Was RJR a Libertarian? You read this quote from Roots of Reconstruction and tell me.
The current organizations that represent institutional Reconstructionism are no longer faithfully interpreting Rushdoony having drank the swill that is movement Libertarianism. They are no longer standing for the ideas that RJR championed having drank the Libertarian Kool-aide. They are supporting those who have attacked the Trustee family.
http://www.christendomrestored.com/blog/2012/11/christian-culture-vs-clan-culture/
(See Rebuttal here,)
http://faithandheritage.com/2012/12/a-defense-of-kirk-and-kin-a-response-to-bojidar-marinov-part-1/
They are applying Libertarianism, as opposed to Biblical Law, to Immigration analysis,
http://kevinforcongress.blogspot.com/2014/07/bojidar-marinov-on-immigration-crisis.html
(See Rebuttal here,)
https://ironink.org/2014/07/fisking-american-vision-published-blog-regarding-immigration/
They are explicitly insisting that Rushdoony was a full fledged Libertarian,
But see below.
Currently those reputed to be representing Rushdoony are interpreting Rushdoony through a movement Libertarian grid and they are fouling the well of Reconstructionism and Theonomy. This is why I encourage everyone to go to the primary source (Rushdoony himself) to get the real Rushdoony. You can easily do this through the services of www.pocketcollege.com.
Don’t read these pretenders to the throne. As the bumper sticker used to say; “Read Rushdoony.”
Here is R. J. Rushdoony on his understanding of the Limits of a limitless Libertarianism.
“Reality, in brief was reduced to a particular institution or discipline of which men were the governors or interpreters.
This same fallacy has marked economics, in that all too many free market advocates under the influence of the philosophy of immanentism, have taken this one sphere of law and absolutized it as the only law. We do agree with classical economics as economics, but not as a religious philosophy. When it is converted into a religious philosophy of immanence, it denies validity to any transcendental law of God and to all other institutions and orders of life unless they pass the test of the free market. Free market economics then becomes totalitarian and absolutist: it becomes idolatry. Some hold that the family and prostitution, and normal and perverted sexuality, must compete on a free market basis. Narcotics and good food are reduced to the same free market test. In brief, anything and everything goes, because there is only one law, the free market. (0ne person contends that there should be no title to property, but only the right of access by everyone who is able to command the power and money to take the property, in other words, a free market to power and violence as well.) Any value derived from any other sphere, or any principled judgment derived from a transcendental order, from God, must compete on a free market basis it is held. This is simply saying that the free market is god, and that it is the absolute and sole value in the universe. It assumes there is no God beyond the market, no other law, no other value, than the free market. Moreover, because the free market has its truth in the economic sphere, they sit back smugly, satisfied that they have the key to life. The Marxists no less than other Totalitarians stress one or two partial “Truths”, which they use to exclude all truth and God, and the same is true of those who reduce the world to matter. The free market religionists are really great enemies of free market economics, in that they pervert an instrument of freedom into a form of totalitarianism. It is not surprising that many free market religionists have in recent years been very congenial to the New Left; both are alike in their strident totalitarianism.”
R. J. Rushdoony
Roots of Reconstruction — pg. 809-810
1972
The problem we are having with the current channelers of Rushdoony is that they have an Libertarian agenda that disallows them from reading Rushdoony qua Rushdoony. As difficult as it is, it is time to put aside Institutional Reconstructionism and Theonomy and realize that we have to start anew digging different wells … wells that hold water.
Sad though it may see, I’m quite confident that not even Rousas J. Rushdoony himself would cut a check to support Institutional Reconstructionism as it is expressed today.
