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In “The Disastrous War” (Chalcedon Report No. 369), Rushdoony argues that the American Civil War was the greatest tragedy in U.S. history, not only because of its immense human cost but because it entrenched a worldview of irreconcilable conflict that still divides the nation. He contends that the war was driven less by Biblical moral reasoning than by Enlightenment humanism shared by influential...

Olympia Fulvia Morata (1526–1555), the brilliant Italian scholar raised among nobility and intellectuals, lived a life far harsher than her privileged beginnings suggested. After a cultured youth, she and her husband, Andrew Grunthler, were trapped for nine horrific months in the siege of Schweinfurt, where plague killed half the population, Andrew nearly died, and the city was burned and plundere...

Modern “juvenile justice” can’t be understood until you see the sleight-of-hand behind it: the state keeps redefining what counts as “public” and “private” so it can seize what God assigned to the family while excusing what God calls public evil. Historically, Christian law carved life into distinct spheres under God—family, church, commerce, civil government—each with real jurisdiction; but moder...

The Hegelian revolution completed a long philosophical shift that began with Descartes: reality and truth were relocated from God and creation to the human mind. For Hegel, reason itself became sovereign, and what the rational elite declared to be true became reality. God was effectively replaced by human consciousness, and the state was elevated as the incarnation of reason on earth. This worldvi...

William Blake, the brilliant English poet and painter, squandered his greatness because he abandoned biblical faith for the radical dreams of the French Revolution exalting freedom, equality, and total self-expression while rejecting all discipline. True to his convictions, when he moved to the country he even refused to prune his grapevines, insisting that vines, like men, must grow without restr...

A traveler in Europe in 1959 discovered a farming valley dying not because the soil was poor or young men were unwilling, but because inherited customs had chopped property into absurd fragments, destroying ownership and driving families away. A woman slept in one house, had the right to meals in another, and could warm herself only in a third; some farmers legally owned one-eighth of their own la...

A very old and vital distinction going back at least to Solomon is the difference between learning and wisdom. Learning is the accumulation of facts, information, and schooling, and our age is overflowing with it; experts and specialists dominate society, expanding knowledge at a rapid rate. But learning alone is not enough, and without wisdom it simply produces learned fools more dangerous than i...

In Ephesians 6, Paul teaches that obedience is essential to godly life and social order, beginning in the home and extending to work, citizenship, and ultimately to God Himself. Obedience is not about pleasing men or asserting power, but about serving Christ, recognizing that all authority carries responsibility under God, who shows no favoritism. Discipline and obedience prepare us for life’s ine...

True discipline is not punishment but systematic training under God’s authority, producing learning, growth, and submission to His law-word; chastisement is only a corrective tool when discipline has failed. Churches often confuse the two, boasting of “strict discipline” while neglecting faithful teaching of Scripture, which alone empowered by the Holy Spirit creates real discipleship. Matthew 18...

In Easy Chair No. 145, R.J. Rushdoony and Joseph McAuliffe examine the state of Christian fundraising, highlighting widespread concern over unethical practices, misuse of funds, and the public’s declining trust in TV ministries. McAuliffe cites polls showing that both Christians and non-Christians view many fundraising methods as manipulative, commercialized, and spiritually dishonest. He contrast...

The myth of nature treats the created world as a moral authority something inherently good, normative, and self-justifying. While nature is real, the myth arises when people read into it laws, meanings, and moral standards that belong only to God. From ancient Greek philosophy to the Enlightenment and Romanticism, “nature” was increasingly viewed as a guiding force rather than a fallen creation. T...

I once heard a minister whose entire sermon amounted to blasphemy, complaints about his upbringing, and resentment toward the way God made the world. His grievance was that his parents had “baptized, catechized, and chastised” him meaning they had dedicated him to God, taught him the faith, sent him to excellent schools, and disciplined him for his good. What he condemned was in fact a priceless i...

