Author: VD

DW writes: I read your blog with interest. Much of it is well-reasoned (NFL allegiances aside, although I certainly can claim no better!). And want to or not, one leaves the blog thinking. Certainly I did not expect to bethinking about cannibalism this morning. Regarding Brandes consent, what about codes that are in place to preventone from inflicting serious harm on oneself?

I do not know the laws pertaining to this in Germany, but that’s not the point of my question. Are codes like this an example of state interference in individual choice and morality? If not, could such a principle be applied to Brandes, and if so, would you prefer to see these laws eliminated?

Yes, they absolutely are. Seat belt laws and helmet laws are good examples of this. Such an example certainly applies, and I would absolutely prefer to see these laws eliminated. If the State has the power to tell you to wear a helmet on a bicycle, they also have the power to tell a woman to wear the chador.

The jury has sent the judge another question.

Question: Since no proof has been offered by the government that the defendant’s business is required to file under Section 7202, are we to assume that they are not required to file or are we to read all 7000 pages of businesses required to file?

Answer from Judge: I have made a legal determination that during the years in question, Arrow Plastics had a legal duty to collect Social Security, Medicare and FICA and forward those taxes to the U.S.A. and the defendant’s business falls into the category of businesses required to file. They should not concern themselves as to the requirement for the defendant’s business to file.

The defense objected that this amounted to a directed verdict. The judge overruled the objection.

After this, the verdict came back guilty on 29 of 31 counts. Which is understandable, given the fact that the judge simply made up the law and directed the verdict. “They should not concern themselves as to the requirement for the defendant’s business to file.” That was what the whole case was about; it was precisely what the jury was there to judge! This is why you must never use a lawyer in these circumstances. The jury has the power to judge the law; the judge does not, but no lawyer will dare to bring up jury nullification for fear of being disbarred. It’s too bad the Simkanin jury did not know its own power.

Since there’s now no law as written, it’s clear that Aleister Crowley’s rule is now in effect. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” I don’t expect this to turn out well, in the long run. The socialist crisis is approaching – what will they do when strong arm tactics such as these still don’t cause freedom-loving people to submit? And what will the next honest and informed entrepeneur take from this lesson in judicial tyranny? Some will submit and pay the taxes they know they don’t owe. Some will resist and go to jail with their head held high. And some will quietly leave the country, never to return.

A nation that persecutes its best and brightest doesn’t tend to survive long.

JM writes: Your answer to the question freaked me out. What about the people in the society? Don’t they have the right to be protected from such an act happening in their midst? If there were the possibility of a man murdering and eating another man next door to me, and it was a common practice (who knows where we will be in 30 years?), I would not be able to live in peace. I would never even consider bringing children into the world. Such acts cannot simply happen “behind doors”, their very presence in a society effects every member of the society. The act is so reviling to basic human nature that everyone is effected.

For some reason the consent makes it far more bone-chilling than your run of the mill “jungle cannibalism”. It is as if you get a glimpse of hell. And by your logic you could have this sort of stuff on pay-per-view. I would rather be persecuted under a tyrant than to live in such a society. Personal freedom in this life is only so valuable, it is not to be idolized, which is exactly what you border on doing.

I think this is absolutely a glimpse of Hell. This is what happens when people turn from God. And legal or no, the possibility already exists. But instead of expecting the government to stop it, I would say that the correct response is social ostracism and a refusal to do business or have dealings with such a person. Sans a government that violates the right to freedom of association, you would be very unlikely to have such a person living next door for long; he would not be able to do so in a town where no one would have anything to do with him. Ostracism is a very powerful force, unfortunately Americans have lost the ability to use it.

Otherwise, you have a society where the government has the power to prevent people from worshipping God next door. You can’t have things both ways. I don’t idolize personal freedom. God, who has far more power than any government, decided to give it to us as a gift. Who are you to attempt to take away what He has chosen to give? Private property and a philosophy of my rights ending where yours begin is the only reasonable foundation for secular law. I would say, however, that it is foolish to think that it would be better to live under a tyrant – there have been tyrants in the past thirty years who have practiced such abominations themselves. You would prefer to allow them the power to force you to do the same?

