seventy neighbors.

Yes, it does threaten it and a lot of it is illegitimate. The state has no business distinguishing the {?} of the church.

[short pause]

[introductory speaker] Yes, the lady in green?

[lady in green] I have two questions, number one is in four years I’ll have a son who will be ready for law school. Is there any college in the united states today that still uses {?} as a teaching implement. And number two, where can I buy volume number one for (book title?).

[speaker] Did you mean Volume I of the Institutes? [different speaker interrupts] No, black {??}... I’ll give you a little interesting experience; I was in what I would call an important law school in California. I was at work in the library to prepare the message on the common law, and in all of the stats there was not one copy of blackstone's commentaries on English law, however in the card catalog I found reference to a rare book room and the librarian did take me to the rare book room and we got out blackstone’s commentaries and I was able to use them. As far as I know, I could definitely be mistaken in this but I don’t think I am, there is no edition of blackstone available. The edition I used was printed in London in 1857, there have been quite a few since then, yes. But there’s no current edition of blackstone available; I would like to see a hand, I’d like to see someone reprint out of the four volumes, maybe one volume of the central (sensual?essential?) things blackstone.

Now as far as whether or not blackstone is being used in any faculty of law in the united states, I’m not absolutely certain. I would mention two places where someone might be using blackstone and this is just suppositional my part... I think at Notre Dame faculty of law it is possible that some reference shall be made to blackstone. [audience chuckles] I also think that at the CBN University which has a law faculty I'm certain with Herbert W Titus there some use will be made of blackstone. It’s possible that it’s done somewhere else but I actually not think so. We have (O’Robert’s?) University Coburn school of law that probably does use blackstone and we have two men here today that are working to start law schools, and I’m quite certain that both of those men when they start law school -one will be in San Diego and the other will be in Helena, Montana- that those schools of law will surely be using blackstone.

If any of other state [rest sentence was unintelligible]. Or if anyone would like to add something. [audience member spoke unintelligibly]

Carmen Green school of law, Doctor Rushdoony, do you know? No, no, no.

[Rushdoony] (Sembardino?).

[same speaker] (Sembardino?) But they’re going to move I think to San Diego- there’s bulk property there, I understand. Is that right?

[short pause]

[introductory speaker] Yes?

I have two questions also. The first one is, is there such a thing as a just war, or more specifically was the revolutionary war a just cause? And my second question is in relationship to that. It seems to me that taxes was a part of that just (if it was a just) war, and I don’t think that the tax revolt of this country with a few exceptions has a violent overtone as (parts?) of the jewish have, there’ve been several men in the last five or six years who have been by jurors declared not guilty for not filing a tax return. Now I don’t see that as being a very (advisable?) system, it’s {?} system. So I have a question with a (mora...?) tax question as well.

[audience laughs]

First of all, the war of independence was a resistance against an invasion by a foreign power. The United States was never under Britain, it was only under the king of England who was king of England, king of Ireland, King of Virginia, New York and so on. Each of them a separate colony. And therefore the issue was entirely different it would be comparable to, say, British Columbia trying to tax Washington. It would be entirely alien. Then, second, I’m well aware that some people have been acquitted in the tax revolt. I followed the tax revolt quite closely. But we’re not called to avoid taxes, we’re called to use the money we have in God’s service. And there’s a simple fact, social financing has to be provided in any society. And what has happened is that the churches and Christians generally have quit doing it.

Once, all orphanages, all welfare agencies, every kind of a need.... all hospitals were Christian. We gave those up, and now we’re a high price for it in higher taxes. Now, we’re not going to end that by saying we won’t pay, we’re going to end that by saying let’s create something that’s going to eliminate the taxes.

Because right now what we’re seeing is that the christian school movement has post one out of four children. Now, since, depending on the county you live in, from sixty to eighty percent your property tax goes for education and welfare, think what that will do to your tax bill if you take over those two things! You’ll cut the cost of welfare, you’ll cut the cost of education, you’ll have better welfare, better education. Now that’s what we should be doing. If these people were as zealously involved in going out and establishing something that would give us something concrete in the future it would be fine, but all a tax revolt does is to create more social problems and dissension and create nothing positive. That’s its weakness.

Yes?

[audience member speaks] I have learned John Whitehead in his last presentation spoke about the family, a bunch of divorced people and children coming out and families and I just wondered if perhaps, I believe he was pouring from the writing on taxes... maybe that {?}. So I {?} the where of the article in the U.S. news world report (verbade?), which is about 46 pieces of spacial {?} to the magazine, dealing with the next fifty years. And it goes into that concept and many others.

