Easy Chair Series

Image versus Reality; Theatre; Secularism and Original Sin; Military Horse; American Indians; Men and Arms; German Traders

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 8-91

Genre:

Track:

Dictation Name: EC135

Year: 1986

This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 135, December the ninth, 1986.

This evening I would like to begin with the discussion of a very important subject, very ably covered in a recently published book. The author, Leo Braudy. The title, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its History, published for 27.50 by the Oxford University Press, 1986.

What this book deals with is a subject touched on, oh, perhaps 30 years ago by John White in his book The Renaissance Cavalier. In that book, very briefly, White pointed out that with the Renaissance, man began to perform on a stage with other men as his audience. During the Christian centuries, men had God in view at all times. They were on the stage before God. It was the eyes of God that they felt were upon them. But with the Renaissance this changed. This chanted quite dramatically. And perhaps the most revealing example of this is Castiglione’s book The Courtier. At that time warfare was largely hand to hand combat, armed men, cavalry or men on foot and Castiglione advised the courtier to reserve his daring fighting, his fearless and reckless charges for those moments when he knew that the prince would have his eyes upon him. There would be no point in some great military feat if he were not observed by the most important person there.

Now this was the Renaissance perspective and the perspective of modern man. To be seen by other men, to live in terms of that audience, other people and to gain their attention one way or another.

Braudy begins by citing a particular example and I quote. “‘How many times do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention,’ complained a murderer in a letter to he Wichita police. Only with his sixth killing, he continued, he had he begun to get any publicity. This was in February 1978. In a cursory reading of any daily newspaper it is easy to find similar stories that illustrate the various insanities to which individuals have been driven by the lust for recognition. Who knows whether the urge to fame drove this man to murder or has murderous nature found the language of fame seeking a comfortable normality to wrap around himself? But it is clear that particularly since World War II the increasing number and sophistication of the ways information is brought to us have enormously expanded the ways of being known. In the process, the concept of fame has been grotesquely distended and the line between public achievement and private pathology grows dimmer as the claims grow more bizarre,” unquote.

We can add to that that in recent years television has increased this kind of frenzy to have fame. Many demonstrations, many revolutionary activities are held for the benefit of the camera. The Communists in particular make use of this media and a great many of their actions are staged for a television audience to give the idea of massive movement.

Braudy begins his study, of course, with ancient times with Alexander the Great. He has a great deal of documentation here, but I think he passes up a very important aspect from the very personal life of Alexander the Great. Alexander liked to pretend that he was above enjoying food or above enjoying women, as though these were grudging concessions to the flesh. And, of course, behind this lay his belief that he was a god, his claim to be a god. And, as a result, he could not act like a human being. He had to conceal his humanity.

In one sentence Braudy recognizes this factor in dealing with modern man, that the goal is to be god. In the process he gives us, throughout history, the role of this desire for fame.

The Christian centuries, of course, altered this. Man began to see God as the one whom he had to act mindful of, not a human audience. But with the Renaissance and the modern era the artist began to see himself as a priest and a prophet. The urge to self destructiveness, as Braudy points out, a suicidal impetus began to be presented as a sign of sensitivity. You are so sensitive that you could not take life and, therefore, you were of a higher nature. You were a super refined person. As a result, a new hierarchy came into being, the hierarchy of sensitive souls who played, who postured, who acted for a human audience.

As he develops this thesis, the linkage is pointed out by Braudy between portraits, theater, sculpture and tyranny, means of demonstrating one’s power, power used not for beneficent purposes, but power used to startle people, to shock them, to make them fix their eyes on you, because you are the center of the stage. You are the god that they should recognize. And, as a result, you live for an audience.

There are some remarkable quotes given by Braudy to illustrate this. For example, Daniel Webster on his death bed asked, and I quote, “Have I said anything unworthy of Daniel Webster?” unquote.

A modern novelist, very suicidal who said, “When I am alone I stop believing I exist.”

Now, parenthetically, let me say a great deal of evidence here is not touched upon by Braudy from the world of the theater and the films. Many an actor feels that they are a non person when they are not on stage not acting. Peter Sellers who died fairly young of a heart attack would have heart attacks and ailments when he was not acting because only when he played a part had an image to project did he feel that he was a person. The world of the theater and of the films has encouraged this so that more than one person finds it difficult to live because who are they? The real person is unimportant. It is the public image that counts. He does have a few illustrations from the world of films, very few. But one of the choice ones is from John Wayne.

