Should Cockfighting Be Legal?

[Sentient Void]

and if you were making your children fight to the death I'd advocate the state to initiate violence against you for that. There is a huge difference between a stone and a living, breathing, thinking life form. By your standards, my IQ rates in the top .2%. I should be able to treat any sub intelligent being as property. Now of course that's not what you are exactly saying but this is the slippery slope you have put yourself on. If we want to act like animals maybe we should be treated as animals. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Bad analogy. Children are humans (and humans are sapient), animals are not. Children are not 'property', animals are.

 

[RyanRSheets]

and if you were making your children fight to the death I'd advocate the state to initiate violence against you for that. There is a huge difference between a stone and a living, breathing, thinking life form. By your standards, my IQ rates in the top .2%. I should be able to treat any sub intelligent being as property. Now of course that's not what you are exactly saying but this is the slippery slope you have put yourself on. If we want to act like animals maybe we should be treated as animals. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Now hold on a second. Are you suggesting I don't have the right to beat my retard?

 

[jmdrake]

Decriminalized, yes.

Animals don't have rights.

^This. I mean seriously folks. Those same two roosters that can't be put together to fight for entertainment can be legally tortured to death in a slaughterhouse.

 

[osan]

I don't disagree with you here - but then we must acknowledge then that the concept of rights are a human construct for the purposes of advancing civilization and human prosperity. I'd say that is the only extent to which rights, at all, are legitimate.

Absolutely agree with you. Natural rights exist in and of themselves, but only because of context. Murder all humans and the concept of natural human rights vanishes into the mists of eternity. It is precisely because we live among our fellows that the rights exist. The rights are natural results of the inherently equal nature of our claims to life. Our rights speak to the propriety of human action and will in the context of life among other human beings. Natural rights have no meaning on a desert island where but a single soul resides. This is a key concept that so few people grasp.

Similarly, natural rights do not hold where human-animal relations are in question. In that context there is brute force - who has more of it and who can wield it most effectively. But that is not quite the entire picture - there is still the question of the propriety of one's treatment of animals. Killing to survive is an inescapable truth of life. Beyond that, destruction of life beyond acts of self defense is most eminently questionable from the moral perspective. Choose as you will, but choose carefully for one cannot know with pure certainty that the infliction of unnecessary harm upon those of non-human persuasions is just fine.

Ultimately, and objectively in nature, rights don't even really exist otherwise - whether we're talking about humans or not.

I would modify this to say that they in fact do when the context comes into existence. Context creates and destroy as surely as anything else does. With the rise of the context of human fellowship, thus arises out of the dust the rights of men. SNuff out the context and those same rights vanish instantly as if they had never been.

Ultimately, the egoist anarchists have it right and are the true realists in political philosophy. I prefer to adopt the natural rights theory because it serves to foster the maximization of the prosperity for *all* individuals.

Could you elaborate on this a bit? I am not well read on this anarchist position.

Further, in regards to what constitutes the ability to have natural rights in this context... I'd say it's do to sapience - but that's hard to measure. Perhaps Adam Smith was right in referencing the ability to voluntarily trade one's property as the attainment of rights?

Self awareness of this sort is good for humans within the human-human context, but its limitations in the human-animal context seems to be a little problematic. Because we cannot know what an animal knows, feels, etc. in the strictest metaphysical sense, I believe it is best to assume the most about their abilities such that when we kill for the sake of eating, we do so with skill and merciful swiftness. For me it is a horror beyond all horror to cause suffering beyond the absolute minimum. When I see something dying in the road, I kill it as swiftly as I am able. I go into something dangerously like a trance state and I act. This past summer I shot a turtle on the shoulder. A truck stopped down the road, turned and followed me, but I lost them. For all I know it could have been an off duty cop who would have arrested me for discharging a firearm withing the city limits of Charleston. It never occurred to me what I was risking. I did what everything that I am commanded. There was no question of what had to happen. None whatsoever. Freaked me out afterward just a little, though.

The year before in the great snows of 2009, I found what had once been a magnificant buck on the roadside, dying of starvation. I tried feeding him, but he was too far gone. I brought hay, laid him down on it, sat by him with his head in my lap and stayed with him until the end. Perhaps I should have shot him - I don't know. I'm not a fan of killing anything and so perhaps I shirked my responsibility. But he'd done the bulk of his suffering and a couple more minutes in exchange for sparing him violence was perhaps a proper end for him. I cannot say for certain - I can only go by what seems right in a given situation.

 

[Bman]

Now hold on a second. Are you suggesting I don't have the right to beat my retard?

lol. yes.

 

[Bman]

^This. I mean seriously folks. Those same two roosters that can't be put together to fight for entertainment can be legally tortured to death in a slaughterhouse.

Didn't your mother ever teach you to not play with your food? Are you saying that society should advocate violence with the sole outcome of death for entertainment?

 

[Bman]

Bad analogy. Children are humans (and humans are sapient), animals are not. Children are not 'property', animals are.

