Cock Fighting

The New York Times takes a look at New Mexico's efforts to ban cock-fighting. It seems that they've only had a limited impact. Still, I would that despite the short-term failures, this may have a long-run impact by making it less likely that new New Mexicans (of which there will probably be many in the high-growth southwest) become habituated to the sport.

But should cockfighting really be banned? This doesn't seem like a very nice way to treat animals, I'm skeptical that this is meaningfully worse than the way we treat the chickens we raise for meat and eggs. I'm always interested in where the next "culture wars" will come from after the gay marriage fight is settled and maybe animal rights issues are a plausible candidate.

Meanwhile, if cockfighting's illegal in your jurisdiction but you've got a hankering for some bird-on-bird violence, YouTube's got you covered.

Comments

Yes, cockfighting is cruel. And cruel sports should be banned, regardless of whether other cruel practices are not.

Posted by KathyF | July 6, 2008 3:34 PM

"I'm always interested in where the next "culture wars" will come from after the gay marriage fight is settled and maybe animal rights issues are a plausible candidate."

Of course, one could pick up the banner of social economic justice, but we know Matthew is on the side of the divine right of kings and trust-fund scumbags on that issue...

Posted by Petey | July 6, 2008 3:37 PM

As a vegetarian, I always find it amusing that some meat eaters are so sensitive to the way some animals are treated. Perhaps their instincts are akin to those of the people who want to find ways to make the death penalty painless.

Posted by gregor | July 6, 2008 3:37 PM

You're absolutely correct, MY, that cock fighting is no worse than what is done to birds raised to be eaten / lay eggs.

The "fight" over "animal rights" will be about as absurd as that over gay marriage. It comes down to insisting on being allowed to pay others to torture fellow feeling beings (see meat.org for example) because we don't want to be bothered to eat a Boca Burger, or cook with Gimme Lean or Morningstar MealStarters, or have Thai food, etc.

I know, of course, that Cleveland Amory was correct in saying that we have an infinite capacity to rationalize, especially when it comes to something we want to eat. But in the future, our descendants will look back on those of us who choose familiarity and convenience over ethics the same way we now view Jesse Helms and his supporters.

Posted by John McCain: More of the Same | July 6, 2008 3:39 PM

JERRY: Marriage is a big step, Elaine. Your life'll totally change.

ELAINE: Jerry, it's three-thirty in the morning. I'm at a cockfight. What am I clinging to?

Posted by David B. | July 6, 2008 3:43 PM

Ban cockfighting as unnecessarily cruel. Then let's leverage that to ban cruel poultry processing practices.

/vegetarian

Maybe we can outfit toddlers with razorblades and spikes before tossing them in the ball pit at ChuckECheese's. Sounds exciting.

Posted by phil | July 6, 2008 3:44 PM

Petey, if you care about suffering w/o bias towards the familiar, there are three reasons to focus on ending factory farms:

#1 The number of animals raised and killed for food each year in the United States alone vastly exceeds any other form of exploitation, involving numbers far greater than the total human population of the entire world. Ninety-nine out of every 100 animals killed in the United States each year are slaughtered for human consumption.

# 2 Animals raised for food must endure unfathomable suffering. The story of any individual chicken, pig, or veal calf clearly rivals any other case of cruelty: the overcrowding and confinement, the stench, the racket, the extremes of heat and cold, the attacks and even cannibalism, the hunger and starvation, the illness…the near-constant horror of every day of their lives. Indeed, every year, hundreds of millions of these animals don’t even make it to slaughter. They actually suffer to death.

#3 Exposing factory farms and advocating ethical eating is the most easily pursued opportunity. We don’t, for example, have to win an election or convince Congress of the validity of our argument. Inspiring someone to change leads to fewer animals suffering on factory farms. By choosing to promote cruelty-free living, every person we meet is a potential major victory.

Posted by Gore/Edwards 08 | July 6, 2008 3:49 PM

"I'm skeptical that this is meaningfully worse than the way we treat the chickens we raise for meat and eggs"

That may or may not be true in America (let's just say I don't hang with the cockfighting crowd). But in Asia, fighting cocks live a much better life than their food-destined counterparts. They are expensive to buy and are treated accordingly (better than the family dog for sure). Compared to living out their brief life in a factory farm outside of Bangkok, a fighting cock has it good and lives a fairly long life. Especially if he's a good fighter. I still think forcing animals to fight each other is reprehensible. But it's not as bad the kind of mistreatment many other chickens receive.

And at least they don't face the fate of the Red Jungle Fowl. They are the original chickens and they face the elimination of their genetic identity because chickens wander off the farm and mate with them. Their not dying off, they're just turning in to domestic chickens.

