Lawless Law

by Rev. R.J. Rushdoony

California Farmer 236:1 (Jan. 1, 1972), p. 23.

A recent news item stated that a court in Kirby, Great Britain, ruled against Amanda Egan, age ten, who was crossing over a crosswalk on roller skates. A truck struck her, but the court ruled, because Amanda had been on wheels, she lost her rights as a pedestrian and had no right to the pedestrian crossing or to damages.

Of course, had Amanda been skating elsewhere in the street when struck, she would have also lost, because the court would have ruled that she had no right to the street.

The court, in this case, because of a technicality, the wheels, deprived Amanda Egan of justice. The court was lawless in the name of the law. The law was used to pervert the purpose of the law. We should not be surprised at this.

Last month, a state official told me that the law itself means little. “If,” he said, “I owe you a thousand dollars, it makes little difference whether you have my signed note for it, or just my word. The note is worth only as much as my word is. If you go to court against me, it will cost as much or more to win, and winning is no guarantee you can collect. The note and the law are no better than your character and mine.”

This is the heart of the matter. If men are not godly, the best-intentioned laws can serve ungodly and lawless ends. This was true in Amanda Egan’s case, and in many other cases. The law becomes a force for lawlessness when the people and the courts are ungodly.

To trust or hope that a new law is the answer is to be a fool. I know people who have spent years and money agitating for new laws to remedy all manner of problems, and they cannot understand why matters get worse. They insist on believing that another election and another law will somehow solve the problem.

The Psalmist wisely saw the issue: “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain” (Ps. 127:1). New and good laws without new and godly men are like houses with roofs but neither walls nor foundations: they cannot stand.

We have some bad laws on our books in America, but also thousands of good ones. We were a godly people before we passed many of those laws; we have neither been made better nor preserved from ungodliness by having them.

Laws are good, in their place. But first and last, we need godly men and soon. God, give us men!

Falling Into Error

It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error. —Justice Robert H. Jackson

Choosing Politicians

In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate - look to his character. —Noah Webster

The Best of All Books

The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts. —John Jay

Steven Mosher Releases First in Series of YouTube Videos

Steven Mosher Releases First in Series of YouTube Videos

FRONT ROYAL, Virginia, July 3 /Christian Newswire/ -- Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, has released the first in a series of short, high-impact YouTube videos designed to grab the attention of the internet generation.

"There a new generation of pro-lifers out there," says Mosher. "They are used to getting their news and information from the Internet, rather than from print publications. Our YouTube videos--state-of-the-art, visually exciting, and superbly edited--are designed for this audience."

The flagship video runs about 5 minutes long, and details Mosher's experiences in China, where he first discovered the one-child policy in 1979. Future videos will include, according to Mosher, "snapshots of our baby-saving work around the globe," making them "a must-see for anyone who supports the cause of Life."

These videos will be available in English and Spanish, and can be found by typing the words "Steven Mosher" into the YouTube search engine.

Ideas can have deadly consequences

One-Child Terror Campaign Continues
by Steven W. Mosher

The forced abortion campaign hit the southern Chinese province like a deadly hurricane. The provincial government decided that too many babies were being born. Local officials were warned that population control quotas had to be met or their heads would be on the chopping block. They reacted by hunting down and arresting hundreds of women for the crime of being pregnant. Taken by force to hospitals and clinics, these were aborted against their will. It did not matter whether the women were past the point of viability, or even whether they were already in labor. Their babies were killed all the same.

The above could stand as an accurate description of what I witnessed in China's Guangdong province in 1979-80. In reality, it is what is happening right now in the neighboring province of Guangxi. And what has happened in county after county, province after province, over the past 27 years. The one-child terror campaign that started back in 1980 continues to the present day, violating women and tearing apart families throughout China.


Guangxi's proximity to Hong Kong allowed word of the Communist crackdowns to leak out.
In fact, the only thing unusual about this latest campaign is how quickly news of these atrocities spread outside of China. Guangxi province is not far from Hong Kong. No sooner had the campaign begun in May of this year than word reached the former British colony and from there the outside world. Guangxi, like Guangdong and Hong Kong, is Cantonese speaking. It is also one of the more developed regions of China, where many people have cell phones and access to the Internet. It was by these means that the victims of the terror campaign communicated their suffering to the outside world.

National Public Radio, the taxpayer-funded alternative to Rush Limbaugh, actually ran a story on the campaign on its Morning Edition show. This described in harrowing detail the plight of Guangxi resident Wei Linrong. She and her husband, Liang Yage, already had one child but wanted a second. Mrs. Liang was arrested when she was seven months pregnant and forced to abort her child. The Liangs are Christian, NPR reported, and do not believe in abortion.

The Hong Kong and foreign press also reported how local officials were imposing punitive fines on those who had already given birth to second children. These fines were, in some cases, equivalent to several years' income.

