If boiling people alive best served the interests of the American people

If boiling people alive best served the interests of the American people, then it would neither be moral or immoral.

We’re not talking about choosing between rum raisin and rocky road at the Baskin-Robbins. Boiling people alive (if only under exceptional circumstances) is either moral, or it isn’t – and anyone half as clever as this lad thinks he is would make those exceptional circumstances clear, then argue for the morality of throwing people in the cauldron.

But even if he were clever enough to do so, he still wouldn’t be a libertarian. Some issues are beyond debate for libertarians, and even if you don’t count preemptive war among those issues, you damn well better include the impermissibility of boiling people alive. Vegans don’t debate skinning baby seals. Libertarians don’t debate boiling people alive. Period. And if we do, then perhaps we should also reconsider Sweden’s take on taxes, Uganda’s thinking on homosexuality, and Bill Bennett’s favored drug policy.

For Thursday’s Capital Times , John Nichols reworked his latest Nation On-Line Beat entry, which topped Common Dreams’ list Wednesday. The subject was the thwarting of a church’s attempt to celebrate inclusiveness. I’m attempting to celebrate how religiously exclusive John (and by proxy, far too many “progressives”) is when it comes to Palestine, that’s 102 Cap Times columns down, eight to go and he’ll have made it through the year without having used the word “Israel.”