Easy Chair Series

James Ussher; Christian Charity; Art of Europe; Church Buildings and Palaces; Destruction of Church Buildings; Human Immune System; Wayne Dick; A.I.D.S.; Symbols of Freedom, Crime and Governments; Soviet Criminals; Early American Life; Buster Brown Cartoons

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 4-91

Genre:

Track:

Dictation Name: EC130

Year: 1986

This Is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 130, September, 1986.

I would like to start this time by speaking briefly of a very remarkable book. It was a gift to me by one of you, Dr. Forrest Chapman. The book is by the then Archbishop of Armagh, Ireland, James Ussher. The title The Annals of the World. It was published in 1658.

Most of you, if you have an older edition of the King James Bible will have dates in the margin. Those date are the work of James Ussher, one of the great men in the study and development of the science of the study of chronology. I believe Ussher’s chronology is still as good, if not better, than most. However, I want to talk very briefly about this book. To most readers it would seem a strange book. It deals with the history of the world from creation to the fall of Jerusalem. It gives us the biblical history essentially, but it is remarkable for this reason. Unlike any history written today, the book by Ussher is set in terms of a chronology to show God’s blessings and curses. The book is dated throughout not only by the year, but also by the Jubilee years. In other words, was Israel observing the Jubilee or not? What happened? Did they go into captivity or did they suffer defeat? Archbishop Ussher tied all of these events in to their relationship to the Jubilee years. His point being that if we look at history realistically, we are going to see it as the work of God, as his blessing or his curse upon us in terms of our obedience to his law.

Now this means that history, for Archbishop Ussher, was something radically different than what we find written today even by Christians because Ussher tied it in to the fact that God is active in history, blessing or judging the nations and therefore it is important to know what have they done. Are they obedient to God’s law?

Well, now on to something else. In the course of some research I have been doing for a book I am writing, I turned to a book that I read some years ago. In fact, August 9, 1956 was when I read it. It was published in 1952 by J. G. Davies. The title of the book is Daily Life of Early Christians.

One of the things that we find in the book of Acts is that very early the Church had a tremendous influx of Pharisees. And so Pharisaism crept into the Church very easily and readily. When the New Testament deals, as Paul’s letters often do, with problems with those who are called Judaizers, we are dealing, very specifically, with the Pharisees, with the pharisaic idea of what should be law, not with God’s law as such.

For example, from very early years the Church held that there were two fast days every week, Wednesday and Friday, supposedly because the betrayal was planned and the crucifixion took place on these two days. Actually this was a continuation of the fasts of the Pharisees. Do you remember in Luke 18:12 the Pharisee praying to God boasts that he fasted twice in a week. The early Church continued this. A great deal of what we have under the name of Pietism today really was not much more than Pharisaism.

Well, another thing from this book. We often have very distorted ideas about the past. This is a little incidental fact. But in the chapter on John Chrysostom, the great pulpiteer and one of the saints of those centuries, we are told that John enjoyed his daily bath in his private bathroom. We often fall into the error of assuming that because the Enlightenment was a time when people were thoroughly unwashed and bathing was not all together popular with most—although let me say not all. Louis XIV bathed twice daily, but a great many people at Versailles rarely. At any rate, the history of bathing is one of ups and downs. And in the early church we find Saint John Chrysostom enjoying his daily bath.

But there was a great deal of Neo-Platonist influence so that that the monks, heavily influenced by Neo-Platonism and a contempt for the flesh at the same time were abstaining from bathing. We find also that some heavily influenced by Neo-Platonism and the belief that we were to be spiritual beings ran into rather strange ideas. For example, {?} was once told by a monk that, “I shrink from partaking of irrational food, being myself rational, destined to live in a paradise of delight owing to the power given us by Christ.”

In other words, this monk was in tears because it was necessary to eat and it showed him what a crass, materialistic person he was. That is the kind of nonsense that Neo-Platonism produces.

But now to the fact that had me go back to this book, to verify this point which I had not remembered being as telling a fact as it is. I had underrated the figures.

At the time of Saint John Chrysostom in Constantinople the Christians numbered about 100,000. But they took very seriously the biblical requirement that they care for their needy brothers. These 100,000 Christians in Constantinople held themselves responsible for the maintenance of 50,000 poor folk plus another 3000 widows and virgins who depended upon the Church for their means of sustenance. Now these are not rich Christians. They were all kinds, rich and poor. But then cared for 50,000 poor people and 3000 widows and virgins. One fourth of the income of the Church went to support these people and the three quarters went to the clergy and the churches and the necessities of maintaining the life of the Church. This tells us something about what those Christians were doing. In fact, what, during a great deal of Church history was routinely done by Christians.

