Our Threatened Freedom

Have We Forgotten the Fundamentals

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 46-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 046

Dictation Name: Vol. D - Part 07 – Have We Forgotten the Fundamentals

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Have we forgotten the fundamentals? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

In a recent issue of ‘Chronicles of Culture’, Professor Thomas {?} recounted the following recent events. And I quote, “{?}, while exercising dictatorial powers, let her son deal with the problem of India’s overpopulation, by having police surround movie houses, collect the males, and transport them to sterilization centers. Some ten million Indians lost their capacity to reproduce. In Indonesia, West Sahara, Iran and {?}, women gouged out prisoners eyes, emasculated them, then gagged them with their genitals.” Unquote. Grim and ugly facts, but increasingly commonplace all over the world.

When I was a schoolboy I greatly enjoyed pirate tales like Robert Lewis Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’. I knew that such stories dealt with times long gone and had nothing to do with the present. Times have changed since then. Now piracy is commonplace in the Caribbean Sea and in the East Indies. Small ships are regularly seized, and all who are aboard are murdered.

Recently a friend gave me a copy of his friend’s log book, an around the world voyage on a small yacht. It was a strange feeling to read of the precautions to avoid pirates.

The world is certainly slipping back into barbarism, not only on the high seas, but on our city streets. One writer recently called attention to the chilling taste for violence. This love of violence is apparently among criminals and also among television and film viewers.

So far reaching is this taste for violence, that simple matters of political protests have increasingly courted violent confrontations with fervor and delight.

Once, not too many years ago, we regarded violence and terrorism as a thing of the past. Hitler was dead and Stalin too, and supposedly the world was going to evolve to a higher moral level. Quite obviously we have lost our way. Or perhaps we should say, the way.

Centuries ago the Psalmist said, except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchmen wait in vain.

About fifty years ago, in the revolt of the masses, Jose {?} spoke of the new barbarians as scientists, specialists, and others who believed, quote “That civilization is there in just the same way as the earth’s crust, and the forced primeval”, unquote. In other words, the new barbarism assumes that twenty centuries of Christianity and its accomplishments are a natural fact, like the air we breathe, rather than a moral and religious fact. We are a part of the new barbarism if we forget that the fundamentals of our faith are also the fundamentals of our civilization. Freedom is perishing because we are neglecting the foundations of freedom. The worldwide retreat into barbarism will not be solved by the politicians. It is a moral and a religious fact, and it calls for a moral and religious answer.

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