Peter SmytheA Different Kind of Word Preacher

Ted continues his discussion with Laura:

Laura: But rape and murder are wrong. The Bible says they are wrong, and the law says they are wrong.

Ted: What do you mean by wrong? What you call wrong, I call attempts to limit my freedom. The Bible punished both sodomy and murder with death. Sodomy is no longer regarded as a crime, or even as immoral. Why then should murder - or rape? But, you say, rape and murder are against the law, and if the law catches me, it will punish me. Very well, and if it does not catch me, what then? After so many highly successful and immensely gratifying rapes and murders, I do not think the law has much to say to me. In any case, it can hardly punish me any more for what I am about to do, then for what I have already done. So I see little benefit for you in this argument.

Laura: But surely, surely, Ted, you must see that killing an innocent human being is wrong. Did you, or do you not have a mother and a father, or a sister or a brother, or friends, in whom you recognize a life like your own, that should be as precious as your own life? Is there not something within you - a conscience - that tells you that to be a human being is to recognize that not everything is permitted? And that your own happiness - indeed your own freedom - depends upon living within the bounds prescribed by God or the moral law?

Ted: Well, Laura, I am glad that we are having this talk. None of my other victims ever asked me to justify myself as you are doing. And so I must tell you - and hope that it will afford you some satisfaction - that you are if possible increasing the pleasure that I am having from our acquaintance, short as it must be. I want you to know then that once upon a time I too believed that God and moral law prescribed boundaries within which my life had to be lived. That was before I took my first college courses in philosophy. Then it was that I discovered how unsophisticated - nay, primitive - my earlier beliefs had been. Then I learned that all moral judgments are “value judgments,” that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved be either “right” or “wrong.” … Believe it or not I figured out for myself … that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any reason to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and the daring - the strength of character - to throw off its shackles. … I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consisted in the unsupportable “value judgment” that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who are these “others”? … Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasures more for the one than the other? … That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me - after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.

At this point in the tape, there was a sharp scream, followed by a click. Laura’s body was found two years later.

For those who do not believe in a resurrection, like it or not, Ted Bundy is their existential hero.