Neither governments nor people can be controlled for long. Not for good, not for evil. This is the great lesson of history.

JM responds: This is a very good argument. I gladly submit to it. I never considered the effect two seemingly disconnected freedoms can have on one another. My nightmare scenario was actually a form of tyranny because we would be forced to “get along” with persons who engage in such behavior in the name of respecting their liberty. It is not really a respect of liberty, [though], it is a respect of sin.

Indeed.

Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News writes: Gang, I think this short City Journal article by Theodore Dalrymple, M.D. could spark an interesting discussion among us. Dr. Dalrymple takes up the case of Armin Meiwes, the German cannibal on trial for murdering and eating his sex partner, the late (and arguably delicious) Bernd Brandes. Meiwes advertised on the Internet for a male sex partner who would be willing to be killed and eaten by him. Brandes showed up at his door saying, “Here I am!” There is, I have read, videotaped evidence showing that Brandes fully consented to what is, you’ll have to admit, the ultimate sadomasochistic relationship.

It is widely accepted in today’s society that the state has no business interfering in private sexual conduct made by consenting adults. It is also believed by many people that individuals should have the right to choose euthanasia; that is, adults should have the right to end their lives on their own terms, as long as they hurt no one.

The question becomes: On what moral and philosophical grounds does the state justify prosecuting the cannibal Meiwes for participating in a consensual act that happened to involve sex and ritual murder?

Writes Dalrymple: “Lest anyone think that the argument from mutual consent for the permissibility of cannibalism is purely theoretical, it is precisely what Meiwes’s defense lawyer is arguing in court. The case is a reductio ad absurdum of the philosophy according to which individual desire is the only thing that counts in deciding what is permissible in society. Brandes wanted to be killed and eaten; Meiwes wanted to kill and eat. Thanks to one of the wonders of modern technology, the Internet, they both could avoid that most debilitating of all human conditions, frustrated desire. What is wrong with that? Please answer from first principles only.”

Dr. Dalrymple is not a libertarian, so he is in no way arguing for the defense. But he does raise a very valid point. I’m not a libertarian either, so I can explain (and will do so) why I think this is wrong. But I know there are some pretty strong libertarians among us, so I’m interested to hear what you have to say in answer to Dr. Dalrymple’s challenge.

Since you asked for a response from libertarians, I’ll be happy to provide one. Meiwes’ cannibalistic and depraved actions should be perfectly legal given the circumstances, although they are without question morally reprehensible. Now, either the State has the power to define sin or it does not. If it does have the power to define sin, then adultery, a far more common and socially destructive sin than cannibalism, should without question be banned and punished. If it does not have this power, then the laws against murder must stem from private property rights, in which case Brandes clearly granted Meiwes permission to make culinary use of his body and so there is no crime.

I am a Christian, but I absolutely prefer that the State be limited to matters of defending its citizenry and the private property rights of those citizens. If the State is allowed to play God and define sin, then sin will be defined by the most active special interest groups in the quasi-democratic West, leading to situations where men are convicted for the hate crime of publishing Bible verses as happened recently in Canada, or, conversely, women are sentenced to stoning for getting pregnant out of wedlock. What the State can give, the State can take away; it is an amoral enterprise.

A society cannot hope to exceed the morals of the individuals that comprise it.

Rod responds: I don’t think this is sufficient. If the moral basis for banning murder is located in the defense of property rights, and not in the inherent dignity of the individual, then what is to prevent the state from declaring an entire class of people — African slaves, for example — as mere property, and denying them human rights?

