133 – Christian Education

Separation of School and State 1

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 1-4

Genre: Talk

Track: 1

Dictation Name: A73

Location/Venue: Conference

Year:

[Tape Organizer] The following presentation was recorded at (SEPCON?) 97, the third annual conference for the Separation of School and State Alliance in Fresno California. It is copyrighted by the Alliance 1997, but you are welcome to make copies as gifts for your friends.

[Audience Leader] Introducing the presenters for our session: Can Relativism Bring Peace? An Atheist and a Theist Compare Notes is Wally Cox from Virginia Beach, Virginia. He is a professor at Regent university and just wrote a book called Tyranny Through Education, and it is in favor of the Separation Alliance, and he is looking for a publisher, hint hint. Please welcome Wally Cox.

[Wally Cox] Good afternoon. It is my pleasure to introduce our discussants or contestants, whatever it turns out to be; the title of our event: Can Relativism Bring Peace? An Atheist and a Theist Compare Notes. All I am going to do is to introduce these gentlemen, I really don’t know how relativism is going to tie into separation, and I am not going to try to figure out right now which one is the theist and which one is the atheist. (laughter)

So first I will introduce you to Sheldon Richmond, I am sure you all recognize him. Sheldon is the editor of the Freeman Ideas on Liberty published by the Foundation for Economic Education, he is also a senior fellow at the Future for Freedom foundation, he is the author of the book Separating School and State, How to Liberate Americas families, that is part of your membership benefit that we gift that book, he is also the author of the forthcoming book: Your Money and your Life, Why we Must Abolish Income Tax, published by the Future of Freedom foundation, he was formally senior editor of the (Cato?) institute, and before that at the Institute of Humane Studies at Georgia Mason University. He has written widely on a variety of topics, including education, population and the environment, Federal Disaster Policy, International Trade, the Second Amendment, American (?), Computer Privacy, and the Middle East. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, and numerous others. I have a feeling you wrote all of this… He has appeared on CNN’s Crossfire and (Both Sides?) with Jesse Jackson, the CNBC’s Business Insiders, and others. A former newspaper editor, he was graduated from Temple University in his home town of Philadelphia, his three children are homeschooled. Here is Sheldon, thank you.

[Sheldon Richmond] I am currently homeschooled too- I wasn’t earlier in my life. Well, thank you very much, it is nice to be here again. This is a patented Marshal Fritz panel discussion, only he could think these things up. This is not going to be a debate as far as I know, I didn’t plan to debate, I didn’t bring the verbal boxing gloves with me because we are only comparing notes, and by that I take it it means that we are going to find a broad areas of agreement between me and Herb Titus, which is fine. Relativism, I checked my American Heritage Dictionary, Relativism, the definition was not whatever you wanted it to be- (laughter- which I thought was kind of a contradiction. It says that it is a theory that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute, but are relative to the persons or groups holding them, which seems like a fairly faithful definition of this idea, which made me think that the idea of education based on relativism is an absurdity, it is a contradiction of terms, because if you think about what education is supposed to be, it is what; it is the instilling of a love of learning, it is the imparting of information, it is several things; it is a quest for knowledge- all those things seem to imply an objective frame of reference, an objective reality which is discoverable by human reason, and if you cut that off, cut that idea of independent reality off, away from the idea of education, I don’t know what education would mean if there is not an independent objective reality to be educated with reference to; I mean, think about it for a minute, what are you doing in the classroom or at home in a home schooling environment, if there is not- it is the real world, it is the objective world that gives us something to learn, and you know, to learn about, and I am not talking about the moral side of it, but let’s say the metaphysical side of it, the point is that there is something out there to learn which is independent of us.

Education would seem to make no sense if it is premised on relativism, because then you wouldn’t need education, then just whatever you decide about anything is true by definition, under the relativist assumptions, and education would become very, very different indeed, if it were to have any meaning at all after that, but I don’t think it would.

