Law and Dominion

How the Christian will Conqueror the World; The Crisis

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law and Dominion

Lesson: Crisis

Genre: Lecture

Track: 01

Dictation Name: RR263A1

Location/Venue: Seattle

Year:

[Introductory Speaker] Its been over ten years ago since I wrote to him to help me get published a book for children, when my children were very young I was very concerned about the type of literature they were reading, and I found an old book in a library by Isaac Watts, War (?) children. And the Chalcedon foundation was helpful, and that was when I first met Reverend Rushdoony. So it has been a long time desire of mine to have Rushdoony come to the Northwest and speak in Seattle, which is my home town.

Rush is president of the Chalcedon Foundation, which is located now at Vallecito, a tax exempt foundation. He has been a pastor for many years, he has been on the staff of two foundations; he, when he left his university training he became a missionary to the Indians in the South West, and he remained there for 8 ½ years. He has always been a person who has wanted to make the faith relevant, and he is not an ivory tower scholar; and I think we can all feel certain that he has been in the battle lines, Christianity, fighting with all of us. So it is my great pleasure to introduce our first speaker today, Reverend R. J. Rushdoony.

Before beginning with our first subject which will be an analysis of our crisis and then some general statements about the direction of the solution, I'd like to express my appreciation to Clint and Elizabeth Miller for their work in making this conference possible. Our Lord once told Peter “when thou art converted go and tell thy brethren.” Well Elizabeth believes in telling everybody and does a very good job. I am very grateful because I know a good many of you here are from the Portland area. The Judge (Vears?) for his role in this area, he's labored a long time to make the faith relevant to our time. And it is definitely beginning to bear fruit.

Certainly we are in a time of crisis. And in any day of crisis people begin to think about the basic issues as never before. In a time of ease men can afford to neglect the basis issues of a culture, but not in time of crisis. And people today are worried. They're afraid. They do see the handwriting on the wall. And this is a time of opportunity for us. Now more than ever we must make the faith relevant to our culture.

I said that in this first section we would deal with this Crisis. Western Civilization is in the greatest crisis it has ever known. The fall of Rome was a crisis in civilization as was the collapse of the medieval synthesis. But, never has a crisis equaled our present one because it is worldwide. Moreover it is a religious crisis because the religion of our age is now being weighed in the balances and found wanting. That religion is humanism.

In Europe since about 1660 humanism has dominated civilization; more and more openly as the years have gone by. In 1660 we saw the end of the puritan common wealth. We saw very nearly the end of the reign of the cardinals in France and the rise of Louis XVI. In Spain we saw the passing of Philip II who had made the chapel the center of his palace and had on either side of it the graves of his ancestors in vaults along the walls to remind him that he too must die.

But, in a few short years Western Civilization no longer thought of God, nor of death, nor of duty, but, of man and of reason. And you had as a result the triumph of rational man, rational man as the foundation of society, rational man as the key to the future, and the starting point of all philosophy became man himself; with Descartes "I think therefore I am." And I, autonomous man, will determine what is real. And so Descartes set out to prove the reality of the material world and of God. The culmination of this rationalism was in Kant and Hegel. Wherein the doctrine of man which we still have in its end result in the Philosophy of Existentialism in Sartre, went so far as to say in Hegel the rational is the real. That which my mind says is real because it is logical, must be reality.

This is an astounding premise. The mind of man legislating and saying: “Let there be and there shall be.” It is an imitation of Genesis 1. It is ironically an echo of the very ancient superstition of magic: “As I will so must it be.” That is the premise of magic. It is by the way echoed in Masonry: “As my will is so mote it be.” But it finds its culminating expression in Hegel. The rational is the real.

Rational man as the doctrine gave way to then to the concept of political man. Earlier in the middle ages the saving institution outside of which there was no salvation was the church. But, with the end of the middle ages the most discredited institution was the church, and the most discredited member of society was the priest. Both were caricatured savagely. Sometimes much of what was said was true; but if you contrast the church and the priests and whatever corruption you could find among them with the Renaissance kings and their depravity and corruption you would have to say the church and the priests came off very well by comparison.

