Eighth Commandment

Injustice as Robbery

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Restitution & Forgiveness

Lesson: Injustice as Robbery

Genre: Speech

Track: 92

Dictation Name: RR130AX92

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Exodus 23:8, “And thou shalt take no gift, for the gift blindeth the wise and perverteth the words of the righteous.”

Leviticus 19:15, “Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.”

Deuteronomy 16:19-20, “Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous. That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

These passages have to do primarily with injustice by courts. Secondarily, injustice by public officials, officials of government. Injustice by courts and judges is perhaps the major form of robbery in much of history. Too often, the thieves are on both sides of the bench.

Many years ago, Calvin, in commenting on these laws, declared, “This kind of theft is the worst of all. When judges are corrupted either by bribes or by affection, and thus ruin the fortunes which they ought to protect, for since their tribunal is as it were a sacred asylum to which those who are unjustly oppressed may fly, nothing can be more unseemly that they should fall there amongst robbers. Judges are appointed to repress all wrongs and offenses. If therefore, they show favor to the wicked, they are harborers of thieves, than which there is no more deadly pest, and besides, if their authority excludes every other remedy, they are themselves like robbers with arms in their hands. The greater therefore, their power of injury is, and the greater the damage committed by their unjust sentences, the more diligently are they to beware of iniquity, and thus it was necessary to keep them in the path of duty by special instructions, lest they should conceal and encourage thievery by their patronage. Now, as avarice is the root of all evils, when it thus lays hold of the mind of judges, no integrity can continue to exist.”

Luther also made the same point emphatically when he observed on the passage in Deuteronomy 16:18-20, “Moreover, he lays down this rule to judges and officers. They are to judge justly. That is, according to the law of God and not according to their own understanding. Then he forbids corrupt feelings. They are not to leave the law behind and be lead and motivated by the consideration of persons and bribes. These two things tend to distort and misdirect all justice, and therefore, he here adds this aphorism, Bribes blind the eyes of the wise and subvert the cause of the righteous. Partiality towards persons includes such things as these: fear of persons, great, mighty or wealthy, love of relatives, regard for friends, contempt for the lowly, sympathy towards those stricken by calamity and fear of peril to one’s own life, reputation, and property. Bribes, however, include gain, advantage, ambition, and the insatiable and boundless gulf of greed. Therefore, in Exodus 18:21, Jethro advises Moses to choose men who are without greed. That is, birds that are as rare as a black swan.”

Now, these passages are extremely important. They deal with a problem that is a constant one in history. They deal with a specific area of life, the state. This is an important distinction. In the rest of life, partiality is an accepted fact of life and recognized by scripture as within bounds, proper and lawful. Thus, it is natural and healthy for parents to be partial to their children, and provided their partiality is, at all times, governed by the law of God, it is proper and fitting that they show special concern for their children, that they do things for their children they would not do for others, that they do make allowances at times, but then at other times the parents are also more severe towards their children than they would be towards others because they are more concerned. So, where there is a personal bound, a personal tie, there is both partiality and greater severity. This is right and normal.

And so it is with our friends. We can be partial to them and we can be angrier towards our friends and those that are close to us, and this is a normal part of life. Certainly nothing would be more destructive of personal relationships than to put strict justice into the situation. If, for example, husbands and wives dart{?} with each other in terms of strict justice, it would soon destroy the relationship, would it not? You cannot have the personal relationship between friend and friend, husband and wife, parents and children that is strictly a matter of absolute justice down to the last penny. Then it becomes impersonal, but it is precisely this impersonality of justice that is basic to the state, because the state deals with people, not in terms of personal relationships. It is an impersonal relationship, and therefore, it has to be one strictly of justice. The state, the civil order, is more than a family, it is more than a clan or a tribe. It is the meeting place of peoples who do not know each other, of people of different races, of different backgrounds, and therefore, within the state, this strict impersonality is required by the law.

The word for bribe in the Bible is a very interesting one: cofer{?}, redemption, atonement. It’s a religious word. It had reference precisely to the kind of thing we’re talking about when we talk about Christ making atonement for our sins. He covers our sins with his blood. He makes atonement for our sins with his death, and that’s exactly the word for “a bribe.” It is a payment for redemption. The purpose of the bribe is to get salvation of a false variety. The unjust judge saves those who should be judged. He makes atonement, we might say, for those for whom no atonement should be made.

