12. Coercion (Remastered)

Coercion

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Leviticus 24:17-22, and our subject is ‘Coercion.’

“And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death. And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast. And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him; Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again. And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it: and he that killeth a man, he shall be put to death.”

Leviticus 24:17-22.

This passage sums up many familiar concepts that we have been dealing with in connection with the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” It states very plainly that the law of restitution governs all criminal offences. In particular, it is applied here to the Sixth Commandment. There must be restitution for the killing of a beast; beast for beast. For any injury done to a neighbor, the nature of the injury governs the nature of the compensation. The restitution required for death, for murder, is capital punishment.

Now very definitely, these laws govern cases of coercion. Today coercion is very much discussed in academic circles and among our student revolutionists. The dream is of a society without coercion. Anarchism is the clearest expression of such a philosophy and of course, Communism believes there must be first the dictatorship of the proletariat, and then ultimately, an anarchistic society, a society in which there is no coercion. 

It is important for us to analyze this philosophy of ‘voluntarism’ or a world without coercion in connection with the Sixth Commandment because it is the philosophy that is seeping into every area of our world today. It has increasingly infected and taken over vast sections of Conservatism. The name that is very commonly given to this philosophy is ‘libertarianism,’ and the new libertarians in particular are strongly anarchistic and strongly dedicated to a world without coercion.

One such libertarian, a very eloquent man, is Carl Hess who, in the 1964 presidential campaign, was Senator Goldwater’s writer. Carl Hess says concerning this philosophy:

“Libertarianism is the view that each man is the absolute owner of his life, to use and dispose of as he sees fit, that all men’s social actions should be voluntary and that respect for every other man’s similar and equal ownership of life and, by extension, the property and fruits of that life, is the ethical basis of a humane and open society.” ⁱ

Hess goes on to say:

“Each man is a sovereign land of liberty with its primary allegiance to himself.” 

In other words, a man’s life is so totally his own that there can be no Law of God or man governing him. There can be no coercion on any individual; each man is, in effect, his own God. He can use his life as he sees fit, he can take his life if he wants to and no man has any rights to interfere. For Hess, in other words, man is not a sinner, but is rather his own god. For Hess, in fact, the state is the great evil and the source of sin. Hess goes on to write: 

“Just as power is the god of the modern liberal, God remains the authority of the modern conservative. Liberalism practices regimentation by, simply, regimentation. Conservatism practices regimentation by, not quite so simply, revelation. But regimented or revealed, the name of the game is still politics.

The great flaw in conservatism is a deep fissure down which talk of freedom falls, to be dashed to death on the rocks of authoritarianism. Conservatives worry that the state has too much power over people. But it was conservatives who gave the state that power.… Murray Rothbard, writing in Ramparts, has summed up this flawed conservatism in describing a “new, younger generation of rightists, of ‘conservatives’ … who thought that the real problem of the modern world was nothing so ideological as the state vs. individual liberty, or government intervention vs. the free market; the real problem, they declared, was the preservation of tradition, order, Christianity, and good manners against the modern sins of reason, license, atheism and boorishness.…

For many Conservatives, the bad dream that haunts their lives and their political position, which many sum up as ‘law and order’ these days, is one of riot. To my knowledge, there is no limit that Conservatives would place upon the power of the state to suppress riots.” ⁱⁱ

Now Hess is right at one point. He said the conservative position rests on revelation, on the Bible, on the preservation of Christianity. At this point he is absolutely right. And the weakness of conservatism is exactly this, that it denies its foundations, it wants the fruits of Christianity without the roots, and therefore it wants the conservative position without the conservative faith. Capital punishment does rest on revelation. If you believe that God has ordained a particular law-order and has declared that those who violate His law-order at certain points must die by way of restitution, then you will accept the death penalty without questions. But if you are a humanist, and you believe that man is his own God, you’re going to deny the validity of the death penalty, even while you are killing people. After all, in principle, the Soviet Union has denied during most of its history the death penalty, and it’s killed more people than any other agency in all of history, but theoretically they deny the death penalty. They are humanists; every man is his own god and no man should be coerced. But they are the great instruments of coercion because they are unwilling to face the implications of their position. What those implications are we shall deal with shortly.

