Ooooh -- There's a New Mexico
Jesse Walker | March 15, 2007, 11:09am
Bill Richardson's dream of a state without legal cockfighting has just become a
reality:
Eighteen years after legislation was introduced to ban cockfighting in the state of New Mexico, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signed a measure this week that outlaws cockfighting in the state. Now Louisiana is the only state in the United States that allows the blood sport that pits one rooster against the other....
"I'm so upset that it's damn near ruining my life," said New Mexico Game Fowl Association President Ronald Barron. "I've got 38 years doing this. I don't know if I should hatch off some baby chicks right now. This isn't a business. It's my pleasure. It's my right, or rather it was my right."
This comes on the heels of Richardson's
smoking ban, his proposal for a
drug offender registry, and his all-around effort to dissuade libertarians impressed with his
economic policies from backing his presidential campaign.
Bonus links: A
cockfighting site. An
anti-cockfighting site. A
film of a cockfight. The
script for the cockfighting episode of
Seinfeld. A
comparison of
Cockfighter the novel and
Cockfighter the film. A
starter kit.
Update: By
special request, Clifford Geertz's brilliant "
Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight." An excerpt:
Now, a few special occasions aside, cockfights are illegal in Bali under the Republic (as, for not altogether unrelated reasons, they were under the Dutch), largely as a result of the pretensions to puritanism radical nationalism tends to bring with it. The elite, which is not itself so very puritan, worries about the poor, ignorant peasant gambling all his money away, about what foreigners will think, about the waste of time better devoted to building up the country. It sees cockfighting as "primitive," "backward," "unprogressive," and generally unbecoming an ambitious nation. And, as with those other embarrassments - opium smoking, begging, or uncovered breasts - it seeks, rather unsystematically, to put a stop to it.
Of course, like drinking during Prohibition or, today, smoking marihuana, cockfights, being a part of "The Balinese Way of Life," nonetheless go on happening, and with extraordinary frequency. And, like Prohibition or marihuana, from time to time the police (who, in 1958 at least, were almost all not Balinese but Javanese) feel called upon to make a raid, confiscate the cocks and spurs, fine a few people, and even now and then expose some of them in the tropical sun for a day as object lessons which never, somehow, get learned, even though occasionally, quite occasionally, the object dies.
And:
Getting caught, or almost caught, in a vice raid is perhaps not a very generalizable recipe for achieving that mysterious necessity of anthropological field work, rapport, but for me it worked very well.
D.A. Ridgely | March 15, 2007, 1:29pm | #
They feel the pain, they understand it as unpleasant.
No, they feel the pain and it feels painful. To understand it as anything as abstract as "unpleasant" would be to be able to conceive of it abstractly, which they most certainly are not capable of doing. The fact that a chicken can be trained to perform tricks or "learn" to respond to stimuli in a Skinner box isn't anywhere close to sufficient evidence of its ability to ideate at all. Sure, the nervous system is closer in some respects to a human's than a worm's, but at that stage of development it might just as well be a worm (albeit, a worm capable of feeling -- feeling, not understanding -- pain.
Note to anyone missing the Humpty Dumpty reference: to wit, a bit of Alice in Wonderland --
I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't - till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'"
But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock down argument,'" Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all"
twv | March 15, 2007, 8:20pm | #
When I was young, I plucked many a pigeon and many a grouse, but only one rooster (cock, if you prefer). I was tasked with the slaughter the animal, too. So I caught it and killed it with an ax. It ran around, headless. I was creeped out. Which brings me to:
People who think that torturing animals is "fun" are human filth. I wouldn't even know how to begin to talk to one of these mouth-breathing neanderthals. On second thought, I probably wouldn't. I'd probably just punch them in the mouth, and laugh. After all, it's entertainment, right?
I know many people who have laughed at a rooster running around with its head cut off. Are they human filth, too? I've talked with them. Each one would support my right to life, today. Many would support my right to liberty, something most city dwellers, who are usually the loudest to pontificate on "human filth," are loathe to do. They want to control me. Prevent me from killing and eating things.
For what it's worth, I find boxing to be a vile sport, as well as football. Both glorify violence. I judge both more vile than cockfighting, though both amount to staged conflicts arising from contracts.
Daily I talk to people who love these sports. Sports that, as I see it, glorify cruelty, violence, conflict in staged battles with real blood and real pain.
I am certain I would not like to watch a cockfight. I might even avoid being friends with those who stage cockfights. But I'm still loathe to prohibit their activity.
Most people can "compartmentalize" their cruelty. And the ultimate compartmentalization is that of distinguishing small-brained beasts from big-brained humans. Next would be to distinguish between voluntary conflict and involuntary conflict. Cockfighting is not something I'd support, but beyond that?
Fred will probably call me "human filth." I'll have to live with that.
By the way, I did not like the movie "Cockfighter," but I loved the book. Charles Willeford was a fine writer. He understood the darker side of the human mind. And he saw how there could even be integrity in a man who sent roosters out to fight other roosters. It's the integrity of his main character that is, in fact, the theme of the novel.
