Our Threatened Freedom

Is the Bed of Procrustes Back Again

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 40-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 040

Dictation Name: Vol. D - Part 01 - Is the Bed of Procrustes Back Again

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Is the bed of Procrustes back again? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

What is sake? And how to you classify it? Now sake is a Japanese drink, and while I am not interest in sake, I am interested in freedom. The problem is this. Sake does not fit the American definitions of either beer or wine. Beer is made from grain, and wine from fruit. This should make sake a beer, but its alcohol content is that of wine. Because California is a major rice producer, and because sake is made out of rice, a company was established to make sake, and there the trouble began. The federal government classified the {?} Sake Company as a brewery, and the state of California classified it as a winery. If the company met the classifications of one, it would not satisfy the regulations of the other. So that to satisfy one branch of civil government, meant being shut down by the other. Finally an awkward situation was solved; a solution or compromise has been reached. After all, both state and federal governments both want the tax money.

The basic issue remains, however. The issue is this. Remember the story from ancient Greece about a deadly innkeeper named Procrustes? Procrustes required all travelers to fit his bed. If they were too short, he and his men stretched them to fit. If they were too long, they cut off their feet. As a result, everybody who stopped to spend a night at the inn, died on the bed of Procrustes.

Now I submit that our state and federal agencies are our modern beds of Procrustes. We are required to fit their specifications and regulations, and if we do not fit, we are the target of hostile action. If our civil governments are to be a servant of the people, why do we have to meet their specifications? How can they be serving us by compelling us to meet absurd regulations? What justice is there in trying to shut down a church, for example, because its ceiling is less than an inch short of the height required by local building code? Very plainly, the bed of Procrustes is with us still.

For example, when is a church not a church? Does it cease to be a church and become a school when it has a Sunday school? Does a week day parochial school or Christian day school make it no longer a church, but a school? Or is it a child care facility, as welfare officers in at least one state are trying to say? In other words, a church feels it is, in all these things, still a church, but both the department of education and the welfare department claim jurisdiction, and each has its own, and conflicting, regulations.

In other words, the bed of Procrustes is an ancient myth, but it is also a very present reality.

This has been R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.