John Wayne once asked Rich Little, who often did imitations of John Wayne to read a script, because he said, “I don’t know whether this fits my image. You are better at identifying it than I am. You read it and tell me whether this is a John Wayne script.”

In other words, the image becomes so public a thing that the person behind it no longer knows who he is. The people out there can better tell him who John Wayne is or Peter Sellers or whoever the case may be than he can himself.

What this does is that the image replaces substance. Reality is no longer what a man accomplishes, but the image he projects. This means that the political figure increasingly becomes a person who must of necessity function in terms of an image. He is no longer a person who does or accomplishes certain things. He is what the public image tells him what he is. And the more outrageously he acts, the more the public attention is focused on him. And so he tries to get away with more and more.

He cites, for example, a number of outrageous examples of this, some of which are hardly repeatable, but one which possibly is. A president, Lyndon Baines Johnson who made a point of conducting business and receiving visitors while seated on the toilet. In other words, he would push his power to the ultimate limit. He would push his image of a man who could do anything and get away with anything to every limit possible.

Hitler was one such man. He had to be faithful to his public image. And this constantly required a new achievement, something more dramatic and also maintaining the same image constantly physically. And, as a result, Hitler was very concerned about his appearance, about his weight, about his public image. Although he was quite a womanizer, as far as the public knew, he was not interested in women. In that aspect, he was playing the same game as Alexander the Great. On one occasion said because he wanted to avoid any food that might put on an extra ounce, he said, and I quote, “Imagine me going around with a pot belly. It would mean political ruin,” unquote.

Well, Braudy’s book is important, because it tells us what is wrong with our world today. In politics we vote for images. In every area of life it is the image which prevails. In the church it is the image that a man projects, not his faithfulness to the whole Word of God. Does he project the right kind of pastoral image or spiritual leadership image? In politics at different times it has been the father image or the youth image, always the image, never the substance, only the form.

As a result, we do have very bad politics, bad religion, bad everything, because the frenzy of renown, living in terms of an image dominates our culture.

I am going to turn now to another book, one that I read a while back about a year and two months ago, a book published Grove Press in 1982. The author is Theodore Shank who is a professor of dramatic art at the University of California. And the title is American Alternative Theater.

This book is important if you want to understand why we are getting the very strange kind of plays on the stage, why we are getting the very weird kind of thing on television increasingly and in films. The book deals with the living theater. And what is the living theater? It was defined in 1968 by Julian Beck who founded with his wife Judith Molena and continues to direct the living theater which is typical of the avant-garde theater which is very much influential in every area. But Beck’s definition of the living theater, and I quote, “Life, revolution and theater are three words for the same thing, an unconditional no to the present society,” unquote.

Now this is a very important definition. For these people reality is the revolution in theater. This is life. Life is identical, he says, with revolution and theater. Thus, if you are not on stage, you are a shadow person. You are not a part of reality.

Everyone, then, who wants to partake of reality must play a part, must project an image, must make his every day life theater. Hence, youth today that wants to be most up to the moment dresses outrageously. Its form of dress is theater, living theater. And, in varying degrees, people of all ages dress in terms of theater. They dress for an audience.

A couple of generations ago people dressed in terms of what clothing is in good taste and is it durable? Are the garments well made? Will they wear well?

At that time women could look at a garment and tell you roughly what the thread count would be. They could tell you a great deal of information about it. When I was a child that was the routine type of question that a woman would ask when she was inquiring about available materials. Now that type of information is no longer available. Not many people know what it means, because no longer is the interest substantive. It is theatrical. What kind of theater, what kind of image will I project with these clothes?

Well, this means, then, that reality has ceased to be what we once though it to be. It is now for these people theater, image projecting. For example, professor Shank quotes another authority in the field and I quote. “Acting is not make believe, but living exquisitely in the moment,” unquote. It is existentialist, thus. It is living in the moment.

Well, you can see why a particularly strong and biblical theology is not going to be popular today, why people like image making on the part of others seek to project an image themselves and want a faith that will give them an image, not the substance.

