Random Notes 4
By R.J. Rushdoony
1. I picked up a used book today for a dollar, Peter Lyon's Success Story, The Life and Times of S.S. McClure (1963). Dorothy began reading it while I was in the bank, and she shared this delightful incident with me. In 1902, Miss Ellen Stone, an American missionary, together with a young Bulgarian missionary Mme. Katerina Tsilka, was kidnapped by brigands in Macedonia and held for ransom. (Macedonia was then a part of the Turkish Empire.) American churches began to raise the ransom money. Meanwhile, the brigands were sorry that they ever kidnapped Ellen Stone! She was neither weak nor helpless, and certainly not fearful. When the brigands warned her against trying to escape, she told them, contemptuously, that "since they had stolen her God-given freedom, it was their duty to restore it, and she would not help them to do so by so much as lifting a finger" (p. 197). She ordered her captors about, lectured them about the faith, made some swear off tobacco, and even reduced some of them to tears. They soon wanted rid of her. Was this unusual? No one who knows something about American pioneer women would say so. The feminist accounts of what women were like in those days is a myth. Stephen Perks, when last here from England, expressed amusement at American ideas about the Victorian era. He says it was the time of "the reign of the battle-axes"! In the stories of W.W. Jacobs, a writer of that era, the women came through as the strong characters. People, of course, prefer their myths about the past to the realities.
2. Mark and I have both spoken and written against the voucher plan. Some churchmen feel I am anti-Christian for doing so! The September 1992 Readers Digest, in an article by Murray Weidenbaum on "Robbing Peter to Bail Out Paul," the subject of federal aid to business is discussed. The first myth Weidenbaum cites is the belief that such funding does not involve government control, just assistance. No federal or state funds, he states, go without strings attached. "Any business manager who is so naive (as to believe in no strings) should not be let out alone at night, much less let loose in Washington" (p. 88). Any churchmen who buys the voucher argument is morally derelict.
3. From time to time, I remember with affection and respect and elderly widow I knew from c. 1953 to 1962, Mrs. Ellen Larkin. During those last five years, she was legally blind, and she had to use a walker to get about. She insisted on remaining alone in her book-lined house. Her son, a professor, lived two states away. His strong-willed wife's solution was to put Mrs. Larkin in a nursing home. A neighboring women checked twice a day on Ellen Larkin; sometimes she would fall and wait for help. She cooked for herself. She never complained, and she was a joy to call on. I would, besides Scripture, read other things to her. Her favorite poem was Rupert Brooke's "The Great Lover," wherein the poet celebrates the simple things he loved:
4. What's in a name? I have raised this question again and again, and I have no answer. We have some surnames on our mailing list inconsiderable numbers; in any telephone directory, these same names take up pages. But, when it comes to giving, some we never hear from, others only infrequently, whereas one common surname, Johnson, marks generous givers and supportive persons. Among familiar but not as common names, Robbins stand out. Why, I don't know! But please, all of you, change your names to Johnson or Robbins, and let's see what happens!
5. The newspapers are full of stories about atrocities perpetrated by Serbians against Croats and Moslems. They may be true, and, again, they may not. I am old enough to remember that, as a child, I heard of all kinds of atrocities committed by the Kaiser's Germany against women and children. These were later proven to be false, and Allied atrocities were real. Recently, we had the evil war against Iraq, certainly a dictatorship, like virtually all the Arab states, and better than most, and more friendly to Christians than almost all others. Iraq fought to regain Kuwait, which had been forcibly taken from them. Why did they suddenly become the epitome of evil.
Wars are fought in terms of power politics, not morality. If, sometimes, a moral issue is present, so much better to drum up popular support.
The Balkans were under Turkish power and oppression until this century. They all dreamed, in the last century, of a united realm and kingdom under Serbia. The great powers, notably the Hapsburgs in Austria, worked to keep them divided in order to make it an area under their control. Germany's dream of a Berlin-Bagdad system furthered this emphasis on dividing the Balkans, and the major target was Serbia. World War I began because ostensibly a Serbian plot led to the murder of the Austrian archduke at Sarajevo. Even during that war, an English scholar wrote that the murder served Austria, not Serbia, which was ready to do almost anything to placate Austria in the aftermath.
