Philosophy of Freud: Q&A

RJ Rushdoony (00:01):
Are there any questions?

Speaker 2 (00:10):
[inaudible 00:00:10] Is there a mental health program in Soviet Russia? Or [inaudible 00:00:10] a different way or the same way?

RJ Rushdoony (00:15):
Oh yes, there is a mental health program in Soviet Russia. It is not Freudian, they don’t care for Freud. They consider him too spiritual, because he emphasizes the mind of man. For them it’s chemistry and electricity. However, lately they have been a little more congenial to a mental approach, but it is significant that in this area they are exploring occultism. So occultism is now openly a subject of legitimate Marxist study. And again, here, you have something that is congenial to this kind of total control by experts, because occultism really is a belief that there are all kinds of hidden powers within nature. It denies the supernatural, which man by understanding and manipulating, can use to control other men and the world. Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Basically, is there any difference between Freud and Jung and Adler? What would be the difference?

RJ Rushdoony (01:25):
Yes. Freud emphasizes these three basic instincts and the counter instincts, to a very great extent. Jung accepts this but he says there is a racial unconscious as well, with each group, and the racial unconscious, say, of the negro and the Asiatic governs him as well. Freud says no, this is common to all men. Adler, the least important of the three, reads man in terms of more shallow instincts. The urge to power, inferiority and superiority complexes and things like this. Adler’s influence has virtually finished. Jung’s is fairly extensive. Freud’s is the determinative one. Jung is fading, I would say, rapidly at the moment. Yes?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
In respect to this experimentation that’s being done, would you classify such things as- experiments and putting artificials parts, like a kidney or a-

RJ Rushdoony (02:57):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Speaker 2 (02:58):
And the heart. We have a friend who really- it was a problem with us to know what to do. Whether they should allow their relatives to go on to a kidney machine for instance.

RJ Rushdoony (03:10):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)- mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Speaker 2 (03:10):
And I just wondered about the moral act of it.

RJ Rushdoony (03:15):
Yes. This business of transplant’s a very good question. Now, there are all kinds of enthusiastic reports about these transplants and the four issues of life had quite an enthusiastic thing. They talk about them as an already accomplished thing. This is not true. The reality is- what they are doing is to transplant animal organisms and organs and other human organisms into the human body. Now, does it work? Well, first of all, let’s analyze the human body. It is made up of about 50 trillion cells. Every human cell is distinctively human, radically different from any animal cell. Moreover, every cell that you have is distinctively yours. First, there’s a vast difference between male and female, so that every man and every woman is male and female to every cell of their body. And a female organism or cell or a piece of skin is as distinctly female.

RJ Rushdoony (04:31):
There’s a world of difference. Men and women are totally different to every cell. Then, every individual is unique. Now, the 50 trillion cells in your body and mine have their systems of immunization. They immediately attack any invader into the body. So that if you get a thorn in your finger, immediately the body mobilizes to repel that invader. If you catch some kind of disease, the body organizes to repel that invader. So there’s a continual process of baffling against anything, and the body regards in its every cell, every kind of invader as an enemy. Now, supposing you take somebody else’s kidney and transplant it into your body, or an animal’s kidney into your body. Two things immediately come into play.

RJ Rushdoony (05:41):
This is an alien organism, and every cell in your body is at once concerned with fighting this. Moreover, this organism which they’ve kept alive and transplanted, says, “Ah, but this isn’t my body.” And it works against the host. So the two are working against each other. Trying to destroy each other. Now, how do they make them work up to a measure? They take and they irradiate the blood with radiation, or else they give Imuran and other drugs to do the same thing, to break down the immunization in the blood. But what happens? Short of killing the body with radiation, what happens is that the radiation wears off very quickly. After a period of months to almost a year, and the body begins to work again to kill the invader. But if you keep taking the person, and these people who have had such surgery are in hot house atmospheres.

