Category: Articles

‘Doing Nothing’ (Rushdoony Classic)

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Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn | Russian author | Britannica

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

I take it R.J. Rushdoony wrote this essay while Alexander Solzhenitsyn was touring the West and warning anyone who’d listen that communism could happen here; and Rushdoony himself was touring U.S. courtrooms, testifying in trial after trial as an expert witness in the defense of Christian schooling and homeschooling.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/doing-nothing

Westerners didn’t understand Solzhenitsyn, Rushdoony wrote, because they don’t understand that “anti-communism” is shallow and powerless if the anti-communists are going to buy into the same humanist twaddle that supports communism. That would be belief in “the sovereignty, not of God, but the state.”

While Americans were shocked by the Soviets’ separating children from their families because their parents had given them Christian religious instruction, at the very same time, here in America, courts were separating children from Christian parents to stop Christian schooling.

No one fought harder for Christian schooling in America than Rushdoony; and by and large, our side has won that battle. But that doesn’t mean the humanists won’t try again to roll back Christian education. They’re always trying.

Western liberals were scandalized when Solzhenitsyn compared American public policies to those of the Soviets. Rushdoony shocked them, too.

Few understood that it was a religious issue. Few wanted to see it that way.

But that’s how it was, and that’s how it is.

‘Social Justice’ Degrades Us

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R.J. Rushdoony was writing about “social justice” decades ago, before most of us had ever heard of it. Here’s one of his essays on the subject, recently re-published. You’ll find it hasn’t aged a bit.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/social-justice

Simply speaking, Rushdoony explained that “social justice” differs from God’s justice because it’s made up by self-anointed intellectuals. It is whatever they say it is, from day to day. It could hardly have helped falling into the arms of postmodernism, which spurns day-to-day reality and goes so far as to say everything is just made up.

But because it’s the product of humanist fat-heads, “social justice” can never be true justice. Only God’s justice can be that. Only God’s law is immutable. Intellectuals’ laws are subject to sudden change. That’s what makes them so hard to live with.

Humanism has a lot to answer for.

My Newswithviews Column, Sept. 24 (‘The Ideology of Playing God’)

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Huff-puff, already running late! Anyway, here’s my Newswithviews column for the week.

I don’t think normal people will ever understand just how warped and lunatic the Far Left is. Having abandoned the real God, they worship themselves and their creations.

The Ideology of Playing God

We are in clear and present danger of falling into these weird people’s hands, now that they have a whole political party to call their own.

America will never be a safe haven for freedom until the Democrat Party is permanently put out of business.

‘The Myth of Social Justice’ (1988!)

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US riots may cause new COVID-19 cases: expert - Global Times

They wouldn’t know what “justice” is if it came up and bit ’em in the glutes.

Wow! “Social Justice” goes all the way back to 1988! But of course it’s always been with us as an aspect of a fallen and deluded world, albeit under many different names.

James Sauer, writing for Chalcedon in 1988, hit the nail right on the head.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/the-myth-of-social-justice

“The aim of social justice,” he declared, “is the establishment of the millenium–without God.” This has been true from the beginning, when the serpent said to Eve, “Ye shall be as gods.”

Now, 32 years later, America is convulsed with riots in her streets, all in the name of Social Justice. But as Mr. Sauer points out, the only relevant consideration, to Social Justice Warriors, is the utopian end: any means to get there are permissible.

It comes from Hell and it smells like brimstone.

‘Science’ Sez… You’re a Fascist!

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Fascist Italy: 44 Harrowing Photos Of Life Under Mussolini

If you’re not a liberal, you must be a fascist!

In 1993, when Otto Scott wrote this article for Chalcedon, liberals were still looking for “scientific” reasons to brand as a Nazi anyone who disagreed with them. And “Science” was only too willing to provide them.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/the-adorno-scale

“The Adorno Scale,” invented in the early 1950s, was supposed to be a “scientific” means of measuring just how far gone in fascism are whatever people you don’t like. Nowadays, of course, they don’t bother: “Systemic Racism,” “White Privilege” and all that simply state you’re automatically guilty if you’re white. They don’t need any “science” to condemn you. Even leftism has been dumbed down.

Dr. Adorno toyed with the idea of including “hostility to modern art” among his list of “fascist” traits, but dropped it when he convinced himself that the typical American slob had never seen any modern art. You don’t dig Jackson Pollock? Heil, Hitler!

Twenty-seven years later, “Settled Science” is still making mischief, still trying to rule the world, still trying to turn ordinary people into livestock. We don’t hear much of the Adorno Scale anymore, but you can be sure its legacy lives on at every looniversity in the Western world.

 

‘Humanist Doomsday Myth Scares Children’ (2009)

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Sully and Mike are back in Monsters Inc prequel trailer Monsters University | Daily Mail Online

Some years ago, a survey came out reporting that “one in three children fear the demise of the planet” due to Man-Made Climate Change.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/humanist-doomsday-myth-scares-children

By 2020 this vision of doom had pretty much passed its shelf life, at least in America. But for a while there it was giving children nightmares.