So, the faith of the church today is shallow. It is empty, because it is a part of this world of the image.

The living theater, thus, is not only in these experimental theatrical groups. It is all around us. We are surrounded by it. We are caught up in it. It is a world we live in and it is the world that is increasingly committing suicide. It is a form of insanity to confuse your dream world with reality. And when men say that reality is the theater and revolution both of which are geared to projecting an image, to a public display, they are insane and the whole age is insane as ours is emphatically. Insanity is a departure from God’s reality.

The other night we were watching something and someone was identified as a sociopath. And Dorothy immediately asked me, “What did they say?”

And I said, “They said the man is a sociopath.”

And she said, “But isn't that word psychopath?”

And I said, “No. The term psychopath went out some time in the 50s and sociopath replaced it.”

In other words, today a man is not defined as abnormal in terms of God, in terms of an objective standard, an enduring, a permanent standard. He is identified as a pathological personality, if he is out of line with society. He is, thus, called a sociopath.

Well, consider the implications of that kind of term. If we are Christians and especially if we are strong, unswerving Christians governed by the whole Word of God and if we believe that the audience whose eyes are always upon us is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, not man, then in terms of the modern perspective we are sociopaths. And this is why some thinkers are already speaking of Christians as social deviants. And the term sociopath, if it has not already been applied will before long be applied to Christians, because we deviate from society, because we are not concerned with the image and the image construction, the image projection which society requires of us, but with: What will the Lord have me to do?

That is a radically different concern. And, as a result, we are out of step with society. We do not fit in with the world of the living theater. We do not see life equated with the revolution and the theater. We see life as Jesus Christ who said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but my me.” So we are out of step, radically out of step.

And the theater is moved out of the buildings and into the streets. When the student demonstrations began and the hippie movement began, again and again I told my wife, “This is like a rerun of the movies of the 20s and of the early 30s.”

That generation of students had been babysat by old movies and they were now projecting the image of what they had learned as small children, doing it very well. They were reenacting those early movies, projecting the same kind of image in their clothing and in their total behavior. They were the revolutionary mobs of ancient times, of the French Revolution and of other revolutions. The world of the theater, thus, is now the world of every day life.

The concern with images. Under different names, a great deal of preaching is given to image building. A great many popular Christian periodicals deal with image building, with living theater as applied to the Church and the life of the people therein. This is why we are shallow. This is why the church today is impotent. It has adopted the way of the world, the standards of the world. It no longer says, “Thou God seest me.” But you, you the people out there, you, my friends, my neighbors, you see me and therefore I am going to behave in terms of what you expect and try to please you. I want to be popular.

Now this is youth today. To fit in with a group, group dynamics, peer pressure, this governs young people today. This is image building in terms of the group. It is being in the living theater of the world and it is evil.

Now this is the world of the state schools. When Christians send their children to the state schools and then expect them to be anything other than a part of the living theater of the streets, they are stupid and they are immoral in so doing. It is a false world. It is a theatrical world. It is an image oriented world. It is out of touch with reality and, therefore, it is insane. It is doomed. It is faced with judgment and judgment is moving rapidly against this generation. And, therefore, we can have hope. It means that the deliverance of God is at hand, because a fearful judgment will overwhelm all these dreamers.

Now as we continue I have a question from one of you, from Phyllis Avery. The question is, “Christianity has been preached and practiced for 2000 years. In other words, Christians have had a head start on Secularism. How were the basic tenets of the Church weakened? Is there something that we are doing wrong? Why aren’t those beliefs being taught from generation to generation,” unquote?

Well, first of all, Christianity did not have a head start on secularism. That goes back to the fall of man, to man’s original sin so that in every person born, the basic tenets of Humanism, of secular Humanism are present. Original sin, we find in Genesis three verse five. “He shall be as God, every man his own god knowing that as determining for yourself what is good and evil.”

This is never totally wiped out in us in this life. The more we are sanctified, the more we outgrow that fact of originals in, the desire to have our own will done and to be our own god. But the world surrounds us and this fact weakens the Church when the Church is not faithful to the whole Word of God.

In the last century one very prominent English statesmen made the statement that it is coming to a pretty past when the Church asks questions about one’s private life and his sexual conduct.