Posted by fostert | July 6, 2008 3:56 PM

"They are the original chickens and they face the elimination of their genetic identity because chickens wander off the farm and mate with them."

Shocking miscegenation...

Posted by David Dukie | July 6, 2008 4:10 PM

"Shocking miscegenation..."

Well, humans will pretty much mate with anyone (sometimes anything), I guess we shouldn't be surprised that chickens will do it too.

Posted by fostert | July 6, 2008 4:22 PM

MattY should watch out, you don't want to make her mad.

Posted by TLB | July 6, 2008 4:27 PM

This is a classic example of a general rule: Progressive are in favor of Celebrating the Cultures of The Other as part of a diversity-driven assault on the stifling conformity of American middle class life, etc etc. ... in theory. But in practice, it turns out that real live illegal immigrants generally bring with them reactionary cultural practices, such as cockfighting, that revolt American progressives, who actually are very bourgeois.

Cockfighting is not Stuff White People Like.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 6, 2008 5:04 PM

Actually the problem with cock-fighting is that it's unsafe to humans. It is an excellent way for the birds to transfer diseases to each other and those around them. Mark my words, when bird flu annihilates half to 2/3s the population of the planet, cock-fighting will be a significant cause of infection of humans either directly or indirectly.

Otherwise I really wish I could do cock-fighting, but it's just not safe for me. Make it safe, then bring on the birds and let me open up my wallet!!

So there you have it.

Posted by MNPundit | July 6, 2008 5:08 PM

The fight against Cockfighting is the end of a gradual process that started when people began to outlaw games of cruelty that started when Christians persuaded the Roman empire to ban gladiatorial games.
My guess is cockfighting will go the way of bog fighting, bull baiting, and bear baiting- sports that are no longer tolerated in a civilized country. Good riddance to all such sports , I say- and you can take bull fighting with them.
As for meat eating, though, well its an original sin which I intend to keep committing :-)

Posted by stonetools | July 6, 2008 5:10 PM

I was actually taken to a cockfight once. It was bloody, and stank. The crowd was pretty well wild too, drunk and drugged. I found it cruel and nasty, and dying cocks make horrible noises. When I asked if the losers went into a cooking pot, I was laughed at: they were dosed with stuff like meth or strychnine.
And my town's (Republican mayor) was busted several times prior to his re-election for cockfighting.
However, chickens are pretty much cruel and nasty too. "You can see that evil is stupidity, if you look into the eyes of a chicken."-Werner Fassbinder. Chickens are just little T-rexes with feathers, who would eat us if they got the chance.

Posted by MR.Bill | July 6, 2008 5:37 PM

I think the issue with cockfighting is just as much about the gambling, drunkenness, and concomitant human-on-human violence at these evens, as it is the animal rights concerns.

Granted that farm chickens aren't treated well, but you get food as a benefit from that. There's no such pay off to cockfighting.

Posted by Adam | July 6, 2008 5:53 PM

Huh. I assumed that Gore/Edwards 08 and John McCain: More of the Same were the same person. (or, rather, that G/E 08 switched pseudonyms to JM:MotS at some point once it became obvious that Gore wasn't in the running and McCain was the nominee.) Now I see them both posting, though.

I'm always interested in where the next "culture wars" will come from after the gay marriage fight is settled and maybe animal rights issues are a plausible candidate.

Okay. That's kind of interesting speculation, but why not provide a little elaboration. What do you expect the contours of this fight to be? Are you expecting right-wing Christian evangelical types to push for higher standards of animal treatment, based on their general "tell others to live their lives according to my morals" attitude, while liberals resist such increased standards in accordance with their general "let people do what they want" attitude, or are you expecting liberals to push for higher standards of animal treatment, based on their "animals exist as ends of themselves and have evolved a form of sentience not entirely dissimilar from what we've evolved," while right-wing Christian evangelical types resist such increased standards in accordance with their general "God granted humans dominion over animals and as such their importance is only as a means to human ends" attitude?

Posted by Julian Elson | July 6, 2008 6:27 PM

Anyone who has ever lived on a farm knows that it is the nature of cocks to fight, as it is the nature of wolves to hunt, and as it is the nature of men to work together for the common good. While I think that getting cocks to fight to the death with spurs and the like is rather cruel and vulgar, the idea of betting on fighting cocks does not particularly bother me. It is more natural for a cock to fight another than it is for them to be shut up on a factory farm. Of course, the hip urban secular liberals of today don't believe there is such a thing as an objective natural order to which men and women ought to conform, so one should not expect such arguments from natural morality and teleological insight to appeal to the modern liberal mind, which prefers absurd fantasies about autonomy and postmodernism. For my part, I would rather be correct than be 'hip' or 'cool' or what have you. Since I'm not white, I care little what 'White People Like' or similar nonesense.

