Random Notes 2
Rushdoony was a head of his time. His "Random Notes" sections in the old Chalcedon Report were just that: random thoughts. We would call this "blogging." In addition, Rushdoony and a select few for years put out a regular audio tape, "The Easy Chair," in which they discussed a particular topic for about an hour. We call this "podcasting." He never ceases to amaze me. Especially since he was so contra-technology!
1. As a boy, born into an immigrant family, in 1916, the United States was to me the land of liberty. My most vivid memories are of new arrivals, and of people gathering from miles around to ask about their loved ones. Did they see them in the long march from Turkey and its massacres into Russia? Sometimes the answer was no, and, at other times, I saw their body on the roadside, or floating in a river, or I saw her seized during a raid and battle with Kurdish or Turkish cavalry. When I started school, lining up outside first of all, before going to class, to pledge allegiance to the flag, was a great and moving experience to me: we were in the land of liberty.
All the same, at times as a boy I wondered if Americans were not at times a bit crazy. One of the common beliefs and hygiene teachings of the day had to do with opening windows wide in the coldest weather, or better, sleeping in a sleeping porch. Going to bed, with windows shut, and a heated brick wrapped in a towel for my feet, made better sense to me! But, I was told, cold rooms and cold showers trained British youth to conquer an empire. I wondered if the empire had not been won by men seeking warmer air and waters which were never chilly!
Craziest of all to me was the universal American remedy of the day, enemas. Very clearly in my school days I realized this was the great terror of American youth. One day, when a boy next to me was obviously unwell, I asked him why he had not stayed home. "Are you crazy?" he asked; if he had not put on an act at breakfast of being as chipper as ever, his mom and pop would have grabbed him and rammed an enema into him! I realized that being a foreigner had its disadvantages, but being an American boy was not all Tom Sawyer fun and games! It included strange and grim things! Of course, we Armenians of those days had a universal remedy also, a happy one: a big bowl of home made yogurt (mahdzoon) every night. I was happy to be an American, but some things made me very happy to be an Armenian also!
2. The Washington Report (P.O. Box 10309, St. Petersburg, Florida 33733) always has some choice humor as well as interesting commentaries. In the February, 1992 number, these delighted me:
5. Critics have a poor record in history, but they still go on assuming that their judgments are valid. In 1877, the Odessa Courier's critic said of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina that it was "sentimental rubbish. . . . Show me one page that contains an idea." William Winstanley in 1687 said of John Milton: "His fame is gone out like a candle in a snuff and his memory will always stink." On October 24, 1878, the New York Times said of Bizet's Carmen, "As a work of art, it is naught." How would the world get along without critics?!
6. In A Medieval Book of Seasons by Marie Collins and Virginia Davis (Harper Collins, 1992) reference is made (p.68) to the gleaners, the poor who were allowed into the fields to glean. This Biblical custom has been practiced over the centuries and still prevails in some parts of the United States. Much more of Biblical law is still current practice than many people will either admit or recognize.
7. 1 recall as a boy reading of Americans whose motto was, "Death before dishonor." Our Congress has revived this in a revised form: "Dishonor before death."
8. Sometime back, I reviewed a very important book, graciously sent to me by a longtime friend, Marguerite Lane, whose father I well remember as a saintly gentleman of the old school. Now this same book is out in an expanded edition: Joel R. Beeke: Assurance of Faith, Calvin English Puritanism, and the Dutch Second Reformation; New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang, 1991 (available from Bible Truth Books, P.O. Box 2373, Kalamazoo, Michigan 49003; $28; Michigan customers add 407o sales tax). This is a serious study, a book for pastors, theologians, and informed laymen. It is a careful and very important work. Great advances in Christianity have been preceded by a revival of emphasis on the doctrine of the assurance of faith and all it implies and presupposes. As one historian has observed, without a faith in assurance of redemption and victory, the church has never thrived nor grown. This is why it is necessary to understand what assurance of faith has meant and means. If the church chooses, it can be greatly richer for Dr. Beeke's work.
9. Sandford Dody was for years a "ghost writer" for prominent actors and actresses. In his own autobiography, Giving Up the Ghost (1980), written to mark his abandonment of ghost writing, he makes a telling observation about one particularly famous actress: she was "her own religion." "One must accept her therefore on pure faith." Those are sad lines to write about anyone, but how much worse if they describe a clergyman? Someone who has a file a foot thick on one such man tells me that more is coming in. People who make themselves their own religion have a faith that soon perishes and is eternally damned.
