20. The Social Inheritance of Land Marks (Remastered)

The Social Inheritance of Landmarks

R.J. Rushdoony

Our subject is, ‘The Social inheritance of Landmarks.’ With this we conclude our studies of the Sixth Commandment and next week we begin the seventh commandments. 

Deuteronomy 19:14 

“Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it.”

This commandment has several parallels elsewhere in Scripture. For example, in Deuteronomy 27:17 there’s reference to it: 

“Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark. And all the people shall say, Amen.”

Again, in Job 24:2 there’s a reference to the same fact: 

Some remove the landmarks;

They violently take away flocks, and feed thereof. 

Then in Proverbs 22:28: 

Remove not the ancient landmark,

Which thy fathers have set.

Again, in Proverbs 23:10-11: 

Remove not the old landmark;

And enter not into the fields of the fatherless:

For their redeemer is mighty;

He shall plead their cause with thee.

Obviously therefore, this commandment in Deuteronomy 19:14 does have reference to the eighth commandment rather than sixth in that it deals primarily with property. In ancient times, every property had its landmarks at the corners of the fields. Those landmarks or boundary stones marked [gap in audio] in order to destroy property lines and expand one’s property. The way it was done usually was to go out to the corner of the field during the night and move the landmark over, say, two or three feet. Then plow quickly in the morning at sunrise so it wouldn’t appear that it had been moved, and over a period of time, by moving the landmark over two or three feet per year you had added a few acres of the neighbor’s land onto your own. This was called, ‘removing the landmarks.’ However, although the reference to the eighth commandment “Thou shalt not steal” is very obvious, we do know from Scripture that it had reference to the landmarks of history, of doctrine, of morals, and of similar things as well as property. The references in Proverbs makes it clear, and then of course, in Hosea 5:10 we read:

The princes of Judah have become 

like those who move the landmark; 

upon them I will pour out 

my wrath like water. ⁱ

And of course, the meaning is very obvious there in Hosea because what he is saying is that the princes of Judah, as judges and as rulers, are breaking down the barrier between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood, between God and Baal. They are therefore removing the spiritual and moral landmarks, destroying them. The commandment, the Sixth Commandment, is “Thou shalt not kill.” And to destroy the barrier between the truth and a lie, between God and a false God, is to murder society. So, in the sense that both Solomon and Hosea understand this commandment, it also has reference to the Sixth Commandment “Thou shalt not kill” because it is the destruction of society when the landmarks of morality and of religion are removed. 

The removal of landmarks of course has been a major task of education and politics in recent years. This past week I was reading a book on the history of textbooks in America, and the author, who was very happy about what was going on, commented as he surveyed the education of nineteenth century America. He caricatures it somewhat, but nonetheless his description is basically sound:

“As we look back on those years, we can see that the text-books and the schools themselves held the Puritan ethic as their basic moral principle. It was this ethic that shaped and unified the nation. ‘The value judgment,’ writes Ruth Miller Elson, ‘is their stock in trade: love of country, love of God, duty to parents, and the necessity to develop habits of thrift, honesty, and hard work in order to accumulate property, the certainty of progress, the perfection of the United States. These are not to be questioned. Nor in this whole century of great external change is there any deviation from these basic values. In pedagogical arrangements the schoolbook of the 1790’s is vastly different from that of the 1890’s, but the continuum of values is uninterrupted.… The child is to learn ethics as he learns information about his world, unquestioningly, by rote. His behavior is not to be inner-directed, nor other-directed, but dictated by authority and passively accepted.’

Thus we entered the twentieth century.” ⁱⁱ

And of course, the author, Black, feels that with the twentieth century we began to wake up, and we began to discard all these authoritarian standards such as love of country, love of God, a distinction between right and wrong, and we began to question all things which, of course, is the proper intellectual attitude according to him. The old landmarks in other words, were denied. And by denying the old landmark, the sovereignty of God was replaced with the sovereignty of chance. 