This is certainly as much a problem now as it was in Moses’ day, if not more. A report of 1969, issued just a few months ago, declared that the bribery by the Cosa Nostra alone is estimated at $2 billion, not million, but $2 billion a year, but as we face that fact, we should realize that, while the crimes of these criminals in the Cosa Nostra are real and many, in terms of biblical law, none of them are punishable for bribery, only for the actual crimes they commit. In terms of the Bible, there is no wrongdoing in bribing a judge. The wrongdoing is on the part of the judge taking the bribe. Only the judge is to be judged. The judged is always under temptation. Every time he gets onto the bench, and finds people before him, there is the temptation to be soft on someone because they are young, or because they are old, or because they are rich, or because they are poor. This temptation is a bribe, as it were. The biblical word covers it. It is not a bribe given by anyone, but it is a covering, to cover the fact of the offense by the fact of his poverty or his wealth, his youth or his age, or some other condition.

Every social order will have its law-breakers. There is no perfect society outside of heaven. Therefore, the bible assumes that every judge is going to be faced with temptation, as a part of the hazard of his office. If it is not a temptation to an outright bribe, a payment of a sum of money, or a gift of some sort, it is at least a favoritism, at least a partiality to someone because of race, creed, or color, or some other factor. By taking the bribe, the public official or judge makes a thief of himself, and he turns his office into a thieves’ domain. The worst thieves operate within the law. Calvin said that this kind of theft is the worst of all, because the whole social order is then converted into an instrument of evil.

In the first of our passages, Exodus 23:8, the law reads, “And thou shalt take no gift, for the gift blindeth the wise and perverteth the words of the righteous.” The bribe blinds the wise judge, but it is a one-sided blinding. He is blinded to justice, because in Deuteronomy 16:19, we are told, “Thou shalt not respect persons.” In Hebrew, literally, the judge shall not recognize faces, and hence, we have, out of that text, the idea of justice wearing the blindfold. In other words, here is the one area of life where there is to be a particular kind of blindness. Outside this area, it is improper. To go back to the relationship between friends, between members of a family, you cannot judge your husband or your wife precisely as you would a man down the block, or a woman down the block. This would destroy the relationship which has to be personal, personal combined with a sense of law. So, there you have to make allowances. This is a part of law when the friendship within a personal relationship, but the court is the meeting place of diverse peoples, without that personal element, and therefore, the personal element cannot be allowed to intrude, and hence, the bribe blinds the judge, but it’s a one-sided blindness. Whereas the judge, we are told, shall not recognize faces.

The judge must always deal with evil. Thus, as we have seen, it is a condition of his office that attempts are made to blind him. The testimony that is presented has always, as its basic function, to present one side of something. Thus, the judge has a responsibility to sift the testimony from the witness’s basic prejudice, which will always be there no matter how much integrity there is, and try to determine the truth of the matter, to avoid being blinded to the issues while being blinded to the persons. We are often reminded these days of the Golden Rule, that it is the essence of the law. The Golden Rule, Matthew 7:12, reads, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”

Closely related to this is the commandment of loving our neighbor and of loving God. As we have seen on many occasions, this commandment of love and of doing unto others is simply a summary statement of the law which means that we keep the law in relationship to our neighbor. We love our neighbor if we do not kill him, nor destroy the sanctity of his home, nor rob him, nor bear false witness against him in word, thought, or deed. Love, therefore, is the fulfilling of the law.

Now, most people do not call attention, and it is virtually an unknown factor that the reverse of the Golden Rule is also given to us in scripture. In other words, whenever the Bible makes a statement, you have to understand it both in its positive and its negative sense. Thus, he that doth not work, let him not eat. He that works, let him eat. He that does not work, let him starve. Now, that’s the meaning of this statement, and so, do unto others as ye would that they would do unto you has its obverse side as it is stated, very plainly, in scripture. For example, in Obadiah 15, “as thou hast done, it shall be done unto you.” It’s strange that this isn’t quoted now a days, but it is a part of scripture. Obadiah 15. “As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee,” and this point appears elsewhere in scripture.