Now, let me posit the opposite of relativism, it would be what I would think of as objectivism, small o, no trademark sign after that, I am not using now at this point Ayn Rand’s conception of objectivism, but that would fall- I mean, hers is a particular philosophy that would fall under the general category of objectivism, which has two components to it, one is that in the metaphysical sense there is a reality that is independent of us that is discoverable, although I suppose there are some variants of objectivism that would say that there is a reality independent of us, but it is not discoverable. I suppose Immanuel Kant could be put into this category. There is something out there, some philosophers would say, that is independent of us, but we won’t ever know what it is, it is inaccessible to us; that is not the view that I am espousing here. I want to add to the idea that there is an independent world that is also open to human reason.

So the idea is that reality is objective, it exists despite our hopes, wishes, dreams, if there is a brick wall there and you decide you don’t want to see it, you are going to bump into it anyway; it is going to impede your progress, whether you like it or not, and whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

I think the real test for any philosopher who is a relativist, or any of the variants of skeptic let’s say, here is the test: watch when they cross the street, do they look both ways when they cross the street? I always thought this was a good, common sense test of a philosophers sincerity, when they espouse these doctrines of relativism and skepticism, and any of the many variants of denial that there is an independent reality; do they look both ways before they cross the street? Because if you are a really devout relativist, there is no need! (laughter)

Now of course, in some sense evolution and natural selection would quickly take its course, and after a while there would not be many of those kinds of relativists left, would there? It wouldn’t be natural selection maybe, but it would be a form of selection.

Now the other side of objectivism in the sense that I am using it now, the small o, but it applies to all of us as the capital O, Objectivism, is that moral values are objective, in the sense that they are either subjective or arbitrary, or intrinsic, and let me quickly tell you what I think those terms mean. Intrinsic values, sometimes that term is used interchangeably with objective values, but I think there is a difference; value is something, it seems to me that when you identify something as a value you are identifying a relationship between a thing or an idea, and a human agent, a valuer. I don’t think there are values that exist independent of a valuer, I am not adopting relativism at this point, because I can claim that there are characteristics that apply to all members of the human race, and that it is based on their nature as human beings which is objective, and the objective nature of the things we are talking about; water is objectively good for the class of things known as human beings- actually, all living things, but let’s talk about human beings for now. Why is water objectively good for human beings? I am not strictly talking about moral values at this point obviously, there is a sense beyond morality in which one can talk about water being good, I mean it sustains life, which is a good.

It is something about the nature, our nature as physical beings, and the nature of water that makes that combination enhance the life or further the life of human beings, so again it is a relationship based on facts, not arbitrary things that we have invented in the relativist sense, but actual facts about human beings and this stuff that we call water. So that’s a denial of the intrinsic theory, the intrinsic theory would say that it is in the thing itself, not in relationship to any valuing agent, but just in the thing itself; the subjective theory would say that values are simply arbitrary, whatever you decide is good for you is good for you. It is kind of absurd. If we decided today by some sort of mass delusion that arsenic was life enhancing, that it would lengthen our lives and make us physically more fit, that belief would have some objective manifestations, the price of arsenic might go up as we all ran out to buy some, in the economic sense it would be as if it were true in this very narrow sense, we would bid the price up because we all thought it was good for us, but then we would all proceed to kill ourselves, and our beliefs wouldn’t change that, the belief that it would extend our lives wouldn’t change the fact that it would kill us, or certainly make us sick. So, again that is a result of the combinations of the natures of Arsenic and our nature, put them together and you don’t get life enhancement or life extension, you get death. And it goes back to the looking both ways before you cross the street, these are facts that you just can’t blink away.

Now, can a- well, I mean, how do we know there is an objective reality out there, I mean, how do we know if isn’t just a figment of our imagination? Well, there is a story of a freshman who was taking philosophy 101 at I think Harvard, this is a true story, and this student that went up to the professor one day and said: “Can you prove to me that I really exist?” and the professor, the Jewish professor, looked at him and said: “Who is asking?” (laughter) and there is a lot of wisdom in that answer, answering a question with a question can sometimes be the most effective way to answer the question. Because in a very fundamental sense, to ask a question about the world is to already presume a heck of a lot of information, and a heck of a lot of knowledge, I mean, it does presume the existence of the questioner, the question, the person being questioned, and a whole lot of other things; in other words, there is background information, axiomatic information, we can call it, that you can’t escape. Aristotle pointed out that the law of identity was something that to even attack you had to adopt it, because if you come up with a proof that the law of identity- and your bottom line proof is therefore the law of identity is false- that doesn’t also mean that the law of identity is true, but if the law of identity is false, then you know, that line doesn’t mean what we think it means, because that depends on the law of identity, so to invalidate the law you have to use the law of identity to attempt to invalidate the law of identity. But that tells us something very special about the law of identity, that it must be in the nature of an axiomatic truth, otherwise you’d be able to escape it, if you can’t escape it that tells us something.

