A Reason is not an Excuse (by Greg Koukl)

Oh me, oh my, I'm being abused by life. I think I'll go out and hurt someone.

I was very disgruntled and deeply disturbed by the turn the Menendez trial has taken in California. Eric and Lyle Menendez have been on trial for the last few months in a high profile trial. As I've mentioned many times in the past, I'm not as concerned about the details of this trial as I am with the ideas that are behind it. Ideas that I think are surfacing in this somewhat bizarre trial going on in Manassas, Virginia with Lorena Bobbit regarding the dismembering of her husband's penis. Incidentally, he was tried for sexual abuse and acquitted with regard for his actions towards his wife.

Both of these trials are similar in that in both cases the defendants testify that they've acted in self-defense after years of sexual and emotional abuse. In the case of the Menendez brothers, they both admit that they shot their father and mother, Jose and Kitty Menendez, but they say it's because they feared for their own lives and it was an act of self-defense. The same thing is being said by Lorena Bobbit. Her defense is establishing that Bobbit abused his wife on numerous occasions and they're trying to portray Mrs. Bobbit as a classic example of a battered wife who should not be held responsible for a desperate act committed in extreme emotional distress. Of course, the desperate act was the severing of his penis after he had allegedly raped her. He'd come in, apparently, after a drunken spree with one of his friends and she woke up to find him on top of her. Afterwards she went to the kitchen, reflected for a few moments, grabbed the knife and the next thing she says she recalls is driving along the highway with his penis in her hand which she quickly tossed out the window. It was later found by the policemen based on the information she gave them and they were able to sew it back on after a nine hour operation.

I guess there are a spate of jokes going on about this incident with the Bobbits. This is a serious circumstance and the details may be funny, but I have a concern about what is being stated in the method of defense of these trials or the contention of the defendants.

In neither case is the question of who committed the crime at issue. There is no question as to who did what. Both Eric and Lyle Menendez admit that they shot their mother and father with shotguns and Lorena Bobbit admits that she cut off her husband's penis. They both admit the deed. As it stands right now, the Eric Menendez case has been declared a mistrial because the jury was deadlocked on whether he is guilty of first degree murder or the lesser charge of manslaughter. The jury in the Lyle Menendez trial is still out. The question in my own mind is what possibly could there be confusion about. I guess they bought the defense's contention that this was a justifiable act in some way so it's not first degree murder, it could be manslaughter. They ought not to have killed their parents, but it was understandable and, therefore, the sense of culpability for the crime is minimized. The same thing is being said about Lorena Bobbit. This is just another very, very sad chapter in our retreat from the notion of moral responsibility.

I was really upset that the jury balked on the issue of culpability in the case of Eric Menendez and possibly in the case of Lyle Menendez and quite probably in the case of Lorena Bobbit. I hope they don't buy it, but they may. This reflects a trend that is very deeply debilitating to justice. Don Feder has an interesting piece not directly related to this case but which makes the same point in the Conservative Chronicle . The piece is called "The Dead-End Road of Non-Judgmentalism." He says, "Whatever you did, there's a justification. The search for exculpating circumstances is a never ending quest." He makes the point that during the Depression there was a lot more poverty, but a lot less crime. Actually, the crime rate declined. "But what they had and what we are rapidly losing is a sense of shame. Moral issues then were black and white and not soothing, conscience anesthetizing shades of gray." He really makes the point well that something desperately evil is happening in our moral consciousness in this society when it comes to the culpability of people who commit crimes.

We've talked frequently about the notion of relativism. This notion has crept in over the last twenty years to seep into the most obscure parts of our social thinking so that virtually everyone now is a moral relativist holding that it's inappropriate to make judgments in almost any case regarding a person's actions. That is happening now in this case. We have a terribly obscene murder in the Menendez case and a terribly obscene mutilation in the case of Lorena Bobbit. Yet, in both cases we are being asked to believe, and in some cases at least a portion of the jury is buying the argument, that though a person is responsible for an action, they are not culpable for what they have done. The word culpability simply means blameworthy. It is not appropriate to blame them for what they have done and there's been a trend on the heels of this relativism that reinforces the idea that people are not responsible for their behavior. We see this everywhere.

If I would identify a single trend with regard to the issue of justice and moral health in our society, the one that I would put my finger on is a form of moral relativism: people are no longer responsible for their actions. Someone else is always responsible. Your parents are responsible. Society is responsible. Your upbringing is responsible. Your genes are responsible. Your chemistry is responsible. It's the chocolate you ate this morning or the pizza you had last night or the difficult circumstances that you grew up with. All of these things, these inanimate things that can't be punished themselves are all to blame. And people, moral creatures who make moral choices, are not the ones to blame. Therefore, it's inappropriate to punish them. Because we believe this kind of thing, we are at a desperate crossroads with regard to crime in this country. Even now we have the proposed "three strikes and you're out" and people are battling against this because it doesn't focus on prevention and reform. Listen, my friends, it functionally reforms every person that has three strikes against them in that they are pulled out of society so they can no longer commit crime.