Now this should indicate to us that it is no impossible task if Christians take back their responsibilities from the state of assuming the work of charity. Today we have been told that if every church and synagogue in the United States supported one family that is on welfare, the problem would disappear and a good many churches could support quite a few.

Now on to something else from the same era. This is from a book which dates back to ‘67 by Paolo Verzone, V, as in Victor, E R Z O N E, The Art of Europe. It covers the art of Europe from shortly after the fall of Rome to Charlemagne. In other words from about 425 to the year 800. Just a couple of minor aspects of this book, not minor in importance, but minor in the general thesis of the book.

First, it is interesting that the council of Toledo in 633 actually threatened with excommunication whoever did not read the book of Revelation publicly in holy week. It was required reading in the churches. The promise of judgment in the book of Revelation was to them the assurance of the restoration of order and a just retribution for sinners. I think that is a marvelous fact, especially when today we have one major church, the Lutherans, that avoid this book, a very sad fact.

Another very interesting point that Verzone brings out is this. Within a few years after the fall of Rome, Christian churches, as they were built, were magnificent buildings. In fact, from before the fall of Rome Christians were building stone churches that were palatial edifices. And that is exactly what they were intended to be, palaces. They were the palace of the King of kings. When his Word as read in a church every one stood so that there was always a hearing of the Word of the King by his people standing.

The reason why the interior of the church as well as the exterior was designed to be magnificent and the interior finished with gold and with beautiful hangings, mosaics, precious stones, was because it symbolized the resurrection world. When you entered the life of faith you were one of the people of the resurrection and of this reason when you gathered in the house of God you were to rejoice in the fact of the resurrection, that this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith and therefore the interior of the Church was to be a magnificent one making one joyful in the fact of victory and of resurrection.

To trace the history of the meaning of churches would be very interesting and it is a sad fact that today the church building is meaningless in the design of people. Churches are built because the architect feels that this is a good design or it is a cheap form of construction and 101 irrelevant reasons, never as the palace of the King of kings, never as the place where people go and rejoice and stand with reverence when the Word of the King is pronounced.

Another brief item dealing again with the history of the Church, I am just skipping over the centuries into England at the time of Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding from a title of a book of that title, Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding by A. L. Maycock, first published in 1938 and reprinted in 1980. Nicholas Ferrar’s dates were 1592 to 1637 in the years mainly of Elizabeth, James I and Charles I.

I turn to this book, which is not a particularly good one, for this reason. We have so many illusions that historians have very often fostered as well as partisan peoples about the destruction of the Church by one group or another. And there is no question that the Church has very often been laid waste by peoples. Certainly at the time of the Reformation, Catholic and Protestant monarchs used the times as an opportunity seize church properties. However, the greatest damage to the Church and to church properties has been by the people of the Church with their indifference. When Nicholas Ferrar went to Little Gidding, the condition he found the church in was deplorable. It was a desecrated building. There had been no pastor for some time. The local people of the parish had used it to store hay right up to the ceilings. They had knocked out the windows so they could do that more readily. But that is not all. They used a portion of the church as a pigsty. And naturally the condition of the church was deplorable. This was not done by any enemies and it is interesting that people will tut, tut about the fact that some few Puritans during the Civil War did a little damage to the Church, but the real damage to Little Gidding was by the people with their neglect, with their indifference.

Now I would like to turn to an entirely different subject, to a very, very important book written by Stephen B. Mizel, M, as in Mary, I Z E L and Peter Jaret, J A R E T, In Self Defense: On the Human Immune System, the New Frontier in Medicine, 15.95, published in 1985 by Harcourt, Brace Javonich.

This book is very important and I am not going to try to tell you much about it, except this. What they have found increasingly is that our bodies have an immune system which is the best possible defense against disease. Our bodies muster all kinds of weapons and instrumentalities against any invasion of bacteria, viruses, chemical agents and so on. It is really something remarkable. So much so that one cannot read this book without a sense of awe, a recognition that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, that we are God’s creation, that the body was created by God in the beginning to have every kind of defense against disease. But, because we are fallen creatures, we are not able to use all those defenses and when we lose the will to live, we lose our immunity. A large number of our ailments are a product of the failure of our immune system because we have lost the will to live.