Libertarianism today, which passes for Conservatism, is really a radical relativism with regard to everything except man. It talks about ‘free market economics,’ but it does not believe in economic law. There are libertarians, for example, in the Los Angeles area, and most of you could think of several who conduct seminars in this area, in Orange County and here. They claim to be teaching a free market economy. They will use free market economists, but in effect what they are teaching is a free market for all ideas and practices. So that, when you push these people, they say, “I do believe in, since I believe in this total free market, in the right of Marxism to practice Marxism… I believe in the right of homosexuals to practice homosexuality…” Hess is in favor of this. “I believe in the right of cannibals to be cannibals. I believe in the free market of all the ideas and practices.” In other words, everything is equally false and equally true. In such a philosophy, there is no truth to free market economics because there is no truth outside of man. As a result, his position is an absolutism with regard to man; man is his own God and there is no truth outside of man, therefore no system of economics, no system of religion, no philosophy can be true, only man as he is, whatever he is, is the truth.

These libertarians are, like our existentialist hippies, very obviously consistent humanists. And this is why Ramparts in its closing days had as its writers such supposed conservatives as Murray Rothbard and the new Leftist anarchists and Marxists; all of them meeting at one common point; their anti-Christianity and their humanism. So here are those who believe in Marxism and here are those who supposedly upheld a free market all together in Ramparts, united in their faith in man. The goal is a total free market of ideas and practices because there can be no truth outside of man.

Now, we could say to these people, “If all men were angels, then you would indeed have the paradise on earth your total free market envisions, because if all men are angels then you would have only an angelic community, whatever these angels did, because angels will act like angels and therefore let angels free to do as they please, and you will have an angelic community. But let men who are sinners free to do what they please, and you’ll have precisely what the world has been throughout history; a place of sin and of bloodshed.”

Now, Hess calls his position a “rational” one, but it rests on a faith, doesn’t it? And a greater faith than any of us possess! Because, if you are going to believe that man is good in the face of all history, is not yours the greater faith than that of the Christian who believes that man is a sinner? Does not all history testify to the evil and the sin which is in man? All we have to do is to pick up the paper almost any day and we find what man becomes when he is free to do as he pleases. In the past couple weeks, for example, law and order, the authority of the state, is broken down in Pakistan.

Here is a dispatch from Pakistan, the dispatch in full. 

“Political turmoil in East Pakistan has spawned numerous ‘people’s courts’ in the interior that are summarily issuing sentences of death by clubbing or knifing, government sources and travelers reported Tuesday.

‘Madness is sweeping the rural areas,’ said one traveler on arriving here. He said he has spent the past week in villages and towns north of Dacca.

‘No one is safe,’ he said, ‘servants can turn against masters.’ He said the people’s courts have no juries and always issue the death sentence, which is carried out immediately by peasants wielding clubs or knives.” ⁱⁱⁱ

That’s the situation as more and more dispatches have indicated. If anyone has a grudge against anyone, they simply finger him, he is brought before the people’s court, which is a kangaroo court, and he is immediately clubbed or knifed to death.

But how does a liberal, how does a humanist cope with this kind of fact? With this fact? The answer is very obvious. This dispatch had a title, and the title was a very obvious giveaway. The title said, “Madness Sweeps Pakistan.” Madness sweeps Pakistan. In other words, not sin, but madness. This is the thesis; not sin, but madness. Man’s problem is not that he has a sinful nature, when he does evil, it’s some kind of temporary madness. 

The same kind of recent issue a Saturday Review carried a book review on Stalin’s reign of terror, and again we find the same thing. Did it say, “This was an example, all these mass murders by Stalin, of the evil of the sin in Marxism, of the depravity of Stalin?” No. It called it ‘mad efficiency,’ mad efficiency. In other words, it will not prescribe sin as the reason for madness. 

But let us examine this a little further before we draw our conclusion. This growing lawlessness that we see all around us is, of course, a part of this failure to recognize sin in man. It’s a part of this radical relativism today that sees no law and worships man. An example of this radical relativism which heeds no law was a recent ‘inquiring reporter’ item in a Northern California newspaper, the San Jose Mercury for Wednesday, March the 19^th. And the question the inquiring reporter asked in Fremont, California was, “Should unrestricted abortion be legalized in California?” And this answer, typical of those that were received, came from a retired salesman, he said:

“Yes. A woman should be able to have one if that’s what she wants. It’s up to the individual. In a way it is taking human life, but if it’s a medical necessity then regardless of the person’s wishes, it should be done.”

