Easy Chair Series

Crime and the State

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 56-91

Genre:

Track:

Dictation Name: EC358

Year: 1986

This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 358, March the sixth, 1996.

In this session Douglas, Murray, Andrew Sandlin and Mark Rushdoony and I will discuss crime and the state.

We have a problem today in that we are being reassured constantly that things are really getting better. The economy is better. The crime scene is much better and so on and on. And yet most people think otherwise. For example, the U. S. News and World Report for March 4, 1996 has a long article on a bad case of the blues. And it goes on to say people think the nation is unraveling. It is no wonder. A look at a week’s worth of TV news would make anybody a hearty pessimist.

And they go on to cite what they consider is nonsense, these things, that the economy is stagnating or in decline, the federal deficit has increased in the past three years. Crime increased in 1995. Religion is losing its influence. Children are worse off today than when their parents were kids. Air quality is worse that 20 years ago. The elderly are more likely to live in poverty today than 20 years ago. Well, perhaps the last two are not true, but contrary to what they say, there is no reason to believe they are right in saying that those premises are wrong. Crime has increased. We don’t count as much crime because you can go to the police or to the D. A. with a case involving theft and they are not interested in handling it. They are too busy. They can’t take every case.

Moreover, even the U. S. News and World Report article admits that crime among teenagers and those in their twenties is increasing.

[Murray] Well, theft of property has been down graded by law enforcement agencies all over the country, except for one glaring exception and that is the automobile and that is only because the banks who own them put the pressure on the law enforcement agencies to track stolen vehicles because they, you know, they lose a lot of money when these vehicles get stolen because people stop making the payments on it.

[Rushdoony] Right.

[Murray] And also the insurance companies take a hit. So that is the only exception to where law enforcement now will make any effort to either recover property or... or attempt to stop the theft of the property.

[Rushdoony] You are right, Douglas. And I had read just a few days ago that before long cars will be manufactured, computerized so that no one who doesn’t know the code can start the car. And they hope this will stop car thefts.

Well, in most areas, crime has increased. But this isn’t all. And what concerns me especially is that in recent years or let us say from 1970, 25 years, we have had a number of books written by highly competent and trustworthy men who have stated that various agencies of state here and abroad have involved themselves in criminal activities, that the most common thing that various agencies of state here and aboard have involved themselves in is narcotics, that they fight it when it is not under their control. The goal is this, as has been openly stated a time or two, more and more groups—intelligence agencies and various other agencies—now have a way of creating their own funds if the state taxes are insufficient. They can go out and seize properties for a variety of reasons. And apparently the Supreme Court is going to .... or has just backed them in that. I don’t have the details. But this means they can grow enormously wealthy. Three million Americans as of a year ago had lost their properties when they had committed no crime. Three million families. That is a staggering thing when you think it is their farms, their houses, their automobiles, their bank accounts. But hey are reticent.

Now this is a terrifying fact. It is increasing. A very responsible authority, Clare Sterling who just died a few weeks ago has, for example, in Thieves’ World: The Threat of the New Global Network of Organized Crime, written that the ability of three or four characters to mount a planet wide operation, their extraordinary impact on what was still a world super power and their singular immunity from beginning to end suggests the guiding hand of not just one, but several intelligence agencies.

Every secret service has its own private agenda, usually incomprehensible to any but its adversaries in the game, whether eastern or western, they all use criminals to serve their ends in the drug trade, the arms trade, the laundering business, the manipulation of international politics. And she says here it doesn’t make any difference whether it is the KGB or a western group. They are in the same game together.

And in her book Octopus, she deals with the same subject in passing and points out how some of the most powerful groups seem to have an immunity. For example, this statement. “Western intelligence services learned of kintex and the arms drug exchange in 1970 but never lifted a finger to stop it. Both sides had an urgent interest in the arms, whether to sell them as purely commercial proposition to get them secretly to a chosen destination or to gather intelligence through the circuit, to go after the drug runners in the same circuit was to disrupt the whole covert operation. By and large, nobody went after them.”

Now, as I say, entire books have been written on this subject. I simply do not have the confidence to evaluate them all. But very obviously such a link is existing. Clare Sterling makes an interesting comment on why this is happening, why all over the world and in every country among people highly advanced and people who are still on a very backward level technologically, you have the same unwillingness to confront this problem.