RJ Rushdoony (07:01):
And you make the hospital room antiseptic or if he goes to his home, you make it antiseptic, and you bring him in periodically and give him the drug, irradiate his blood. You’ve destroyed or are periodically suppressing or temporarily destroying the capacity of the blood to repel an antibody. So what happens? If the person gets sniffles, they die. The body has no capacity now to resist anything. So that they keep them artificially alive for a time, and then they die inevitably, because the transplant is a death sentence. You put an alien body into the body and it rejects it. It will not accept any other alien body. Now, there’s one thing with which they’ve had limited success, and this is not a transplant, it is patchwork using silicon. Silicon parts.

RJ Rushdoony (08:17):
There’s been limited success, but even there, there are indications that it will lead to tumors and cancer. And it’s tragic in some areas how many operations are being performed foolishly. One thing that upsets me no end. This isn’t common knowledge, but today, there’s a new kind of falsies. They are silicon breasts, whereby older women and very often young girls who are flat chested have the skin lifted and the silicon breasts are placed underneath. And I have seen them, because a young man whom I led to Christ who stops by is a surgical supply man, and they have them in four sizes. The largest is a burlesque size, and burlesque women use them regularly. Now, there are already indications that this silicon which is the one thing they found that seems to be safe, does produce cancer or tumors.

RJ Rushdoony (09:26):
So they have found that they cannot play God with a body, as they thought. And yet, they’re already saying, “Well, these problems are nothing, we’re going to overcome all of these problems, because we’re going to overcome.” It isn’t the civil writers only, but the sadists who have as their theme song, “We shall overcome.” Because they do not respect God’s creative power and the statement of Genesis that God created each thing after its kind. They believe all forms of life merge into another on an evolutionary scale, they merge above and downward so that you can take one and transplant it to the other and so on. But these transplants do not work.

RJ Rushdoony (10:19):
What you read about, there have been stories several times in the papers about people getting parts from a pig or chimpanzee and going home, but they go home to a laboratory type of home, prepared for them, and they ultimately die. And what they say, well, is this: “The operation was successful, unfortunately several months later the person died of pneumonia.” Yes, he got the sniffles and in a matter of hours that was pneumonia and the person was dead. This is not successful. Yes?

Speaker 2 (10:57):
Wouldn’t this also be true, then, of blood transfusions?

Speaker 3 (10:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
And what would be the moral standpoint?

RJ Rushdoony (11:02):
Well, a good question. I’m not sufficiently confident here, but there certainly have been questions raised by very competent people. There’s a great deal of debate here about the validity of blood transfusions. What will they do in the long run? Many things like this are apparently successful for a time. Blood transfusions apparently do some good over a short haul. We don’t know on the long haul, and we may not know for some years. There are people, however, who say that there are deleterious effects. I don’t know. But your body is distinctively yours. Every organ, every cell of the 50 trillion cells is distinctively yours. And it will never change.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
Is that why the Jehovah Witnesses don’t want to receive or do not believe that transfusion, will not accept it?

RJ Rushdoony (12:07):
Now I know they don’t, but I don’t know the reason why.

Speaker 4 (12:10):
There’s on the scripture about not drinking blood or…

RJ Rushdoony (12:12):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
How about the birth control movement?

RJ Rushdoony (12:19):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Declining population and food and [inaudible 00:12:26] left wing movement.

RJ Rushdoony (12:27):
Yes, again, the purpose is total control of man. And these modern devices, particularly the pills, are potentially very, very dangerous, and today so many things of this sort as well as the coil, very dangerous, are being introduced with very little experimentation, very little concern about side effects. Man is the guinea pig now. Yes.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Oh. And in connection with the birth control pill, my doctor said there were 85 known deaths in Los Angeles last year from this pill, and it does cause thrombosis of the leg. Many young women have to have their veins pulled.

RJ Rushdoony (13:15):
Yes. Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

RJ Rushdoony (13:18):
I’ve heard that, but you see, they do not publish this sort of thing any more than-

Speaker 2 (13:24):
No [crosstalk 00:13:25]

RJ Rushdoony (13:24):
This business of transplants, you get the glowing story of life, and anyone who brings out the other facts is an obstructionist, and an extremist and so on.