Gideon and 300 exhausted men cross the Jordan chasing 15,000. They ask Succoth for bread and get mocked. Penuel does the same. Two towns of unique covenantal privilege side with the enemy against the Lord's anointed deliverer. Reading Psalm 83 as inspired commentary, this episode exposes nationhood as God's post-Babel design — and asks what to do when the men in the pew and the men in the pulpit c...

Old frontier movies and revolutionary films of the 30s and 40s have been replaying for decades, and now their spirit shows up in the streets as shallow, undisciplined youth reenact Hollywood fantasies long-haired “frontiersmen” and ragged “revolutionaries” railing against the Establishment. Empty-headed people, especially undisciplined and faithless youth, are always susceptible to such hypnotic s...

In “Hostility to Christianity” (Chalcedon Report No. 155), Rushdoony argues that the drive to abolish Christianity did not begin with modern revolutions but was a long-standing Enlightenment objective, quietly embedded in state policy before erupting openly in events like the French and Russian Revolutions. He shows how this hostility surfaced even in the American War for Independence through Brit...

Man often claims absolute independence, insisting he is accountable to no one but himself, yet such freedom is an illusion, for no one can secede from an interdependent universe. Our lives physically, socially, and morally are bound up with others, and every private act carries public consequences. Because we share a common life, we are responsible both to one another and, supremely, to God, our C...

If you want to produce a generation of hippies, the formula is simple: remove God, Scripture, and moral law from schools so children learn that faith is trivial; teach them to fixate on their “rights” rather than their duties so they grow up both demanding and irresponsible; train them to feel entitled to instant paradise so they riot when denied anything; and convince them that the source of evil...

This message traces the modern war on the family to humanism’s twin goals: erasing God and dismantling the family as a governing institution. Drawing on history—from the French and Russian Revolutions to failed collectivist experiments in Soviet nurseries and Israeli kibbutzim—it shows that societies seeking rootlessness, anonymity, and radical equality consistently produce damaged children, socia...

A worried mother went to meet her son’s teacher after receiving a note from the school, fearing her junior-high-aged Eddie already both mature and helpful at home had fallen into serious trouble. Instead, she was told his grades were excellent, but his real “problem” was that he did not “relate” to his peer group: instead of wasting time in childish nonsense, he read, studied, worked, and refused...

In “Depending on Evil” (Chalcedon Report No. 112), Rushdoony argues that modern states consistently trust and support evil regimes because corruption is predictable, purchasable, and controllable, whereas righteousness and freedom are not. Using the long history of European and later global protection of the corrupt Turkish state as a central example, he shows how powers repeatedly defended tyrann...

This passage explores the origin and meaning of the word nag, tracing it from its Scandinavian roots meaning “to gnaw, bite, or burrow” to its modern sense of persistent, irritating talk or complaint. The imagery comes from rats gnawing in thatched-roof houses during the Middle Ages, producing an unending, unwelcome noise hence the connection to human nagging. Solomon recognized the difficulty of...

When Ben-hadad besieged Samaria, his demand for Ahab’s gold and silver aimed to cripple Israel’s strength, and his demand for the king’s wives intended to humiliate him but his greatest weapon was the demand for Israel’s children, who would be taken, re-educated in an alien faith, and returned as servants of a foreign power. This strategy has been repeated throughout history, from ancient empires...

Catharsis is the belief that health personal or social comes through the uninhibited expression of inner impulses. Originating in Greek tragedy, it was later moralized by Christians but eventually reverted to its pagan meaning: purging through violence, sexuality, or emotional release rather than moral restoration. In modern times, catharsis has justified revolutionary violence, sexual permissiven...

This session confronts the social power of the biblical family and explains why it is relentlessly targeted by the modern state: under God, the family governs the future (children), property, inheritance, education, and welfare—the very foundations of society. From Theodora’s transformation of Roman law to Marx, Engels, Dewey, and modern democrats, the pattern is clear: destroy the family and Chri...

A century ago, John Swett the architect of California’s public school system openly denied that parents had any rights in government education, insisting that teachers were not accountable to them and that children in public schools were “the children of the State.” Later attempts were even made to prevent parents from sending their children to Christian or private schools without state approval,...