And she said it is because there are too many empty suits behind imposing desks. By empty suits she means people who are not going to stick their necks out or do anything. So we have an ugly situation where step by step we are going down the drain and I do not believe it can be reversed by politics. It will have to take a Christian revival of staggering dimensions to alter the situation.

[Murray] Well, I... I often wonder if there is much regenerative capability left in our society. You take a look at election results and the attitudes of people. The people are so buffaloed. There is so much anger. There is so much confusion. You have to conclude that it used to be that countries would propagandize each other. Now we have governments that propagandize their own people.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Murray] That probably the United States is the leading practitioner of this. We are lied to by the government routinely about facts such as the rate of inflation, for instance.

[Voice] They make an art of it. Yes.

[Murray] Any company, any corporation that cooked the books like the US Government does in order to make themselves look better to the share holders, assuming the citizens are the share holders of the federal government, would be... would go to prison. And yet nothing happens.

[Voice] Yes.

[Murray] People just, you know, they hear these numbers night after night on television, the rate of inflation, the rate of inflation. But yet when they go to the store they have got too much month left at the end of their paycheck. So, you know, the realization seems to be coming very, very slowly, but it is ... I hope it is coming.

[Voice] Yeah. There is also the problem of extension of what constitutes crime. All sorts of new agencies are created, regulatory agencies and there are all sorts of laws. Oh, that is such an evil phenomenon, the multiplication of laws is just in a society.

[Murray] Everything is a crime.

[Voice] Exactly. And, boy, there was... then there was the case, especially as Mark was alluding to earlier in the 70s or, Rush, when you testified in a number of court trials, church state trials, when there was a severe criminal problem and yet parents of children who enrolled those children in Christian schools were assaulted legally for truancy. And those things happen all the time. I know a Christian businessman who—and I won’t mention the specific regulatory agencies. Let you mind go wild. You know some of them. They just can’t do anything. They are constantly receiving notices and warnings which is stupid, silly, unconscionable regulations. And so all this talk, whether Republicans or Democrats about passing a crime bill. That is just ... that is just a farce.

[Murray] It is an aspirin tablet.

[Voice] Absolutely.

[Murray] For those people who are frustrated and demand that something be done, something is done, but it is never effective, it never solves the problem. They never find the culprit. And so it is a sham game.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] Well, I have noticed an interesting thing in my life time. The more people are controlled, the less crime is. Crime is not controlled.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] It gets bolder and bolder as the people are harnessed and chained.

[Voice] So the solution is not adding more police officers.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Voice] That is what is so foolish I these crime bills. And the bans on, you know, various weapons and that sort of thing.

[Voice] Well, it reminds me of Cotton Mathers. I think it was Cotton Mather who wrote something to the effect—and this is a paraphrase—that we shouldn’t give any more power to a man than we care to have him exercise, because exercise it, he will. And if you look in society at the general moral tone of our society, we see a lot we don’t like and that is exactly the moral quality of the men in government. The more evil a society, the more evil a government you are going to have.

[Murray] This is the reason that people, especially in an election year, have to guard themselves very carefully not to be perhaps form a false expectations. And they... they tend to get themselves whipped up into a frenzy and they think that the guy on the white horse is going to come along and save them and... and any guy that comes along and voices their frustrations is automatically going to be on their side. But after ... after so long a period of time of having these individuals mouth these promises and then do exactly the opposite after they are elected, you would think that after some period of time people would wise up. But they never... they all seem to fall of the con game, time after time after time.

[Voice] That is a good point. Yeah. It took us many years to get into this mess. And to have messianic expectations that one man will be able to reverse this is just totally wrong. Rush is right. We need a revival, a biblical revival.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] Of mammoth proportions. We cannot change this piecemeal. It has got to be truly revolutionary.

[Murray] I... I don’t know who said it. It is not original with me, but somebody said that politics is a giant cesspool. Only the skunks floats to the top.

[Voice] Well, there are changes, though. People are getting.... they are beginning to blame government for a lot of the mess and they are beginning to have contempt for government rather than saying that government should do something. They say, it is all of their faults. And there is disgust with the Democratic party and the Republican party. And generally there is... people don't trust their government anymore. And they don’t have confidence in it. And that is a big change in the last 20 years.

[Murray] They are both finished and they are both dead on arrival, but they don’t know it yet.

[Voice] So there is going to be a change on the horizon. We are not sure what form it is going to take, but I think there is going to be some changes down the road.

[Voice] I agree. Yeah, there is... there is going to have to be a change. There is no question about that. And that is why people who are so-called outsiders, or at least perceived outsiders... It is amazing how these politicians now get rid of their coat and tie and they want to put on their plaid shirts and go out ...