Let me read just one passage. And this, to me, is amazing because each cell of our immune system functions like a computer or like a source of amazing intelligence. I quote.

“Only in recent years have we been able to piece together precise details of this extraordinary system of self defense. And there is still much to discover. We are only beginning to understand the language of immune responses, those chemical signals and commands by which the cells of the immune system communicate with each other. Each cell of the immune system receives and transmits enormous amounts of information. Immune cells engage in something very much like conversation, an elaborate network of announcements, commands and counter commands. The placement, the time and the nature of every signal is exquisitely precise. The effect of a single command extremely powerful. By deciphering the key words in this immunological vocabulary, researchers have begun to gain important insights into the way the body defends itself against disease. And the future of immunology holds out a breathtaking possibility. By learning these key words, researchers may discover how to mimic the commands of the immune system and use the language of immune responses to stimulate the immune system itself to fight against disease,” unquote.

Well, we may take that latter statement with a grain of salt, but what we have to recognize is that this tells us very clearly God made us perfect, very good. Built into a resistance, all kinds of diseases, all kinds of ailments so that we had within us the capacity to eliminate every kind of threat to our lives. But by the fall, we have separated ourselves from God. We have lost the basic immunity, our faith in God and our own being can now be in a war against itself. In fact, as the authors say, the immune system literally turns on the body, rejecting healthy cells as if they were invaders.

In other words, when we lose the will to live, when we are under the burden of something that warps our whole outlook, our immune system works against our health. It creates a whole host of ailments. It becomes as form of suicide.

As a companion to this book, another very interesting one which, however, I am not sure is in print. It was published in 1983. The author Gerald Astor, A S T O R, The Disease Detectives, Deadly Medical Mysteries And The People Who Sought Them. A very interesting book. It describes a number of ailments and what happens with these ailments. Cholera has been the deadliest disease mankind has ever known. Questions can be raised about cholera and a number of writers have. Normally cholera, by the way, is killed on contact with our saliva and gastric juices, but if your immune system is threatened, if we are tense or nervous it inhibits the natural juices so that instead of killing the cholera virus on contact, the cholera virus kills us.

We have something here on hepatitis and the relationship of oysters and shell fish generally to hepatitis. A very interesting account of the swine herd’s disease, the black death on the role of hospitals and disease transmission and much, much more. Thoroughly interesting reading, a very important book.

Now very briefly I would like to call your attention to something I have quoted from from time to time. It is The Conservative Manifesto: A Monthly Report from Howard Philips and the annual subscription is 250 from 9520 Bent Creek Lane, Vienna, Virginia, 22180.

The August 1986 issue has, among many interesting things, an article on a situation at Yale. One of the students there, Wayne Dick, who had just finished his sophomore year recently is in trouble for exercising his free speech. The students who were having their annual GLAD week, GLAD standing for Gay and Lesbian Awareness Days. So Wayne Dick wrote and mimeographed a parody poster, BAD week, ’86, BAD standing for Bestiality Awareness Days.

Now nothing on his poster was legally obscene or defamatory and the poster had a schedule of alleged events. Lambda, Yale’s own animal house announces their first barnyard rush. Lambda is a homosexual and lesbian rights organization.

Well, there was a great deal of anger at this poster. He was charged with harassment and intimidation against the gay and lesbian community and Yale has put him on two years probation, in other words, for the rest of his college career. In other words, there is free speech at Yale for gays and lesbians, but not for anyone who criticizes them.

Another item from Howard Philip’s Conservative Manifesto, I quote, “According to the New York Times, justice department lawyers have tentatively concluded that people with AIDS are handicapped individuals entitled to protection under federal civil rights law,” unquote. This from a conservative administration and from a supposedly conservative attorney general’s office.

Howard Philips also cites the justice department memo that claims AIDS is not a genuine threat to public health. More fairy tales from our marvelous people in Washington.