But, men thought that the old order was a failure. And as a result they looked to the state for salvation and political man was born. Man redefined as he was in ancient paganism in terms of politics. Man in terms of Aristotle again a political animal. But this gave way in the past century, century in the half, to another humanistic concept; economic man. Man as an economic creature; and Marxism of course is the culmination of that trend, defining reality and determination in terms of economics. So that we do have a secular form of the doctrine of predestination, but, now it is predestination by economics. Economic reality is the governing reality.

But, then in time this gave way in the last years of the last century to another concept. Psychological man; the work of Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud ironically called attention to the fact that he was one of the three great men of the modern age of humanism. The prophets of humanism and each of them had been destroyers of humanism. Copernicus, who reduced the earth and the human drama there-on to a small speck in the face of a vast ocean of matter. Darwin, who went a step further and said man is only an animal. And Freud who said man does not rule; his unconscious does.

Indeed Freud went so far as to say “I am like king Midas of old only in the reverse. Everything he touched turn to gold and everything I touch turns to filth.” Humanism was being done to death by its own prophets. Indeed the culminating principle and premise of Freud's thought was that the basic factor in man, the governing factor, is the will to death. So he saw no hope for man's future. And so today man who began the age of humanism with such proud and vain, glorious thoughts is going out not with a bang but a whimper.

Chapman in his famous play of the Renaissance Bussy D’Ambois has his Renaissance hero who finally in the last scene is wounded and dying as he sees the blood pouring out of him express shock and amazement at the thought that he can die. He one of the gods of creation, how can he die? That was the confidence of humanism in its earliest days and now it is going out with a whimper. We are on the last days of the age of statist humanism which now commands the entire world.

One English writer, Eliot, in a book titled The 20th Century Book of the Dead has spoken of this century, the 20th century as the darkest age in all of history; the true dark age of history. Why should a humanist say so? He gives a statistical account. Writing in midcentury in the 50's he pointed out grimily that a higher percentage of mankind had been killed in the 20th century than ever before; killed a higher percentage, through war famine, mass murders, save labor camps, and other forms of human atrocities. We are thus living in the true dark age of history as the age of humanistic statism goes down in blood. And the worst may well be ahead of us. I'm very optimistic about the future but, as far as the near future the next decade or perhaps two we are going to see some rough days.

Since Eliot wrote his The 20th Century Book of the Dead the death toll had only climbed. Just since 1975 since the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia 50% of the nation has been systematically put to death; 50%. The goal was to wipe out the past. To make possible the creation of a new people, a new future, without any interference from the past and so the people who were killed were all who had worked for the old government or were related to anyone who had. All who had worked for any foreigner or any foreign corporation. All who had lived in cities. Non Penh a population of two million; no one there now. All who had ever been abroad, all who could understand or read, or speak any foreign language; And all who were Christians. And the result? Only illiterates and rural peasants left. Anyone who could read by the way, any language, was liquidated.

This is the logical consequence of humanism. We are told that god can kill and make alive. And man as he plays god cannot make alive much as they are trying to create life. But, he exercises his would be god like powers in killing and hoping thereby by eliminating a vast segment of humanity to create a new world.

But Freud was right, man outside of God, although he would not have added that qualification, has a will to death. We should have known this. Wisdom speaking long ago in Proverbs 8:36 declared he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. All they that hate me love death. And a love of death is emphatically a part of our day. All around us we see cynicism and moral decline. When we look at the economy we see the breakdown of the life blood of the economy; money. It is not prices that have gone up it is money that has depreciated in value.

Let me read to you a passage from a very brilliant commodity analyst, an expert who is by the way on our Chalcedon mailing list and most appreciative. Richard (Burgers?). And he writes in April of this year, "If we assume the real measure of the dollars current worth in terms of gold may be represented by the past 10 years mean price range of gold, $875 high, $38 dollars low, $456 mean. Then most all other current commodity prices quoted in paper dollars are remarkably low. In fact many of today's seemingly generous prices related to the modern price of gold are relatively even lower than the depression prices of the 1930's.

If we accept that the price of gold has found a new mean level just below $500, well under the peak of early 1980; then we must infer that the new 1981 paper dollar is worth no more then 1/13th or 7.7% of its former 35 dollar gold standard. Think for a moment what this 92.3% depreciation means when we consider 1981 commodity prices. Today’s $4.40 wheat deflates the 34 cents at $35 gold. $3.70 corn and 28 cents and $35 gold, $8 soybeans drops to 62 cents at $35 gold, copper at 86 cents deflates to 6.6 cents at $35 gold, 20 cents sugar to a cent and a half at $35 gold, cotton 87 cents down to six cents at $35 gold. And so on.