[multiple voices]

[Voice] Yeah...

[Murray] Let me kiss that bay with jam on his face.

[Voice] Absolutely. Well, I think that, itself, is telling and a testimony to what Mark is ... what Mark is talking about. There is, really, a reaction against civil government. It is centralized civil government. And that ... that goes good. But we have to replace it with what Rush was talking about, self government.

[Voice] Yeah.

[Voice] Yeah, we don’t want to... we want to replace secular civil government with big Christian civil government. People make it big... and they accuse us Christian Reconstructionist of holding that. And we do not hold that.

[Voice] No.

[Voice] We want to decentralize.

[Murray] Yeah and... and... and... and to add to Mark’s comment that people have to take responsibility for themselves. They can’t shove the responsibility off on a government.

[Voice] That is right. Absolutely.

[Murray] And nothing else works, you know.

[Voice] That is right.

[Murray] You know, as a practical matter nothing else works. I mean, it has been proven in so many places and for such a long period of time. The conclusion is inescapable.

[Voice] That is right. But people have a slave mentality and people like that, they will have a civil government that will enslave them. And until they get back to godly self government and family government and church government, school government, vocational government, other private government, then civil government, centralized civil government will increase in size. But Mark is right. I think there is a reaction against that.

[Murray] And... and another way of saying it is when people abdicate self responsibility, government is more than willing to step in.

[Voice] Absolutely. Whenever there is a vacuum, the civil government will jump right in. That is exactly right. Well, that is why we have got to put restraints on it. And the founders knew that. That is why they had created an elaborate system, if you have read The Federalist Papers, of checks and balances. They weren’t all Christian men, but they certainly were influenced by a Christian ethos an that is a biblical idea.

[Murray] Well, they knew they were creating a monster. They... they... the best they could hope for was an impotent monster.

[Voice] That is right.

[Murray] But they knew...

[multiple voices]

[Voice] They had experience with England, of course, and they knew what it was going to be like, so they were not ignorant men. They... they knew exactly what needed to be done.

[Murray] And nothing has changed. You know, that is... that is what people need to understand. Nothing has changed. They think, well, all that is passé, what those guys did back in 1700s is all passé. Nothing has changed.

[Voice] That is right.

[Murray] Man’s basic nature has not changed.

[Voice] They have peculiar insight into human nature that is largely lacking today. And I wish that many of our politicians and political philosophers today would go back and read those writings and take them much more seriously.

[Murray] You know, the clothes have changed. The speech has changed, but man’s basic nature has not changed.

[Voice] that is right.

[Murray] And people halve got to understand that.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] Well, one of the things that I found especially interesting in a very disturbing book which, I believe, was her last one, Thieves’ Wall: The Threat of the New Global Network of Organized Crime. It came out in 1994. She speaks of the Chechens of Chechnya and they have their own army of 600 killers in Moscow. They are on the ... and foresters, the killers for the international mafia. And she says natives of a self proclaimed sovereign enclave in the northern caucuses population 700,000 they are the most notorious and versatile of all Russia’s Mafioso at home and abroad. They are, by the way, Turks. There are many Chechen gangs, not necessarily friendly to one another, but uniformly vicious and assured a perfect sanctuary in their tiny mountain republic. Upon declaring its independence, its president, General {?} opened its prison gates, let everybody out and closed the prisons down. The Chechens are hated and feared in Moscow, but cannot be dislodged. Their swaggering tops are also taking over the streets in Berlin, {?} Prague stealing cars in Germany, Austria and Sweden, running drugs into western Europe, working fraud and currency scams in the US. Wild, cruel and impenetrably secretive they are singularly frightening villains. Chechen gangs do almost anything imaginable that is illegal starting with protection.

Now you cannot get the truth about the Chechens anywhere. They are a very vicious and dangerous people. The Russians are fighting them because if they don’t get rid of the Chechens they are gone. They Chechens are running the Russian economy and have made it a tool of their criminal activities.

But why aren’t we telling the truth Clare Sterling did. And, of course, none will say that the Chechens are Turks. They are a Turkish people with Turkish morality and Turkish hatred of everything that is Christian.

So we have been treated as though they were martyrs and the most sentimental kind of thing is put on television and we have protested to Moscow about their mistreatment of the Chechens. They are fighting to save their country from these illegal criminal gangs of Chechens.

