Our Threatened Freedom

Is There a Good Excuse for Murder

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 100-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 100

Dictation Name: Vol. H - Part 09 - Is There a Good Excuse for Murder

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Is there a good excuse for murder? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

In December 1981, two women were released in Britain after trials, one for threatening to kill a police officer, the other after killing a man. The 29 year old barmaid who threatened a policeman’s life and who was carrying a knife, had 30 previous convictions for arsine and assault, and was on probation at the time for stabbing to death another barmaid in the previous year. The other woman, age 37, had driven her car into her lover after an argument in December 1980. Both women gained their release because attorney’s pleaded that PMT, not the woman, was responsible. PMT is pre-menstrual tension. It has now gained a standing as a defense against criminal charges. This can be scary news for both men and women. If a woman can walk out of court free after murdering a man, pleading pre-menstrual tension, any angry woman has a license to kill and make use of this plea. It could become risky for a man to disagree with his wife when such a convenient legal excuse for murder is provided. Hopefully this legal plea may not succeed in the United States, but you can be sure some lawyers will use it soon. We already have all too many similarly inane please being successfully used.

What such decisions as these two in Britain do is to strike at the foundations of morality, law, and freedom. The biblical foundations of Western law insist on man’s responsibility and accountability for his actions. This accountability is to both God and man, and there are no valid excuses for sin nor crime.

Pre-menstrual tensions can be a problem, as can be migraine headaches, trouble with our boss, fellow workers, or employees, can make us frantic. Then too most wives and husbands can be very aggravating at times. The whole point of morality is that, given these aggravations, and given the sinful nature of our being, we conform ourselves to moral law, not to our hatreds, frustrations and aggravations. To justify a crime because of aggravations is to reward precisely the evil or the worse side of our being, whereas the point of law and morality is that evil is punished, and moral conduct is to be protected.

The barmaid who was freed had 30 previous convictions, including a killing, all this by the age of 27. Very obviously she had not served much time in prison to have a record which included a killing, arsine, and assault, with 30 convictions by the age of 27. What such records tell us is that we are soft on crime and hard on the victims. They tell us that, throughout the western world, lawlessness is flourishing, and law abiding citizens are being hurt badly, and the law is not concerned.

If a woman can deliberately run her car over her lover and kill him, and then walk out of the courtroom on a plea of pre-menstrual tension, then why bother to have any laws against killing?

This has been R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.