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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.

Jonah Goldberg of NRO writes: I would love for a critic of the neocons to give me a serviceable definition of what one is. A few self-described neocons — Irving Kristol, Max Boot, Adam Wolfson — are invested in imbuing neocons with a lot more meaning than I believe it has in part because they are leaders of what they see as the distinct political faction Drum’s talking about. But on specific public policy issues, I am at a loss to understand what exactly neocons believe to the exclusion of plain old conservatives.

My short definition is that a neoconservative is a big government conservative. This includes numerous politicians and commentators who would probably not consider themselves anything but conservatives. As the Republican party has grown, it has attracted more and more people who are more devoted to being on the winning team than they are to conservative Republican priniciples. Add to this the pragmatic Republicans, who will sell out every conservative principle in order to win an election, and you have the foundation for what increasingly appears to be a transformation into a full-blown neoconservative party.

Neoconservativism rejects conservative isolationism in favor of Wilsonian adventurism. It rejects republicanism in favor of fostering democracy, both here and abroad. It consistently favors favors the acceptance of federalism over battling for states rights. It rejects tradition and what you call the democracy of the dead in favor of building a new world order. It does not respect national sovereignty, and uses left-liberal language of human rights to justify this lack of respect. It rejects the Christian principle of being in but not of a fallen world and imitates the architects of the secular Left in attempting to construct Man’s paradise here on Earth. There are different strains to this neoconservativism, but the common theme is a willingness to embrace the expansion of government power for a particular end.

I think there is a strong case for describing President Bush as a neoconservative. He ran away from conservativism with his “compassionate conservative” rhetoric, has twice refused to follow the Constitution in properly declaring war and has instituted a new government entitlement as well as increasing government spending at rate that puts past Democrats to shame.

I am a libertarian, not a conservative, but I don’t find it hard to understand why many conservatives are dismayed with both President Bush and his neoconservative administration. I’m somewhat acquainted with the non-official Bush coterie – I once dated the daughter of one of his major supporters – and these were not conservatives offended by the notion of big government, so long as the sum total of its interventions were in their favor.

Looks like Doug Kenline is back online audioblogging from the trial in Fort Worth. The courthouse is packed, so much so that Doug couldn’t get into the afternoon session. According to Robert Engle, who managed to find a seat, Larkin Rose, Bob Schultz and Ed Rivera were testifying for the defense and Rose particularly had the jury paying close attention to his presentation. Some interesting information on the right to withhold tax money when petitions have not been addressed by the government was presented by Schultz too. Engle’s opinion was that it was a good day for the defense, but since he’s not on the jury, we’ll just have to wait and see.

The informative audio posts are time-stamped 4:37 PM on Tuesday and 5:33 PM and 5:37 PM on Monday. The others should be skipped. Closing statements in the final session still to come, followed by deliberations and the verdict.

Audblog is tres cool.

I’m just wondering how the “helpless homosexual” crowd is attempting to explain away this sort of thing. So, it’s genetic, unless it’s a high school fashion trend, but you can’t choose to quit? Is that it? Right, got it. Or is it genetic for men and not genetic for women, as the writer seems to suggest? But then, that would necessitate gender being more than the invention of oppressive white males, in which case it’s the feminist theorists who are dashed upon the cold hard shoals of logic.