The National Perspectives Institute, PO Box 2370, Chesapeake, Virginia, 23320 has published AIDS: Civil Rights or Civil Wrongs by J. V. G A R R I S S. The price is 2.95. And Garriss makes this point at the beginning of his little study. And I quote, “AIDS is unique from a public health perspective. While the devastating effects of historical epidemics were partially attributable to an ignorance of scientific fact, for the first time in history the facts which are known about a plague are deliberately being ignored or misrepresented. Although the initial cause of bubonic infection, rat fleas, remained unknown for 500 years, the cause of AIDS infection has been known since the disease was first identified. Infection with AIDS comes through homosexual promiscuity and intravenous drug abuse. Initial containment of the disease within well defined subcultures has allowed our society to ignore the problem, but no longer,” unquote.

As Garriss goes on to say, the number of ailments that exist in the homosexual community primarily are considerable. I quote again, “Even though homosexual men are only two to three percent of the total population, they account for 40 percent of all cases of syphilis and 50 percent of all gonorrhea. In addition they are 10 to 20 times as likely as the general population to have hepatitis. They have an 80 percent lifetime risk of infection. Ninety percent or more of all reported cases of intestinal parasitic infection are among homosexuals. In addition, the incidence of genetic herpes, venereal warts and other venereal diseases is far higher in homosexuals than the general population. In short, the homosexual death style provides a breeding ground for all kinds of venereal diseases and intestinal infections,” unquote.

It goes on to say that there are at least 25 different forms of sexually transmitted disease, STDs, many of which have no cure. There are 27,000 new cases everyday. And homosexuals are the primary carriers of all these diseases. Hepatitis B was once very uncommon, but has become widespread among active homosexuals.

“This contagious liver infection,” says Garriss, “can progress to cirrhosis and cancer and now threatens the general population.”

Then he says, and I will conclude with this. I quote, “The homosexual community is also host to a series of bizarre bowel diseases once confined to tropical regions of the world,” unquote. And he goes on to cite a number of them.

And yet we are told by our justice department that we are abusing this segment of the population with our belief that they cause problems.

A very important book, published just this year by Harper and Rowe for 16.95. It is by Francis Russell, Saco and Vanzetti, the Case Resolved.

Saco and Vanzetti were two Anarchists arrested for killing a paymaster and a guard and stealing the payroll of a shoe factory in 1920. Witnesses identified these two men. They were tried and they were convicted and executed seven years later. However, the case became one that created demonstrations all over Europe and throughout the world, a tremendous number of public protests at American embassies everywhere. These two Anarchists became a symbol of freedom to many liberals. The number of women’s groups lined up in their support was tremendous. {?} and successors in the Kremlin lined up the Communists of the world to organize demonstrations and public rallies in their favor in order to use it as an anti American demonstration. It was used in this country by people to attack the Puritan heritage of Massachusetts. Today we would say it was an attack on the WASP culture.

As Russell points out, he originally believed these men to be innocent. He has since become convinced otherwise. Ballistic tests have clearly shown that it was Saco’s gun that did the killing. But these men were regarded as innocent by definition and the state of Massachusetts as guilty by definition.

Interesting, too, is his account of the women whom he describes women of dogmatic good will, liberal women, wealthy women who felt a glow of self righteous virtue in working with people who were determined to destroy the Capitalism they represented because they lived in inherited wealth. And somehow the fact that they were working with Communists, knowing that in their lifetime their capital would never been in danger, gave them a glow of virtue.

It is a good study in what is happening today in this country and other countries which has been used against nuclear power, against nuclear weapons, against South Africa, against the men who are fighting for their freedom in Nicaragua, the Contras and many, many other groups. It is not the truth that matters. It is whom can we attack?

Well, now on to something else, turning to a very, very interesting book, a large book of almost 1200 pages published at 22.95 by Doubleday, published this year. The author is James Mills, The Underground Empire: Where Crime and Governments Embrace.

As the author says at the beginning, everything in the book is true. He has not changed any names. No composite characters, no invented scenes or dialogues. He worked for some time with SENTAC, the group created to combat international drug traffickers. Incidentally, only one present did anything concrete to destroy the international trade and that briefly. It was Nixon with his action in Turkey compelling the destruction of the opium fields there.

Since then one president after another has spoken out against drugs and done little else. Today Nancy Reagan is going all over the country speaking out against drugs, but this administration has wiped out SENTAC. Earlier the Mansfield Amendment prevented effective action against the international narcotics industry.

But, as Mills points out, we better take this seriously, because, he says, the people of this world spend more money on illegal drugs than they spend on food, more than they spend on housing, clothes, education, medical care or any other product or service. It is the largest growth industry in the world. The revenue is in excess of half a trillion dollars which is three times, Mills says, the value of all US currency in circulation, more than then gross national product of all but a half a dozen of the major industrialized nations.

