Our Threatened Freedom

Is Charity Illegal

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 103-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 103

Dictation Name: Vol. H - Part 12 - Is Charity Illegal

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Is charity illegal? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

Most of us saw on television news the give-away program in Oakland California where 500,000 pounds of oranges were given away in late 1981. These oranges were given by farmer {?} of Exeter California. All he asked was the cost of freight and packing, the West Opened food co-op asked recipients to donate 2 cents per orange to defray expenses.

Because of this, {?} has become the target of a federal lawsuit. He may be fined 150,000 dollars and assessed an additional 16,000 dollars. Federal agents have already 500 hours going over his business records, and the worst may be ahead of him. Perhaps, by today some political decision may lead to no prosecution, but this is far from sure. All this is based on a 1937 US Department of Agriculture order, creating a naval orange administrative committee. This committee determines the number of naval oranges that growers can ship to the market. The 1981 order limited California and Arizona growers to shipping 76 to 78 percent of the oranges grown to the market. The rest had to be exported, made into juice, or fed to cattle. In 1981, according to {?} twenty-six million, twenty-eight hundred and seventy-two thousand boxes were diverted to non-human use, dumped in pastures for cows to walk on.

There are two important issues in this case.

First, does a man have the right to sell his produce where and however he wants to? Does the federal government have the right to limit the amount of produce that goes to market? The federal government has been exercising such powers since the days of President Roosevelt.

Second, does the federal government have the right to tell us when we can be charitable, and when we cannot be? There were no complaints from the people in Oakland who received the oranges.

We can raise still a third question. Is federal planning and controls a superior force than freedom and the free market? {?} critics seem to believe that the consequence of freedom is disaster. They maintain that the free market would destroy us. {?} charges, in turn, that such critics, both farmers and non-farmers, are either members of a major distributing corporation, or federal officials.

The issue is an important one. In the {?} case, freedom is on trial. All too many people, both in and out of the federal government, seem to believe that freedom is a potentially dangerous force, and if permitted at all, should be very strictly rationed.

Whatever the decision in the {?} case, this issue will remain a key one in the last 2 decades of the 20th century.

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