Now this is a very interesting statement because it reveals so clearly the religious presuppositions of this salesman. First, he admits that abortion is murder, he says it is taking a human life. But second, he says that this right is reserved to the woman who has the child; it is up to the individual. That life is under her, therefore it is under her to govern. Then, well, the question comes, “If, because she is over that fetus in authority, can she have the same authority to murder a born child that she’s rearing up? Or does she have the same authority to murder her aged parents if she chooses?” And we must conclude, “Yes,” because he says if it’s a medical necessity, regardless of the person’s wishes, it should be done. In other words, if the state decides there should be an abortion, whatever the woman thinks, it must be done. In other words, the higher power always prevails; the mother over the child, the man over the woman, the stronger man over the man and the woman, and the state over them all. In other words, there is no law except what the individual wishes. It’s up to the individual or the group of individuals, and the stronger they are, the greater their rights. This is why we find among many primitive people or so-called ‘primitive’ people that the sin is never [in the aggressor] (for example when a man murders or rapes someone else) but it’s on the other person because he was weak enough to have it done to him! And this is precisely the position, moral anarchism, whether it is from the Left or the so-called ‘Right,’ is leading us too. They cannot face the fact of evil. They cannot see that, given this moral anarchism, men are going to do precisely that; kill at will, as in Pakistan. Because they have no doctrine of sin, they hold to the myth, the faith, that all people are really good at heart. 

For example, Steve Allen said just this past week: 

“I’m not completely convinced of it, but I think there’s almost no evil intent in the world.” 

Now of course, this takes us right back to what we were discussing last week; how our world today has separated intent and act. The Bible says intent and act are linked inseparably. The Biblical view of man is not schizophrenic; intent and act are linked. But Steve Allen rests on the humanistic, ultimately the Ancient Greek dualisms which separate intent and act. So that no matter how evil the act is, that evil cannot be ascribed to the intent, because the intent, by definition, is always good. And this is why the plea of insanity has been manufactured in the modern world. Man is by nature good, therefore, if he commits evil, it is an act of madness, it cannot be sin. 

And so today we have a case going from California to the Supreme Court in an attempt to abolish the death penalty, “It’s cruel and unusual punishment.” The case involved is of a man who, in less than ten years, has committed three murders, and the plea is that this man does not have an evil intent, there’s just a kind of madness in him and therefore it would be cruel and unusual punishment and unconstitutional to execute him. This is the basis of the appeal.

As a result today, we have the growing breakdown of law and order, we have the growing collapse of civilization because of this dualism which separates intent and act. And we have the monstrosities that prevail today. I cited earlier the Saturday Review article on Stalin which refused to speak of the Soviet murders by Stalin and his regime as, “evil,” it was only “madness.” On the opposite page from that analysis of Stalin and his mass murders, was an article about the Red Guards of Soviet or Red China. And the title was “The Good in the Red Guard.” This was written by Alfred Moravia, a wealthy Italian writer, whose thesis was that man is best off when he lives in terms of the barest necessities, just barest existence, then man is at his noblest. Therefore China is near perfection as a humanist society because life there is at the barest subsistence level. 

Now, this is an interesting article coming from a wealthy writer who can tour the world at will. And the Saturday Review publishes it with a straight face. Why? Because of this radical schizophrenia, this inability to see the evil intent in an evil act. And so there is no connection in their thinking between what Moravia is, and what Moravia says. It cannot be, by definition. 

But the Scripture clearly forbids this kind of thinking, it declares that every evil act must be punished:

“…he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.”

Leviticus 24:17.

Must be punished, “Surely be put to death,” no exceptions. The evil act requires evil intent. The only exceptions are when it is accidental and it is specified in the law. When an ax head breaks and it kills a man, there is not an evil act but only an accident. If there is criminal negligence, then there is criminal responsibility. But otherwise, every evil act requires an evil intent. The humanistic perspective is schizophrenic, the Biblical is not.

Coercion in terms of Scripture is bad when it is evil coercion, when it is unlawful coercion, but godly coercion is required against evildoers, and without godly coercion, the world is surrendered to evil doers if we do not coerce the evildoer, “…he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death,” we surrender the world to murderers. 

