Our Threatened Freedom

What is Wrong with Our Politicians

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 10-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 010

Dictation Name: Vol. A – Part 10 – What is Wrong with Our Politicians

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] What’s wrong with our politicians? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

It is an election year again, and we are once more deluged with campaign promises and electioneering.

It has also become more popular than ever to abuse the politicians, ridicule them, and poke fun at them. To a certain degree this is understandable. All too many politicians talk as though their election would save the world and usher in the millennium. Their speeches tend to be full of promises as to what they will do for us.

However, we need to ask ourselves this question. Why do they do it? Is it not because the people are demanding more and more, and electing those candidates who promise the most?

One state senator I know sent out a questionnaire to all the voters in his district, to give them an opportunity to tell him what they wanted. The results he got were like many others all over the country. The people wanted lower taxes and more benefits.

What their pressures on the state senate made clear was that usually they preferred more benefits. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they preferred more benefits for themselves, in their area, and less for all others. So that they could have lower taxes and benefits, both.

The sad fact is that the politicians give the people what they want, and the people still complain. I am reminded of a man who demanded steaks or roasts daily, and then nagged his wife because she always needed more money. He was insistent on paying less and demanding more.

The politicians will give us what we really want, but we are not willing enough to admit that we the people have voted ourselves into trouble.

We do need better politicians, but we also need better voters. One of Oliver Cromwell’s chaplains, the puritan preacher, {?} Peter, saw the problem clearly in his day and summed it up in these words. Quote, “Good men, not good laws, must save kingdoms.” Unquote.

An old proverb states it also with clarity and bluntness. It declares, one cannot fill a torn sack. If our national life and character is like a torn sack, we are in trouble.

What an election does is to bring us face to face with all our national problems, sins, and errors. If we feel that the politicians on the ballot are a bad lot, then we need to ask ourselves why were they voted in and why we as a people have a knack for getting ourselves into more and more trouble.

Some years ago I knew, briefly, a woman who had been married and divorced 6 times. She claimed that all 6 of the men had been bad characters, really terrible people to live with, and guilty of all kinds of unfaithfulness and abuse. From friends and a local pastor, I learned that what she said about all 6 of the men was true. The woman claimed that she had had nothing but bad luck with men. But 6 bad marriages is not bad luck. It is a perfect record of bad judgment, bad taste, and bad character. There was no hope for that woman, because the one conclusion she would not make was that there was something wrong with her also, wrong with her faith, her moral judgment, and her standards. The same applies to us. If we vote in bad politicians again and again, something is wrong with us also.