Speaker 3 (13:37):

Well they did slip up and because a couple weeks ago or so, [inaudible 00:13:42] I think it was, they showed us how they got a whole set of lungs, and he was doing bad. He’d been home for two months, and they didn’t know if he was going to live or not.

RJ Rushdoony (13:55):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Speaker 3 (13:55):
The whole aspect of it. They said they just didn’t know.

RJ Rushdoony (13:59):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (13:59):
You know, went down to skin and bones, just 98 pounds and [inaudible 00:14:05]

RJ Rushdoony (14:04):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)- That’s right. But they do this to present a picture of objectivity, yes. You see, we are giving both sides. But it’s a slanted picture. Yes?

Speaker 5 (14:20):
[inaudible 00:14:20] Talking about this birth control [inaudible 00:14:23] somebody talking about population explosion, and I believe they said the population density explosion is even higher than that of India, which is given as an example.

RJ Rushdoony (14:32):
Yes.

Speaker 5 (14:34):
Is that true?

RJ Rushdoony (14:35):
Yes. Some day, I would like to speak on the myth of the population explosion. It is pure nonsense. There’s no evidence for it, and the basic purpose is to persuade you that there is so that you will accept their answer. First, create an artificial answer, and then talk people into accepting a totalitarian- an artificial problem, then talk people into accepting an artificial, totalitarian answer. And-

Speaker 2 (15:07):
Also, they never mention the vast number of people who are dying, you think no one ever dies.

RJ Rushdoony (15:13):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
You know? They never mention death.

RJ Rushdoony (15:15):
Of course they don’t expect death to exist very long. Professor of physics, Ettenger, has written a book, “The Prospects of Immortality.” I have it on my desk. And which, perhaps, you’ve seen a notices of it, there were excerpts from it, around about a year ago, in the Herald Examiner, on the deep freeze plan, whereby if you are going to die of a disease, you’re hastily put into deep freeze and then you’re thawed out when they solve that problem and brought back to life. And so on. And you’re kept alive forever that way, because ultimately, of course, they’re going to conquer death. And maybe after going two, three deep freezes, you will reach that age. Although, in one article, they state, and this is amazing, that they will conquer death by 1984.

RJ Rushdoony (16:14):
But to me, the interesting thing is that Ettenger, and this is done with a straight face and with intense earnestness, has a chapter on the freezer centered society.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Oh.

RJ Rushdoony (16:29):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
There is some discussion of the fact that Freud, at the end of his life, denied or turned against his own theories. Is there any thing to this story?

RJ Rushdoony (16:44):
I don’t believe that, no.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
He really believed it.

RJ Rushdoony (16:49):
Yes he did. With an intensity. He was a strange figure. He died in London as you know, I believe, in ‘39 or ‘40, and kept working and writing almost to the very last. He had cancer of the throat and jaw, and had been in considerable agony for about 15, 20 years, and any number of operations, he refused to accept any painkillers or morphine, and continued working and writing and defending his position right up until the last, I think the last day and a half, he finally accepted medication. And then went under almost immediately and died. But it was simply raw courage that kept him going, and his belief that he was right. That his ideas were necessary. It’s an amazing thing that a man could be so dedicated to promulgating total despair, really.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
[inaudible 00:18:18] and many of the scientists now, say that the new morality is that you must be rid of guilt.

RJ Rushdoony (18:29):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
And don’t the existentialists say that in addition to you are yourself and living your own life and all that you shouldn’t feel guilty about any consequences or anything that you do.

RJ Rushdoony (18:47):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
That you’re merely trying to find yourself.

RJ Rushdoony (18:50):
Yes. These people are all-

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Freudian.