Not too long ago a woman made that statement and sued a church for sticking its nose into her sexual life. And other people, I have heard, say, “What has God to do with my diet?” In other words, keep your nose out of my affairs, God. Give me fire and life insurance. That is all I want of you and then keep your nose out of my affairs.

Well, as long as people preach minimal Christianity this is what will happen. When people preach only salvation—and this is what you have in most churches—and salvation is the beginning of the gospel, but it cannot be the end of it, because those churches that only preach for salvation are saying, “All we are concerned with is that everybody have fire and life insurance, not that the will of God be done in their lives.”

That type of preaching is very popular, but if you start preaching the whole law of God, as we do, well, then, you get a different response. We get hate mail. We get a lot of venom from a great many sources, because people do not want Jesus Christ as Lord, only as Savior, fire and life insurance agent, a Savior in that sense, which is not salvation.

This is the problem. As long as people feel they can send their children to the public schools and all will be well, as long as they feel that they can disregard a great deal of Scripture beginning with biblical law, the Church is going to be weak. The Church does not want power in and from Jesus Christ. It wants fire and life insurance. When you and I begin to say, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” and when we go to the Word of God and say, “Every word of God is that which I must live by according to my Lord...”—“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”—then and then alone will you begin to see Christianity exercising power. And the power that is ours in Christ the world cannot cope with. We are powerless because we choose to be. Christians who make up 60 million adults in this country, 60 million who profess to be born again barely have one percent representation in elected office. That is because of unconcern. When they begin to move in the power of God, they will rule the world.

Well, now on to an interesting fact in a book by Sue Simmons which I read recently, The Military Horse, a story of equestrian warriors. And the question I asked before we began of Bob {?} and Craig Flanagan was: When was the last war fought with Calvary having a significant role?

In case you are wondering, I will give you the answer by quoting from Simmons.

“In the Second World War the use of horses was limited to those parts of the world where the topography of the land was such that mechanized transport was not able to be used. Examples are to be found in Melia where jungle fighting required the use of large numbers of pack animals, at Bataan, where the Americans were so desperate for food that they were reduced to eating their horses and in Russia where conditions were so grim, where primitive roads, frost swamp and dust halted one of the finest mechanized armies in the world and where the horse once again proved his worth when all else had failed the warring men.

“It must, in the final analysis, be significant that when Hitler’s panzer divisions had reached Moscow, not all the miracles of modern science could prevent the machines from freezing solid. And in their counter attacks, the Russian troops dressed all in white, many of them brought from Siberia, swept down silent on their sturdy horses, the only effective means of moving upon the German invaders to drive them back ultimately to Berlin itself. Indeed, the Germans themselves were forced to use horses in order to make any semblance of movement and when they were starving, they, too, were reduced to eating their horses.

“One of the truly memorable stories of the war concerns a band of Polish heroes who refused to give up the impossible struggle when Poland had been overrun. Led by a man of indomitable courage, this little band of 300 guerillas, all of them mounted, proceeded to engage in just the kind of noble cavalry tactics that had been know for generations. Using cover whenever they could, they proceeded to harass the invaders on every occasion until, finally, the patriotic Poles were wiped out and their leader executed. It was a last symbolic fling of the horse in battle and the depressing context of total world war,” unquote.

Now on to another aspect, again, military from Richard H. Dillon’s Indian Wars: 1850-1890 meaning the western American Indians.

One of the things that I think marks this book that is very good, it calls attention to some facts that are rarely mentioned today, why it was difficult to establish peace with the Indians.

I quote, “Inter-tribal warfare would continue. It was ingrained in the Indians’ nature. Prowess in combat was 10 times as important as skill in hunting. Indians would fight to gain territory, plunder or revenge, but most of all to gratify their lust for personal glory. And the greatest glory of all came from counting coups in hand to hand combat. He also knew their chiefs in peace or war had no authority to speak as sovereigns for all their people. This idea was a conceit of functionaries in Washington who found it convenient to treat with Indian chiefs as if they were European princes or Asiatic potentates,” unquote.