I listen to the testimony of Lorena Bobbit and hear these terrible things that her husband allegedly did to her. What if I granted that he did commit these things. Even if he was guilty, what then? Is it appropriate for Lorena Bobbit to take out her revenge on her husband? Her defense attorney says it was self-defense. Ladies and gentlemen, if you buy that I've got some seashore property I want to sell you in Montana. This has nothing to do with self-defense. It's the same thing with Eric and Lyle Menendez. These were grown people who could leave if they wanted. Self-defense is not the issue. Revenge is the issue in both cases. Vigilantism is the issue. I can prove that by Lorena Bobbit's own words. The L.A. Times records what she said on the witness stand. "'I remember many things,' she said in a quavering voice. 'I remember the first time he raped me. I remember the insults. I remember the first time he forced me to have anal sex and the bad things he said. I remember the abortion. I remember everything.'" Then it says that she remembered nothing after that until she remembered coming to her senses driving down the road with a penis in her hand sans the body of her husband. Now, the point I'm making is that by her own statement this is not an act of self-defense. This is an act of revenge. This is an act of taking the law into her own hands. She reflected on the harm that was done her and she responded by punishing the man that did it.

I was talking to someone on the airplane and in reflection on this issue this young lady said, "They got what they deserved." Maybe they did, but that's not the point. Maybe Dr. Gunn got what he deserved at the hands of Michael Griffin (remember the abortionist that was murdered last year). Maybe the child molester in Sonora got what he deserved when Ellie Nesler, the mother of his alleged victim, blew his head off in a court room last year. The point is this: who's doing the giving that they got, not whether they got what they deserved. Justice is the responsibility of the government to carry out. Even if everything that was said was true, even if we buy everything that was said by Eric and Lyle (in which case, as my neighbor Tony said earlier today, then it's Jose and Kitty Menendez who are on trial), even if we buy what Lorena Bobbit says, even if the other parties are guilty of everything they claim, is it still justifiable for them to do what they did? My answer is no and my reason is because a reason is not an excuse.

Many times we approach trials like this and we see the terrible things that happened to people and we are asked to excuse the crime because of the reason involved. But a reason is different that an excuse. Even if we might understand why a person would be inclined to act in a fashion, it doesn't excuse the behavior. In fact, the behavior should be punished. That is the way, ladies and gentlemen, that we instill values. We act based on those values that we believe in. When we punish evil, when we punish harmful actions, when we punish wrong doing, we are saying that such acts, even when understandable, are not acceptable because they are not excusable. Then hopefully, fewer and fewer people will do that kind of thing. That's how you influence a society.

Just a thought on one common factor in both of these cases. It's the cry of abuse, the cry of being a victim of some sort. Whenever a person begins to cast a party in the language of a victim the next thing you'll hear from them is a request not to judge them. If you're a victim, then you're not responsible for your behavior. It's become more and more popular for people to cast themselves as victims, and not just individuals, but whole groups of people. The minute they do so it makes it impossible to make a difference in their lives because victims aren't in control of themselves. That is why they can't be held responsible for their behavior and they can't be asked to change their behavior.

I started one of the biggest bruhahas on this station about two and a half years ago when I was talking about racial difficulties. I said that Whites would never be able to solve Black's problems. I wasn't trying to make a policy statement, a moralistic statement or a philosophic statement. It's simply a pragmatic statement that people can only solve their own problems. The minute we push any of our problems, whether it's a racial problem or a background problem that we personally have, we push it on someone and make them responsible for it, then we no longer are responsible and, frankly, nothing will ever get done. That's why when people start casting themselves as victims, not only are they asking us not to hold them morally responsible, they are making it impossible to ever change their behavior because they are not in control of the behavior. If they aren't in control, they can't be held responsible. They're victims. The thing that victimized Eric and Lyle Menendez and also Lorena Bobbit, apparently, is abuse.

What I'm about to say is going to be a little difficult for me to say because I realize that there are people out there that have suffered terribly at the hands of others. It seems to me more and more that there is a new name for growing up and it's simply called abuse. And it's used to justify all sorts of bizarre and immoral behavior, all sorts of other abuse. It's very popular to talk about abuse now and people talk about the lives they led and what they experienced as kids. I'll tell you honestly, I think back on my life and I think back on the lives of kids I grew up with and we all experienced the same thing. I got strapped. My mom busted hairbrushes on my butt. I was famous for how many hairbrushes got busted on my butt as my mom whopped me. Did I like it? No, but that's discipline. My friends all got the same thing. I lost privileges. I was yelled at. People swore at me. What was that to me? Abuse? No, it was just growing up. Some of you are thinking I had it so hard. That's the point. Everybody has it hard. Everybody has difficult experiences in their lives. Everybody can look back on a time when their parents just lost it and did something that we could call abusive, but we would do ourselves if we were in the same circumstances. In fact, it's those kinds of things that people do now in the same circumstances that they're asking to be exonerated of responsibility for because they have had the same things happen to them, too. They were abused in some fashion. The new word for growing up is abuse. What used to be the normal hard knocks of life is now considered extreme and bizarre, and because of those things we ought not be held responsible.

You know, I loved the movie "Tombstone." Doc Holiday and Wyatt Erp were having a conversation towards the end of the movie. Erp was to have this showdown with Johnny Ringo who was the fastest gun around. Erp was trying to make sense of this. He asked Doc Holiday, lying in bed dying, "Doc, can I beat him?" Holiday said, "No, you can't." And Erp asked, "What drives this person?" Holiday answered, "He wants revenge." Erp said, "Revenge for what?" Holiday replied, "Revenge for being born." Ladies and gentlemen, you don't have the right to take out your anger and pain of growing up and the pain of life by killing and maiming the ones who hurt you. This isn't to glorify the abuse, minimize it, dismiss it, or say that some don't have it worse than others. But let's face it, life is abusive. It's called growing up. That's just the way it is. Mature people understand that and are willing to take the licks of life and move on instead of crying the victim and asking everyone else to excuse the abusive behavior that they then do.

A reason is not an excuse.