Really? In history humans have been property that could be used in such ways that are being advocated here. Animals may have reason to be considered property but to equate a cow to a television is madness.

 

[low preference guy]

Really? In history humans have been property that could be used in such ways that are being advocated here. Animals may have reason to be considered property but to equate a cow to a television is madness.

if we're talking about rights, it isn't madness because neither has any rights whatsoever.

 

[Sentient Void]

Osan,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egoist_anarchism

 

[jmdrake]

Didn't your mother ever teach you to not play with your food? Are you saying that society should advocate violence with the sole outcome of death for entertainment?

Do you not understand the difference between something being legal and something being advocated by society? Ron Paul is against the drug war, but I've never seen him advocating illicit drug use. As for my mother teaching me not to play with my food, she never suggested I should be prosecuted for doing so.

 

[jmdrake]

Really? In history humans have been property that could be used in such ways that are being advocated here. Animals may have reason to be considered property but to equate a cow to a television is madness.

True. You can't eat a television.

 

[RyanRSheets]

^This. I mean seriously folks. Those same two roosters that can't be put together to fight for entertainment can be legally tortured to death in a slaughterhouse.

That isn't exactly right, either. The animals should be killed quickly. This analogy doesn't really work, though, because a cockfight is not meant to feed anyone, it is purely meant for entertainment.

 

[jmdrake]

We can assume you would be legally prosecuted as a murderer if you decided to eat me, but it would hardly be a legitimate prosecution if you killed and ate me while starving in the middle of the nowhere. It would be more desirable to have to eat an animal, as sentient beings typically try not to eat their own type, but ultimately you have 2 choices, eat or die.

It would be a totally legitimate prosecution! Using your analogy if you had me killed because you needed a heart and I was a perfect match that would not be murder.

 

[Sentient Void]

Really? In history humans have been property that could be used in such ways that are being advocated here. Animals may have reason to be considered property but to equate a cow to a television is madness.

I've covered this numerous times in this thread. Human slavery is a violation of human rights, because all humans have sapience. 'Animal slavery' is not a violation of rights, because they don't have sapience, and thus do not have rights.

 

[Bman]

Do you not understand the difference between something being legal and something being advocated by society? Ron Paul is against the drug war, but I've never seen him advocating illicit drug use. As for my mother teaching me not to play with my food, she never suggested I should be prosecuted for doing so.

Are you saying that getting yourself high from doing a drug is exactly the same as getting high from strangling a dog to death?

 

[jmdrake]

That isn't exactly right, either. The animals should be killed quickly. This analogy doesn't really work, though, because a cockfight is not meant to feed anyone, it is purely meant for entertainment.

Maybe they should be killed quickly, but the truth is they are not. Regardless if you don't have a right to life you don't really have any rights at all. If I was a rooster I'd rather take my chances in a cock fight where I might live if victorious than in a slaughterhouse no matter how "humanely" I was killed.

 

[low preference guy]

Are you saying that getting yourself high from doing a drug is exactly the same as getting high from strangling a dog to death?

he obviously means that even if both are wrong they shouldn't be illegal. not that they are the same thing.

-rep for acting stupid

 

[jmdrake]

Are you saying that getting yourself high from doing a drug is exactly the same as getting high from strangling a dog to death?

Are you saying that you beat your wife? Goodness, enough with the ridiculous straw men. I'm saying that you can be against something and still not think it should be illegal. Not everybody that thinks Lawrence v. Texas was correctly ruled is an advocate for gay sex. Not everybody that thinks that drugs shouldn't be criminalized is an advocate for drug use. And not everybody that thinks that people shouldn't go to prison for cock fighting is an advocate for cock fighting. The idea that not everything you disagree with should be criminal is libertarianism 101. I'm not libertarian per se, but at least I understand the basics.

 

[Bman]

I've covered this numerous times in this thread. Human slavery is a violation of human rights, because all humans have sapience. 'Animal slavery' is not a violation of rights, because they don't have sapience, and thus do not have rights.

Really? I could certainly make the case that my German Shepherd has sapience. Like the fact that when his toy ends up on an end table that he gently pulls the toy off to make sure that he doesn't knock anything off the table. Or when playing with another dog he takes it easy on them. If you have not seen wisdom or intelligence in an animal it's because you have been far to ignorant to watch the animal behave.

 

[Sentient Void]

That isn't exactly right, either. The animals should be killed quickly. This analogy doesn't really work, though, because a cockfight is not meant to feed anyone, it is purely meant for entertainment.

Honestly, I'd be fine with seeing blatantly convicted serial killers / murderers being used as a form of entertainment to the masses a la the gladiatorial arena or like the movie 'Running Man'.

They've lost their rights to the extent that they've taken away their rights to others, and so if someone has maliciously murdered someone else, then they lose the right to their life - without rights, anything goes and IMO it's perfectly fine for them to be used as entertainment or slave labor. Like animals. Like cocks (no, not THOSE cocks you sicko).