Therefore, in terms of this principle of law, Israel had a penalty for the judges, the corrupt judges. What have corrupt judges done and what is their penalty? Well, Josephus felt this very plainly what the penalty in Israel was. The corrupt judge suffered the death penalty. Now this seems very severe. After all, if a criminal bribes the judge with a $50 bribe, and the criminal goes “scott free” there is no penalty against him for bribing, but there is against the judge and the judge suffers death, some would say, “Where is the justice in that?” After all, isn’t the principle of the law and eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth? That is, the punishment should fit the crime. Fifty dollars? The death penalty for that? Isn’t it disproportionate? Is it not a violation of the biblical principle? And the answer is that more is involved than the $50.

The point of issue is far more than the amount of the bribe. It is the life of the society. It is dedicated to furthering justice in terms of God’s law-order. This is the purpose of any society, but when the courts of that society become thieves’ courts, when they make atonement for evil, then the society has been sentenced to death. Wherever the corrupt court appears, there a society is dying. Wherever the courts cannot be depended upon for justice, then you do not have godly law and order. You have a thieves’ paradise.

Every corrupt official is using his office to destroy the foundations of social order. He is killing godly society and replacing it with a society of polite and legal thieves and murderers. Therefore, the principle inherent in the Golden Rule requires his death. “As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee.”

The King James Version, for the Exodus and the Deuteronomy passages, says that the bride perverted the words of the righteous. Other translations give it as, “upsets the pleas of the just,” or “thwarts a just man’s testimony,” or “subverts the cause of the innocent.” The essence of the just court is that the cry for justice is heard, that there is no respect of persons. When persons come into the court, then justice disappears.

One of the things, for example, in Chinese society, that has made it both durable and very weak, has been the strength of the family, an area will be governed by a family, or a group of families, and the family does everything to protect itself and to discipline its own members. As a missionary in China told me, he said, “You never deal with a thief directly. If you have someone working for you as a servant and he steals, you don’t get after him. You go to the head of his family, and they deal with him. They deal with him very severely, far more severely than you would, but they also deal with him personally and they keep him as a member of the family because if they cast him off, he’s a dead man. So, they bring him into line, they protect him, and you can take that same thief back into your home and be sure that he will never touch another thing. So there is a strict sense of family justice.” A partiality, a protection of the member of the families, but with it all, justice.

Now, this is right and godly within the context of the family. The family, friends protect one another and also mete out a certain kind of justice to one another, but because China was unable to have any impartial justice between totally alien peoples, strangers, no central government has ever survived very long in China. There is no sense of impartial justice. The family survives, but the state comes and goes, and collapses.

The procedural care of the court under law has, as its purpose, to sift truth from error, to do it blind to the persons but wise and seeing with regard to the issues. To receive a bribe is as serious as to cut off a man’s air. Just as a man needs air to breathe, so for a society, justice is its air. The social order then dies even as a man without air dies.

This is why St. Paul, as well as our Lord, declared that between Christians, the courts should not be resorted to. Why? Only when the believer is, to you, as a heathen and publican, when he cannot be dealt with as a Christian should he be dealt with in the courts, because then it is on a purely impersonal basis. It has none of the feeling of a family, of trying to bring a member of the family back into the circle, or dealing with him as one of you, and therefore, believers are told to avoid the courts, because this means there is only an absolutely impersonal relationship with them. They are no longer members, one of another, forbearing, putting up with one another’s weaknesses, and yet dealing with justice, tempered with mercy. In the courts, it must be purely impersonal, and when the court ceased to be impersonal, then society dies. This kind of theft, said Calvin, is the worst of all. It is also, in our day, the most prevalent. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that we can appeal from the courts of men to thy court, and we thank thee, our God, that our appeal is always heard in heaven, and so, our God, we come to thee. Thou seest, O Lord, how the courts around us are turned into places of evil, where criminals have their rights magnified and defended, and godly men are treated with contempt, where officers of law are abused and the criminals treated with favoritism. O Lord, our God, we cry unto thee that thy justice may prevail and that these courts may feel the weight of thy judgment, and that again, godly order may be established, and our land be a land of righteousness. O Lord, our God, we look unto thee, in Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now with respect to our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I can’t hear you.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] A very good point. There has to be justice first in the family. Now family justice is justice, even though the personal element is there, because in the family you not only judge your children, or husband and wife, but you also work personally to reestablish them, unless they’re hopeless in which case the relationship is terminated, and then it becomes impersonal, and this is why, of course, it’s wrong when the court seeks to become personal. For example, rehabilitation and so on, they are turning an area that is not a family into a family, and of course, then they are showing concern for the criminal in a personal way, but they continue to be impersonal with the person who is offended. So that if you’ve been robbed, the court doesn’t treat you like a member of the family, but it treats the criminal as though he were a family member who has to be rehabilitated, and so on. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. What Obadiah does declare is the justice of God, that this is the conclusion of it, that even as we are to do unto others as they have done unto us, as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee. Now this is strict justice. This is the way the courts shall rule, and this is the way God ultimately should rule, so that this is not so much directed to us as individuals as Obadiah declares this sentence, it is God’s declaration of a principle of justice. Does that not make it clear?