Posted by Hector | July 6, 2008 6:31 PM

Another utterly irrelevant post.

Everybody's worried about cruelty to animals while cruelty to humans is a given. It's pathetically obvious that the only reason people are opposed to cruelty to animals is that they don't want to be reminded that THEY are animals.

The only valid reasons to be opposed to animal fighting sports is 1) they're pointless - like most sports - which is why I'm opposed to most sports that are individual performance oriented, and 2) they bring out the worst aspects of human animality. It's the latter that upsets most people who otherwise couldn't care less about the animals involved.

Meanwhile, as to vegetarianism, I'm reminded of a line I see used as a sig on some posts over at Superiorpics.com.

"There's a place on this earth for all God's creatures - and it's right next to the mash potatoes."

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 6, 2008 6:37 PM

I think this thread is good evidence for the suitability of animal rights as the next culture war. I think a key feature of a culture war issue is that each side's position is incomprehensible to the other -- so on same-sex marriage, opponents have trouble understanding what it even means (see John Cornyn and his box turtle), whereas proponents like myself are led to doubt the basic moral integrity of opponents. Likewise, we see animal rights opponents who find the horribleness of cruelty to chickens self-evident (eg JM:MotS), and opponents who dismiss the idea out of hand (eg Richard Steven Hack).

To answer Julian Elson's question, why not both? The issue could split the left and the right, leading to the much-predicted but never realized realignment of parties.

Posted by Stentor | July 6, 2008 6:57 PM

I think this thread is good evidence for the suitability of animal rights as the next culture war. I think a key feature of a culture war issue is that each side's position is incomprehensible to the other -- so on same-sex marriage, opponents have trouble understanding what it even means (see John Cornyn and his box turtle), whereas proponents like myself are led to doubt the basic moral integrity of opponents. Likewise, we see animal rights opponents who find the horribleness of cruelty to chickens self-evident (eg JM:MotS), and opponents who dismiss the idea out of hand (eg Richard Steven Hack).

To answer Julian Elson's question, why not both? The issue could split the left and the right, leading to the much-predicted but never realized realignment of parties.

Posted by Stentor | July 6, 2008 6:58 PM

I look forward to Matt's enthusiastic defense of bear baiting and children who like to torture small animals for their own amusement.

Posted by Rid | July 6, 2008 7:41 PM

Won't the next culture war have to involve sex in some capacity to spark everyone's interest? I really don't know of any huge political organization for cockfighters or people who want to be cruel to animals.

I'd think it would make more sense that hunting and fishing might, just might, be on the chopping block.

Without it involving sex though, I can't see it mobilizing significant amounts of people.

Posted by zoombaba | July 6, 2008 7:41 PM

Won't the next culture war have to involve sex in some capacity to spark everyone's interest? I really don't know of any huge political organization for cockfighters or people who want to be cruel to animals.

I'd think it would make more sense that hunting and fishing might, just might, be on the chopping block.

Without it involving sex though, I can't see it mobilizing significant amounts of people.

Posted by zoombaba | July 6, 2008 7:43 PM

it is the nature of men to work together for the common good.

Wow. I gaped when I saw this line. Really?

Now, as an urban secular liberal (not hip, though) who believes that the natural order has no normative content, I would say that the nature of men, as can be observed, encompasses many things, from working together for the common good to killing each other to painting to singing to writing diaries to raping women to talking about times past.

However, from a Christian perspective -- admittedly, I'm not a scholar in this regard -- my impression was that men (and women) are all sinners, irredeemably evil, yet God still grants us the gift of eternal life (if we're willing to accept it), and although none of us truly deserve a better fate than eternal damnation, Jesus nonetheless took our sins onto himself, granting us the possibility of salvation, an undeserved gift of a merciful God. Is it simultaneously true that it is the nature of men to work together for the common good, and that humans are all inherently depraved sinners? I admit that I'm ignorant here, but this view seems to go beyond Pelagian neutrality with regard to human nature into full-blown Star Trek-esque belief in inherent human goodness.

It's pathetically obvious that the only reason people are opposed to cruelty to animals is that they don't want to be reminded that THEY are animals.

Not really. Such people regard animals (human and non-human) with empathy. You, of course, are indifferent to cruelty to non-human animals, but you also write extensive posts in which you fantasize lavishly about cruelty to humans (butchering Israelis and such).