In a recent issue of Saturday Review, Charlotte Willard stated it very plainly. She wrote: “Chance is the only certainty in the universe.” ⁱⁱⁱ Now, if chance is the only certainty in the universe, it means, of course, that you cannot therefore educate in terms of any moral standard because there cannot be any more law if chance is ultimate in the universe. As a result, Charlotte Willard continues as she discusses a recent book, Jack Burnham's Beyond Modern Sculpture, to say: 

“Mr. Burnham climaxes his thesis by quoting from Intelligence in the Universe, by Roger MacGowan and Frederick Ordway; the former is chief of the Scientific Digital Branch, Army Missile Command Computation Center, Huntsville, Alabama, and the latter president of the General Astronautics Research Corporation, London. They prophesy that the intelligent life we may encounter in stellar space will probably be the product of biological evolution but will be inorganic artificially constructed intelligent life. Political leaders back on earth will soon learn that intelligent artificial automata having superhuman intellectual capabilities can be built. They believe, in fact, that these automata will take over the earth. Man, in short, will bring about his own transformation from a biological creation to an inorganic concentration of information-processing energy. Mr. Burnham concludes triumphantly that “the physical boundaries which separate the sculptor from the results of his endeavors may well disappear.” The final illustration in the book is a bent and upright pipe arrangement which is labeled God.” ^iv

Now the implications here I think are very obvious, if you deny God, ultimately, you must deny man. This is the consequence of removing the ancient landmarks. The death of God philosophy spells the death of man. The reason is obvious to these people! Man is still in some sense God’s creation. Man still wrestles with the idea of God even as he denies God. So, how are you going to eliminate God from the universe as long as man thinks about God? Why, by eliminating man! So, man to kill God and systematically bring about the death of God, believes that the only thing he can do is to bring about the death of man and replace him with automata, robots who will then rule the universe and will be programmed without God. Then you will have, with the death of man also, they believe, the death of God. 

This seems fantastic to us, but, mind you, these are not fools, but the prize scientific minds of our day which are thinking along these lines. Man plays God, in other words, by committing suicide. And of course, this is a point made over a century ago by Dostoyevsky in his novel The Possessed. He said ultimately that men who deny God must commit suicide in order to eliminate God from their world. 

As a result, in the world around us, we are seeing man moving towards that suicide. In law, the old landmarks have been replaced. This has been the work steadily of our courts, in particular of the Supreme Court. Instead of the landmarks of Scripture, of absolute law, we have relativistic landmarks according to the Supreme Court. Almost twenty years ago, chief justice Vincent said, “The only certainty is that there is no certainty.” In other words, there is no ultimate law or morality. Thus, with this relativism, we have a rubbery yardstick which measures according to every man’s wishes.

But men cannot cope with reality, with rubber yardsticks. And as a result, we find man increasingly unable to understand the world around him. He has a rubber yardstick and he can measure nothing. Thus, crime grows very drastically between 1967 and 1969, but the majority of Americans, according to the Harris survey, believe that crime has dropped in that time. 

This is an interesting fact. Why? They’ve become more accustomed to riots and campus disturbances, and so it doesn’t seem as extreme to them in 1969 as it did 1967. And so they believe there’s been a major drop in crime. This is the majority of Americans! Since they have no objective standard, how can they see an increase? They measure everything with a rubber yardstick. It is not surprising, therefore, in a relativistic world, that people do things not in terms of an absolute law but in terms of the group. 

Twice this last week from totally different authorities I learned that with many people it is the ‘in thing’ to be for Bradley. In other words, the only criteria for voting is, “Is this the in thing to do?” Is it any wonder that we have problems? To war against landmarks, as our world is doing, is to war against progress, and against hope. In a world of chance nothing exists but change, meaningless change. Therefore, how can man know the future and educate in terms of the unknown? 

Last week, one of this group reported to me the problems confronting her in classrooms education, and I’ve had this reported repeatedly to me by students who are in education and, of course, I’ve encountered this repeatedly in my reading. Well, “The professor said last week in class, feeling that this was a most learned pronouncement, ‘In a world of chance and of change, how could a man know the future? Therefore how could you educate children in terms of the future? Because any fact you teach them today may be completely obsolete by the time they are adults. Therefore, there is nothing really that you can say, ‘This the child must learn!’ What the child must learn, however, is that we are in a world of change and chance and must be educated to this.’”

Now is it any wonder that we have revolution on the campuses? If the child is taught that there is nothing real except chance and change, then it is the duty of that child to wage war against any and every establishment! So that even if his own crowd becomes the ‘in crowd’ of the establishment, he must declare war on them. And if he becomes the top dog, then everyone must declare war on him. Because only chance and change are ultimate. And this is the philosophy of education as it is taught. In school after school today, it is your students who have learned their lesson who are doing the rioting. And this is why a non-Christian school has no logical philosophy of education. It has no right to exist, because either it must line up with its philosophy of chance and change, or with a Biblical standard in terms of the landmarks of Scripture. In a world without landmarks, every law or landmark is a criminal offense because it is standing in the way of chance and change. 

