Tag: Rushdoony

One Characteristic Of Babel Humanistic Statism

Ironically, at the same time that humanistic statism de-personalizes life and man, it speaks often about ‘the Brotherhood of man’ a term from family life. This doctrine of brotherhood, however, is an intellectual concept and an abstraction. It has nothing to do with family life, even though the term ‘family of man’ is often used. This idea of the brotherhood refers to the statist integration of races, nationalities, and cultures to form a homogeneous blend in which all the distinctives of each are lost. The God given personal identities and ways of white, black Oriental, and other peoples are all offensive to these statists. They seek to create a humanity which has no personal identities but acts, responds, and functions in terms of social evolutionary plans. Theirs is a plan for death and they call it life.”

R. J. Rushdoony
The Roots of Reconstruction — pg. 323

What RJR is noting we might call “universal racism.” Universal racism would be that racism that treats people in an unloving way who do not agree that “integration of races, nationalities, and cultures to form a homogeneous blend in which all the distinctives of each are lost” is a good thing. Actually, the problem of Universal Racism is far more prevalent today then any other kind of racism

The Nations As Nations Have Their Place In The Kingdom Of God

http://chalcedon.edu/…/audio/inheritance-and-possession/

Question (Somewhat garbled)

One point of Scripture is it speaking of the unity of God’s people. How does that compare to the Nationalism of today?

Rushdoony Answers

The Bible is not saying it is going to be a one world order governmentally. That is the only way the modern mind can think of a world united — governmentally. It means rather, united in Christ without destroying the integrity of the various national groups because they have their place under God. Thus, there is no reason to believe that in God’s Kingdom on earth there will be no longer any Russians or Chinese. It does mean emphatically that they will be alike governed by the word of God. The principle of unity is Christ. It is not a World state. And this of course is where many groups like Armstrong’s group and others go sadly astray. They are insistent on seeing a one world state to come through either Christ’s premillennial return or through some kind of human agency with the British Israelites or the British Empire. These are all heretical views I believe.

RJR Lecture — Law and Life

http://chalcedon.edu/…/audio/inheritance-and-possession/

Go to the point where there is 3:45 left on the lecture

Rushdoony Exposes The Faults Of Movement Libertarianism

“I am a strong opponent of the free market idea because it is a utopian idea that presupposes a world without sin. It presupposes a world without borders. After all, if we are a free market and other countries are protectionist,… There is going to be a disadvantage.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Easy Chair talk
http://www.pocketcollege.com/wiki/index.php?title=Unemployment_-_EC354

Here we have another proof that RJR was NOT a movement libertarian. I believe what RJR was doing by calling himself “Libertarian” at times was attempting to co-opt the movement in his direction by subtly redefining the word.

Another problem with movement Libertarianism is that it absolutizes property rights, extending those property rights as even being over the self. The problem is that property rights are not absolute but have to be relativized in relation to the true property owner — the God of the Bible. If we absolutize our individual property rights then we make ourselves to be gods, suggesting that there is not a higher ownership beyond ourselves. It is true that we have ownership privileges but only as stewards of God, most high.

When we absolutize property rights as our property rights, we get this kind of mindset as expressed by movement Libertarians,

“The proper groundwork for analysis of abortion is in every man’s absolute right of self-ownership. This implies immediately that every woman has the absolute right to her own body, that she has absolute dominion over her body and everything within it. This includes the fetus…Abortion should be looked upon, not as “murder” of a living person, but as the expulsion of an unwanted invader from the mother’s body. Any laws restricting or prohibiting abortion are therefore invasions of the rights of mothers.”

Murray Rothbard
“Ethics of Liberty”

“Regardless of his age, we must grant to every child the absolute right to runaway and to find new foster parents who will voluntarily adopt him, or to try to exist on his own. Parents may try to persuade the runaway child to return, but it is totally impermissible enslavement and an aggression upon his right of self-ownership for them to use force to compel him to return. The absolute right to run away is the child’s ultimate expression of his right of self-ownership, regardless of age.”