This love of battle marked the Indians. We saw it in World War II. A great many of the Indian soldiers were highly decorated. At that time I was a missionary on an isolated Indian reservation. Some of the jungle warfare in the Pacific Islands was particularly horrible, but the Indians enjoyed it. I recall my first experience of that when I asked one of the young men after he came to church when he was on furlough what it was like there in the jungle warfare. And his eyes lit up and he beamed and he said, “Oh, it was marvelous, just like the stories grandpa used to tell me.” He loved it and he was never happy back in civilian life.

Of course, there were a great many problems that the western Indians had with some of the military men who had very hostile ideas and were for dealing as savagely as possible with the Indians, Jefferson Davis, before the war, afterwards, Sheridan and Sherman.

Interesting, though, that one of the most enlightened and humane of men in his Indian policy was US Grant who as president worked with the Quakers and peace policy formulated and he wanted Indians Christianized, fed, clothed and taught agriculture on reservations so they could become self supporting farmers and a part of American society. A very remarkable policy which with the New Deal has been steadily undermined since John Collier and Franklin Roosevelt’s day.

A little more on warfare, one of the interesting books I read recently, an older book, Arms and the Woman: The Diaries of Baron Boris Uxkull, 1812 – 1819, edited by a descendant of his and published in London in 1966.

Just a couple of items from this book. Up until World War I the nobility of Europe was international in its composition and, thus, Uxkull was a baron owning vast properties in the Baltic republics. He was part Polish, part Russian, part French, part German so that wherever he went during the Napoleonic wars as a young soldier he encountered relatives, relatives who were of royalty and of the nobility. He went into the army as a young man, I believe at the age of 18. The title Arms and the Woman comes from the fact that wherever he went the young noblemen had no lack of affairs. So it alternates between battle scenes and bedroom episodes.

In those days the sexual revolution which began under Louis XV was part and parcel of the life of the nobility, of the aristocracy and they destroyed themselves by this.

Now it has become a part of the life of the common man. But wherever he went noble women, noble in blood, that is, thought nothing of slipping in and out of his bedroom, sometimes anonymously in the middle of the night.

One of the interesting things to me is that when Napoleon invaded Russia, the high command, the first army of the west, Barclay DeTolay issued the following proclamation to the French outpost on the Duma and I quote. “Remember, comrades, (he is addressing the enemy) that you are a 400 leagues, that is 1000 miles away from your reinforcements. Do not let yourselves be deceived by our initial movements. You know the Russians too well to believe that we are fleeing. They will take up the battle in good time and then your retreat will be difficult. We call upon you as comrades. Go back en masse. Give no faith to the deceitful talk that you are fighting for peace. You are fighting for the insatiable ambition of a ruler who wishes no peace and who is toying with the blood of his best men,” unquote.

They also warned them that the winter was something they had no experience of, which was true.

Well, of course, the savage winter destroyed Napoleon, not the armies of Russia, even as the savage winter destroyed Hitler’s men. And the war on both sides became increasingly vicious.

Uxkull describes it in part, for example, “Approaching a village (this is in September, when the weather already that year became bitterly cold) approaching a village in order to get some supplies, I saw a fresh prisoner sold to the peasants for 20 rubles. They baptized him with boiling tar and impaled him alive on a piece of pointed iron. What horror. Oh, humanity. I groan over it. The Russian women kill with hatches the prisoners and marauders who pass by their houses. But measures have already been taken to put a stop to this barbarity. (It didn’t work). The saddest thing of all is that our soldiers spare nothing. They burn, pillage, loot and devastate everything that comes to hand. All around for a circle of 100 verse you can see immense fires which indicate the road taken by the enemy troops and our own since we have vowed to leave nothing for the enemy, bread, fruits, supplies, animals, everything is wiped out. The wells and streams are ruined and the foragers don’t dare show themselves for fear of being clubbed down by the peasants.”

Well, that was at the beginning. As time past it grew only worse and he writes, for example, a little later in this... in September, “The number of prisoners is immense and these poor people can scarcely drag themselves along. They are escorted by Cossacks who kill them with lances the moment they no longer have the power to walk.” And he says, “Everyone has been given a free hand. We are pillaging and looting all in order not to leave anything for the French. I have seen a peasant with a torch in his hand burning his hut in order not to abandon it to the French. The estates of the gentry are a source of great pain to me. How many valuable things have been broken and stolen. Among other things I have seen in the anterooms of a pillaged chateau, the works of Linnaeus and a Buffon lying on the floor trampled by the feet of marauders. What a loss.”