Well, Rand and others have extended that to the very idea of there being an independent objective reality, to attack that you have to use it- there is no way out of that, it is like being in a paper bag that you can’t fight your way out of, that is just the way things are. So to mount an assault on the idea that there is objective reality, and that we can have knowledge of it, entails a very fundamental contradiction, because aren’t you- it seems to me that you would be stating an objective fact that there is no objective independently existing reality, but if you are claiming that that is true, then you are claiming that that is an independent, objective fact that is true whether you like it or not, well, you are endowing that statement with all the characteristics of my statement that there is an independent objective reality, which should go without saying, undercuts any claim of relativism.

You know, Descarte had the famous apparent axiom: “I think therefore I am.” He tried to find the one true, certain statement, and he felt he could doubt everything except the fact that he was doubting. Now, on the surface that sounds pretty persuasive, so he ends up with only the existence, you are only certain of one thing, the existence of your own consciousness; the rest of you could all be imagined, but I can’t doubt the fact that I am imagining under Descartes system, but the fact is that I have no real reason to believe that all of you are existing, it could just be the result of something I had to drink last night, or earlier. The only thing I can’t doubt is that I am imagining this, and therefore that I am conscious of something.

Now, there is a problem with this, there is a problem with trying to work from the idea that you are conscious to the idea that there is a real world out there, in fact it goes the other way, Descartes approach was what is known as the Primacy of Consciousness, the opposing view of course would be the primacy of existence, or the Primacy of Reality, and the argument being that if there were no existing independent reality there would be no consciousness, because consciousness is consciousness of something; because I don’t know what the term would mean otherwise, consciousness is radically dependent on something to be aware of, it is awareness, awareness of something, take away all the things to be aware of and there can’t be awareness. And if I can cite Rand here again, the idea of a consciousness which is conscious only of itself is again an impossibility. I mean, think about that for a second; nothing to be conscious of except itself, it would be having a content-less consciousness, even though it exists, it just ends up dissolving away.

So we are stuck with the opening fact that there is a real world out there that we have to discover, it is there independent of us, and now our job is to go out and learn what it is.

Now, I am supposed to be representing the secular or the atheist view, and the question is, can a secularist believe in absolutes? And it seems to me that I don’t know what the alternative is, you know, you have all heard the line that the answer to the very emphatic claim that there are no absolutes except that one; it doesn’t get you very far, so I think we are stuck with the idea that there are things out there that exist apart from our likes and dislikes, and so we have to use our heads to go out and figure out what they are through all kinds of methods. But it seems to me like I said, the law of identity doesn’t really have to depend on anything, there is no alternative to it, and to even attempt to come up with one quickly leads to a collapse in absurdity. In fact, if I can be a little contentious here, and you would probably be a little disappointed if I wasn’t, maybe the religious outlook, I will be deliberately provocative, offers a weaker foundation to this idea of an independent immutable reality, based on the law of identity, that namely the thing is what it is, and the thing has a nature.

Now the idea that a thing has a nature should not come as a surprise, imagine something existing that has no nature, it is one of those empty ideas? I mean, to be is to be something specific, there is no sense in the idea of a sort of general existent, that a thing is but it doesn’t have any characteristics. I mean, to be is to have characteristics.

Now, that seems like a pretty solid beginning of knowledge, and as a guide to your discovery of what things are in particular, but I am a little worried about the idea that there is a being that could change something’s nature at will; again I am back to my provocative stance here. And I will just plant that, and you are welcome to bring this up- this isn’t supposed to be a debate on theology and I don’t really mean it to be, but I figured Marshall would probably be disappointed if I didn’t throw a grenade or two, you know. As (Menken?) said, it’s helpful every once in a while for someone to throw a dead cat into the temple; and I’m a fan of Menken, so I am stuck with that.