RJ Rushdoony (18:53):
Freudian in this respect. Guilt is a product of the past, recognize you have this inheritance and don’t let it bother you. So don’t worry about consequences. There is no law, so why should you worry about consequences to your actions? Sartre, one of the leading existentialists, has not hesitated to admit that many of his student followers have committed suicide.Tthis doesn’t bother him in the least. Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Because the guilt does come up.

RJ Rushdoony (19:34):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
They can’t down it.

RJ Rushdoony (19:36):
Right. Right. But you simply live with it and you grin and bear it, in effect. Existentialism today, of this sort, is promoted in virtually all our periodicals. Life and Time are very definitely existentialist. And this is true of most of your major periodicals.

Speaker 6 (20:05):
This is the end of this question period. Another question period follows.

RJ Rushdoony (20:11):
So that we need to be exceedingly careful of paying any attention to these people. Recently I saw a publication in which Calvin was quoted as being socialistic. Well I went to the commentary of Calvin from which this citation came, and it didn’t read in any sense socialistic, what Calvin did was to emphasize justice as the concern of officers of state. And justice is a different thing from a welfare economy. He was talking about law carts and crime. It was as vicious a misrepresentation as possible. This is, today, routine, so that we need to check sources out thoroughly.

Speaker 4 (21:06):
Then what we should be doing is what the liberals have attempted to do to us for many years. Now, we have always had to go with our documentation. We have felt we had.

RJ Rushdoony (21:17):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Speaker 4 (21:18):
Because we’re always challenged.

RJ Rushdoony (21:19):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (21:19):
And what we like to do is to challenge them every term they make these statements. Where? Which founding father? Where did you find it? What is this? This is the way that we can find out their inaccuracies.

RJ Rushdoony (21:34):
Yes. We allow them to put us on the defensive. I was talking to a woman just this past week, who showed me a little quiz that her daughter had received in a certain class that asked all kinds of impertinent questions. And these questions were set in the context of some that were sensible routine questions, for the particular class. But questions on- they began, “When do you think that you ought to start dating?” This is for, I think, a sixth or seventh grade girl. And then went on to questions about sex education. And when she objected and said, this type of questioning had a background that was very dangerous and such questions came out of questionnaires, they had been pulled out of questionnaires, out of a very questionable background. She was asked to document her charges.

RJ Rushdoony (22:50):
And I said, “Well, you go back and tell them that they should be on the defensive. What right have they to ask your child to answer to impertinent questions that are none of their business? They are there to teach her certain things. Not to probe in her private life. And ask questions which you yourself would not ask of your child because you wouldn’t feel, first of all, your child had any right to express an opinion in those subjects, or that it was proper for your child to start thinking and talking in those directions.” I said, “Keep it on the offensive. They have to vindicate their position, not you your criticism.” But this is what they so often do. They act as though we have to defend ourselves for raising a question.

RJ Rushdoony (23:47):
And of course, they do not document or their documentation is not valid. For example, this was done by some historian, just as a joke, but I thought there was a good point to it. I believe it was in the journal of the history of ideas. And this man who had just written a study on Calvin, one aspect, and he was a [inaudible 00:24:18] historian, said he was interested having finished his work to encounter in Will Durant’s book, On the Reformation, a statement that Calvin was very hostile to Copernicus.

RJ Rushdoony (24:35):
Now, that’s strange. I went through all those passages of Calvin when I was doing my research. And I didn’t see that. So he checked the footnotes, and he found that Durant had quoted Andrew White, former president of Cornell, and his History of the Warfare of Science and Theology. So he went to White and White had quoted Farrar about 50 years before, and eh went to Farrar and Farrar quoted someone else. And he went back and each time, the quotation was a little vaguer. And finally, he got back to about 180 years ago, and the thing petered out and it had rusted on a misunderstanding of a passage.

RJ Rushdoony (25:33):
So he pointed out how each one had quoted the other and had built up until finally they had Calvin against Copernicus. And then he concluded, “What did Calvin really think of Copernicus?” And he said, very simply, “Never heard of the man.” Yes?