Fred couldn't talk to such a man, even if he wanted to, in this case, because the man expressed his integrity in part by not talking through the period covered by the story.
Willeford knew such men. They exist. And I bet, when they aren't committed to silence, they are worth talking to - at least occasionally - whether Fred calls them filth or not.
I find it amusing to witness people dehumanize other human beings with invective like "Neanderthals" for the sake of animals.
For the record: Had Neanderthals survived the onslaught of Homo sapiens, I'd support their rights. Even if they liked cockfighting.
This being said, Val's comments, above, about a separate category for living non-human property is quite perceptive.
LarryA | March 16, 2007, 12:27pm | #
You are confusing animal cruelty legislation with morality/ethics legislation. They are completely different. No one is saying make cock fighting illegal because its amoral or because its abhorrent to me.
Read the thread. Many people are saying exactly that.
We are suggesting that animals do not fall cleanly into the PRIVATE PROPERTY category, but we are not suggesting that they deserve HUMAN RIGHTS.
Once you grant animals something like rights that must be protected by government then there's no legal difference between cockfighting and fried chicken.
There is an ethical difference. Humans are designed to eat meat, and therefore to harvest animals and consume them, just like any animal predator does. They are not designed to agitate animals to fight each other, however willingly, for entertainment. Note that there are people who disagree with this.
But the only
long term way to teach ethics is by experience, not legislation.
Consider a child; a child falls between property and an independent human being with full rights.
Not. A child is an independent human being with full rights. However, since the children are immature some of the rights are exercised in their behalf by adult guardians. (Usually parents.)
Legally you can do to a child things that you could never do to another adult (physically discipline them or confine them).
Tell that to the U.S. prison population. (Which should legitimately be composed only of people who violate other people’s rights.)
There is obviously more to law and legislation than this perceived duality of RIGHTS and PRIVATE PROPERTY.
There is no duality. Law exists to protect rights. One of the rights is to own private property. Owning property carries the ethical responsibility to use it wisely.
So why do so many people feel that the only way to treat animals in libertarian law is as inanimate property?
Actually, we treat animals as
animate property. I own two dogs, and I'm tolerated by a cat. I would be far more distressed if someone harmed any of them than if they harmed my Jeep or my Glock. If I was sitting on a civil jury I would award higher damages to someone who lost a companion animal than someone who had a TV stolen.
But the best way to convince most people that they have a moral/ethical obligation to treat animals (or the rest of the Earth) humanely is to let them experience the difference, not to take away their choices.
I teach hunter education. Because of that I also run into people who are anti-hunting. I have noticed that hunters, by and large, have a much deeper understanding of nature and appreciation for animals in the real world than most anti-hunters. Many of the people I meet who “know” all about hunting and are against it have never been more than a hundred yards from a sidewalk.
The first libertarian philosophy is that you cannot force people to act morally. You must educate them to make those choices on their own.
The second is that there is more than one culture in the world, and sometimes those cultures legitimately disagree on matters of morality.
Ultimately the only way you can protect your right to live the way you want to, is to protect my right to live the way you don’t want me to.
LarryA | March 16, 2007, 6:17pm | #
Take slavery as an analogue. Before you get up in arms saying that slaves were human and this doesn’t apply, you should remember that a lot of people (majority?) considered slaves subhuman, not as clean, not as intelligent, not as compassionate as their lighter skinned anglical compatriots. They were to them not much more than animals.
From a libertarian point of view then, was the force necessary, or should we have sat and waited until the populace grew out of this opinion? After all at that point in time SLAVES were considered private property and owning them and treating them however you liked was legal.
Okay, lets look at the real-world application of your example.
Slavery was sort of abolished for some people in some states by the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.
That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
Did that proclamation result in blacks actually being treated as fully human? No. You still had “a lot of people (majority?) considered slaves subhuman, not as clean, not as intelligent, not as compassionate as their lighter skinned compatriots. They were to them not much more than animals.”
That didn’t finally change until the educational process that was the civil rights movement of 1955-1965, a hundred years later. Equality was the culmination of a long history of incremental gains, including the black regiments of the Civil War, George Washington Carver, the Buffalo Soldiers, blacks serving during WW I, Jessie Owens, blacks serving during WW II, Rosa Parks, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, the Urban League, Sidney Poitier, Martin Luther King Jr, and a host of others.
That includes my father, who volunteered to serve as the white commander of a black truck company in WW II, and who was proud that he gave his men the best opportunity available at the time to serve their country.
The result of the civil rights movement was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But the effect of this act was to
remove many laws that infringed upon the rights of black people. Once again, government wasn’t the solution, but the problem to be solved.
That education process continues to this day, as we see Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Tiger Woods and Barack Obama serving as new examples, giving the lie to the myth of black inferiority.
I would agree with you wholeheartedly in an ideal world. But you know that’s not how the world works.
Actually I believe that’s
exactly the way the world works. There is no such thing as an ethical government, or an ethical form of government. The only true change possible is in the hearts and minds of the people who run the government.
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