Besides which, it doesn’t follow at all that if the state has the right to pass laws based on a vision of right and wrong — and that’s what all laws are: a codified moral vision — that the state must make adultery a criminal offense. Unquestionably adultery is destructive of the social order, but it could be argued — indeed, I would argue — that making adultery a criminal offense would cause more problems than it would solve. Not so with murder and cannibalism.

Because under my libertarian scenario, the State has no power to supercede any individual’s property right to himself. Such an action would be theft; there is no eminent domain. Admittedly, it might be difficult to prevent an individual from selling himself, should he so choose. However, under Rod’s scenario, the State can simply declare the class of individual non-human, as the Nazis and the U.S. Supreme Court and now New Jersey have done. The moral basis for banning murder is not based in the inherent dignity of the individual anyhow, it is based on Mosaic law and the conflation of the State with the Church. Unfortunately, we don’t have God talking directly to our leaders, except perhaps Pat Robertson, so in this fallen world it is preferable to strip the State of the ability to define morality, legality and sin.

The correlation absolutely follows since Rod’s codified moral vision (he’s a Catholic Christian) bans adultery as it bans cannibalism. If we’re going to delve into moral relativism or utilitarianism, then we have to begin from scratch by making distinct cases for the morality or immorality of adultery, murder and cannibalism. This was not the perspective from which the original question was posed.

It occured to me that the very language used is telling. The post on DMN Daily didn’t ask “what is illegal about cannibalism”, it asked “what is wrong” with it. Illegal and wrong are not synonymous. What is wrong with cannibalism and murder is that, like adultery, it is an offense to God. One does not eat His temple. That’s the sum total. God alone defines our morality; that is why the apostle Paul told the newly Christian Jews that the old Mosaic Law had been superceded and they could now eat the formerly unclean foods. Morality thus is not the law, it is above it.

The only question that remains is do we structure our society with laws in accordance with our best understanding of God’s Will or not? Since God appears to be the ultimate champion of free will, I do not think we should, but rather imitate Him in allowing people the maximum freedom and responsibility possible. I suggest that history and the failures of every attempt to force God on individuals through the State supports this stance.

The White Buffalo writes: Do you know that when I bring your blog up, almost everyday the header at the top is for Howard Dean? The blogspot advertising at the top of your page is a Deanathon.

That’s because I’ve warmed to him now that he’s talking about God and the Rebel flag.

If anyone can get the Redskins ship back in order, it’s Joe Gibbs. I am not happy about this. Not that I have high hopes for the Vikings making the Super Bowl in the next year or two, but it’s a lot tougher if you have to get past teams coached by Bill Parcells and Joe Gibbs.

I much preferred Mike Tice matching wits with Chan Gailey and Steve Spurrier. Oh well. At least the Lions under Millen and the Bears under Colangelo will continue to keep us battling with the Packers for the NFC North.

With a population of nearly 182 million, more than 40,000 Brazilians died of gunshot wounds last year, according to the WHO. The United States, with a population of 292 million, had 29,000 firearm deaths last year.

And here I thought the USA was supposed to have the biggest problem, due to our lax gun laws. I’ll bet you that in five years, the problem will be worse than it was before the new gun control laws.

See, elect a socialist and it’s only a matter of time – in this case months – before he starts disarming the people. The only good thing is that perhaps the Brazilian supermodel factory will be forced to relocate.

Made my debut in The Corner today. [Name withheld] as per usual Corner etiquette, but you can probably figure out which definition was mine. Here’s what Jonah had to say, and my subsequent reply.

Okay. Here’s just one of the basic problems with all of this. If Neocons love big-government, why does Pat Buchanan — perhaps the only self-described “paleocon” average Americans have ever heard of — want to expand the welfare state? As Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out in a brilliant take-down of Buchanan, the man’s biggest complaint with Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” is that it’s a rip-off of Buchanan’s “conservatism of the heart.” Meanwhile I know literally dozens of allegedly well-known “neocons” who very much want to shrink the welfare state.