Speaker 4 (25:53):
Would you please define existentialism? I think I know the modern meaning [crosstalk 00:26:01]

RJ Rushdoony (26:00):

Yes, I’ll be spending tomorrow afternoon at the class on existentialism and its meaning. But essentially, existentialism says that the only reality, the only standard, is your own life and your own existence. There is no law outside of yourself. This is it. So that if there is a God, he’s irrelevant. Other people, well it’s what you choose to make of them. If you relate to them, if it’s a personal, I thou relationship, then fine. But otherwise, no.

Speaker 4 (26:40):
But how’s that-

RJ Rushdoony (26:40):
So you are totally a law unto yourself. Yes?

Speaker 4 (26:46):
[inaudible 00:26:46] more impersonal.

RJ Rushdoony (26:48):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)- The relationship to impersonalism?

Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yes. And-

RJ Rushdoony (26:51):
Of existentialism?

Speaker 4 (26:55):
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:26:56]

RJ Rushdoony (26:55):
Well, existentialism says the world is ultimately impersonal, and therefore, since you have consciousness, which is a meaningless thing, there is no law in the universe. And things are governed by basically impersonal forces. So there’s no law, there’s no morality. So live it up. This is the conclusion. When you talk about law, and morality, and God, you’re talking about personal things. And you’re living in an area of myth and talking about an area of myth. So since your self consciousness is nothing more than an epiphenomena in the universe, a kind of an accident, it’s under no law. Therefore, don’t pay any attention to anything, just live it up.

Speaker 4 (27:52):
Is this the neo-orthodoxy, or is that a little different?

RJ Rushdoony (27:57):
There is a minor variation, but neo-orthodoxy is existentialism applied to theology. And as I’ll point out tomorrow in great detail, it’s like talking about Christian atheism when you’re talk about Christian existentialism. Barthes, Bruner, all these men are existentialists. The great fountainhead of existentialism is Kierkegaard, and Kierkegaard is a Kantian. And Emmanuel Kant is really the fountainhead of all modern anti-Christian philosophy and existentialism. The grandfather of Marxism, via Hegel. A thoroughly detrimental force in the modern history. Yes?

Speaker 3 (28:53):
Was Darby and Schofield and their- they got some of this impersonalism in their way they review [inaudible 00:29:08]

RJ Rushdoony (29:08):
No, that’s not quite it. But their perspective is not consistent Christian in that they- there may be some, that’s an interesting point you’ve thrown out. I’d have to analyze that and study it again sometime, but-

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Because we’re not doing anything new, we’re doing it for someone else.

RJ Rushdoony (29:30):
Yes. Yes. But their perspective involves some real heresies. Yes?

Speaker 2 (29:37):
I was wondering when you were talking, is the [inaudible 00:29:46] in the book of Jonah, do you think that the universal city, when it becomes a universal Babylon, that there will be a repentance of the type that was done in [inaudible 00:30:02] true repentance, but that just-

RJ Rushdoony (30:04):
That was true repentance according to the Bible, yes. Jonah, the book of Jonah gives us a picture of it as true repentance. No, for the simple reason that the book of Revelation gives us, in revelation 18, a picture of the collapse of Babylon the great. And it is a picture of an economic collapse. And I think we’re building up to that, now. Both the world wide economic disaster as well as the world wide economic order, so this worldwide establishment will destroy itself via this economic collapse which it is building itself up to. So that Revelation 18 doesn’t give any picture of any repentance, but of a total collapse.

Speaker 4 (30:56):
How do we protect ourselves from this?

RJ Rushdoony (30:59):
Well, first by faith, second by precautions, that’s another subject, but I do believe we need to be out of debt. We need to start thinking in terms of some very real things, weathering it. And reconstruction. Because God will honor us all the more if we think not merely in terms of our survival but of creating the institutions now for the future. That’s why I believe in Christian schools and churches that are free of this whole network, and myself, a Christian college. We’ve got to begin the work of reconstruction now so that we are prepared for that day. Because it will come. Yes?