Why do we not tell the truth? Is it because we don’t want to face up to the truth about them here and any and all criminal activities here and abroad? It is a really scary scenario.

[Murray] Well, every Mercedes Benz and every BMW has been stolen and shipped in cargo containers to Russia that you see driving around in the streets of Moscow. None of those cars were purchased. They don’t have pink slips over there. They don’t have department of motor vehicles as ... as the gun that is in the guy’s waistband. Possession is 10 tenths.

[Rushdoony] Probably they are operated mostly by Chechens.

[Voice] You know, I was thinking that the American government has been guilty of collusion. I recall a book that I read. I didn't get to finish it, but... written a number of years ago called The Pledge Betrayed talking about how that Churchill after World War II as well as the United States and other along the same lines, swooped into eastern Europe and Germany and picked up a lot of the scientists and various other... of course this is well documented. Those that had performed all sorts of evil experiments and brought them back to the United States. But this has happened quite frequently with, of course, the Central Intelligence Agency, the ... several events last year, collusion with sin and with evil dictators and that sort of thing. That eventually... God will judge that and he is judging it. We won’t get away with that sin.

[Murray] I used to be confused when I was in my 20s. I could never figure out why the United States was always on the wrong side. I mean, can’t we tell the good guys from the bad guys?

[Voice] Yeah.

[Murray] And I finally came to the realization when I was 40 is that we are the bad guy’s side on purpose, not by accident.

[Voice] Yes. Yeah.

[Rushdoony] As I recall, some one who was a part of the American embassy in the capital of Afghanistan and he finally quit and came back to go into college or university teaching. He had bee a professor before he left. And he told me. He said, “It dawned upon me while I was still over there that if in all the treaties we made with the Soviet Union we were wrong 50 percent of the time, you would have to say, ‘Well, we have got some learning to do.’” But he said, “It has been 100 percent of the time.” He said, “I have studied the treaties and trade agreements and what not that we have made with the Soviet Union and in 100 percent of the case we were giving away the store.” And he said, “That cannot be an accident.”

[Murray] No.

[Rushdoony] He was not ready to call himself a conservative, but he was a very disgusted former professor.

[Murray] Yeah, all of those treaties are worked out and they are photo op opportunities for politicians to walk onto the world stage and say, “Look what I have done.” But they are instruments of collusion between governments in order to... to give favors away.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Murray] You know, we are giving hundreds of millions of dollars probably billions to foreign governments and they just spit in our face.

[Voice] Yes.

[Murray] So there is no logic to... to giving that... to giving the... the wealth that is taxed away from the American people. There is no logic to ... to giving this money away. So there has to be some other reason. That is because they want to keep these regimes alive.

[Voice] Rush queried why we don’t hear about those things. Of course, part of the problem is the evil in the modern media which is secularist to the core. I think immediately about all the tragedy that is going on in the Sudan and yet we hear nothing about that.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] We hear about Bosnia, but very little about what is going on in the Sudan. Several months ago I faxed information from Peter Hammond to Ted Koppel and didn’t hear anything of course. They don't care about that.

[Murray] It is genocide.

[Voice] Yeah, that is exactly right. And it is because the Christians are being assaulted for the most part.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] Christians are being assaulted. That is not a matter for public discussion.

[multiple voices]

[Murray] Well, it is open season.

[Voice] Yes.

[Rushdoony] When will Peter Hammond’s letter be in the report?

[Voice] It will be in the report in the May issue which we are working on right now.

[Rushdoony] Very good.

[Voice] It is almost done.

[Rushdoony] Now very early going back into the 60s the estimate was that after independence, the assault on the Christians was so savage that 100,000 Christians had been massacred. They haven't change the figure since then. And yet every year Christians are seized and sold into slavery or they are massacred.

It is interesting, of course, that the Christians of the Sudan are almost entirely blacks. The Moslems who are doing the enslaving and murdering are the Arabs.

[Murray] Yeah, where is Jesse Jackson when you need him?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] And none of the black leaders in this country have come out in favor of the blacks of the Sudan.

[Voice] Absolutely.

[Rushdoony] They have refused when they have been asked.

[Murray] Where is Jesse Jackson and Maxine Waters and all these...

[Voice] That is exactly right.

[Murray] ...and all these paragons of virtue when you need them? They are never there.

[Voice] And they are not interested in race or interested in ideology.