As a result, the moral premise of the Marquis de Sade was: 

“In a criminal society one must be a criminal.” ^v

And this, of course, is the premise of your radical student. They have a moral duty to break the law because ours is a criminal society, it is dedicated to the old landmarks and therefore it must change, it must change perpetually, and therefore one must be a criminal in order to overthrow it. This is why, in one of the Berkeley episodes, one of the young men who was arrested was the son of one of the more prominent judges of the State of California. The tragic fact is that judge agreed with his son’s philosophy. And of course, when you have this principle; in a criminal society one must be a criminal, it means total warfare against every establishment and every social order. It means also total isolation for every man. Because if the only thing that is real is change and chance, what is there to link man to man? Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist, is, thus, logical when he says that God is no problem to him, but that his neighbor is because what contact can he have with his neighbor? The Marquis de Sade stated it long before, he said: 

“My neighbor is nothing to me; there is not the slightest relationship between him and myself.” ^vi

As a result, de Sade was at war with the idea of law and the court, the only justice he could approve of was the vendetta. His attitude was it is legitimate for every man to commit rape, and it is legitimate to kill to prevent being raped, because there is no law except what the individual wishes, and the only thing that is wrong is not getting away with what you were doing. And of course, this is why Jean-Paul Sartre the existential philosopher to whom I just referred, lost many of his student following in recent years because he took a stand on something. How could he, in a world of chance and change take a position on anything? And with that, he lost his following.

And so Marcuse, who is at San Diego now, has taken unto himself as a more systematic existentialist Sartre’s following. If a man’s own wishes are his only landmark, then in a world without meaning, man himself becomes meaningless, and so he should commit suicide. And Sartre admitted that many of his student followers had committed suicide, and this was a logical step, and he had no reason himself for not committing suicide. As a result, the only possible contact with other people is aggression, and the only possible meaning, crime. De Sade again, as the logical existentialist said: 

“Ah, how many times, by God, have I not longed to be able to assail the sun, snatch it out of the universe, make a general darkness, or use that sun to burn the world! Oh, that would be a crime.…” ^vii

The greater the crime, the greater the man, the only reality is aggression. But ultimately, even that fails. 

China, which was the first country of the world to become relativistic, to deny the ancient landmarks, at the beginning of the Christian era did so. And this is why China stagnated. The only time China advanced was when an alien group took over China and for a while China would progress under alien leadership. But as soon as the alien group that conquered China became themselves Chinese by faith, embraced the relativism of Taoism and Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism they themselves stagnate. 

But, by the eighth century, Wang Wei was saying:

“Do not count on good or evil—you will only waste your time.…” ^viii

And what was the cure for everything? The doctrine of non being, there is the only remedy. In other words, to be dead. Deny all meaning as the cure for meaninglessness and finally, life. In a world where the landmarks are destroyed, deny the possibility of landmarks. In other words, tell the starving man that hunger is a myth, this is the conclusion of relativism. Thus, we are in a suicidal age because we are an age that is bent on destroying the landmarks. And if it is a crime to alter property landmarks and defraud a neighbor of his land, how much greater to alter social landmarks, the Biblical foundations of law and society, and thereby bring about the death of that social order? If it is a crime to rob banks, then surely it is a crime to rob and to murder a social order. 

Remove not the ancient landmarks; 

for by them your forefathers lived. ^ix

Let us pray.

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that thou hast surrounded us with thy landmarks and made us strong therein. Give us strength, faith, and courage, our Father, that we may reestablish thy landmarks and recall men and nations to those things whereby our forefathers lived, that we may build in terms of the old landmarks and progress in terms of thy holy calling. Bless us to this purpose. In Jesus' name. Amen. 

* * *

Are there any questions now?

Yes.

[Audience member] Comment about teachers and change.

[Rushdoony] Yes. They are all dedicated to change, even the smallest of the featured colleges. And unfortunately many of the so-called ‘Christian’ colleges, really church colleges, are teaching the same thing and don’t even realize what they’re teaching.