[Audience] {?} personal.

[Rushdoony] In other words, just as our Lord and St. Paul said, “Alright, here you are, fellow Christians, you are not to go to the courts. You’re not to make your relationship impersonal. You’re to try to govern with justice, and with patience, and with love, but once it becomes that, then the principle of justice impersonality, fully takes over. “As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee.” This is a sentence, you see, that says when the personal “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” breaks down, the impersonal takes over. Yes?

[Audience] {?} “judge not lest ye be judged” in relationship to the impersonal?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Our Lord declared, “Judge not lest ye be judged, for with what measure ye mete out (or with what judgment you judge) with the same it shall be measured unto you.” What our Lord was there stating was, Do not judge people around you in terms of purely personal considerations, rather than godly considerations. Our Lord stated also, “Judge righteous,” in other words, judge in terms of God’s standard. Thus, if we judge a person in terms of the length of his nose, or the color of his hair, or personal factors, that simply do not set well with us, then we can be judged by similarly purely arbitrary things, but we are to judge righteous judgment. So, judgment was not forbidden by our Lord when he said, “Judge not lest ye be judged,” because when you take the whole passage the whole point is you are not to judge in terms of purely arbitrary things. We have a right to judge. Every one of us do. We have an obligation to judge. Righteous judgment, in terms of God’s law, in terms of objective standards. So, the sad fact is, of course, the people who throw that particular passage around most are those sharpest in judging.

I like the incident where a conservative, on one occasion, when he was speaking of certain issues, was challenged very savagely by someone who told him he was judging, and his answer was, “And aren’t you judging me when you say I am judging,” which of course, is true. It’s impossible to eliminate judgment, totally impossible. As you approach it, you get total anarchism, where there’d be no difference between good and evil, right and wrong, you tolerate everything, and that certainly is not what scripture intends. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Obadiah verse 15. Yes, you see, it’s one thing when you have a relationship, say, with an employee, and a relationship with your wife. Your boss can lay you off if you’re sick and not able to do your work, but you don’t lay off your wife if she’s sick and can’t work. You see the difference? It’s an entirely different world. In one area, you’re impersonal. In another, you are. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, this is, of course, one of the reasons why, as I pointed out last week, the Bible has more to say about personal relationships than anything else. It has so much to say, for example, about the relationship of husband and wife, parents and children, friends and friends, because it’s really, when you come right down to it, harder to get along with those close to you, than it is with people you barely know. In other words, our husbands and wives, whom we love the most, provide us with more problems than say, a person we know living ten miles away from us. So, this is the area where the law speaks the most and where we are also told to consider love and mercy, to consider the personal relationships, “that ye are members one of another.”

Now, this is what Christ says with regard to members of the church, that they are members of his body. Now, what does a person do if he has an infected finger? He tries to heal the infection. He doesn’t tolerate the infection, because the infection can destroy him, so we deal with one another. An infection of the body of Christ, an infection of a member of the family can destroy the whole family. So, first of all, you are less tolerant of an infection of your finger than you are of your neighbor’s finger. If his finger is infected, it’ nothing to you, but if your finger is infected it’s everything to you. Similarly, if a member of your family, or of your congregation, or of a group you belong to is infected, as it were, it’s most important for you to do one of two things. First, to heal that infection or if it cannot be healed, then to amputate it, but you’re not going to show the same concern about your neighbor’s finger, or his son’s. You’ll be concerned, at best, {?}. So, the personal element where we are members one of another is important. There are different considerations. If your neighbor has a communicable infection, then, because if affects you and everyone else, your interest comes in, you see. Then it’s an impersonal thing, but it’s also an impersonal thing that affects everyone. The impersonality governs your relationship to someone who is a stranger to you. It’s only when what infects him can infect all, that you become concerned. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] In the Sermon on the Mount, we’ve touched on this before, but very briefly, turning the other cheek, the passage there, has reference as the Greek word makes clear. In fact, one or two of the words go back from the Hebrew to the Persian, to a forced, military conscription. In other words, if they compel thee to go one mile, goeth in twain. The word “compel” there has reference to the forced, military, or civil compulsion, whereby anyone at anytime could be conscripted, or his clothing or his property could be conscripted for emergency use.