[pause]

[speaker speaks] When are the actions of a church, for example, having a basketball team as opposed to preaching the word such that they are a fundamental right and should be treated that way by the courts.

[pause]

Well, freedom to preach the gospel is a fundamental right... whether to play a-- have a basketball team as a fundamental right is in serious question. However, there might be instances where things you would be sure would be absolute rights though would fall under equal protection rights; in other words under the constitution, in other words we should be treated equally, christian schools should be treated equally with all others in those situations. There a have been several cases like that. So fundamentalism. The word fundamentalism is a very very important one, you know the fundamental rights have always been life, liberty, and property. And that’s what we’re talking about, so.

[audience member] Doctor Rushdoony, I wanted to ask you concerning a couple of taxes; how do you feel when there’s a tax initiative sponsored by the public to, say, resist taxes or change the way taxes are formed as far as a voting initiative. I’m not talking about refusable pay taxes, which Jesus commanded us to pay, I’m talking about a voter initiated drive, say, to reduce the {?} taxes.

[Rushdoony] Anytime I have an opportunity, legitimately, I’m very happy. [audience laughs and applauds heartily] As a practice I vote against bond measures, I vote against tax measures of any kind that I can. I’m much happier with the money in my hands than in the states hands. So I’m all for any kind of initiative to cut down on our taxes, believe me! I’m blissfully happy.

[audience member] Yeah, just two things. I can’t help but comment something on this past issue, too, and I have another question. But, um, from personal experience I know that you can get quite embroiled in a tax protest type of a situation and as Reverend Rushdoony once pointed out, the law may look favorable to your situation at the time, but they shift... and you waste a great deal of your energies, fighting this, and taking it to appeals and doing things, that could be used in other much better causes. Higher priority causes. So I have a little experience in this and it’s not a good thing to get into unless you really want to be pulled into it and that’s where you view your priority is.

But my second comment is on a different subject and, uh, it has to do with the discussion of all of our talk about the constitution and the first amendment and the way it’s being misinterpreted and how it should be interpreted properly. But as Reverend said, I think in one of his easy chair tapes back in December or so, some of the judges are refusing to allow evidence to be introduced with regard to the constitution or the first amendment because it’s irrelevant. The supreme court has ruled about the use of public facilities by Christians then there’s no sense bringing up the constitution or first amendment rights, the supreme court has gone beyond that.

And so, my question is, what sort of strategy or tactic do we have to get beyond what the supreme court says is important, to get back to the constitution, and the propers interpretation of the first amendment. Is there such a strategy, do we have one, are there tactics?

[speaker speaks] The first thing that you have to recognize is that our constitution and our system as a whole when it was established, generally was a good system. What’s made it a perverted system are the people who sit on the courts. So a major strategy has got to be to get better people in the courts. Um, we have worked in Washington, and I’m working with a few fellows that I like to see appointed to the federal judiciary, there needs to be --and I agree-- a (quarenated? correlated?) legislative lobby that would focus on this particularly --and there may be one that I don’t know about-- there are many things one can propose to do with federal judges.

Some people have come out now, a few being experts and suggested that maybe in these federal judges who are nominated for life should have shorter terms not life terms. In other words-- [audience laughs] like ten years, five years, whatever because once you get a bad judge in the lifetime {?} situation, it’s over. You’ve got him for the next fifty years if he happens to live that long. And there are a few guys in our supreme courts that may never die! [audience laughs again] Some people have been waiting for them to die and they keep living. Uh, so I’ve been tossing over in my mind ways to affect it, and you know congress under article number three, if congress would merely act they could do a tremendous amount of controlling in the judiciary. They have the right to restrict the jurisdiction, they even have a right to eliminate federal courts altogether!

So a lot of reform, and there have been some excellent books on it. I think it’s Blueprint for Mutual Reform is a good one, it came out of a congress Paul Wyrick’s group. So there are some books out but we’re just starting to get educated in this area, 2nd American revolution for instance, which is only judiciary, many people that read the books didn’t even know there was a problem until they read the books. So we still have a massive education problem.