No man wants a hose of water turned on in his living room. If there is a fire in your living room, then that hose of fire is a welcome thing! No man wants coercion, but to bear in his community, but if there is evil, robbery, murder, any kind of violence, then legal coercion against that violence is a welcome and necessary relief.

The point that the Scripture here makes, the absolute requirement, “…he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death,” rests, as we have stated, on the absolute unity in its conception of the doctrine of man. Man is a whole, man and his intent and his act are unified. When this faith in man as a whole is destroyed, as it has been in our modern society, when intent and act are separated, the doctrine of responsibility goes, and with it law and order. 

By trying to abolish coercion, humanism is assuring its triumph in the form of lawless violence, and there can be no relief in sight until there is a religious change in man, until man again comes to a Biblical doctrine of man, to a Biblical doctrine of sin. Apart from that, we shall soon revert to the jungle law where the crime is to be weak, and if your wife is raped and if you are killed, it is your fault, for you had no business being so weak. 

This is the law in much of the world, it will be in what was civilization. 

“Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it…” ^iv

Let us pray.

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee for thy Word and for its certainty. Recall us as a people to thy Word, O Lord, and reestablish us as a godly people so that we may have law and order, that we may have the joy of salvation, the security that comes from establishment in thy Word. Make us, our Father, beacon lights of grace unto this dark world so that there may be again a new building, a new nation, a reestablishment of the foundation our forefathers laid, and that with a new birth of liberty we may be a people under God and to His glory. Grant us this we beseech thee. In Jesus' name. Amen.

* * *

Are there any questions with respect to our lesson first of all?

[Audience member] Is coercion synonymous with physical force? ^v

[Rushdoony] It usually is in modern definition, it is synonymous with psychical force, and it is because of this fact that coercion is made synonymous with physical force that your Marxist has so often resorted to, hypocritically resorted to brainwashing and mental torture to get around physical coercion. So they resort to every kind of façade to avoid admitting openly that they are resorting to physical coercion. Of course, they are.

Yes?

[Audience member] Is Ayn Rand a libertarian? ^vi

[Rushdoony] Ayn Rand is very definitely a libertarian.

Yes?

[Audience member] Is she antinomian in her outlook? ^vii

[Rushdoony] Yes. Ultimately, the only right for her is might, and while she holds to certain free market laws, they are an anachronism because actually, in her position, no law is possible; only total anarchy.

Yes? 

[Audience member] I have heard that there are some moves to local community control in some school boards in Chicago.  ^viii

[Rushdoony] With regard to the local school board, there is a persona of local governments there, but if you were a white community trying to have the same authority for your school board, you would get nowhere. This is simply a form of anarchy whereby various racial groups, particularly black, are demanding total control of the local schools and of tax funds, and the right to have anarchy and society. So, it is not truly local control. 

Yes?

[Audience member] Could you speak about the ‘law of reaction,’ Dr. Rushdoony? ^ix

[Rushdoony] The so-called ‘law of reaction’ is really not much of a law. There is a reaction to things, but the reaction is futile unless it is principled. So, without the principle, the reaction leads nowhere but in the same direction. In other words, there is a reaction very definitely against the lawlessness of today, but since the reaction itself is in humanistic terms, it is doing nothing but compounding the evil. As a matter of fact, your student rebellions today are a reaction against our prevailing establishment, but they’re reacting in the same direction only further, because they have no principle in their reactions. The negro rioting is, in part, a reaction to our establishment. What they are saying in effect is, “You promised us so much, your socialist dream has promised us paradise on earth and you said you were going to add integration, and your Supreme Courts made these decisions a few years ago and we still haven’t had paradise handed to us. So we’re going to burn everything down because we are disillusioned.”

So, you see, there is a reaction there but the reaction only takes you further in the wrong direction. Because until man can move on principle, they will continue in the same direction as before, no matter how much they react against something. This is why the Marxist can always make use of the reaction because they know that, lacking any principles, it basically always favors them. 