When I cited this on one occasion, I used the illustration of the fact that today, a sheriff can conscript any person or his property into a posse, which doesn’t happen often, but he can commandeer your car, but more often what happens in the forest areas, you can be forced at any time, at any highway they can stop the cars, and this has been done and I’ve seen it done, and compel every able-bodied man to get out and help fight a forest fire. Now, our Lord says, when they compel thee to go one mile, go with them twain. You’re better off cooperating than resisting, because you cannot resist. So, to the people of the time who were inclined towards revolution, as they are today, and the mentality of the people today is increasingly closer to violence, on both sides of the fence, left and right. The courts are no good, it doesn’t do you any good to elect anyone, direct action. This is the kind of psychology that’s governing people, and our Lord’s declaration is, “It is better to turn the other check, because you’re helpless in such a situation.” In other words, it doesn’t say turn the other cheek to your husband or your wife. It doesn’t apply there to personal relations, not that you shouldn’t be forbearing one towards another, that is stated, but the passage about turning the other cheek and giving {?} and going a mile has reference to a forced situation where the state compels you to do something. You’re better off cooperating. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] It is no grounds for pacifism, it is not a generalization for life. It is an extremely important passage for what faces us today as we face the political scene. With reference to the political scene, it means we are to be non-violent, non-revolutionary.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, it does not refer to purely personal relationships. It refers to the larger aspect of the social scene, the political scene. I used an illustration on one occasion when this was cited of, one occasion when I was in a particular mining camp and the call came, and I was just going through there, for every man to be on the fire line. Well, I could perhaps have begged off from one of the officers who was asking. He would have let me go, knowing I had no way of sending word home and so on, and that it might be a problem. The other, I’ve met him, he might have prevented me, but I volunteered. I figured it was a sensible thing to do, and it was fall, it was a warm day. I had only a shirt on, and in the evening, in the mountains there, the weather drops to about ten degrees. Well, because I volunteered, I turned the other cheek, as it were, I went the second mile. I was assigned one of the easiest spots on the firing line. Just patrolling the area where the fire was burning out, instead of going up there ahead of the fire to head it off. You see, it paid off for me to volunteer. I really would have been in trouble with improper clothes, say, a half a mile up there trying to keep warm, while I was trying to build a fire-break with a crew of men. I was just patrolling, and that’s the purpose, and it deals with our political {?}.

The number of conservatives who are disheartened and feel that maybe assassination is the way, is more than we realize, and certainly the less{?} are on the street in direct action. Now, the word of the Lord to all such people is, “No, turn the other cheek. Put up with it. Violence is not the answer. You don’t change society by violence. You change it by changing men, and this was, of course, a critical issue in our Lord’s day, because the whole country was heading towards revolution, which did break out in 66 A.D., within thirty years or so after our Lord’s death, between thirty and forty years after, and of course, it was the death of the nation. The disciples themselves had been involved in this kind of activity. Simon the Zealot was the name of one of the revolutionary parties, which means he had followed Jesus at first in the expectation that here was someone who could rally the nation in terms of revolution. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, of course, because they refuse to see their work as a ministry of justice. It’s just dividing up power amongst themselves, and it makes no difference what a person in office does. The lines are drawn in terms of party lines. There’s no attempt to see any justice in a statement, or in a course of action, nor to act in terms of justice. It’s in terms of what will get the votes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right, there is no desire today to exercise authority. This is one of the reasons why management, for example, so often gives in to unions. On the management level, there is less and less desire to exercise authority. I have heard men in management say that there, the seniority system has very serious faults, but it’s a lot better than the alternative. Why? Because if the alternative faced them, what would they have to do? They’d have to say, well, here is someone of thirty who is better than this man of fifty, and should be promoted over his head, or here is a new man of fifty-five who has come in, who is better than anyone else, and even though he doesn’t have seniority, he should be at the top, and they find seniority takes care of a lot of problems. Let everything come automatically and then we don’t have to offend anyone. You see, this is a surrender of leadership, and then the whole thing becomes a silly game, because you advance only in terms of seniority, and then you begin to claim all the appearances of authority without being able to exercise it.

