Our Threatened Freedom

Is Discrimination Always Bad

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 99-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 099

Dictation Name: Vol. H - Part 08 - Is Discrimination Always Bad

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Is discrimination always bad? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

According to the intellectual activists, a district court judge in late 1981 ruled that an applicant’s psychosis is not a lawful ground for a medical school to deny admission. A young woman entered a university medical school without disclosing her previous psychiatric hospitalization. As a student there, she did such things as cutting herself to cause bleeding, and physically assaulting doctors. The school required her to take a leave of absence, and during that time she was again hospitalized. She was later denied her application for readmission to the medical school, and she sued the school under the rehabilitation act of 1973. The court ruled in her favor. Is it not time that we recognize that discrimination can be both good and bad? Would it make sense, for example, to allow a paroled rapist to be a teacher in a girl’s school? Would a paroled bank robber make a good bank teller? Certainly a man or a woman’s past record should not be held against them, but neither can it be disregarded. An opportunity for rehabilitation is important, but it must be a sensible opportunity. To make a former drug addict the person in charge of a hospital’s drug supply is not being fair, either to the hospital, or to the ex-junkie. There is a difference between opportunity and stupidity, and between justice and injustice. In the name of no discrimination, we can unjustly impose upon the public a person they would not choose, if they knew the facts. Perhaps there were mitigating circumstances in the medical school case, and perhaps there were not, I simply do not know. What I do know is that the rehabilitation act of 1973 is ignoring the realities of situations, and imposing a straitjacket upon institutions and the public.

Discrimination is not necessarily bad, nor necessarily good. It can be either, depending upon the circumstances. If I discriminate against someone because of their nationality or color, I am depersonalizing them and am wrong. I discriminate against them because I have found them to be morally untrustworthy and financially dishonest, I am being both right and sensible.

The law, however, says that no program, agency or institution can exercise common sense discrimination if it is receiving federal financial assistance.

Medical and other schools do receive such assistance, as do a variety of other institutions. Should your local public school have no right to discriminate against certain types of individuals with known records, in hiring teachers and employees? Should a paroled poisoner have the right to a job in a school lunch room or kitchen? What happens to our freedom under such a law?

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