Anyway, I mean, the law of identity seems a lot more shaky if there is a supreme being that could change the nature of something any time the being wanted to. So will leave it at that, again to be a trouble maker.

Now to the question at hand, can relativism bring peace? Well, this is interesting, if we take relativism very seriously, why should we assume that peace (?), I mean, that is just up for you to decide; for relativists, some people want peace, some people see peace as of value and some people don’t think peace is of value, so if a relativist would be to argue that relativism is what we need, because that leads to tolerance, because that leads to peace, you would have to ask him why does he seem to be positing peace and tolerance as absolute truth? He seems to be smuggling in some solipsism there, and we need to call him on it, and make him demonstrate why peace is better than war, and why tolerance is better than intolerance; so we shouldn’t let him get away with that, I mean I think generally peace and tolerance is good, I mean, fighting in the streets makes it hard to accomplish other things that we all want to accomplish so I have no trouble accepting that generally, not that I tolerate everything, I don’t think we should tolerate everything, some things are beyond tolerance, I would say state schools are beyond tolerance- (laughter)

But generally those are fine, but I think we should make the relativists prove that those are things to be desired, and they seem to be like I said, smuggled in as desirable things, but I don’t think they can defend them very staunchly without giving up the bigger point that they want to make, that namely we shouldn’t assume that there is truth and good to be discovered, that that is something that is left to each persons, their own will and decision.

So it seems to me that we can make a very strong case that we have a better chance of civility and peace if we accept that our statements that we make regarding truths both in the metaphysical and the moral sense, can be civilly discussed and eventually resolved through argumentation and through discovery, and an argument between two relativists seems to me that it gets nowhere, because there is no court of appeal, there is no reality to appeal to, too see who in fact is speaking more accurately, and who is speaking less accurately. So it seems the real key to peace is to a commitment to the idea that there is an independent reality, that the relativists are wrong, that it isn’t just a matter of whatever you want to decide, that these things can be discussed in rational terms, and through argumentation, through gathering of evidence, etc, those kinds of things, we can eventually resolve disputes, because we have a common method, namely reason, and a common court of appeal, namely that real world, and that at least holds out the potential for resolution, and that engenders in my view a spirit of toleration and peace rather than this irreconcilable route of relativism, where we both stamp our feet at each other, where we say: “No, it is what I believe, and you say what you believe.” And then we both say: “Okay, we are both right, even though we are making absolutely contradictory statements.” At that point, if we can’t go our separate ways, the only recourse left to us may be fisticuffs, because again there is no method or court of appeal to resolve disputes.

I will stop at that point, and hopefully I have said enough to provoke some discussion. (applause)

[Wally Cox] Thank you Sheldon. I think I am here, so I am going to keep going with the next introduction, following your line. Herb Titus, Herbert Titus.

Herb is a lawyer, an author, and an educator, he has taught constitutional law at the state universities of Oregon, Oklahoma, and Colorado, and at the private institutions of Orel Roberts University and Regent University in Virginia. He was the founding dean of the college of law and government at Regent, serving in that capacity from 1987 to July 1993. He has written numerous articles and book chapters on a variety of legal and public policy topics. In 1996 Mr. Titus was a candidate in 39 states for Vice President of the United States, on the U.S. Taxpayers Party ticket. He in fact has a radio program now I think, in Virginia Beach that broadcasts several times a week. He and his wife Marilyn, who is with us also- hi Marilyn- have been married for 35 years and have four children and nine grandchildren, and both of these gentlemen, by the way, have writings and books and so forth on our tables over here. So would you welcome Herbert Titus please? (applause)

[Herbert Titus] Wally, thank you very much. It is a pleasure for me to come and to be on this panel with Sheldon Richmond, as I tell Sheldon I read his articles all the time, and I find myself more often than not in agreement with them. On this though, we disagree- Sheldon went to the dictionary to find the definition of Relativism, I went to the Whitehouse and found the personification of Relativism- (laughter) William Jefferson Clinton. As Sheldon has so ably discussed the philosophical and metaphysical ramifications of Relativism, and yes, indeed we would have some differences in regard to how God figures into all of that, instead of joining him in discussion on that, perhaps we can do that as a question and answer period- I would like to talk about the political and legal implications of relativism.