~~Murray Rothbard
“The Ethics of Liberty”

Rushdoony warned against this kind of Libertarianism,

“Modern libertarianism rests on a radical relativism: no law or standard exists apart from man himself. Some libertarian professors state in classes and in conversation that any position is valid as long as it does not claim to be the truth, and that therefore Biblical religion is the essence of evil to them. There must be, according to these libertarians, a total free market of ideas and practices.

If all men are angels, then a total free market of ideas and practices will produce only an angelic community. But if all men are sinners in need of Christ’s redemption, then a free market of ideas and practices will produce only a chaos of evil and anarchy. Both the libertarian and the Biblical positions rest on faith, the one on faith in the natural goodness of man, the other on God’s revelation concerning man’s sinful state and glorious potential in Christ. Clearly the so-called rational faith of such irrationalism as Hess and Rothbard represent has no support in the history of man nor in any formulation of reason. It is a faith, and a particularly blind faith in man, which they represent.”

R. J. Rushdoony
~~Institutes of Biblical Law — pp. 289-290

Christianity is Worth Fighting For … Rushdoony

Chrysostom, in dealing also with the conflict w/ Caesar warned his people in his sermon “Concerning the Statutes” Homily III 19

“This certainly I foretell and testify, that although this cloud should pass away, and we yet remain in the same condition of listlessness, we shall again have to suffer much heavier evils than those we are not dreading; for I do not so much fear the wrath of the Emperor, as your own listlessness.”

“Here Chrysostom put his finger on the heart of the matter: the threat was less the Emperor and more a listless and indifferent church. The same problem confronts us today. The greater majority of church members do not feel that Christianity is worth fighting for, let alone dying for. They only want the freedom to be irrelevant, and to emit pious gush as a substitute for faithfulness and obedience. In soap opera religion, life is w/o dominion; instead, it is a forever-abounding mess, met with a sensitive and bleeding heart. Soap opera religion is the faith of the castrated, of the impotent, and the irrelevant. The devotees of soap opera religion are full of impotent self pity and rage over the human predicament, but are devoid of any constructive action; only destruction and negation become them.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Roots of Reconstruction — pg 27

Further Observations On RJR & Libertarianism

I don’t have a problem with RJR quoting the Libertarians or even with him making common cause with them as co-belligerents on certain issues. I acknowledge that RJR often was in bed with the Libertarians. I will even say that I can see RJR supporting a Ron Paul candidacy for President. (Does anyone know if RJR said anything regarding the Paul Libertarian Presidential Candidacy in 1988?)

However, what I object to, as coming from American Vision, is that they want to thump that Libertarian side of RJR completely and then turn around and disavow all the Kinist quotes from RJR as if that side of RJR never existed. The Kinist side of RJR is the balance and tension that is needed for all his Libertarian statements. It is true that RJR was a Libertarian as that concept finds meaning in the context of God’s Law word, but it is equally true that RJR was a Kinist as that concept finds meaning in the context of God’s law word. The fact that RJR would have embraced both Libertarian strains and Kinist strains fits perfectly with his understanding of, “The One and The Many,” and the fact that organizations invoking the name of RJR finds problems with either of these necessary strains is telling. Is it possible to be loyal to RJR and recognize his Libertarian strains while denouncing those who also recognize his Kinist strains or would such lopsidedness communicate that such a organization is leaning to far in a non God’s law word conditioned Libertarianism?

But AV doesn’t want the kinist RJR. They only want the Libertarian RJR. Meanwhile the Daniel Richies, Stephen Hallbrooks, and John Loftons don’t want either the Libertarian nor the Kinist RJR. The Theonomy of those people is highly suspect.

Rush was no Libertarian in the Rothbard or Rand sense of the word but He was smart enough to use them to advance His agenda, which had a libertarian side as that Libertarianism was conditioned by a Christian Theonomic Reconstructionist worldview.

I think what we might be seeing now is the unraveling of the coalition that RJR built. RJR was able to bring together a coalitiion of Libertarians, Kinists, soft covenanters, agrarians, and southern sympathizers but it seems that coalition is becoming undone.