Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey
Rushdoony summed up his argument in just a single sentence:
“Politics takes credit for what others do.”
https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-fallacy-of-politics
His example is a telling one. Martin Luther King and President Lyndon Johnson take most of the credit for advancing civil rights in America–but there were two non-politicians whose work was much more important:
Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers who hired Robinson to be the first African-American to play in the major leagues (and did he play!). The day Robinson first took the field for the Dodgers was the day segregation and formal racial discrimination took a mortal wound. After Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey had done their work, things would never be the same. Baseball did what 100 years of politics couldn’t do.
Politics, Rushdoony said, works from the top down. But the real progress is made from the bottom up, by “ordinary people” who hold no public office. They work for what’s right–and that’s the lesson.
Work for the good.