Yes?

[Audience member] Inaudible question. 

[Rushdoony] Well of course, their ideal of man increasingly is that of the robot... The man who moves without reference to a conscience, without reference to God. But of course, the ideal now is that man must be dispensed with. One scientist recently said that man was tainted, but the machine could be created as a pure instrument, and therefore the machine was the man of the future. Now, if we had invented these statements a few years ago and said this was where science was tending, we would have been really attacked, but they’re saying these things to a degree that staggers the imagination. 

[Audience member] Inaudible question. 

[Rushdoony] They discuss it. They say that the machine because it won’t have a conscience, it won’t have aggression built into it as man does, it will not have all the tensions and conflicts that human society has, the machines will be self-regenerating, will manufacture new machines, it will all be programmed. 

Now, of course, they are talking utter nonsense. But they do believe that nothing is impossible with them! They feel that they are gods who are able to create a totally new world. I have in my Mythology of Science quoted of the top astrophysicist who says that they will make a new sun when this one wears out, when it dies.

Yes?

[Audience member] Isn’t their plan, rather, to program man? ^x

[Rushdoony] Yes. This has been very extensively discussed, to make robots, as it were, out of people, by mind altering drugs, electrical treatments, and so on. But increasingly, the more recent thinking is that man is obsolete.

Yes?

[Audience member] What, really, are these movements aiming at? ^xi

[Rushdoony] What all these philosophies aim at is an end of time, an end of world change. So that they are trying to achieve a heaven. Now this, of course, characterized Karl Marx. He was going to have an end-of-the-world order with the communist paradise when time, history, and change would stop, and it be perpetually unchanging society, and therefore it was compared to the anthill where every person’s role is fixed and unchanging, there is no self-consciousness, there is no history. And so, the anthill society of the future was to be beyond history. This is still important, and there are writers who are doing a great deal of writing in this area, and I have several books over the last century which are important contributions to this kind of thinking. One is titled Beyond History and the other, I believe, Post-Historical Man. However, the newer thinking is of the kind I cited. This dispenses with man because man is too much of a problem. So with the machine they’re going to attain this paradise, this heaven, this unchanging social order. So that while they affirm chance, they are in a sense saying that we want to get beyond chance into paradise.

To deny God, ultimately, they’re going to have to kill man. Because, as long as man is around, they feel that it’s inescapable that man is going to think in terms of God. You remember as I pointed out some time ago, and as I develop it in my book on Freud, Freud says that man feels guilty. Now, he traced this guilt to the primal horde and to the will to live, which is the will to incest, to parricide, and to cannibalism. So, he said, as long as man feels guilty, he’s going to try to find God to remove his guilt. So, he said, the way to eliminate God and religion is to do so by coming to a medical, a scientific answer to the problem of guilt by explaining it in terms of anthropological problems, then we can eliminate God and religion. Now, this is the primary function of Freud’s work. Well, of course, this has been tried for a long time, but for all their attempts, man still tries to think in terms of God. So now, the next step, of course, is to eliminate man entirely. Then, with man eliminated, there will be no one to think about God and you can say, “God is dead because man is dead.”

i. English Standard Version.

ii. Hillel Black, The American Schoolbook (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1967), p. 90. The quotation by Black is from Ruth Miller Elson, Guardians of Truth.

iii. Charlotte Willard, “Presaging the Triumph of Egghead Automata,” in Saturday Review (February 8, 1969), p. 20.

iv. Charlotte Willard, “Presaging the Triumph of Egghead Automata,” in Saturday Review (February 8, 1969), p. 20.

v. Simone de Beauvoir, “Must We Burn Sade?” in Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver, The Marquis de Sade: The 120 Days of Sodom and other writings (New York: Grove Press, 1966), p. 58.

vi. Simone de Beauvoir, “Must We Burn Sade?” in Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver, The Marquis de Sade: The 120 Days of Sodom and other writings (New York: Grove Press, 1966), p. 58.

vii. Simone de Beauvoir, “Must We Burn Sade?” in Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver, The Marquis de Sade: The 120 Days of Sodom and other writings (New York: Grove Press, 1966), p. 32.

viii. Chan Yin-nan and Lewis C. Walmsby, translators, Poems by Wang Wei (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1958, 1965), p. 84.

ix. Proverbs 22:28, I’m not sure which Bible version this is, however.

x.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.