A couple of weeks ago, President Clinton addressed the issue of human equality at the annual human rights dinner, for the so-called ‘Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgendered People in America’. At this dinner he issued a new emancipation proclamation: “The old ideas of sexuality must go, it is time,” proclaimed our president: “to redefine,” and I am quoting: “redefine in practical terms, the immutable idea of equality.” And of course what he had in mind was that with this redefinition of the immutable idea of equality, homosexual sodomy would be equal to heterosexual monogamy; and according to what he practices, fornication and adultery are the equivalent to covenant marriage, and I would assume that many of his supporters would also say that all sexual relations are equal without regard to sex, age, or species.

[Audience] Ewww! (laughter)

[Herbert Titus] If you doubt what I say, let me also quote to you from our presidents statement that we need to expand our “imagination” in how we should live. Now I believe that President Clinton believes that if we do not voluntarily expand our imagination, then it is time to enlist the power of the state to expand it for us. Indeed, I believe his speech at this particular dinner was a prelude to adding sexual orientation to the Civil Rights laws, which would be enforced by the nation, making sexual orientation one of those forbidden basis for discrimination, along with race, sex, etc.

But it was not just his speech to add sexual orientation to the Civil Rights laws to be enforced by the government, rather it is part of a larger ideological agenda, designed to dismantle the nations charter. He would take the provision of the Declaration: “We hold these truths to be self evident” and he would change it to: “We think that these following opinions are reasonable.” He would take the language, and instead of a nation built upon self evident truths revealed by God, he would rebuild this nation upon reasonable opinions of an enlightened elite, and he would take the words that ‘all men are created equal’ and he would retranslate that: “Every living human animal ought to be treated equally in as many ways as imaginable.” Instead of a God-created legal and political order of equality among human beings, we must, according to Clinton, have an economic, social, and sexual egalitarian order, as the elite imagination would have it be.

Instead of the language that: “We are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” he would retranslate that to: “That everyone’s claim to life, liberty, and happiness should be tolerated, unless that claim conflicts with better claims of others, provided however, that all claims of rights should be subordinate to compelling state interests.” So instead of a God given and defined right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, he is calling for a new order of forced toleration for God given rights to be trumped by man invented rights, or overridden by compelling state interests.

A relativistic, evolving, legal and political order for an absolute, unchanging, Godly legal and political order.

Now how is this transformation of American society to occur? Through the transformation of the minds of Americans. What Clinton has declared is a war against American who believe like our Founders did, that there are absolute unchanging rules imposed on man by Almighty God- indeed, I believe he has declared war against God, and against God’s law, elevating his own imagination above God’s revelation. How will he wage this war? What will be the means that he chooses? Through America’s schools.

Again let me quote to you from Clinton’s speech, he said that: “Most people as they grow older become somewhat limited in their imaginations.” Not surprising, Hillary Clinton is heading up a national movement for daycare- the younger you get them, the more likely that you can reshape their imaginations. I believe the national testing, goals 2000, Schools to Work, all of the national education programs, are really designed for the purpose of imposing a unitary political ideology on America.

Now, Barry Lynn of course supports this, if you remember what he said about the establishment clause, is he says: “All the establishment clause forbids is a religious uniformity” or a religious ideology, “upon a people, but it doesn’t forbid imposing a political ideology upon the people.” Indeed, he likened education to the training of the military- and let me assure you, that when someone enters the military, that in order to be an effective soldier you have to think like a soldier, you have to live and be a soldier, if you are going to be an effective soldier; and that of course is precisely what a statist education is designed to do, is for people who are educated there to think and be as the state would have them be.

Now, this is not the first time that a political leader has proposed and implemented an educational agenda to force upon a nations people a worldview dictated by the powerful on those who don’t hold power. In 1786 Thomas Jefferson wrote the statute for religious freedom, and quoting from Jefferson, he said: “It is the impious presumption of legislatures and rulers, civil and ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, have established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time. It is not new for a nations political leaders to attempt to impose a uniform ideology upon the people that they might better control those people. In Jefferson’s time that was precisely what the political agenda was in nations all over the world.