[Rushdoony] A recent article in the Reader’s Digest or, perhaps, a couple of months ago on the return of slavery to Africa they commented on the fact that when a prominent black leader’s ... new leader from the U. S. was approached on this, he refused to come to the aid of the blacks or speak for them. He said, “That is a local matter.”

Well, to continue this matter of the relationship of crime to civil government, to the state, we should remember what I have often cited, the great and important statement by Saint Augustine in the City of God. And he said, to put it in modern language, “If any civil government rules without God, it will be no different than a gang of thieves.”

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] ...because it will be without a morality. It will only seek to plunder so that he said the pirate and the criminal gang will do it on a small scale. The civil government on a great scale. And I believe that the problem today is that Christians are unwilling to understand this. There is a professor of theology who actually feels that it is better not to have a Christian state. He wants a secular, humanistic state and then we can all get along peacefully because it is not going to be in favor of anybody, which is nonsense. They are going to be in favor of anti Christianity.

[Voice] We see that today. Absolutely.

[Rushdoony] Yes. You know, whom I am speaking...

[Voice] I believe so, yes.

[Murray] Well, I finally came to the realization. The only reason the federal government ever went after John Gotti or any of the mafia figures was they don’t want the competition. You know, it is... it is who is going to be the big guy on the block?

[Voice] Yes. That is precisely correct. Rush, I want to pick up on that point that you were talking about. if we have a secular civil government, that will be the religion, of course...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] ... of that government and it will seek to impose...

[Rushdoony] That’s right.

[Voice] ... it’s religious views. And secularism, of course, is much more intolerant than biblical Christianity would ever profess to be.

[Rushdoony] Yes. That is right.

[Voice] And that is precisely the case we have. I think people need to understand that there is no possibility of neutrality and civil government as there is no possibility of neutrality in any other sphere of life. If it is not Christian, it is going to be anti Christian in one form or another.

You know, I would... I think another thing we may want to discuss, too, as long as you are talking about crime is the problem of gun control, which is certainly a ... a relevant issue. And we were talking about the crime bill and that sort of thing. Although I... from what I understand, I believe the state of California is considering permitting concealed weapons. Is that right, Douglas?

[Murray] It has passed the assembly. It is... comes up before the state senate shortly.

[Voice] I think that is an indication of what Mark was talking about, a reaction, again, against this sort of liberal social policy. That is quite favorable.

If... if it goes, if it continues to go in the direction of which it is going, that is this reaction against the popular liberal views.

[Rushdoony] Well, we have a growing problem because the Church is given to what Van Til so powerfully condemned, the belief that people can be neutral.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] And they cannot be. They will either be for Christ or against him.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] They will be either for righteousness or against it. They cannot straddle the fence. Moral issues cannot be dyked.

[Voice] That is right. There is one lady I heard on a news program talking about a presidential candidate. She says, “I don’t like the fact that the mixes religion and politics.” What she really is that she doesn’t like any attack on her mixing of her religion with politics.

[Voice] Yes.

[Voice] And I think that is what people need to recognize. Some sort of religious view will prevail in society because society is inescapably religious. Culture is inescapably religious. The question is whether it is going to be a Christian culture or a non or anti Christian culture.

[Rushdoony] Well, I have had in the past arguments with people who believe that religion has to be defined in terms of belief in God or the supernatural. Very few religions believe in God. Humanism is a religion.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] It does not believe in God. Buddhism is a religion. It does not believe in God.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] And Confucianism was a philosophy which became a religion and it does not believe in God.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] Shintoism does not believe in God. It believes in spirits which are translated as gods, but everything has a spirit or a god possessing it and in Japanese culture you recognize that trees and streams, everything have spirits.

[Voice] Yes.

[Rushdoony] And even the toilet does, the {?}, the spirit of the toilet.

But our faith alone is consistent and truly supernatural religion.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] Those who are seemingly supernatural among the religions are, without exception, derivative from biblical religion.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] Hebraic faith and Christian faith truly believe in a God who transcends the natural order. Now I don’t necessarily say the term supernatural and natural are the best descriptions, but I use them because everyone understands what they mean. But we are faced with non theistic religions every day.

[Voice] Absolutely. That is... that is precisely correct.

[Rushdoony] I think Tillich best defined religion when he said religion is ultimate concern.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] Whatever is ultimate for you, that is your ... what your religion is about.

