Monday, October 24, 2005

Right Wing Wackos, Too

Just so you realize I’m not biased… I have already criticized the left wing wackos who want to take away your rights to reasonably own a dog…

I also have a few critical words about right wing wackos who want to take away your rights to reasonably own a dog.

Dog ownership isn't a Democrat or Republican thing. You can get reasonable dog laws passed by appealing to the majority of people from both sides of the aisle. Remember: they own dogs, too.

I’ll spell out more of this in detail later, but here’s the gist of what I mean…

Right wing wackos will object to reasonable dog laws on the following grounds:

a.) “Dogs are property, and we don’t want to limit what people can do with their property. There are strong protections of private property in the US Constitution.”

True. But we have a different set of laws for “living” property and inanimate property. Thus, we talk about “our sons”, “our daughters”, “our wives” and “our husbands”. Yet, we have anti-slavery laws. You can’t do whatever you want with your property, and we punish people for harming “living” property. Just like all reasonable people support laws that punish spousal abuse and the sale of humans, we can also oppose selling dogs in pet stores, animal abuse and puppy mills.

b.) “We are Economic Conservatives. We don't believe in the Bible, but in free enterprise.”

We believe in free enterprise, too. But, we don’t live in a completely laissez-faire political/ economic system. We are highly regulated, and every regulation passed needs exceptions to counterbalance the restrictions imposed. Unless you can start repealing all these restrictive laws, then we need you to make the laws more balanced.

For example: What if the legislature required that if you were to buy a car, you also had to get insurance which guaranteed that if you killed someone in an auto accident, that the insurance company would resurrect them from the dead? In other words, what if they required you to get insurance, but the type of insurance they required was impossible to obtain? Well, that’s what is happening with dog bite legislation. The legislatures are requiring that you get types and amounts of insurance that the insurance companies are refusing to sell. The result is the banning of ownership of certain types of dog. Thus, you need counterbalancing legislation requiring the insurance companies offer whatever type of insurance that is being required.

c.) “Dogs aren’t people, they are dogs. They don’t have any rights in the Bible.”

True. But even God scolded Balaam in the Bible for beating his faithful donkey, so He does care about animals.

There are also horses, lambs, and lions in heaven... heaven isn't just for people... think on that one! There was a good reason why all those animals were loaded up onto Noah's ark... not all of them were food. It's about time to shed your doctrine and start reading the Bible again for what it says and doesn't say, not just what you heard some preacher say...

d.) “We believe in law and order.”

Good. So do responsible dog owners. But you we don’t want the nosy neighbor or the emotionally insane intruding on our rights to own a dog, by over-regulating us and calling the police every minute, either. Conservatives are supposed to be for limited government. The idea of "law and order" doesn't mean passing more and more laws that restrict our liberties more and more. We want objective standards to the law, relating to real harm and personal responsibilty. We don't want laws that are governed by the "feeeeellings" of weirdoes. We also support allowing dogs to be dogs, not holding them to the standard of being people.

There’s more… but I have to leave the house now and train some dogs…

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