It is good, therefore, that Dorset Books has reprinted an important 1917 book, R.G.D. Laffan: The Serbs, The Guardians of the Gate. Read it before you judge a great people. Atrocities? There are perhaps some on both sides, but what is the truth of the conflict? I am suspicious of what the media stridently proclaims as the truth.
6. I love books. They are not only my tools but a source of delight to me. I have maybe forty thousand or more and always want more! (My problem is space for them: I need an addition to house them!) Dorothy's problem with me is getting me to spend money for clothes because I want to buy books instead. I have been stalling her for some time, because, I tell her, at 76, how do I know that I can use new clothes very long? Well, I have been feeling so healthy of late that my excuse is now wearing thin!
7. John Lofton concluded his September 1992, Lofton Letter with these words: "Support Your Local Calvinists."
8. Many of you know that the West in 1992 has had many forest fires, including, one in our county that destroyed between seventeen and eighteen thousand acres and about forty or more homes. Most such fires are started either by arson or by lightening. A contributing cause is that many city people, in moving into the country, refuse to clear out the brush and deadwood and thus leave a dangerous scene around their house. Even more, according to my son, Mark, who is, among his many duties, a volunteer fireman who has fought forest and brush fires from the Yosemite area south of us to some two hundred miles north of us, the forest service has been compelled by environmentalists to give up a safety practice. By allowing cattle to graze on forestlands, brush was previously destroyed by the cows, and fire-dry grass eaten, thereby reducing the fire hazard. Also, the cattle, by breaking down and destroying brush (greasewood and like shrubs) made it easier for young trees to sprout and grow in the available space. Too many natural disasters are man-made.
9. I have a picture, supplied by Ron and Lesha Myers of Concord, California, of a Spray-painted sign on a bridge on Oakmead Drive, taken on December 24, 1991. It read, "Kill Christians." The Christian community had, for the second time, defeated a so-called "gay rights" bill, and this was the response. The media refuses to take note of such things. Can you imagine the reaction if someone maliciously painted, "Kill anti-Christians"? Too often, the "news" is news if it is anti-Christian.
1. I picked up a used book today for a dollar, Peter Lyon's Success Story, The Life and Times of S.S. McClure (1963). Dorothy began reading it while I was in the bank, and she shared this delightful incident with me. In 1902, Miss Ellen Stone, an American missionary, together with a young Bulgarian missionary Mme. Katerina Tsilka, was kidnapped by brigands in Macedonia and held for ransom. (Macedonia was then a part of the Turkish Empire.) American churches began to raise the ransom money. Meanwhile, the brigands were sorry that they ever kidnapped Ellen Stone! She was neither weak nor helpless, and certainly not fearful. When the brigands warned her against trying to escape, she told them, contemptuously, that "since they had stolen her God-given freedom, it was their duty to restore it, and she would not help them to do so by so much as lifting a finger" (p. 197). She ordered her captors about, lectured them about the faith, made some swear off tobacco, and even reduced some of them to tears. They soon wanted rid of her. Was this unusual? No one who knows something about American pioneer women would say so. The feminist accounts of what women were like in those days is a myth. Stephen Perks, when last here from England, expressed amusement at American ideas about the Victorian era. He says it was the time of "the reign of the battle-axes"! In the stories of W.W. Jacobs, a writer of that era, the women came through as the strong characters. People, of course, prefer their myths about the past to the realities.
2. Mark and I have both spoken and written against the voucher plan. Some churchmen feel I am anti-Christian for doing so! The September 1992 Readers Digest, in an article by Murray Weidenbaum on "Robbing Peter to Bail Out Paul," the subject of federal aid to business is discussed. The first myth Weidenbaum cites is the belief that such funding does not involve government control, just assistance. No federal or state funds, he states, go without strings attached. "Any business manager who is so naive (as to believe in no strings) should not be let out alone at night, much less let loose in Washington" (p. 88). Any churchmen who buys the voucher argument is morally derelict.