[Voice] And civil government is forced to borrow Christian premises to maintain order in society.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] And if not there will be absolute destruction and anarchy on the one hand or absolute Statism...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] ... on the other hand. And they are giving tacit admission of the validity of Christianity when they do that. But they would never explicitly admit that, of course.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] That is why Christians are so inclined, because they aren’t sure what they believe. They are so inclined to hear, listen to any moderate who at election time...

[Voice] That is right.

[Voice] ...professes in traditional values and they can’t see that those traditional values are just a generic term for I believe in good.

[Voice] Yes.

[Voice] That is all they really believe in or profess to believe in and they have...

[Murray] Conditional...

[Voice] No ... no respect for the Christian faith and it has no impact on their lives or their... or their politics.

[Murray] But it is every... it is all... it is always conditional.

[Rushdoony] Gertrude Himmelfarb in a very important book, On the Edge of the Abyss, called attention to the fact that today we no longer talk in public discourse about virtues.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] ...because virtues point to the Bible. They point to a morality which is supernatural, not of this world. But values, the term they use, refer to things that are man chosen.

[Voice] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Or man made.

[Voice] And it is a Nietzschian invention.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] Yes.

[Rushdoony] And this is what we have in the way of values clarification.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] ... and values education in our public schools which means, kids, you decide what is good and what is right and wrong. And that is going to be your value system.

[Voice] That is right.

[Voice] And when Christians have tried to appeal to a broad spectrum by talking about family values, it is easy to adapt the language to {?}...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] ... any philosophy, because everybody believes in some kind of value.

[Voice] Oh, the devil has family values.

[multiple voices]

[Voice] Yes.

[Voice] So it is easy to talk about family values no matter how destructive your ideas are of the family.

[Voice] And one of the liberal parties did that and it said we are going to take this issue away from the conservatives. We believe in family values, homosexual family values? Oh, yes. We believe in that.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] You know, you were talking about that professor. I believe I know who you were talking about. He may have been the one, Rush, who wrote the article in which he said, “We don’t believe in biblical or Christian government. We believe in good government.”

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] As though there could be a separation between them.

[Rushdoony] That is right. He was very emphatic on that point, both in the article and in speeches he gave.

[Voice] Virulently so. He was a strong opponent of any idea of wanting to... biblical law and wanting to base things rather on so-called natural revelation which, of course, is a dead end.

[Rushdoony] It is interesting that sooner or later he has had to move on to another so-called Bible believing school or seminary or college because his thinking is so implicitly humanistic that he trips himself up.

[Voice] That is right. And he has publicly assaulted you, Rush, and... and Christian Reconstructionist.

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes.

[Voice] And... and others. And it is sad because there are many evangelicals, reformed people, for that matter, and, of course, Roman Catholics, various others, all groups, unfortunately, that tend to buy into that idea and look at anybody who wants to take a stand on the explicit authority of the Word of God as a radical or as an extremist. But what is extreme about standing on the Word of God?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, in the book I mentioned by Gertrude Himmelfarb, On the Edge of the Abyss, she cites professors who say that to condemn Stalin or anybody else, any tyrant, is moral Imperialism. And it is wrong. In other words...

[Voice] That is the logical conclusion.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] ... under relativism.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Now years ago a Supreme Court justice, William Douglas, came to a like conclusion and he felt that we could not condemn the cannibals because in terms of their culture, their values were authentic. They were sound for them, which means a total moral relativism. Well, when you have that kind of moral relativism, how can you possibly condemn crime?

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] And is this not the reason why increasingly the courts are coming down heavily on the side of the criminal?

[Voice] That is right. All they...

[Rushdoony] Only the popular outrage has caused them to pull in the reigns occasionally when the hue and cry becomes too great.

[Murray] I... I am amused at this indignation in the social security administration about finding out that criminals on death row have been collecting social security for years. And the only reason that they are voicing this indignation is that they don’t want to appear as though they are incompetent.

[Voice] The liberal politicians throw up their hands at the increase in crime and yet they don’t realize that it was their political philosophies that permitted these things to occur in the first place. It happens all too frequently.

[Rushdoony] Well, whatever the figures on crime may show—and let us say for the sake of argument that they are right, that crime is dropping, which I do not believe for a moment—the fact remains when you have increasingly young and old who do not believe there is an absolute right and wrong, a good and evil, that morals are a matter of opinion, you have to say, “We are on the brink of the most fearful kind of criminality unless there is a dramatic moral change very soon.

[Voice] That’s right.