And, again, he writes, “The battle of Borisoff has taken place.” This was in November. “The three army core attacked the remnants of the allied army which lost its entire artillery and all ammunition crossing the Berezina, but he in the Corsica and then terror and scourge of Europe was able to escape and avoid final defeat. He is fleeing toward the border and has left the remnants of his once so large and glittering army to their own devices. About 120,000 captives have been counted including 2000 officers and 28 generals, 700 canons have been taken, everything dragged out of Moscow has been {?} back and the treasures found in individual war chests are immense. The Cossacks have a great deal of money and jewelry. To compensate us for not getting any spoils, we are being assigned quarters so everyone gets something.

“What a difference between Poland and Russia. Here there is no lack of anything at all and around you can see that that the Polish traders love the French. But we will set them right soon enough. Everything left to them by the French is being taken by us.”

And he says also, “The word is that the French are already eating their horses, that 10,000 cavalrymen have been turned into infantrymen because the lack of fodder is killing the horses.”

Things got only grimmer and the result was finally as he describes it, “Past by a tavern. I saw inside a heap of dead bodies all naked piled up one on top of the other and living people were sitting on their comrades, gnawing away at the flesh of their companions and roaring with pain like savage beasts. Oh, humanity, where hast thou hidden?”

Very grim war, a very, very grim account by this young nobleman.

Now to turn to a very different subject, a book on The Hansa: History and Culture by Johannes Schildhauer, S C H I L D H A U E R, published in 1985.

On the Hansiatic League, the north German traders who for a few generations played an important role in European commerce. A couple of incidental facts which struck me as very interesting.

One of the facts that the author points out in dealing with pilgrimages in the late Middle Ages and it was this.

“Earlier, pilgrimages were undertaken by people out of faith. People of faith moving to go to these sanctuaries, there to worship and to pray for the forgiveness of their sins. But in the 14th and 15th century when medieval faith was inclined, rich penitents sometimes sent replacements on a pilgrimage in their stead.”

In other words, they had a proxy to fulfill their religious goals, an ironic fact and something that tells us why the Middle Ages declined. When you have a proxy to exercise religious duties for you, then your faith is not very strong. And an age that finds that acceptable has really missed the boat.

Another thing that indicates why there was a decline is a very interesting little bit of rhyme, apparently a lampoon bit of verse which was sung in those days in German translated in English.

“I have already sent my money as that is my best credential. They talk a lot about law there. Rubbish. All they want is money. However bent a thing is, money soon straightens it out. Put your hand in your pocket if you want mercy. If you have got no money, you have missed the boat.”

Well, a very grim piece of poetry, if it can be called that. It tells us that justice was disappearing from society. When justice begins to disappear from a society then there is no future in that culture. This is our problem today. That is why the world around us is a perishing world, a world that is going to disappear. And whether a good age comes out of it depends upon Christians. Justice is disappearing out of our world. Justice is no longer something you expect from the courts. Justice is not associated with the law any longer. When justice goes out of a culture, that culture begins to collapse. But as someone observed some years ago, when hell disappears from the religion of a people, justice soon follows. If there is not an eternal court of judgment, a last and final judgment, if there is no hell it means that there is no ultimate justice in the universe.

If the Stalins and the Hitlers of history have no judgment beyond history, and if God somehow enables all people to go to heaven, then there is no justice. This is why the Far East became a place of routine injustice. The cult of Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, became prevalent throughout the Far East. And Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, was your bleeding heart liberal par excellence. According to the Buddhist mythology Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, is standing perpetually outside the gates of paradise and she will not enter in until the last person in all the universe enters in.

Well, there was no justice in the Far East. The idea of justice was absent.

When I was quite young I recall a missionary describing an episode that took place once, a very interesting episode. His child and a poor Chinese neighbor’s child were playing and they had little pebbles. They were preschool boys and they threw the pebbles at the neighbor’s cow. And the cow was hit and died and they insisted that the missionaries cow be given to that poor family. No justice, only he now doesn’t have a cow and you have two. Well, when hell disappears from a culture, so does justice and then the culture disappears.

Thank you. Our time is up. God bless you all.