Quoting Mills, “To imagine the immensity of such wealth, consider this. A million dollars in gold would weigh as much as a large man. A half trillion dollars would way more than the entire population of Washington, DC,” unquote.

This international empire is interlocked with the various governments of this world. Some governments in South and Central America are little more than criminal enterprises. Incidentally, Senator Helms was rebuked by many dignitaries for making statements that called attention to the fact that high governmental personnel were involved in the drug traffic in a particular country and were major producers of it.

It is quite a devastating book. And it does need to be read. The data in this book needs to be talked about.

Ultimately the only solution to this, however, is a new people, a new people in Christ, because narcotics, like liquor represent a substitute religion.

When I was on the Indian reservation of the alcoholics, of whom there were many, the Indians would speak of them as believers in the whiskey religion. Those who took peyote, a narcotic, were spoken of as the peyote religion people. And they were right. Both liquor and drugs provide a substitute religion for people who believe in nothing.

Very interesting in this book are his accounts of conversations with the Chinese warlord, a man who speaks very candidly about the stupidity of the United States. He says, very clearly, that what we are doing is a suicidal course. He says the Communists have nothing except what we give them. And he goes on to say that the people of the West are digging their own graves happily, smiling all the way to their graves and they are the ones who have the power to put up a stand. They don’t. They are fooling themselves.

And he goes on to say that... let me quote this. This is from this Chinese warlord of Hunan Province who still has a great deal control both in Red China and out of Red China. And he said to Mills, I quote, “Americans love to delude themselves. Back in the 40s they kept insisting that the Chinese party was not Communist. They were agrarian reformers. They loved that, the same thing today. What happens in China today? Chinese leaders have to change because they think that is the only way to calm the population they are ruling. It is a tactic. It is not that they think what they believe is wrong. No, the same thing is happening with China today as happened with Russia before. Russia would never have been a threat to anybody if the capitalistic countries didn’t sell their technology to Russia. They never learn. They are doing the damn same thing now with China. Americans are masochists. They want so much to be liked. Today it is the same euphoria, the same enthusiasm. It is so unbelievable. They don’t remember. And in the end you get the shaft. Communists are Communists. They are like religious fanatics. Americans want to be professional goodies and they are good, but they are very emotional. To be emotional is very good as an individual, but very bad as a national policy. I feel so sorry for Americans,” unquote.

Well, I wish I could read the whole book to you, but this would take days. You ought to read it. It will tell you something about the real world we are living in which too many pietists are not ready to face up to, a devastating study.

Now turning to Policy Review for summer 1986. An excellent article in Policy Review entitled “The Urban Strangler,” by James K. Stuart. And the subtitle is, “How Crime Causes Poverty in the Inner City.”

Usually we are told poverty causes crime. But Stuart gives us an exceptionally good analysis pointing out how crime causes poverty in the inner city. That is a very important article because it is very true. I know that, oh, 40, 45 years ago or more I was in New York City at the Labor Temple staying for a few days and the director there was a college and seminary classmate of mine. We were on different sides of most issues, but we respected each other. The thing that he told me that I found very interesting because I had heard it repeatedly and here I had it from someone on the other side of the fence. The ghettos in the cities are temporary or were then temporary places of people on the way up. Around the Labor Temple in those days and for many, many years before, the population changed every few years. There would be foreign language papers, foreign language speaking shops, the signs in the street would be in a foreign language and then it would change after a few years as these people moved on up and other people, fresh migrants moved in so that the city was seeing a continual turnover in its poor neighborhoods. These people worked their way up in a very short time.

But what has happened since? In those days you could walk around and I did in the worst part of New York City during the night to visit the used bookshops that were open until nine and 10. The streets were safe. Today crime causes poverty. It does not allow the people on the lower level to get up. It robs them. It murders them. They are the first victims. Crime causes poverty, an excellent study.

In line with that, let me turn to an older book by N. N. Krasnov, Jr. The Hidden Russia: My 10 Years as a Slave Laborer. This book was published in 1960.

He tells us that when Stalin died the successors to Stalin wanted to show that there was a change and they had an amnesty and turned a great many people out of the slave labor camps. But they were not the political prisoners. They were common criminals. But by saying they had turned so many people loose, they were going to claim that things had changed. They were getting ready to say that, “Well, Stalin is dead and better days are ahead.”

