Our Threatened Freedom

Are We Encouraging Insanity

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 25-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 025

Dictation Name: Vol. B - Part 12 – Are We Encouraging Insanity

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Are we encouraging insanity? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

We are hearing increasingly all kinds of opinions which bear the mark of insanity. Thus one feminist leader has said that he must work for uterus implants in men, to enable men to bear children, in order to have sexual equality. A professor who’s an anthropologist has charged that the old expression in abandoning ship at sea, women and children first, represents male manipulative psychology, whose purpose is the exploitation of women. Another man, looking at women’s lib, has said that the answer to this is to keep women barefoot and pregnant, and when he continued, it was obvious that his serious thoughts were worse. Why is such wild and insane thinking so commonplace? There’s scarcely an issue on the national scene without wild and absurd remarks coming from all quarters.

Sometimes it is embarrassing to listen to, or read some, of the widely held opinions on the current scene. They do sound insane.

What is behind this? I do recall some years ago, hearing many like wild statements. But they came from children, and spoiled, bratty children at that. They were threats, if you don’t do this I’m going to run away, or some such thing. Now, it’s do what we say or we’ll demonstrate and riot. With children it was wild and impossible statements made without any sense of responsibility or reality. Now we fear this from adults. Childish and foolishness from a child is bad enough, but in an adult it is insanity.

For a parent to give into a child is bad enough, for a society or a country to give in to the tantrums of people is deadly. It’s a way of saying that we will not be ruled by the slow, sometimes irritating, processes of social order, but by threats and tantrums.

To rule by threats and tantrums is to destroy freedom.

God knows I do not like much of what goes on in this country. The courts often scare me with their indifference to justice, and their over attention to technicalities. The answer to this is not tantrums and violence. If our society is not any better than it is, it’s quite likely because we ourselves as a people are not any better than we have to be, and far from mature. Can we expect just courts in the midst of an unjust, lawless, and immature people? Any time something is radically wrong with a society, you can be sure that something is wrong with the people. To change things, begin with yourself, and that does not mean a tantrum. To encourage social insanities is to destroy freedom.

R.J. Rushdoony on our threatened freedom.