Moloch worship was thus state worship.  The state was the true and ultimate order, and religion was a department of state.  The state claimed total jurisdiction over man; it was therefore entitled to total sacrifice. . . . For a state to claim total jurisdiction, as the modern state does, is to claim to be god, to be the total governor of man and the world.  Instead of limited law and limited jurisdiction, the modern antichristian state claims jurisdiction from cradle to grave, from womb to tomb, over welfare, education, worship, the family, business and farming, capital and labor, and all things else.  The modern state is a Moloch, demanding Moloch worship:  it claims total jurisdiction over man and hence requires total sacrifice. . . . God is the only true source of law; the state is an agency of law, one agency among many (church, state, family, etc.) and has a specified and limited area of law to administer under God.  The Moloch state denies any such boundaries:  it insists on taxing at will, expropriating at its pleasure by "eminent domain," and it claims to have the right to force the youth into warfare and death at the pleasure of the state.
     The Moloch state is the product of apostacy. (pp. 33-34)

If Rushdoony were simply preaching about the need for Christians to rightly order their allegiances and not be unquestioningly patriotic, few would disagree with him.  If Rushdoony were advising Christians to be prepared to conscientiously object to fighting in unjust wars and to resist the imposition of unjust laws, few would disagree with him.  But Rushdoony is saying more than that.  He is indicting every form of govenment that is not Christian and theocratic.  He expounded:

To attempt to govern or to take life apart from God's permission, and apart from His service, is like attempting to govern the world and the future apart from God. (p. 36)

The Bible is clear about God's judgment of idolaters.  Rushdoony wrote:

Deuteronomy 13 cites three cases of instigation to idolatry, first, in vv. 1-5, by the false prophet; second, in vv. 6-11, by a private individual; and, third, by a city, vv. 12-18.  The penalty in every case is death without mercy.  To the modern mind, this seems drastic.  Why death for idolatry?  If idolatry is unimportant to a man, then a penalty for it is outrageous.  But modern man thinks nothing of death penalties for crimes against the state, or against the "people," or against "the revolution," because these things are important to him.  The death penalty is not required here for private belief:  it is for attempts to subvert others and to subvert the social order by enticing others to idolatry.  Because for Biblical law the foundation is the one true God, the central offense is therefore treason to that God by idolatry.  Every law-order has its concept of treason.  No law-order can permit an attack on its foundations without committing suicide.  Those states which claim to abolish the death penalty still retain it on the whole for crimes against the state.  The foundations of a law-order must be protected. (p. 38)

Rushdoony appears to have searched for an escape hatch from the harsh implications of what he believes God demands.  He added:

This condemnation does not apply to a missionary situation, where the land is anti-God to begin with:  this is a situation for conversion.  It does require a nation grounded in God's law-system to preserve that order by punishing the basic treason against it. (p. 39)

Rushdoony's escape hatch is either cosmetic or he did not have the stomach for what his beliefs demanded of him.  He was much too logical and consistent to have failed to see the fallacy underlying this statement.

The laws Rushdoony wants to make applicable to all nations at all times were not given in the context of a "missionary situation."  They were given with a  command to wage a "holy war" to  conquer the land of Canaan.  Rushdoony's distinction regarding "missionary situations" smuggles in the idea of a progressive revelation that supercedes the harsh commands given to Israel at Sinai.  It undermines his previous contention that,

All scripture, law, prophets, and gospel is one word. . . . There can be no arbitrary separation of the law from the gospel:  one God means one word.  To divide the word is to divide God. (p. 30)

Whether Rushdoony recognized the inconsistency of his position or not, there is little doubt that some of his followers did.  I suspect that this may be the source of some of his differences with his son-in-law Gary North.  

A more obvious inconsistency in Rushdoony's escape hatch is the fact that Rushdoony and his followers do not see America as a "missionary situation."  In their eyes, America was founded on Biblical law.  That, I suspect, is why people like James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, Tony Perkins, and Rick Scarborough appear so impatient with the pace of the legislative and judicial reforms that they are pushing.  

Whenever the patient revolutionaries working through political processes are stymied, the more militant revolutionaries begin to act in more extreme ways to rid America of "apostates" who permit "treason" against God's law.  In their eyes, anything can be justified to protect the foundations of their "law-order."