In response to these heavy-handed tactics riots broke out in 28 towns throughout the region. Thousands went on the rampage, storming government buildings, breaking windows, smashing furniture and vandalizing vehicles. Some rioters even tried to set buildings on fire. To quell the unrest, the regional government called in hundreds of armed police.

Tian Congming, President of Xinhua News Agency. This Agency claimed that the Chinese who rioted against the one-child policy were only to be "re-educated."
The sympathy of the foreign press was obviously with the victims of forced abortions. NPR’s Morning Edition told not just the Liang's story, but other tales of Chinese women whose babies were aborted weeks, sometimes days before they were due to be born. The Los Angeles Times published full-color photos of the riots and printed the stories of peasants who had “finally had enough.” Even the New York Times finally got into the act with a long piece about the tragic inner-city abortion rates among young, unmarried Chinese women. (It apparently took the Times several days to figure out a pro-abortion slant.)

The official Xinhua News Agency, reacting to the foreign media coverage, went into damage control mode. Xinhua claimed that only 28 people were arrested in the aftermath of the riots, a number which seems ridiculously low under the circumstances. Xinhua also suggested that instead of jail terms the misguided villagers were to get counseling: 4,200 Communist Party cadres had been dispatched to the area to engage the villagers in dialogue about their complaints and ease tension in the 28 troubled towns. Xinhua did not reveal whether these cadres were armed.

Those arrested, whether 28 or, more likely, several hundred in number cannot expect to be treated well in jail. A blind attorney, who has been one of the leading activists in China against forced abortions, was recently severely beaten while in jail. Human rights groups say prison officials ordered fellow inmates to beat him after he resisted having his head shaved and insisted on his legal rights. This is unusual only in that the officials themselves did not administer the beating.

How many more millions of women will have to suffer forced abortion before China's leaders realize the bankruptcy of the policy they adopted so long ago?

It is dangerous to question Communist Party policy, but some inside of China are doing so. These include Ye Tingfang, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). Professor Ye was recently quoted as saying that “In the beginning, it was believed that our big population would be a hindrance to our economic development. But over the past decades, experience has told us otherwise. Japan, for instance, has little in the way of resources and boasts one of the highest population densities in the world, but it is a thriving economy and one of the richest nations. Labor is the most important source of wealth.”

Or, to put it another way, human beings are the ultimate resource.

Steven Mosher is the President of Population Research Institute.

Liberty and Freedom of the Press

We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press. It is however, the prostituted companion of liberty... It corrupts, it deceives, it inflames. It strips virtue of her honors, and lends to faction its wildfire and its poisoned arms... It is a precious pest, and a necessary mischief, and there would be no liberty without it. —Fisher Ames

Divine Providences

The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety. —Thomas Paine

Defining Success

No other success in life - not being President, or being wealthy, or going to college, or writing a book, or anything else - comes up to the success of the man and woman who can feel that they have done their duty and that their children rise up to call them blessed.

Recognizing that, it is my prayer that what I DO before the watching eyes of my family never supersedes what I AM.

Theodore Roosevelt

Persistence

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. - Calvin Coolidge

Principled Persistent Passion

It does not take a majority to prevail...but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.
— Samuel Adams

The Dead Speaks

Posterity — you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.
—John Quincy Adams

In Defense of Liberty

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. ~ Samuel Adams

The Political Savior

Rev. R.J. Rushdoony

CA Farmer 241:5 (Oct. 5, 1974), p. 28.

According to the German historian, Ethelbert Stauffer, the religious principle of the Roman Empire, from the days of Augustus on, was salvation by Caesar: “Salvation is to be found in none other save Augustus, and there is no other name given to men in which they can be saved.”

This helps us to understand the boldness of St. Peter, and the total power he declared rested in Christ, when he said of Jesus Christ, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

War between Christ and Caesar, the Christians and Rome, was thus inevitable. The state and its emperors claimed to offer salvation. The church declared only Christ does.

We are again in the age of Caesars, of political saviors. All over the world, politicians proclaim their plans of salvation, and the cornerstone of their building is man. Look unto me, these false saviors declare to the peoples, vote for me and be saved.

St. Peter faced a hostile nation whose hope of salvation was in freedom from Rome. Thus the Zealots, or revolutionists, had a large popular following. Salvation for them meant their own political order. For the Roman overlords and their followers, salvation meant Caesar’s rule and plan.

St. Peter ruled out, not only all other religions, but all the political plans of salvation with his blunt words: “Neither is there salvation in any other.” Christ is unique, and His salvation is exclusive. He is THE way, the ONLY way, Peter made emphatically clear, of salvation, “for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” There are no alternate routes.

This means that false political saviors will give not salvation but ruin. False religious saviors will only give delusions. Truth is exclusive. We cannot say that two plus two can equal five, or can equal three, because three and five sound close to four. We cannot play games with truth.

Thus, as we are confronted by political and other saviors, we must stand with St. Peter and declare: None other name!

The Price of Liberty is Virtue

“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” —Samuel Adams