Speaker 7 (31:51):
[inaudible 00:31:51] I have always felt that when we can awaken a liberal, that they are more articulate sometimes than we.

RJ Rushdoony (32:02):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Speaker 7 (32:04):
Now, going back to Buckley as an example.

RJ Rushdoony (32:05):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Speaker 7 (32:06):
I once wrote to him about a year ago and told him he had his own little ivory tower, and I had a very interesting letter back, and I [inaudible 00:32:12] it’s exactly what you said today, from this return letter.

RJ Rushdoony (32:15):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Speaker 7 (32:16):
Now using Buckley as an example, would there be a way of reaching him or someone like him to really educate him or- do we discount him or do we try?

RJ Rushdoony (32:31):
Well, take him for what he’s worth. He’s doing some good and he’s doing some damage. Usually, people don’t change their direction until they meet a crisis, and pay the penalty. James Russel Lowell, in a poem, I forget the title of it, poem written many years ago. Well before the civil war. Had a line which I felt was so vivid and Christian. He spoke of man as we who by shipwreck only find the shores of divine wisdom. How true that is. We who by shipwreck only find the shores of divine wisdom. We have to have our way and our hopes wrecked before we’re ready to turn to God. We’re so proud and confident in our ways, and Buckley is finding his way pays off. He’s the- and Russell Kirk, they are the kept conservatives of the liberal opposition. They’re the prize exhibits.

RJ Rushdoony (33:47):
They appear on TV and they lecture on the campuses. And are introduced as it were, this is the way a conservative should be, you know? Nothing far out about him. They’re thriving on it. They love it. They’re not going to change when the going is good.

RJ Rushdoony (34:11):
What?

Speaker 7 (34:11):
I think you just waste a lot of time and effort.

RJ Rushdoony (34:17):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Speaker 7 (34:35):
On people like that. [inaudible 00:34:37]

RJ Rushdoony (34:38):
Yes, very definitely.

Speaker 7 (34:39):
[crosstalk 00:34:39] looking at your book, can you imagine that? Jacob and Clyde.

RJ Rushdoony (34:39):
Yes, there’s no question that secret societies have carried conspiracies through the centuries. In the religion of revolution, I describe the chaos cults. Now, these chaos cults are- and it’s obtainable, by the way, I did find a few more copies and it’s back here for quarter. That’ll be the first chapter of a book. A second chapter’s already written. But I mention, I believe, in this, the liberty cap. Now the liberty cap is an ancient symbol of these secret societies, going back to ancient Phrygia, centuries before Christ, of a revolutionary movement. The Phrygian cap, or Liberty cap, also had this aspect, the woman’s cap was down, the tassel was down. The man’s was pointed up. And when the woman wore it up, it indicated homosexuality, when the man wore it down, it indicated homosexuality, also.

RJ Rushdoony (35:57):
Well, it’s strange, the places this liberty cap has popped up in history. It popped up in Nero’s reign, and just after Nero’s reign in Rome. It’s appeared repeatedly in history. It reappears in the french revolution, very openly, as the symbol of the revolutionists. It started to appear on some of our coins, in the last century. And here is a Nicaraguan coin of 1899 I believe, and the liberty cap is here on the coin. Then I read recently a book by an American woman, Motley, Devils in Waiting is the title. She married a french colonial officer and she found among the leaders in the witchcraft cults of Africa, the liberty cap. And her husband was a member of the cult.

RJ Rushdoony (37:06):
Now, you find this everywhere, and you find it continuously in history. In a second chapter that I’ve already written to this religion of revolution, I deal with the revolution that Mazdak staged in the late fifth century, 483. In the Persian empire, which was a great empire, an Indo-European people. And it was a communistic revolution. Well, the program of the Mazdakites was threefold, total communization of all wealth, or money, all property, all women. For over 50 years, they controlled the country. At the end of that time, no child knew who his father was. They destroyed the empire.