Meanwhile, the Buchanan crowd says National Review is a “neocon” magazine because it supported the war, while the mainstream press routinely says NR is “paleo” and the Weekly Standard is “neo” even though our respective positions on foreign policy are nearly identical — albeit from the vantage point of, say, a New York Times or Slate reporter. If being a neocon means being hawkish, then NR was always more neocon than the neocons because we were the ones championing rollback, not containment. And, oh yeah, why did Buchanan want to send the Sixth Fleet to defend Dubrovnik in 1991, if the Paleos are against foreign adventures. And why did über-neo Charles Krauthammer oppose getting mired in the Balkans?

I don’t suggest that Neocons love big government. If they did, they’d be left-liberals, after all. I merely suggest that Neocons consider it a perfectly viable tool whenever they feel it is desirable. It is this willingness to embrace big government, on occasion, that sets them apart from traditional conservatives. I believe that the self-professed paleocon whose definition you also mentioned was saying almost exactly the same thing, albeit in different words.

As for Pat, well, let’s face it. As strong as he is on some things – I’ve spent enough years in Europe to know that his Death of the West hypothesis is not the product of a fevered imagination – he can be all over the place. I respect him, but I don’t look for consistency from him. Those neo-cons you mentioned may well be willing to shrink the welfare state; my guess is that they’re perfectly willing to embrace expanding central state power in other areas more dear to their respective hearts, be it the drug war, Patriot II, or the Federal Reserve system. And, of course, your reply doesn’t even begin to defend the Bush Administration, which shows no sign of interest in reducing the welfare state, much less turning back the New Deal.

Maybe Charles Krauthammer opposed it because it was an obviously bad idea? Being a neoconservative doesn’t imply stupidity.

“At the bench, Judge McBryde openly admitted he had not read any of the Defense motions, but regardless, summarily dismissed all of them within seconds. “

Yes, we’re supposed to believe that these jokers are concerned about someone obeying the law. Right. McBryde should recuse himself, as he’s either incompetent or corrupt. This would be nothing but a Soviet-style show trial, were it not for the fact that the advocates of total government power have not yet been able to eliminate the jury. If you ever to trouble to read a transcript of one of these cases, you’ll see that the judge almost always flat out declares that the law is not what is written, the only law is what he says it is. This is a blatant lie, albeit one that the Supreme Court, in its decadence, has declared acceptable.

This is why you should always defend yourself in a tax case instead of using a lawyer, since lawyers have to fear the judge and let him get away with blatantly biased actions like this. Not being an officer of the court, the pro se litigant does not. Costs a lot less too, and from what I’ve read, pro se litigants have a better record than defendants represented by lawyers.

The best legal defense in the world won’t do you a bit of good when the judge simply rules it out and your lawyer meekly accedes because he doesn’t want to get disbarred. This is also why you should never submit to any proceeding other than a jury trial. You will never get a fair trial from a judge – no matter what kind of case it is, he wants to get it over with as quickly and easily as possible. The question of justice doesn’t enter in; I’ve personally witnessed a judge flip a coin to settle what should have been an open-and-shut case. Judicial corruption is an evil that preceded the Magna Carta and it is not only still with is, it is arguably as bad as it’s been in centuries.

Remember, courts have been illegitimately sentencing men to prison and worse for millennia. Gandhi, Mandela and the apostle Paul could all testify to this, as could Jesus Christ Himself. For all their pretensions, the courts are not inherently on the side of civilization or the Good, the Right and the True.

It’s all rhetoric at this point. But I have to say, he’s off to a surprisingly good start:

“Never again will government be allowed to spend money it doesn’t have. Never again will the state be allowed to borrow money to pay for its operating expenses…. Every governor proposes moving boxes around to reorganize government. I don’t want to move the boxes around; I want to blow them up.”

Then again, there was this:

“We agreed to fight side-by-side to get more federal tax money for homeland security, for criminal aliens, water resources, highways, and other needs.”

Okay, probably not entirely wrong. Oh well.