Now, what was Jefferson’s ammunition against this political homogeneity? Did he argue that it didn’t work? No, it only worked too well. Did he come up with a bunch of statistics to show what was happening to the people, that it was not cost efficient, or that people weren’t performing well on the tests that might be administered to see whether or not they were learning what they were to be taught? No, he opposed it for one simple reason: it was wrong. and the basis on which he relied to show that it was wrong was that it was contrary to God’s created order. You remember the language of that great statute, it still appears on the statute books in the Commonwealth of Virginia: “Well aware that Almighty God created the mind free.” You see, he began with the proposition that God created the heavens and the earth, and all creatures in it, including all human beings, and he created the mind according to the law of freedom, and that for a civil ruler to coerce the minds of men was in violation of that law.

Jefferson went on to say: “Even God Himself, even the holy Author of our religion, did not coerce man to believe the truth that God offered to it, how dare impious rulers do what God Himself would not do?”

From this foundational principle based upon the law of God, he came up with three principles by which all nations should govern themselves: principle number one, that there should be no taxation to support the propagation of opinions of any kind, not just religious opinions, but of any kind of opinions. He called it sinful and tyrannical, both a violation of God’s moral law, and a violation of God’s law for nations, that is what makes it sinful and tyrannical. He went on to state that not even school vouchers were consistent with the law of God. Some of you perhaps do not know, but that the school voucher system was the dominate system of education in America, if you look for example in the Massachusetts constitution dated 1784, you will see a Puritan form of school vouchers. It is interesting to me today that people who abhor the Puritans are actually walking with the Puritans who supported school vouchers. If you don’t believe me, look at the first few sections of Article 1 of the Massachusetts Constitution; the difference between the Puritan school voucher and the proposed school vouchers today, is that the person did not send his money to Washington for it to be laundered and sent back to the parents to spend, it was far more efficient, all that had to be done was that the parent could take the money and give it to the teacher of their choice. Jefferson said even that violates the law of God, because it interferes with the parent’s choice not to spend money for a teacher.

Homeschoolers, you don’t have to pass money from the Father to the Mother, or from the mother to the father in order to homeschool; Jefferson understood the law of liberty of the mind. The second principle he set forth was that there was no authority for the civil ruler to impose a test of religious orthodoxy upon any civil office holder. That particular principle lead to the prohibition against religious tests that we find in article 6 of the United States Constitution. It was not for the Civil government to determine what was Orthodox Christian faith, it was for the church to determine, and for the people to determine, the civil government had no jurisdiction over religious orthodoxy.

The third principle under which he operated was that the civil government has absolutely no jurisdiction over the minds of men. This is the language of Jefferson, he said that the opinions of men are not the object of Civil government, nor under its jurisdiction. Obviously a tax supported educational system takes the position that indeed education is the object of government, the minds of men are the object of government, and the government of course exercises jurisdiction through civil bureaucrats called teachers, who are representing the government when they walk in to the class room. It interesting that in today’s regime according to Barry Lynn, a teacher can’t express a religious opinion, only a student can in a tax supported government school room today.

So a student who has a religious opinion never gets reinforced by the teacher, only those students who have non-religious opinions would be reinforced.

Now, James Madison explained this in his Great Remonstrance in which he supported Jefferson’s bill for establishing religious freedom, and he put in the language of Article 1 section 16 of the Virginia Constitution, you can still see this language in that document, although they have added a whole bunch of relativistic stuff following it; where it says: “Religion are the duty that we owe to our creator, enforceable by reason and conviction, but not by force or violence.”

You see, both Madison and Jefferson understood that true liberty begins first with identifying those duties that God has exclusively reserved to Himself, those duties that God has ordained in His revelation, that can only be enforceable by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. Or if you want to get theological about it, those duties that only the Holy Spirit has authority to enforce, and not what the sword of the civil ruler has to enforce. This particular principle can be traced back to the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ in Luke 20:25 where he said: “Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and unto God what belongs to God. Those duties that we owe that can only be enforced by reason and conviction belong exclusively to God, only those other duties that God has ordained can also be enforced by force and violence belong to the civil ruler.