In terms of nominal paper dollars a gallon of gasoline in 1981 costs a record of $1.35 in $35 dollars gold terms the real cost of gasoline is a remarkable low; 10.4 cents. Lower than any point in the thirties. We grumble about paying four dollars paper to see a movie in 1981, the real gold value of our preferred four dollars 92.3% depreciated is 31 cents. We hand over a quarter dollar copper for a pack of gum that never cost less than a nickel in the 1930's; the real gold cost of the gum in 1981 is less than two cents. We must say the high 1981 price of $1.25 for a quality loaf of bread which equates to a little more than 9 cents at $35 dollars gold."

Of course what has happened is that our money is debt money and our economy is a debt oriented economy. And we are inflating our money endlessly to try to catch up with the debt cycle. Flying in on a plane yesterday my wife read and shared with me extensive portions of a book that I shall be reading on my flight to Washington on Monday by Martin (Weiss?), an expert on the problems of illiquidity. And he pointed out that in 79 General Motors' had to give 93 cents out of every dollar profit to pay the interest on its loans.

This is the debt picture for corporations and for the United States in varying degrees. How are they going to try and pay that off? By inflating all the more dramatically. But, it's going to collapse sooner or later. It's a fraudulent economy. The life blood of any economy; money is being destroyed. If in 1930 you had $600 in paper it would have been convertible to gold you could have gone to the bank and gotten 30 double eagles or $20 gold pieces. With that $600 in paper or gold you could go out and buy a new Ford, Chevy, or Plymouth, take your wife out to dinner and go home with silver in your pocket.

Today with $600 you could not get much of a car if the $600 was in paper but if the $600 was in gold if you had the thirty double eagles today you would have $21000. You could buy more than a Ford, Chevy, or a Plymouth. The difference tells you what has happened to the life blood of the United States. And in many countries it is far more dramatically worse. In every area we see controls and taxes creeping in. So that today we are regulated every time we turn around. I am one of the perhaps two oldest people in this room, and those of us who are a little younger then I am and Mrs. Clauster and possibly Judge Burrez; although I may have a few years on him; remember what things were like before our present nightmare.

I was very much reminded of what happened about a year ago when a friend of mine; a rancher in California; took a trip to Virginia City in Nevada. Before he left his neighbor an old man in his 90's came there and said, "Ted when you go there do me a favor. We moved out of there in the early 90's because the mines were beginning to shut down. And we couldn't sell our house because there were too many vacant houses on the market and no buyers with the declining population so we just walked away and left it." And he said, "I loved that old house. Check on it and tell me what's happened to it if it's still standing. And go to the Catholic church and see if my Grandfather's grave is tended and leave some money to make sure it's cared for. But he said “I do want to know what has happened to the house I was born in."

Ted went there and went to the church first, found the grave and left some money with the priest and then went over to the house. It was standing. In fact it had a new roof just put on it. He went to the county hall of records and checked on the house and found that it had sat vacant from the early 90's to 1940 when it was sold for back taxes plus cost. Well the cost was only a penny or two because it was an ad in the local paper, advertising all the properties that were sold.

There was only one bidder for that house which was an old fashioned Victorian house. A huge thing with a lot of ginger bread. And the loan bidder refused to pay a penny more than over 45 years of back taxes plus costs. So he got the house for $6.46. And I can remember when my relatives in the San Wakeen Valley thought the world was coming to an end because for a good size farm with the house and out-buildings you had to pay $50 a year in taxes. That was about the time that the war ended.

Now if their crops fail their taxes are still so high that they have to go to the bank and borrow money to pay their taxes. What is the difference? Why it is the State, the Federal Government, Statism playing at being God. Determined to solve all the problems of life and accordingly taxing and controlling to the point where we are now taxed to such a degree that today 75% of all estates are wiped out at the death of the father or the mother because of inheritance taxes.

Those figures are of 79, it is now worse because the inheritances taxes as of January 1980 increased. But, the basic crisis is religious. It is humanism. Humanism which sees the state as the agency of salvation, together with the public schools. We are seeing the unpublicized beginnings of the persecution of Christianity.