[short pause]

[different speaker] I’d just like to add one word to what John was saying, or perhaps two. Ahh, the basic problem that we have are the people who are in these positions. And you have to go beyond even the judiciary, because remember, they’re appointments are affirmed by congress! So you have a double pronged, a two pronged proposition here. Not only do you have to work for men whose hearts have been changed by the holy spirit and move them into first the law schools and from the law schools out into the general practice so that they have some experience ,and this has been our problem, we’ve been making political appointments very obviously. For example, just before preseeding president Carter left office there were a hundred and fifty or sixty new federal {?} created and he managed to fill about two-thirds of those with people who had the same predilections and presuppositional basis as he did. And I’ll leave it to you as to whether those were good or bad, I have my own opinion on it. [audience chuckled appreciatively]

But I think you ought to think that through because out there I’m just one man but here’s a couple of hundred people and every one of us could be an effective instrument for God’s righteousness and this is what we have to bring in. That’s so much for the law schools and the judiciary, what about the things that Wayne talked about, getting Godly men and women into public office and getting them into the congress where their voices can really be heard and they really count! This is the kind of a slow proposition, I don’t know whether it’s going to be done in the next couple of weeks or not. [audience laughs] But I know this: nothing is going to happen if you and I don’t start marching.

[Rushdoony] I want to add one word to that, ah. [audience laughs] First of all, I want to stress again, we can’t be purely negative. I was in Washington DC at a very significant gathering of top people across the country of a generally conservative and Christian persuasion, and this was before the last vacancy came up for the U.S. supreme court. And someone from the white house asked the group if they had any names to suggest for the supreme court. And do you know, they had been basically against what was going on but they hadn’t thought of someone to name! They did come up, finally, with one or two names but they weren’t prepared to make a suggestion. And this is our problem, if we only think in terms of negation, what can we do?

Well, there’s good news too on the way in that there is a reformed bill for the judiciary that is being framed. Possibly in a year or so they will hold hearings on it, maybe after the election. I know it is definitely in the works because I have been tentatively contacted to be a witness of the senate here, so at least the pressure is building up so they’re thinking about the reform of the federal judiciary.

[introductory speaker] So that we don’t leave Wayne Johnson out, does somebody have a question for Wayne? [audience laughs]

[Wayne?] I could have a little word with {?}. AMEN! [audience laughing]

[audience member] I have a question for Wayne. Can he suggest any other area of involvement besides running for political office for Christians to have an impact?

Excuse me? ...ah.

[Wayne] I think that we’ve found several effective ways to be involved process, and to make what you’re individually are doing count without necessarily being involved in a particular candidates race. There are some issue campaigns that I think have been an excellent organizational tool and they’ve taken what we want-- see a lot of times we don’t want something to be an issue in a campaign, even when it’s something we feel very strongly about because we already know from the surveys that if the issue comes up most people are going to disagree with us on it and they’re going to vote against our guy when they find out how he feels.

And we’d just as soon not bring that issue up. Other times there, we’ll find in our survey work, there are issues that the public agrees with a hundred percent on!

And to get involved in a particular issue is a pretty good thing to do. I think that the issue that most people in this room are involved with if they involved with a single issue group is probably pro-life. And the things to do about pro-life are grass roots type works, it’s not trying to corner the legislature and stuff {?} down his pocket, because I tell you we’ve been doing it for years and they’ve seen it all and they’re you know... I just don’t think we’re going to win the battle that way. I think we’re going to win that particular battle by building support on a grass roots level.

And that’s something you can do! That’s being involved in your local pro-life organization and the pro-life council and in the, ah, if you don’t have one it’s setting up the hotline for people to call... and those kind of activities, I consider all those things political activities in a way. There are things that are going to be issues that are going to cut our way five and ten and fifteen years down the road, the same way as when we first started talking about the tax issues years and years ago, and one of my clients Paul Yan who was the coauthor of proposition thirteen that I worked with through years--and we’ve had another tax measure coming up, we’re going to be sponsoring this year.

Last year we passed the victims bill of rights in California. It’s not a political issue in that it’s for Canada, but we completely overhaul, we just took everything we’ve been pushing for ten years and finally the times were right; with the newman grassroots were from those on the law enforcement issue for years and years and finally the work was starting to pay off and we were able to launch a full statement political operation. We passed the victims bill of rights, which among other things put the right of victims restitution from the criminal to the victim in the California constitution.