Clintons relativistic world view must be imposed by force; he must declare war upon the American people, for his view of the world is contrary to God’s reality, and any other political leader who holds to the view that mans imagination should be lifted up over God’s revelation, must ultimately use the power of the state, because the people upon whose heart is written the truth will simply not voluntarily follow such a leader.

So relativism never brings peace, it only brings war. Only by God’s law limiting the jurisdiction of state, will peace and harmony be restored to America. (applause)

[Wally Cox] We would like to take this time for a question and answer, and we are making a special offer right now for those of you who have not yet participated at that microphone, please feel free to do so first, and those of you who have questions and would like some answers to those questions, you may ask those after those others have asked their questions, if that makes sense.

Please state your name and your place of origin.

[Audience Member] My place of origin? (laughter)

[Wally Cox] Well, directly before this conference.

[Audience Member] Tony Mall from Central Pennsylvania. Alien… (laughter) I had a comment to make on the question, which I think has been eloquently answered, that relativism necessarily leads to war, rather than peace. We should note I think that it is being sold in the schools under the rubric of diversity training, under the mistaken notion that it produces peace rather than war, and I think it is expected that peoples commitment to any set of beliefs will be so weakened that they won’t be willing to fight for anything, however what it does is simply liberate desire and revert to a Hobbesian condition of a war of all against all, in which simply the powerful enslave the less powerful. But I think while it is certainly the case that one can determine objective moral standards simply on the basis of an analysis of human nature as Aristotle for instance tried to do. I think, Mr. Richmond, you have a certain difficulty in the same way that someone who is a Hobbesian would have a difficulty, finding some basis for an obligation to live up to the contract that one has made if one is in a position to be able to get away with violating that contract, or abrogating the contract. So too, you may have a set of moral values objectively rooted in human nature, and at the same time you still have the question: what is the source of the obligation to live that good life, to renounce vice, and to practice virtue? Without some sort of divine sanction it would seem to me- I am not adamant about this, I have not made up my mind adamantly about it, but it would be difficult to make a case for that obligation, even though one could perhaps understand to a great extent what a good life is. Thank you.

[Sheldon Richmond] I will just be very quick, you ask a question that obviously you could write books and books and books about, and therefore you could talk about it for hours; I am not a professional philosopher who is working every day in these areas, so I will answer in that spirit, and quickly just suggest my approach: I think the obligation comes out of the quest for the good life, and I can’t endow this with all the detail at this point, but you are right, this was Aristotle’s mission in part, and I think that is a fruitful route to pursue, even if it hasn’t been completed yet, but my hunch is that is the direction to go.

[Audience Member] My name is Stephen (McGarry?) I am from Blumont Virginia, and my question is for Mr. Richmond; it is similar in vein to the last question, and I don’t ask this to be confrontational, I am genuinely curious: How can you say that we can know an absolute truth if you don’t believe that there is a God that has ordained that absolute truth? If you say- you seem to be saying relativism is wrong, well, what is your standard if you don’t have a God who sets the standards? Thank you.

[Sheldon Richmond] Well, as I tried to suggest, I hope this doesn’t become too autobiographical for me, as I tried to suggest, any other starting point than an objective reality, form of reference, is a non-starter. I mean, it just doesn’t get off the ground. Again, to attack this idea that there is an independently existing reality, you have to smuggle in quote ‘objectivist’ assumptions to attack it, in which case you are then doing what Aristotle said, you are doing it if you try to attack the law of identity. It is a non-starter, your system never gets going. So I think existence is sufficient in that sense, for us to begin building knowledge about what exists. I don’t see what is missing, and I am not talking about moral values now or the moral life, I don’t see, just in terms of trying to get a handle on what the nature of reality is like, I don’t see what is missing from this picture that I have tried to draw, namely that the starting point is there has got to be a real world out there, because anything else collapses in self contradiction, so that is the only root left, and simply that is enough to get your system going.

