Pro-Life Dog-Fighting Rings

Now, I must admit that I'm currying favor with the picture to the right of this post. It would be disingenuous for me not to admit that. Only Michael Moore would not.

Okay, so this story is going to be very, very strange, so try to keep up. And, for reference's sake, Michael Vick, quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, might have been involved in a vicious dog-fighting ring. Okay. Now.

The radio hosts on ESPN Radio - all of them - talked about the issue today in great detail, calling anyone involved in dog-fighting despicable and mentioning that it's a felony in most states.

Well, a fellow employee of mine much higher up on the food chain walked by as the topic was being discussed and - I suppose because we're on different ends of the political spectrum - asked me, "Now why is there a law against dog-fighting?"

Do no mistake me: the man in question is extremely intelligent and was only being semi-obtuse here, so don't scoff yet. I told him I thought it was obvious. He then explained that he agreed that it was horrendous, but then he countered that he didn't think the federal government should get involved if two people wanted to fight their dogs.

I told him that I would have to think about a justification for why I thought it was a law. It seemed a pretty cool challenge, and I came up with the example of incest. I thought that certainly he would agree that, though one should be pretty much allowed to do what he wants as long as it did not harm another being, certain legislation is led by social mores and is not necessarily the fault of the federal government.

Now, when I mentioned that position to him later, telling him that you couldn't marry, say, your mother if you wanted to, he said: "But you should be able to."

Now, I have to admit that this caught me off-guard. It shouldn't have, but it did. It was a strictly philosophical and tactical maneuver. He then likened what I'd said earlier to the abortion argument, which I also should have seen coming. He told me that, if I defended abortion, which I do, that I was putting a dog's life above a human being's.

When I explained that I didn't and that I didn't think that in the first trimester a bundle of cells was a human being, much as an acorn is not an acorn tree, he persisted in telling me that if a woman can kill a bundle of cells bound to become a human, then a man should be able to kill a dog.

Well, perhaps it was a segue into talking about legislation, because he then said that he didn't agree with abortion but that a woman should have the right to do it. Because he's an absolutist in liberties, I presume. His main point was that basically nothing doing with a person's choices should or could be legislated.

Now, I'm aware that it was an overarching challenge on the belief in abortion - which ranks low on my scale of necessities in politics - but I could tell he thought he'd won. Truth be told, I don't really care. Somone so staunchly anti-government wouldn't accept less as an answer. Because there's no way to prove why there should be federal regulation. There just really is not a decent argument to say, "Well, yeah, why? Why should this be a law or this be a law? Why should it be legislated?" It's frustrating.

See how this really had nothing to do with dog-fighting whatsoever? I give up.