That’s one out of about a dozen different points, and there were some of the things I was less happy with than others, but we made some very very strong progress. But that was not involving any candidates. So there are issue groups like that. I think the tax issues provide a lot of opportunity in tax measures. Provide a lot of opportunity to build and organize political constituencies which down the road are going to be big political issues. All the work we did for the last ten years came to fruition in the nineteen-eighty elections. We saw dozens and dozens and dozen get elected. I mean, look at the U.S. senate and the tremendous advances we made in the U.S. senate nobody could’ve imagined.

When all those issues finally caught the public favor and a lot of candidates, including the president rode in on that conservative tie. So yeah, there’s been a lot of work that if you’re not working for Canada to direct political issues today they're gonna be five and ten years down the road. That’s what I think.

[introductory speaker] I think several of the speakers do have traveling commitments but we will go about four or five minutes more. Uhm, yes sir?

[audience member] I’ve a question concerning a positive christian theology of the state. On the one hand I’m concerned with certain theological cults, such as scientology or other groups, it seems hounded by the state. They have their records confiscated and so on. And we as Christians find their doctrine abhorrent and their practice abhorrent, but in the other sense these things may come back to haunt us. With the state rifling through our own records and so on. The other hand: in biblical law you have penalties against blasphemy and sabbath breaking and so on, so my question, I know is a difficult one and a deep one... but what is a Christian states responsibility to protect religious freedoms in light of abhorrent theological groups?

[short pause, audience chuckles]

[Rushdoony] First of all, I feel that it is very important for us to protect some of these groups like scientology and the moonies, the worldwide church of god and so on because I know that they are working to establish precedence in those cases to use against all of us. Believe me, they figure that if they can make a charge stick against one of those groups, they’ll make them stick against the rest of us. They’ll have established a legal precedence. They go after the groups that are not well known or offbeat groups or independent local baptist churches. Unaffiliated. Because they figure this won’t arouse the country at large! So we have a duty to defend those groups.

Second, we’re not going to convert them by oppressing them. So that as long as they remain within the bounds of Christian character and decency they should be tolerated. Now, in the reynolds case of more than a century ago that Mormons went to court demanding that their religious liberties be granted so they could have polygamy. The court had to face that problem in that case and in a few others, it had to wrestle with it. And what they recognized was that there was absolute religious freedom, there could be no law! Because their were in the world religious groups practicing cannibalism, practising human sacrifice, practicing bestiality, practicing murder and robbery (like the thugs of India), and so on and on!

That if you granted absolute religious liberty you could have no society. No law whatsoever. Because any and every group could plead religious liberty on any ground. This brought the supreme court face to face with the fact of what could be tolerated? Well, it wasn’t settled in that case, but essentially the net result was that only that which conforms to a kind of common law Christianity. Not Christianity as a theological system, but anything that offends our biblical sense of morality cannot be tolerated because then every kind of practice will be legalized. I think that is basically the premise in terms of which we have to operate. And it gives us, then, a society in which there is freedom, but in which the moral bounds are not destroyed.

[introductory speaker] I think we’ll take maybe one more question... Mike?

[Mike] [recording is mostly unintelligible] I’d like to commend Clat and Elizabeth Miller for sponsoring and coordinating this conference. ______________?

[audience applauds]

[speaker] I wonder if we could stand up for a minute? All right. I think before we have Doctor Kelly say the benediction I would like to take this opportunity and thank you, Mike, incidentally. Since we have all of our speakers lined up here and to thank them with all our hearts for their magnificent efforts and their time and their wonderful words. And won’t you just join me in giving them a round of applause. [audience applauds enthusiastically]

Alright, I would like Doctor Kelly to give the benediction now.

[Doctor Kelly] Let us pray. Our gracious God, we thank thee for thy providential goodness which has brought us together into this place, for our freedom to be here, for thy love for us in the gospel, the cleansing blood of Christ that has reconciled our souls to thee. For thy spirit to indwell us for law, to guide us. We thank thee for the Millers, whose vision has made this meeting possible, we thank thee for each one who is here, we pray that thou wouldst bless them and use them that they might be burning and shining lights when they return to their homes. Grant us all we pray, our father, thy traveling mercies as we go back to our responsibilities, may (pride?) continue to have more and more of us, to use us to shine through us. O God we do pray for revival, renewal, restoration, widespread repentance in this country. O God send us revival and in wrath remember mercy.

And now may grace, mercy, and peace from God the father, God the son, and God the holy ghost rest upon and abide with you all both now and even forevermore. Amen. [audio ends.]