RJ Rushdoony (38:10):
For a brief period, under [inaudible 00:38:13], they recuperated. But they had been destroyed from within to the point that in a few years, the Muslims overwhelmed them, and they’ve been living in insignificance for the most part since then. This was the Persian empire. Now, those people, the Mazdakites, went underground. You meet with them centuries later as the Zendiks. You meet with them apparently as the Paulicians and the Bogomils, the Albigensians, they infiltrate into Europe. And you have this kind of thing linked up with all kinds of underground subversive movements. So there is a long history to some of these conspiracies. There hasn’t been enough work done in this area. Yes?

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Can you recommend a good history book written by the right person? I mean, true history?

RJ Rushdoony (39:21):
In world history, or just what period, or?

Speaker 2 (39:25):
I’ll start with our history. Of the United States.

RJ Rushdoony (39:29):
Well, there isn’t too much available. My publisher has brought out a few good books in American history that I heartily recommend. Of course, my two books. This Independent Republic, and The Nature of the American System. But then a good introduction to bibliography as well as the central periods of American history is The Myth of the New History, which is a critique of the contemporary rewritings of American history. The Myth of the New History by David L Hoggen. H-O-G-G-E-N. Scotch form of Hogan. And Betsy Ross bookshop does carry that. Now, in The Myth of the New History, Doctor Hoggen begins with the war of independence and gives all the pros and cons and how historians have tried to rewrite it, then he takes the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, Spanish-American war, World War One and Two, and the Korean war, and points out what the real story was and which the reliable books are in each particular field, and how the reigning historians have attempted to pervert the meaning, so that in some instances, most people don’t even know what the War of 1812 was about. Or what the Mexican War was about.

RJ Rushdoony (41:07):
And that included Bobby Kennedy with his denunciation of the war as imperialistic aggression. Now that’s an excellent book. Then there is Gregg Singer’s book, G-R-E-G-G, capital S-I-N-G-E-R. A Theological Interpretation of American History. Also available at the Betsy Ross bookshop, published by my publisher. Those books will give you a good guide, and Doctor Hoggen’s book will give you the important books on special subjects. There isn’t any work that takes the whole of American history and gives you an overall perspective from beginning to end. But on specific subjects, Doctor Hoggen will tell you where to go. If you’re interested in the War of 1812, he’ll give you the names of the only reliable sources. And the same is true of every other period. Yes?

Speaker 7 (42:23):
[inaudible 00:42:23] you are aware [inaudible 00:42:26] I was talking to one of the men out there, not [inaudible 00:42:33] but one of the other men, I was really disturbed, because in his call, he said they were going to have all of the true history books. Then he added, not necessarily from the Christian point of view.

RJ Rushdoony (42:46):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Speaker 7 (42:47):
Now, he asked you, and I’m quite sure you know some of those people out there.

RJ Rushdoony (42:51):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Speaker 7 (42:53):
Couldn’t we not see that they are [inaudible 00:42:55] a little bit?

RJ Rushdoony (42:57):
Yes.

Speaker 7 (42:58):
This disturbs me.

RJ Rushdoony (43:00):
I have already given them a list of the books they should get and they will be getting. So I think the library should, if they follow the suggestions, and they ask me. I didn’t volunteer them.

Speaker 7 (43:19):
[crosstalk 00:43:19] that’s why I asked.

RJ Rushdoony (43:20):
Yes. Mr White called and sent Mr Benzell out and I gave him a list. Fortunately, in this area, any library has a head start in that all books published in the United States prior to 1815 in any and every field, are now available on microfilm. And on microfilm, in drawers, and with the equipment, a room about this size, will house all of them. And this is invaluable for research. And it does save a lot of expense, because many of these things, you couldn’t begin to collect now. So college that would dedicate itself, such as I hope ours will when we are able to have it, to research in this area, will have all the material available in this form. This is a marvelous thing. Yes?

Speaker 4 (44:29):
I’d like to ask two questions. First, are Nesta Webster’s books reliable? Her book on the revolution and the conspiracy.