But what happened? Let me quote.

“Throughout the country there was a wave of horrible crimes from the trains on which the convicts were returning from prison. They threw out the bodies of raped women, of robbed and murdered peasants and even the bodies of well dressed party members in {?} suits. What a dissonance these innumerable and incontrovertible facts produced when set beside the words of the attorney general of the Soviet Union when he explained the amnesty saying, ‘Our people have become civic minded. The brutality, banditry and other crimes which were brought in by war and the example of our enemies are on the wane. There has been an abrupt decline in crime in the USSR. Soon we shall set an example for the whole world.’ But the criminals from whom the country had been protected for years because of their confinement in concentration camps, now flooded the streets like waves of slop. Contrary to the words of the attorney general, banditry rose by 50 percent. The criminals were rearrested, resentenced and returned to the camps as they had to admit later on 75 percent of the amnesty convicts were returned to their green pastures in the camps. Of course there were no amnesties for any but these hard core criminals.”

Well, on to something else, a thoroughly delightful book, a book I wish I could read at length to you from is a biography of W. C. Perry, The Grand Prairie Years by Ron Arnold, published by Dodd, Meade and Company in 1986 for 14.95.

This is a beautiful book because it gives us a life of American people, life as it was lived in the early years of this century. W. C. Perry is a man who grew up in the last days of the American frontier. He is still living, by the way. He worked hard, went into teaching, became a dean at Baylor University and is an excellent example of the greatness of America, of the kind of hard work perseverance, dedication that does go into the making of this country.

And there are a great many things here that I would like to read, but to give you an idea of the difference, because I can remember this. The beginning of this century saw a cartoon, The Buster Brown cartoon strip. It started in 1902 and it continued into the 20s. Buster Brown and his dog Tige. Well, it tells you how much the comic strips have changed. And this is... I enjoyed this so, because I could remember these strips. Let me quote.

“In one Sunday comic strip Buster falls for the tale of woe of Willy, a street bum. Buster takes him home, cleans him up in the family bathroom, provides a shave and a haircut and even his father’s clothes including a fine diamond stick pine. When Willy the bum stands thus bedecked, Buster admires his handiwork saying, ‘You are the candy, Willy.’ The dog Tige all the while laments, ‘Let me see how can I get him out of this? I will go mad. And I believe in astrology now. By what law of nature is this coming to that bum?’ However when mother comes up and hugs the tramp from behind, Buster yells, ‘Let go, ma, that isn’t pa.’ Pa, however, walks in at this inopportune moment, sees the scene and asks the bum, ‘Who are you?’ As Willy replies, ‘Search me,’ ma faints in horror.

“Thousands of boy clipped Buster along with their dogs dubbed Tige lay on the parlor floor and chuckling turned to the next strip without so much as glancing at the last frame which delivered this homiletic harangue.”

Now mind you, this is from a comic strip.

“Resolved, that a tramp is not a victim of hard luck nor ill fortune. He is just the effect of a cause. Selfishness and ignorance and laziness are of the cause, filth, disease and poverty the result. A bad effect never came from a good cause. If you do right, you will be right. If you do wrong, you will get the worst of it. No man ever got wheat who planted weeds. Laziness is a mental disease. All action must first be a thought. If you are too lazy to think you can’t act. If you don’t exercise your brain, it will grow useless. Don’t let the doctor, the orator, the lawyer or the newspaper do your thinking for you. You smile at the child who believes in Santa Claus while you believe worse piffle. God gave you brains to think with,” unquote.

Now isn't that marvelous? That is what the comic strips were. The book is full of delightful things like this. I could talk at length about some of the things. For example, the comments about the past and its meaning, about W. C. Perry’s reaction when he goes to a town school and sees the expression is marvelous, the bored privilege of the young people there and much, much more.

Well, time is running out. I am sorry I can’t go on at greater length, but let me share this with you, a delightful cartoon I ran across of a man sitting at the desk of his computer and the computer just goes down. It is finished and smoke is pouring out of it. And on the screen flashes these words, “I am a Catholic computer. Call a priest,” I guess to administer the last rites.

Well, our time is up. And it has been a pleasure to share these things with you and I hope they bring you as much pleasure as it has given me to recount them to you. Thank you for listening.