[Murray] Well, we have a generation coming along which is really scary.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Murray] You have got eight, nine, 10 year old kids committing murder.... murder, totally without remorse. You are not just looking at isolated circumstance. You are looking at an entire generation that have been mentally conditioned...

[Voice] That is right.

[Murray] ... to have no remorse. And...

[Voice] That is right.

[Murray] ...to them it is not morally wrong. It is just something that you do. Either it makes you feel good or you acquire some material thing that you want. It is like... has no more significance to them than a baby clutching for a piece of candy. There are no consequences for them.

[Voice] They are only doing what they have been taught. That is exactly right.

[Murray] And this generation is ... is going to be coming to bear here in a few years and I am rather concerned that there doesn’t appear to be any countervailing force in our society at the present time.

[Voice] Yes. Another factor we can’t neglect is our penal system which tends to exacerbate the problem. We have gotten away from the biblical idea of restitution, created an unbiblical prison system. So it is no wonder that when criminals are thrown in there, maybe they are not hardened criminals, they tend to come out hardened criminals. And when you get away from biblical faith that is precisely what happens. Plus it penalizes the people who... the victims. I mean, they suffer, let’s say, theft and then money is stolen from them so that they can pay for the guy to have—or woman—to have cable TV in the... in... in prison. It is an evil system.

[Murray] It is... it is a lopsided system. It has, you know, forgiveness in the form of light sentences, short parole periods.

[multiple voices]

[Murray] Plea bargaining, et cetera, et cetera, but it is at the expense of no repentance for the crime.

[Voice] That is right.

[Murray] There is no remorse. And with the... I don’t know of any time in history or any culture in history that has duplicated this and survived. I can’t think of any... any culture in history that have had murders committed by children this young.

[Voice] Yes.

[Murray] I mean, does anybody here know of any country or culture or people in history that have had kids eight, nine, 10 years old committing... throwing... throwing babies out of windows?

[Voice] Yes, that was... I heard... yes, that is right.

[Murray] I had never heard of that in any history book I have ever read or any...

[Voice] Yeah.

[Murray] So we... we have to be unique here and have to recognize that this is a problem unique to our culture and our generation and it is pretty scary. We had better do something about it.

[Rushdoony] Well, we have given more rights to the criminals than the prison guards have.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] This comes from a prison guard. On top of that, we have allowed so much license in prison that homosexual rape is so prevalent that it is creating a major problem. I am glad that this past week television did given an account of how grim that picture is. I know that in Institutes over 20 years ago in volume one I called attention to that problem. It is a growing one. It is totally out of hand now.

[Voice] Too, you know, there is another point I was thinking about. There is an absolute hatred for retributive justice.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] Prison is looked at as a place, well, as it has been... {?} and that is penitentiary, where you go to become penitent. We have come {?} where people are to be reformed and that sort of thing. But the Bible doesn’t hold that the state should be in the business of doing that. The Church and the family should be in the business of doing that, but not the state. The state is to dispense retributive justice. But since the state wants to be mom and dad, since the state wants to be the church, the state has to make everybody good. And, of course, that is... that is what ruins many of these things.

[Murray] The homosexual rape that is experienced by prisoners in penal institutions now is openly considered by public prosecutors as part of their punishment and tacitly considered part of the punishment by judges. So that is the degradation that our... our so-called law enforcement officers have sunk to.

[Voice] Well, that is evil. That is utterly evil.

[Rushdoony] Yes. You have to say they are then a part of the same criminal mentality.

[Voice] Absolutely. That is precisely correct. I often think of some of the evil judges who dispensed not genuine justice, but their own solipsistic, man centered justice when they have to stand before the one great judge, the sovereign triune God on that final day of judgment. They will certainly get their comeuppance.

[Murray] They are... they are arrogant to the extent that they don’t think they are going to have to answer for it.

[Voice] Yes. Well, they are in for a surprise.

[Rushdoony] I started earlier this evening in on this subject by discussing Clare Sterling’s books. She has quite a number. She was, perhaps, the most accurate and the most highly respected anti Communist writer. She wrote on the terror network. She wrote on the KGB. Her books were outstanding in every field she touched on with regard to the international situation.

Now the interesting thing is as a foreign correspondent she began dealing with Communism. But step by step she went to the link to crime and the criminal link to intelligence agencies so that her pilgrimage in terms of the subjects of her books was a very, very important one. She saw as she studied the situation intensely how close the link was.

Of course, there are those like Anatoliy Golitsyn who wrote New Lies for Old at the beginning of the 80s, a former KGB man, who predicted everything that has happened in the Soviet Union and has since written another work in which he states that that goal of the U S and the Soviet Union and of all these other states is convergence.

