“It’s a dog’s life” takes on new meaning
Hardly any media are taking on the issue of public outrage over violence done to dogs juxtaposed against public (or mainstream media) silence over violence done to vulnerable human persons.
Michael Cook looks at this troubling paradox in the current MercatorNet. And right here, he zeroes in on a point I haven’t heard anybody make, but it begs an airing.
Nonetheless, dogfighting is despicable, but not just because dogs die. It is despicable because it brutalises the human beings who organise it, bet on it and watch it. As the only creatures on the planet who can reason and make moral judgements, we are the stewards of the animal world. Entertaining ourselves by inflicting needless pain on a fellow creature dehumanises us.
That is a point no one in the media has taken up, probably because of where that argument would logically lead.
Besides, abusive treatment of animals often leads to cruelty to fellow humans, too. Our own humanity is the greater victim in the sickening spectacle of dogfights.
Correct. But everyone with a public voice missed that connection. Follow the true argument…
Much of the outrage directed at Michael Vick happened because the infliction of pain, and not the violation of human rights, has become a touchstone of morality. This shows the degree to which public discourse has been imbued with the principles of the radical animal rights agenda. Killing half a dozen dogs is deemed wrong because it is violent, bloody and lawless. The deaths of human beings, so long as they are painless, convenient and discreet, are no big deal.
What puts this in dramatic relief is the appalling decision not to try a New Orleans doctor for intentionally killing nine patients with lethal injections in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
We’ve been talking – here and on radio – in recent days about the paradox of outrage over dog mistreatment by the same people who accept violence to babies in abortion. Michael Cook takes that conversation to another level here in this examination of a culture that accepts the willful murder – by lethal overdose – of other vulnerable humans.
Pretending that nothing untoward happened treats these patients as lesser beings than Michael Vick’s dogs. What does it say about public attitudes towards human life when the deaths of half a dozen vicious animals spark a media frenzy and the deaths of nine innocent people are swept under the carpet?
It says we haven’t learned much – anything? – from the very public and brutal Terri Schiavo ordeal.