Our Threatened Freedom

Do We Need a License to Die

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 117-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 117

Dictation Name: Vol. I - Part 13 - Do We Need a License to Die

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Do we need a license to die? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

It is not as easy to die these days as it once was. I can remember when dying time meant that family and friends stopped by to say their farewells. On the day of the funeral friends came from miles around and everyone brought food for a big potluck dinner. Enough was left over to keep the family from having to cook for days after. It was also a big family reunion. At the cemetery some folks would show me their own gravesites and headstones with everything chiseled in except their own death date. Dying was easy then.

What happens now? Well, all kinds of certificates have to be filed, and they cost money. State and federal taxes on the house, farm or business can tie up a family for almost a year, and they also very often wipe them out financially. It’s getting so bad that almost no one can afford to die these days, but this is not all. One law which is catching on in state after state requires that an autopsy performed on the deceased, if he or she had not been to a doctor within 3 weeks prior to death. Think of the implications of that. If you and I or anyone else is old or ailing, we must see a doctor every month approximately, whether it does any good or not, or else if we die, an autopsy must be performed. This means a tidy and steady income for the doctor, or else an income then for the coroner. Much of this is taken care of by Medicare, but of course our tax money pays for that.

Now we have here and there in the country, ghoulish people who try to cash in on death. They come around on reading a death notice, and they claim that the deceased ordered something and then they try to collect on it. Fortunately there are not too many such people. However, what can we say about our ghoulish federal and state governments, which make death a time to gouge and rob widows and orphans?

This subject is not a pleasant one, but I submit that any civil government that deliberately plans to make money out of death and the grief of people has sunk as low as anyone can. The Bible tells us over and over again that God regards the treatment of widows and orphans as a key test as to the character of a people and a nation. God promises judgment on those who exploit widows and orphans, in other words, God sees it as thoroughly rotten and contemptible for a nation to use the time of bereavement and grief to rob and impoverish a people. We have however made this policy into law. One estate planner says that about 75% of all families are economically wiped out by the death of a husband or wife. People sometimes talk about the high price of funerals, but such costs are a trifle compared to the toll exacted by the federal and by many state governments.

It is time we told the ghouls in Washington that we have had enough of this. The taxation of death is the ultimate insult a civil government can impose upon a people. It is a degrading and an evil tax. The rich can utilize some provisions of the law to protect themselves to a degree, but most of us are the victims of the Washington ghouls.

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