[multiple voices]

[Rushdoony] ... more and more democratic for one reason. We are all going to converge into this new world order and, of course, that new world order will be also a criminal world order.

[Voice] That is right.

[Voice] It is frightening how many of our politicians even in this country so blithely support that idea. And when anybody stands up and says, “We need to put our country first and protect our country,” he is looked upon as being a radical, an extremist or that sort of thing. That is really frightening.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] We... we have to remember, too, that when the Hebrew people demanded a king they were... they were told what that would mean and they were told that the kings would abuse their rights.

[Voice] That is right.

[Voice] The kings would have a very harsh rule. It is the price of the strength of having a king. They were going to have to pay a very, very stiff price.

[Voice] Yes.

[Voice] And that is true in any form of government. You pay a heavy, heavy price. And for too long in this country when we had a relatively Christian populace, we taught that democracy would solve all problems and that the ability of the people to vote was ... would... would be perpetually a way to have good government. And yet representative government is only good if you have a government that is representative of a moral and a Christian people.

[Voice] That is right. Absolutely.

[Voice] And democracy is actually—and I say democratic government, a representative government. Representative government when you have massive amounts of people voting is actually an almost impossible type of government to reform, because it means you have to completely reeducate, reform an entire populace.

[Voice] Yes.

[Voice] ...because an evil people in a democratic system becomes its own... a form of self judgment.

[Voice] As de Tocqueville said, then you have the tyranny of the majority. That is right.

[Rushdoony] I have been asked over and over again by bewildered people whether in the media or not, but don’t you people believe in democracy? I said, “That is not something to believe in. It is not like God.”

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] And a form of government is no better than the people in it.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] So the most perfect form will be destroyed if you have an evil people. I believe in God and I believe in his Word.

[Voice] If you have evil people, democracy can in some ways be the most dangerous form of government, because it may be easier to depose one evil man or aristocracy. But how do you depose an entire group of the entire nation when they are evil?

[Murray] Anything can become a tyranny.

[Voice] That’s right.

[Voice] Anything apart from God.

[Voice] Yes, that is right.

[Voice] Mark Twain, who wasn’t at all a Christian, he had his own ideas about government and ... and such, but he once had a good line. He said, “The only perfect government would be a divine despotism.”

[Rushdoony] Well, it is interesting how in the last century and into this century there were a number of humorists, especially in the last century, who made fun of Washington and of civil government. The last of them—and he made fun up to a point—was Will Rogers. But some of the men of the last century were very good at evoking laughter at the powers that be in Washington and the state house. That kind of thinking is now not common. What is his name? Russell on PBS does it to a sleight degree, but he is basically pro Washington and it is just a little humor and not very profound.

[Voice] And it is presented, you know, as political humor.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] He makes fun of whoever is in power now.

[Voice] Yeah.

[Voice] But when they are out of office, they are ... they are all... they are sort of you don’t touch them now.

[Voice] That is right.

[Voice] Even Nixon they lay off of Nixon or Carter or Ford.

[Voice] It is a {?}.

[Voice] Right.

[Voice] Yeah.

[Murray] Well, here is...

[Voice] Now you just pick on the current... the current laugh.

[Murray] You have to consider the source. His paycheck comes from National Public Radio, so...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] That is right.

[Rushdoony] Well, our time is almost up. Do any of you want to make a concluding statement? If so, don’t hesitate.

[Murray] Well, we have to unlearn slavery ...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Murray] And we have to relearn God’s law and take responsibility, individual responsibility for conducting ourselves according to God’s law. Otherwise civilization is lost. There is... there is just a flat guarantee.

[Voice] Civil government, even Christian civil government is not the Savior. Only God can save us. Therefore we need to reorder our individual lives and our families and our churches according to the law of God. Civil government is, as Rush indicated, one government among many. And perhaps in some ways the least important.

[Voice] Well, you will...

[Voice] We will always have corrupt government as long as we have powerful government. So the answer is to take power away from government and put it back in the basic institution of the family and the individuals.

[Rushdoony] I believe it was Harold J. Berman and his magnificent work Law and Revolution who said that if we did not have a return to God’s law and the doctrine of the atonement as the basis of law restitution, in not too many years we would see the collapse of civilization. But we are going to return, by the grace of God.

[Voice] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Well, thank you all for listening and God bless you.