Humanism always needs a boogieman to scare people into compliance with its diktats. And along came COVID-19 to fill that role. Thanks to the panic raised up by the virus, the world has frittered away six out of this year’s nine months so far–shutting down nations’ economies, quarantining all the healthy people along with the sick, destroying small businesses, freaking people out with fear, and generating a malaise that has deadened everything.

There’s always going to be a doomsday myth. In the 1970s it was The Coming Ice Age. We get Doomsday du Jour. All marine life wiped out! White supremacists take over!

The humanists’ god is the State–that is to say, themselves–and denying the real God, they promise to do everything they say God should have done but didn’t, because there is no God. So the State will create paradise on earth–blah-blah-blah, you know the drill. And if they have to break a few eggs to make the omelet… We’ve seen that one, too.

“Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar,” wrote St. Paul (Romans 3:4).

We’ve come uncomfortably close to that.

‘Defenders of the Faith’ (2014)

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Mark Rushdoony on Charity & Welfare - YouTube

Why do we need anyone to defend the Christian faith?

And what must they defend it from?

Mark Rushdoony answered those questions in this 2014 essay.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/defenders-of-the-faith

Mark refutes the contention that the early church was “pure.” Good lord, no! As people throughout the Roman Empire joined the church, they brought all sorts of pagan ideas in with them. The church needed to call authoritative councils to weed out the paganism and state orthodox Christian belief as plainly as possible–which is why we have formal creeds.

We hardly need say that they’re still trying to import pagan notions, and humanist delusions, into the church (can you say “feminist theology”?). Because the church today is split into so many denominations, it’s no longer possible to hold a council that would speak with real authority. So we rely on the ancient creeds to protect us–and to keep us clear about what we believe.

Mark also provides a list of the major heresies the church had to deal with in the first centuries of its history. Most of them are still around, repackaged under new names. Well, that’s Original Sin for you. In a fallen world, we are always obliged to defend the Christian faith.

 

Rushdoony, ‘The Religious Foundations of Culture’

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The Soviet Union voted itself out of existence in 1991. In his book, The One and the Many, published in 1978, Rushdoony wrote this sobering little essay.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-religious-foundations-of-culture

Who else in 1978 was predicting that the mighty U.S.S.R. would collapse, and soon? The Carter administration was trying to work out the best surrender deal that it could make with Russia. And Rushdoony didn’t just predict the collapse; he told his readers why it would collapse.

All societies founded on humanism will collapse, because their foundation is not Jesus Christ, the rock, but just a lot of shifting sand.

Observing the chaos in our country’s streets today, and hearing the lunatic outcries of the Far Left Crazy–well, think about this essay. Think hard.

Writing Tips: Getting Started

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Little Girl Writing Images, Stock Photos & Vectors | Shutterstock

Faith, 12, has asked me for writing tips, so here we go. The nooze can wait.

I was writing stories when I was 12. I was even writing “books,” longhand in one of those black-and-white composition notebooks. I was, of course, fully convinced that these efforts of mine were good enough to be published; but in the meantime, I read them to my friends.

Which is a way of getting started as a writer!

No one wants to hear this–I certainly didn’t–but it takes a certain amount of life experience to write about life. Maybe that’s why children experimenting with story-telling are so apt to venture into science fiction or fantasy: instead of knowing things, they’re free to make things up.

Ah! But your time isn’t wasted. I started telling stories when I was in third grade, nine years old. I had two friends who liked inventing stories, and we would sit together in their cellar and entertain each other with the stories we made up–mostly about monsters.

Writing itself can be tricky. Getting your point across the way you want it, saying what you really mean to say, so that someone else will understand it–these take years of practice. There’s no substitute for practice. In fact, let me emphasize it: THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR PRACTICE.

I couldn’t do at 15 or 16 the things I can do as a writer now. I couldn’t do at 12 what I could do at 16.

So don’t be discouraged if you can’t get stuff published when you’re 12 (although when I was 12, there was no such thing as self-publishing). The time is not being lost; it’s being invested. What you need to be doing is telling stories–whatever kind of stories you enjoy telling. Tell them to your friends. If your friends like your stories and want to hear more, you are very much on the right track.

And keep at it. Just keep at it. I didn’t get anything published professionally until I was almost 40 years old. You’re bound to do better than that.

‘How Christians Worship False Gods’ (Chalcedon, 2009)

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Understanding R.J. Rushdoony", Mark Rushdoony - YouTube

Mark Rushdoony wrote this piece to highlight the errors of an “abstract theology.”

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/how-christians-worship-false-gods

So what’s wrong with abstract theology? Two things: 1) God is real–not an abstraction, or a concept; and 2) God is not only real: He is a person. We are individual persons because God is a person and He created us in His image.

It’s easy to say “God is a person,” but it’s worth taking time to think about it. This is an astounding thing to realize! Nothing else we say or think about God makes any sense apart from the realization that God is a person. With all that that implies.

And if the very idea of a Person with infinite power and perfect knowledge doesn’t provoke in you a healthy sense of fear… you need to think about it longer.