In California we have 75 churches that are going to be sold for nonpayment of taxes because they spoke out against gay rights; against homosexuality and they were called political. You are going to see that in every state. It is the kind of policy the IRS is promoting.

We have an attempt now to remove the tax exemption from the Catholic Church because it is against abortion and therefore against public policy. The IRS is holding that if you are against public policy then you are not entitled to tax exemption and are perhaps illegal as well. So “if we approve of anything, abortion or homosexuality, don't you dare disagree.”

This is the direction of things. The state of Ohio has moved to license church nurseries and Sunday schools and every kind of ministry to children. And a great many other states are moving in the same direction. The IRS and other agencies are claiming that the first amendment no longer applies. That he 16th amendment has invalidated it because the 16th amendment makes no exemption for churches so that all churches are liable to income and other taxes and the only exemption they have is statutory not constitutional. At any time any state can say we choose to tax all of you.

I could go on but, the time is growing short, to sight more and more such examples. I am in the courts regularly as a witness in these cases. But, what we are seeing is the growth of bureaucratic power. Most of the lawmaking of today is not by state and federal legislatures but, by bureaucratic agencies; State and Federal.

The world around us is a dying world. It is committing suicide. We are in the last days of humanistic Statism. What the future will be depends on us as Christians. It is our duty to command the future. History has never been commanded by majorities. The Marxists know that. They studied history. They studied the puritan movement more than any other single group. Christians have not given the attention to Puritanism that the Marxists have. What they found is that with only 4% of the country puritan the puritans dominated it. Why? Because most people are indifferent to basic issues and they will follow the people who seem to have the answers.

It is no wonder that today we find all around us the hatred that is in evidence when Christians begin to act because they are afraid of us. Chalcedon is a shoe string organization financially but, when Newsweek classified us not to long ago in February of this year as "The Think Tank" of the religious right, they did so because Washington is aware of us even though most people are not. Both Bureaucrats and legislatures in Washington are aware of us and of our influence.

We are called sometimes by congressional aids for information. In the past two weeks by two major television stations for data on the Christian school cases. You see a minority can do a great deal. But, all around us people are heedless. The more the crisis depend in Rome and at the end of the middle ages the more people gave themselves to escapism. To try and find some kind of pleasure that would blunt reality. That would give them an escape from the problems around them. The presbyter Salvian wrote in the last days of Rome and before the barbarian invasions saying, "If Rome does not fall then we will know there is no God." And we can say the same today.

When the city of Trier in Northern France, a part of the empire was invaded, the athletic events were underway in the arena and most people felt it was more important to attend the games then to defend the city. And Salvian gives us a grim account of the fall of Trier when he said the cries of the raped and the dying mingled with the cheers of the people who would not leave the arena. And when it was over and the city had been burned to the ground the survivors of the city council met together to petition the emperor: “Rebuild the arena to improve the moral of the people.” Salvian said, "Rome is dying but it continues to laugh."

Today we have the same factor very much with us and the same hostility and hatred to all those who say the handwriting is on the wall. And to all who would call attention to anything in our past as Christian such as the Puritans who did offer answers.

I was startled to find as I read about the half crown of the Cromwell Regime of the commonwealth; a beautiful coin. The animosity and hatred of the numismatic experts for it and for all the coins of the Cromwell regime. Why? Because the puritans produced them. And this one expert sums up his commentary on the history of the coin thus; and I quote, "Their sneering derision of the coins is a microcosmic case history of humanistic hatred for anything emanating from the puritan period, and for anything speaking God's order and its primacy in human activities" unquote.

Now if they hate something that is a few hundred years back that much, they are not going to love us when we raise the banner of the Crown Rights of Christ the King over every area of life and thought. But, that is exactly what we must do. And that will be exactly our subject in the succeeding sessions.

The book of Revelation gives us a vision of the collapse of the world humanistic order. Of the joyful cry goes out Babylon goes out. “Babylon is fallen is fallen is fallen and shall arise no more” and then the summons, “rejoice my people.” We do live in grim times. But what is happening tells us that God is on the throne and that the wages of sin are now as they always have been; death. Now how are we going to rebuild? This is the question we shall address ourselves too.