RJ Rushdoony (44:40):
Her book on the French Revolution is the best single thing on the subject. Her book on world revolution and some of her other books are excellent, but they have this weakness: she is so intensely pro-English, she has a blind spot there, and she refuses to see anything wrong, for example, with British American masonry. And as a result, has overlooked some very important things. But she had an amazing knowledge of original sources. Her French Revolution I believe is must reading. And I think it’s one of the best ways of understanding what the civil rights revolution is doing here in this country. Interestingly enough, when it was published in 1921 in this country, I believe, there was a long and extremely enthusiastic review in the Boston Telegraph by Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. He has changed somewhat since then.

Speaker 4 (46:01):
[crosstalk 00:46:01] book available, I don’t have the ones on the French Revolution. I have two others. The one on world revolution and the one on other ones.

RJ Rushdoony (46:09):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Secret Societies in Subversive Movements.

Speaker 4 (46:12):
Secret societies. Yes. Subversive movements. Where can I get the French Revolution?

RJ Rushdoony (46:17):
No, the French Revolution is not obtainable now, unless you get it used.

Speaker 4 (46:24):
Yes.

RJ Rushdoony (46:25):
And there is a woman in Reno.

Speaker 7 (46:28):
I have a copy of it.

RJ Rushdoony (46:29):
Oh, Mrs Bailey has a copy of it.

Speaker 7 (46:32):
I have a copy of it.

Speaker 4 (46:33):
Well you couldn’t get me a copy, could you?

Speaker 7 (46:34):
I don’t know if I could.

RJ Rushdoony (46:39):
If you’ll telephone me sometime or drop me a line, I’ll give you the name of this woman who has been collecting copies and selling them to conservatives. But-

Speaker 4 (46:49):
Now the other-

RJ Rushdoony (46:51):
The French Revolution is the subtitle is “A Study in Democracy.” And she uses only the original source materials and no one has dealt with them more thoroughly than she has. It’s a magnificent work. Yes?

Speaker 4 (47:14):
The other is someone’s statement that I would like you to elaborate on the idea. The social gospel followers repeatedly make the statement that Jesus was a revolutionary, and in fact in [crosstalk 00:47:38] the Methodist literature. There is the comparison drawn which of course are completely- there is nothing comparable, but they do draw these comparisons.

RJ Rushdoony (47:52):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)- mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Speaker 4 (47:53):
And Jesus neither revolted against historical biblical law or government, but I’m wondering on what basis- this is an arbitrary statement, is it not?

RJ Rushdoony (48:09):
Yes, it is totally arbitrary without any foundation. It is a part of their propagandizing of believers into accepting something else, which is thoroughly contemptible. There is no foundation for it, and they know it. It’s just impossible to say anything else. It is so far out, it’s ridiculous, and yet absolutely contemptible.

Speaker 4 (48:43):
Congregations sit and accept it without one flicker of [crosstalk 00:48:49]

RJ Rushdoony (48:49):
Yes, yes. The first step is to, in such a strategy, to make them accept revolution because Christ was a revolutionary, and second in the name of revolution to drop Christ as an obsolete revolutionary. And of course, now Christian morality is being dropped. So the theology has been dropped, the morality has being dropped, and soon all reference to him will be dropped.

Speaker 4 (49:19):
Isn’t it true that a lot of so called Christian schools that accept it and teach that impersonal philosophy.

RJ Rushdoony (49:32):
Yes, some of them unfortunately do. So this is just a weakness of some of these particular churches. However, the fact is that there’s not much point in having a Christian school unless you deny this position. So the majority of them are not wedded to this position. It doesn’t make sense. The public schools are doing your job if you believe in impersonalism. So why hold to it? I do know some Christian schools that do, but I’ve been interested to see that their leaders are hostile to the Christian school movement. They’d just as soon close down and let the public schools do the job more efficiently.

Speaker 4 (50:27):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

RJ Rushdoony (50:29):
Well, our time is up now.

Speaker 4 (50:30):
Thank you so much, Mr. Rushdoony.