10. Last November, Concord, California voted down a "gay rights" measure for the second time. A graffiti which appeared soon thereafter on a bridge read "Kill Christians. " The Christian community had defeated the measure.
11. One of my fond memories of almost twenty years ago at a bookstore in a Los Angeles suburb: Some non-selling books, slightly shelf-worn, were marked down to less than a fourth of their original price. I spotted one on Jewish history, The Dark Ages, 711-1096, published by Rutgers in 1966. Before I could get to it, a slender old gentleman picked it up lovingly and began to examine a volume in The World History of the Jewish People, vol. 2, The Dark Ages, 711-1096. His wife, whose accent was obviously Jewish, was annoyed and wanted to leave. He said, mildly but earnestly, "There is much valuable information in this book. "Put it down," she ordered, "you know too much already!" Thank God, Dorothy never says that! She helps me locate the important books with equal delight. I did get that book when the old gentleman reluctantly put it down!
12. A curious book I read recently was by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Witchdoctors and Psychiatry, The Common Roots of Psychotherapy and its Future (1986; a revision of a book published in 1972). He holds that "the techniques used by western psychiatrists are, with a few exceptions, on exactly the same scientific plane as the techniques used by witch-doctors" (p. 11). However, Dr. Fuller favors licensing and accreditation! One wonders, after reading his book, when all psychiatrists and witchdoctors gain their licenses, whether or not the Christian clergy will be allowed to carry on their ministry of the cure of souls. Already attempts have been made to control the clergy in this sphere.
13. Fidelity, December, 1991, p. 27, reported that a feminist magazine turned down an article by Diane Bartz on lesbians who batter their lovers because the writer was not herself a lesbian! So much for tolerance on the left.
1. As a boy, born into an immigrant family, in 1916, the United States was to me the land of liberty. My most vivid memories are of new arrivals, and of people gathering from miles around to ask about their loved ones. Did they see them in the long march from Turkey and its massacres into Russia? Sometimes the answer was no, and, at other times, I saw their body on the roadside, or floating in a river, or I saw her seized during a raid and battle with Kurdish or Turkish cavalry. When I started school, lining up outside first of all, before going to class, to pledge allegiance to the flag, was a great and moving experience to me: we were in the land of liberty.
All the same, at times as a boy I wondered if Americans were not at times a bit crazy. One of the common beliefs and hygiene teachings of the day had to do with opening windows wide in the coldest weather, or better, sleeping in a sleeping porch. Going to bed, with windows shut, and a heated brick wrapped in a towel for my feet, made better sense to me! But, I was told, cold rooms and cold showers trained British youth to conquer an empire. I wondered if the empire had not been won by men seeking warmer air and waters which were never chilly!
Craziest of all to me was the universal American remedy of the day, enemas. Very clearly in my school days I realized this was the great terror of American youth. One day, when a boy next to me was obviously unwell, I asked him why he had not stayed home. "Are you crazy?" he asked; if he had not put on an act at breakfast of being as chipper as ever, his mom and pop would have grabbed him and rammed an enema into him! I realized that being a foreigner had its disadvantages, but being an American boy was not all Tom Sawyer fun and games! It included strange and grim things! Of course, we Armenians of those days had a universal remedy also, a happy one: a big bowl of home made yogurt (mahdzoon) every night. I was happy to be an American, but some things made me very happy to be an Armenian also!
2. The Washington Report (P.O. Box 10309, St. Petersburg, Florida 33733) always has some choice humor as well as interesting commentaries. In the February, 1992 number, these delighted me:
What can you say for a country that says GOD is dead and ELVIS is alive.
Overheard in divorce court: My wife converted me to religion. I never believed in hell until I married her.
Moses came down from Mt. Sinai and told his followers: "I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that God has reduced the commandments to ten. The bad news is that adultery is still in."
One dog to another dog: "Show me a home where the buffalo roam and I'll show you a smelly living room."3. On October 20, 1991, the Los Angeles Solo Repertory Orchestra had, as its concluding number, Symphony no. 4, Opus 78, by Martin Selbrede. The program notes read in part:
The symphony, subtitled RECONSTRUCTION, evokes Mendelsohn's Reformation Symphony in denoting a religious programme, but follows John Adams in depicting a contemporary phenomenon.... Selbrede's literary/philosophical source is contemporary theologian R.J. Rushdoony. (THANK YOU, Martin!)4. Some things never work out right. In 1987, the French decided to give safe driving awards to good motorists; the awards would be free petrol tickets. After several days, no motorist qualified, so it was quietly decided to award the tickets to any driver obeying the basic traffic laws. It worked out badly. The first driver the gendarmes tried to flag down assumed he was in trouble and raced off; the second driver ran through a red light to get away and got a ticket instead!