So that, at a certain point, it’s important, you have the key to the wash room, a special, executive wash room. Now that’s a big status symbol in many quarters. You have a key to the wash room. Also, you have an office of a certain size, or at a certain point, your office has wall-to-wall carpeting, and in many of the big corporations, space, aeronautical, and the like, this is the kind of thing that men are jockeying for, and one engineer told me, he said, “One engineer in ten does the work. The other pass the buck and jockey for power.” So he said, “You don’t find a company without a lot of fat on it.” Yes?

[Audience] Let’s go back to the first chapter {?} 39 {?} first part of that verse says, But I say unto you that you resist not evil, and this is the word, key verse, that {?}. Is this reference to evil mean {?} at that time, or just what does that mean? {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. The whole point there is you are not to resist evil because you don’t contend with evil in the social order by personal resistance, but by changing men and little by little changing society. How are you going to resist evil, for example, if the only way you can do it is by compounding evil with revolution? In other words, this is a denial of revolution. It doesn’t mean that you don’t fight against evil by trying to get better justice, better courts, but basically, evil is not resisted simply by resistance. You don’t make a good omelet with bad eggs, as the proverb says. So the way to alter the situation is to change men, so they were facing an evil world, and totally corrupt regime in Judea, and a totally corrupt Roman government. How were they going to change that by revolution? The revolutionists are, very often, as evil as the men they try to supplant and in the course of their illegality, their violation of law, they usually become more evil than those whom they are resisting.

I can sympathize with some of the things that the campus revolutionaries are against in the “establishment,” as they call it. Certainly none of us would try to defend the establishment today as it exists in Washington, but are they not compounding the evil. They begin by saying we’re going to fight against these things, and they end up by being the greater evil, by far. If there’s any choice between the two, it’s obvious where you’ve got to stand, but where we have to stand is in terms of proclaiming the law-word of God, establishing the law-word in ourselves and in our circles, and little by little, extending a law-order, because only then can you have a real change. This is not a council of pacifism, in other words. It’s a realistic program for dealing with a problem we face in the world today, and that they faced then. The revolutionists were doomed then. In every age, they are either doomed me, or they become the monsters of the next day, if they succeed, because revolution cannot bring good out of evil.

Well, our time is really just about up. These two then.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I don’t see anything wrong with his judgment. I think Judge Hoffman{?} showed remarkable patience. The whole point of the trial, on the part of the lawyer and the defendents, was to say that they despised the court totally. Had Judge Hoffman not ruled as he had done, we would have had to say there is not even a semblance of justice in the courts. He acted with forbearance. The protestors met in Washington. The attorney declared that this was the first step of revolution, and he was honest. The conduct in the court was revolutionary action. The wife of one of the defendants declares that it was a fitting place to announce revolution, at the foot of Washington’s monument, in the capitol city, she said, of the imperialist face{?}. Now, we surrendered quite a bit in the courts, but it would have been total surrender had Judge Hoffman ruled otherwise. What the appeal courts will do may yet be surrender. Yes? Last question.

[Audience] {?} not a solution {?}

[Rushdoony] No, this was a question I’ve also dealt with before, but very briefly, the War of Independence was not a revolution. Every one of the countries, of the colonies, was an independent country, having its own officers, legislatures, everything, whom they elected. Their only connection with England was that they had the same king, King George III. He had the power of a royal veto on their actions. What happened was that the king was turning over more and more power to Parliament, and Parliament and king conspired to impose an alien government on the colonies. When the colonies resisted, having their right of election taken away, and judges appointed from England, and one after another, their self-government taken from them and to be taxed by an alien government rather than their own legislatures, Parliament sent over two troops to quarter them on the American family. We don’t understand what that means today, but Louis XIV did that to the Huguenots. He said either become Catholics tomorrow, or we’re going to quarter troops on every Huguenot family, which meant that these troops would have free right to rape and to rob in every household, literally. This is what they were going to do to the Americans. They sent over an army. It was an armed invasion of free and independent countries. They resisted. It would be the same thing today if Parliament and England decreed that the Canadian Parliament was null and voice, and its courts null and void, and they were going to replace them, and if they didn’t like it, they’d quarter troops on them and send an invading army. It would be the same principle. It was a War of Independence, not a revolution.

Well, our time is more than up.

End of tape