[Audience Member] (?) Baltimore Maryland, my question is for both gentlemen, number one it seems to me and correct me if I am wrong, that both of you believe in both natural law, that there are natural laws that if you tamper with you may run into big trouble, number one, and number two, referring to Mr. Titus’s quoting of our president, it seems that his attempts and his policies and those that think like him are actually an assault on tolerance which can destroy civilized society. Please comment?

[Herbert Titus] Well, our founders understood that there was such a thing as natural law, but they did not build the nation on that foundation. That is the reason why, if you look at the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, they use the term ‘law of nature’ rather than natural law. Law of nature as is articulated in Blackstone’s commentaries is God’s actual will, revealed in nature, rather than as Blackstone also states, natural law of which is man’s best understanding of God’s will revealed in nature. They understood the distinction between God’s actual revelation, and mans best understanding. Now, obviously whenever a man acts, or a human being acts, you see natural law in action because that is based upon that persons best understanding, but one would never substitute a persons understanding, no matter how well educated, how well trained, for the actual revelation itself; with regard to the question of toleration, our founders rejected toleration. If you look at article one section 16 of the Virginia Constitution you will see that they began with a rule of religious toleration, which was essentially this: that you could freely exercise religion so long as you didn’t disturb the social order. Or another way of putting it, if you want to put it in modern terms, that you could freely exercise religion unless there was an overriding compelling state interest.

Now, today we have a regime of religious toleration which in fact means that those who are intolerant will not be tolerate, that is the danger of toleration, is that ultimately there will be some who will not be tolerated.

[Sheldon Richmond] Just a quick word about toleration, I know we don’t have a lot of time. Toleration today has turned into the idea of approval, I think the people that Herb talked about have an interest in having smuggled in that additional meaning to the word, I don’t think that is what the word originally meant, in political terms it shouldn’t mean that. I mean, it seems to me that someone who does something that you don’t approve of, even deeply, morally disapprove of, but who is not using violence, fraud, in other words not violating anyone’s rights, his rights should still be respected under law. And that is I think what generally was made by the idea of toleration, you weren’t going to persecute, politically persecute or even privately persecute through physical force someone who does something you don’t approve of, assuming that person is now again, not violating rights, not using violence, not using harassment, or you know, not doing things which are defined in the criminal code. Those people should be left alone, you can ostracize them, you can use all sorts of voluntary ways to show your disapproval, not deal with the person, etc; but it is tolerance or toleration if legally that person is still permitted to be at liberty, and that is the contribution of American political thinking, that those people were not going to be jailed or beaten into submission until they crossed the line and actually committed what we think of as an actual crime.

[Audience Member] Hi, Anthony Santali, Fairfax Virginia. This question is directed towards professor Richmond.

[Sheldon Richmond] Don’t promote me! (laughter)

[Audience Member] It seems that you draw a distinction between the primacy of reality and the primacy of consciousness, and it seems that you come on the side of the primacy of reality. Now, as a believer in God I believe that the consciousness of God existed first and that He spoke reality into existence. In light of the latest theories of quantum mechanics, that seem to question reality in the sense that we seem to perceive it, how does this confront I guess a more- the premise of reality with more an atheist view of things, and secondly, if reality came first, then where do you get free will from, and do you believe in free will or not?

[Sheldon Richmond] All good questions, I had a feeling quantum mechanics would come up at some point. I am not an expert on quantum mechanics and we are also very short on time, luckily for me… (laughter) there are certainly strange things that go on at the quantum level, I mean I have done a little reading on this so I have some sense of there is some very interesting things that go on there, but we can still debate whether the theories that go on there are true or not, notice how that is still within the context of objectivity, whatever you decide is going on at the quantum level is good enough, no matter what you decide is true, we can still debate and test and see what seems to be more in accordance with the truth and what seems to be less consistent, so even that debate, where things are going on, and maybe we need terms now to identify things that we don’t have good terms for yet, it is obviously different down there, but the point is it still seems to be within the context, because we talk about how the theories of quantum mechanics are constantly upheld by the various experiments that are put on by scientists, so we can still talk about the truth or falsity of that, even though what goes on there doesn’t seem to be exactly like what is going on at this level, the macro level.

I am going to have to stop there, so we don’t get the hook!

[Audience Leader] Thank you very much.

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