5. Critics have a poor record in history, but they still go on assuming that their judgments are valid. In 1877, the Odessa Courier's critic said of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina that it was "sentimental rubbish. . . . Show me one page that contains an idea." William Winstanley in 1687 said of John Milton: "His fame is gone out like a candle in a snuff and his memory will always stink." On October 24, 1878, the New York Times said of Bizet's Carmen, "As a work of art, it is naught." How would the world get along without critics?!
6. In A Medieval Book of Seasons by Marie Collins and Virginia Davis (Harper Collins, 1992) reference is made (p.68) to the gleaners, the poor who were allowed into the fields to glean. This Biblical custom has been practiced over the centuries and still prevails in some parts of the United States. Much more of Biblical law is still current practice than many people will either admit or recognize.
7. 1 recall as a boy reading of Americans whose motto was, "Death before dishonor." Our Congress has revived this in a revised form: "Dishonor before death."
8. Sometime back, I reviewed a very important book, graciously sent to me by a longtime friend, Marguerite Lane, whose father I well remember as a saintly gentleman of the old school. Now this same book is out in an expanded edition: Joel R. Beeke: Assurance of Faith, Calvin English Puritanism, and the Dutch Second Reformation; New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang, 1991 (available from Bible Truth Books, P.O. Box 2373, Kalamazoo, Michigan 49003; $28; Michigan customers add 407o sales tax). This is a serious study, a book for pastors, theologians, and informed laymen. It is a careful and very important work. Great advances in Christianity have been preceded by a revival of emphasis on the doctrine of the assurance of faith and all it implies and presupposes. As one historian has observed, without a faith in assurance of redemption and victory, the church has never thrived nor grown. This is why it is necessary to understand what assurance of faith has meant and means. If the church chooses, it can be greatly richer for Dr. Beeke's work.
9. Sandford Dody was for years a "ghost writer" for prominent actors and actresses. In his own autobiography, Giving Up the Ghost (1980), written to mark his abandonment of ghost writing, he makes a telling observation about one particularly famous actress: she was "her own religion." "One must accept her therefore on pure faith." Those are sad lines to write about anyone, but how much worse if they describe a clergyman? Someone who has a file a foot thick on one such man tells me that more is coming in. People who make themselves their own religion have a faith that soon perishes and is eternally damned.
10. Last November, Concord, California voted down a "gay rights" measure for the second time. A graffiti which appeared soon thereafter on a bridge read "Kill Christians. " The Christian community had defeated the measure.
11. One of my fond memories of almost twenty years ago at a bookstore in a Los Angeles suburb: Some non-selling books, slightly shelf-worn, were marked down to less than a fourth of their original price. I spotted one on Jewish history, The Dark Ages, 711-1096, published by Rutgers in 1966. Before I could get to it, a slender old gentleman picked it up lovingly and began to examine a volume in The World History of the Jewish People, vol. 2, The Dark Ages, 711-1096. His wife, whose accent was obviously Jewish, was annoyed and wanted to leave. He said, mildly but earnestly, "There is much valuable information in this book. "Put it down," she ordered, "you know too much already!" Thank God, Dorothy never says that! She helps me locate the important books with equal delight. I did get that book when the old gentleman reluctantly put it down!
12. A curious book I read recently was by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, M.D. Witchdoctors and Psychiatry, The Common Roots of Psychotherapy and its Future (1986; a revision of a book published in 1972). He holds that "the techniques used by western psychiatrists are, with a few exceptions, on exactly the same scientific plane as the techniques used by witch-doctors" (p. 11). However, Dr. Fuller favors licensing and accreditation! One wonders, after reading his book, when all psychiatrists and witchdoctors gain their licenses, whether or not the Christian clergy will be allowed to carry on their ministry of the cure of souls. Already attempts have been made to control the clergy in this sphere.
13. Fidelity, December, 1991, p. 27, reported that a feminist magazine turned down an article by Diane Bartz on lesbians who batter their lovers because the writer was not herself a lesbian! So much for tolerance on the left.