[Audience member] Were the Crusades justified, Dr. Rushdoony? ^x

[Rushdoony] Were the Crusades justified? That’s a complex question, and I would not entirely be able to answer that. The history of the Crusades is a complicated one. First of all, the entire area had been Christian territory, and it was conquered by Moslem invasions. Now, the Christians in that area appealed to Christian Europe to come to their aid. Sometimes, when they went there to the aid of their people, they did them more damage than the Moslems because they went in there to loot and to make a fortune for themselves. Too often, the Crusaders who did go were men, who were the younger sons of families, who were not going to have an inheritance, and it was a good way to make a fortune, to go there and try to carve out an empire in that area, or to come back with loot. 

Now, this is not true of all the Crusaders, but it was true that there were a number of them. Also, some of the Crusaders went there, and they picked up a lot of subversive ideas, illuminists ideas. For example the assassins, the old men of the mountain. A great many of the Crusaders became secret members of that group, and brought that kind of subversive revolutionary doctrine into Europe. On the other hand, there were a great many plusses in favor of the Crusades, in that certain areas were kept from conquest by the Moslems. The Moslem attack on Europe was delayed by a few centuries until Europe could better be ready. So a great deal could be said for the Crusades as well; it was a mixed story. However, there was nothing wrong with the coercive aspect of it. In other words, it was a legitimate cause for battle, in spite of the fact that many fought illegitimately.

Yes?

[Audience member] Is it right for art and literature to focus on the physical aspect of the suffering of Christ?

[Rushdoony] The answer is, of course, there has been a fantastic amount of humanism read into the Easter story these days. The physical suffering was real. After all, crucifixion was a fearful form of death, and it produced (doctors who are experts in this area and have made it a matter of studies, and I have studied the records) it produces a radical dehydration in the body which is extremely painful. However, apart from our Lord’s words, “I thirst,” there is not a single reference in any of His words to the physical aspect of His suffering, however real that was. And His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me” had reference, not to the physical aspect, but to the total isolation. 

In other words, He as man’s representative was going to take the death penalty upon Himself. As such, it meant that He would be the accursed one, that He would be the criminal isolated from God and in the process also be isolated from man. It was this aspect, the fact that no one understood exactly what it meant, that was so painful. And this is why He took the three chosen disciples with Him and asked them to walk and pray with Him. And He went back to them, you remember, and each time He found them heedless, and this was the cause of His grief. But He finally accepted it and said, “The hour is come.” He knew He was going to face it totally alone. And it was, you remember, with calmness that He went to the trial, that He faced the fact of Peter’s denial and the flight of all the disciples, this utter isolation. So that the emphasis on the physical, while it was real, has been made into a humanistic thing and wrongly emphasized. 

Yes, one more question. 

[Audience member] Are there any Christian Libertarians, Dr. Rushdoony? ^xi

[Rushdoony] Yes. There are Christian libertarians, the Libertarian Press, for example, in Illinois has published a number of works. Frederic Niemeyer has written some excellent books in this area. I can give you the address of the Press if you’ll call me sometime; very, very fine. And while I don’t agree with Fred Niemeyer at every point, I think very highly of his thinking. 

Now, some of the older libertarians were purely economic libertarians; they did not go off into other fields, and therefore we as Christians can accept their works. Ludwig Von Mises, while not a Christian, is strictly an economic libertarian, and his thinking is excellent. He is not at all happy about the perversion of his ideas in the anarchistic philosophy of Murray Rothbard, and is very unhappy that people regard Rothbard as his exponent, as it were. And you will find, for example in Böhm-Bawerk, whose works also published by the Libertarian Press, Böhm-Bawerk, a very great economist, and there you have a very fine exposition of free market economy.

Hans Sennholz very definitely, incidentally, is hostile to the new libertarians and their anarchism, and he has expressed to Dorothy and myself his distaste for their thinking. Gary North’s book, The Marxist Religion of Revolutionalso is very clearly given to a free economic concept, but hostile to this new libertarianism, thoroughly Christian. 

Well, our time is up. 

i. Karl Hess, “The Death of Politics,” in Playboy, vol. 16, no. 3 (March, 1969), p. 102.

ii. Karl Hess, “The Death of Politics,” in Playboy, vol. 16, no. 3 (March, 1969), p. 104.

iii. “‘Madness’ Sweeps Pakistan,” Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Wednesday, March 19, 1969, p. A-14.

iv. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Ps 127:1.

v.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

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vii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

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ix.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

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xi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.