3. From time to time, I remember with affection and respect and elderly widow I knew from c. 1953 to 1962, Mrs. Ellen Larkin. During those last five years, she was legally blind, and she had to use a walker to get about. She insisted on remaining alone in her book-lined house. Her son, a professor, lived two states away. His strong-willed wife's solution was to put Mrs. Larkin in a nursing home. A neighboring women checked twice a day on Ellen Larkin; sometimes she would fall and wait for help. She cooked for herself. She never complained, and she was a joy to call on. I would, besides Scripture, read other things to her. Her favorite poem was Rupert Brooke's "The Great Lover," wherein the poet celebrates the simple things he loved:
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soonEllen Larkin never complained, and she was always grateful; she had a joyful disposition.
Smooth away trouble....
The benison of hot water; furs to touch:
The good smell of old clothes; and others such.
4. What's in a name? I have raised this question again and again, and I have no answer. We have some surnames on our mailing list inconsiderable numbers; in any telephone directory, these same names take up pages. But, when it comes to giving, some we never hear from, others only infrequently, whereas one common surname, Johnson, marks generous givers and supportive persons. Among familiar but not as common names, Robbins stand out. Why, I don't know! But please, all of you, change your names to Johnson or Robbins, and let's see what happens!
5. The newspapers are full of stories about atrocities perpetrated by Serbians against Croats and Moslems. They may be true, and, again, they may not. I am old enough to remember that, as a child, I heard of all kinds of atrocities committed by the Kaiser's Germany against women and children. These were later proven to be false, and Allied atrocities were real. Recently, we had the evil war against Iraq, certainly a dictatorship, like virtually all the Arab states, and better than most, and more friendly to Christians than almost all others. Iraq fought to regain Kuwait, which had been forcibly taken from them. Why did they suddenly become the epitome of evil.
Wars are fought in terms of power politics, not morality. If, sometimes, a moral issue is present, so much better to drum up popular support.
The Balkans were under Turkish power and oppression until this century. They all dreamed, in the last century, of a united realm and kingdom under Serbia. The great powers, notably the Hapsburgs in Austria, worked to keep them divided in order to make it an area under their control. Germany's dream of a Berlin-Bagdad system furthered this emphasis on dividing the Balkans, and the major target was Serbia. World War I began because ostensibly a Serbian plot led to the murder of the Austrian archduke at Sarajevo. Even during that war, an English scholar wrote that the murder served Austria, not Serbia, which was ready to do almost anything to placate Austria in the aftermath.
It is good, therefore, that Dorset Books has reprinted an important 1917 book, R.G.D. Laffan: The Serbs, The Guardians of the Gate. Read it before you judge a great people. Atrocities? There are perhaps some on both sides, but what is the truth of the conflict? I am suspicious of what the media stridently proclaims as the truth.
6. I love books. They are not only my tools but a source of delight to me. I have maybe forty thousand or more and always want more! (My problem is space for them: I need an addition to house them!) Dorothy's problem with me is getting me to spend money for clothes because I want to buy books instead. I have been stalling her for some time, because, I tell her, at 76, how do I know that I can use new clothes very long? Well, I have been feeling so healthy of late that my excuse is now wearing thin!
7. John Lofton concluded his September 1992, Lofton Letter with these words: "Support Your Local Calvinists."
8. Many of you know that the West in 1992 has had many forest fires, including, one in our county that destroyed between seventeen and eighteen thousand acres and about forty or more homes. Most such fires are started either by arson or by lightening. A contributing cause is that many city people, in moving into the country, refuse to clear out the brush and deadwood and thus leave a dangerous scene around their house. Even more, according to my son, Mark, who is, among his many duties, a volunteer fireman who has fought forest and brush fires from the Yosemite area south of us to some two hundred miles north of us, the forest service has been compelled by environmentalists to give up a safety practice. By allowing cattle to graze on forestlands, brush was previously destroyed by the cows, and fire-dry grass eaten, thereby reducing the fire hazard. Also, the cattle, by breaking down and destroying brush (greasewood and like shrubs) made it easier for young trees to sprout and grow in the available space. Too many natural disasters are man-made.
9. I have a picture, supplied by Ron and Lesha Myers of Concord, California, of a Spray-painted sign on a bridge on Oakmead Drive, taken on December 24, 1991. It read, "Kill Christians." The Christian community had, for the second time, defeated a so-called "gay rights" bill, and this was the response. The media refuses to take note of such things. Can you imagine the reaction if someone maliciously painted, "Kill anti-Christians"? Too often, the "news" is news if it is anti-Christian.