There are people who deny that humans are members of the animal kingdom, but you don't (you have no empathy for either) and I'd reckon most of the animal protection advocates on this thread don't either (having empathy for both).

The issue could split the left and the right, leading to the much-predicted but never realized realignment of parties.

Interesting point. Reminds me of the accounts I've read of the porn wars and the split they generated in feminism in the 1980s.

Posted by Julian Elson | July 6, 2008 7:53 PM

But should cockfighting really be banned? This doesn't seem like a very nice way to treat animals, I'm skeptical that this is meaningfully worse than the way we treat the chickens we raise for meat and eggs.

You don't think forcing prisoners to fight each other is more cruel than keeping them locked up in tiny cells all day?

Posted by Swan | July 6, 2008 8:14 PM

Cock-fighting is a low class hobby, which would be disappearing faster in the United States if the government in recent decades hadn't mostly ignored the law against illegal immigration.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 6, 2008 9:02 PM

In my 20's I fell into a rough crowd from the horse country of Va. These people who owned million dollar race horses also loved a good cock fight.

Many of the fighting birds where driven around the country side in expensive horse trailers. Yes, the expensive wine flowed link, well wine, and thousands of dollars in cash were bet on each fight.

Afterwords everyone retired to an exclusive restaurant to enjoy a fabulous meal and savor the days fun.

The next day we all went to a private horse race at one of the biggest private farms in Middleburg VA, drank expensive wine and I saw 10' of thousands of dollars bet on the thoroughbreds.

Yes it's horrible to see the seedy underbelly of cock fighting.

Just in case you were wondering, none of these people were from Latin American although a few has relatives who came over on the Mayflower.

Posted by Organic George | July 6, 2008 9:03 PM

Just as an aside, I live about half an alphabet above you on 13th St NW, Matt, and the people two doors up have a live rooster in the back yard. It's been crowing all weekend, and I have to wonder why they have it, and whether I should complain to anyone.

Posted by mark | July 6, 2008 9:07 PM

In my 20's I fell into a rough crowd from the horse country of Va. These people who owned million dollar race horses also loved a good cock fight.

Many of the fighting birds where driven around the country side in expensive horse trailers. Yes, the expensive wine flowed link, well wine, and thousands of dollars in cash were bet on each fight.

Afterwords everyone retired to an exclusive restaurant to enjoy a fabulous meal and savor the days fun.

The next day we all went to a private horse race at one of the biggest private farms in Middleburg VA, drank expensive wine and I saw 10' of thousands of dollars bet on the thoroughbreds.

Yes it's horrible to see the seedy underbelly of cock fighting.

Just in case you were wondering, none of these people were from Latin American although a few has relatives who came over on the Mayflower.

Posted by Organic George | July 6, 2008 9:09 PM

Julian Elson,

No, I do not accept Pelagianism. You are mixing up different meanings of the word 'natural'. A common mistake.

I'm referring specifically to the concept of natural law, as developed by the Platonistic tradition. The nature of a thing is to achieve its final end, i.e. the state in which its inherent capacities are most fully acted upon, its innate tendencies most perfected, its deepest desires fulfilled. That does not mean that we will actually observe most individuals achieving their Final End. Many men use pornography and strive for economic self-interst. That does not make either greed or pornography any more 'natural'. In the fallen world, we sin against our own nature in the same way as we sin against God, and absent divine grace, it is impossible to fully live in accordance with our own nature. However, that does not exempt us from the obligation to obey the law of nature.

Posted by Hector | July 6, 2008 9:53 PM

C'mon Hector. It's impossible to derive morality from nature. Some moral practices may happen to overlap with natural inclinations, but they are justified and made right by reference to transcendental principles, which we discover by various means - everything from conversation to revelation.

Here are a bunch of natural behaviors: a bear killing a man; a man raping a woman; an asteroid impact wiping out all sentient life on earth; a child getting an erection while wrestling with his dog; a man killing the last mammoth; the enslavement of the helots by the Spartans.

Natural behavior is simply amoral. Some of it can also be described as moral under certain circumstances - like a man and a woman having sex in marriage - but it is not the fact that it is natural that makes it so.

Posted by lampwick | July 6, 2008 10:23 PM

Oh, Organic George, I hope you're outta Virginia. My great-grandfather left the horse country there after the civil war, having lost his land and, mercifully, his slaves. Removed to the north, he had normal descendants, who all joined the ASPCA, adopted various disabled pets, and turned into liberal Democrats. Virginia is a toxic pocket, as you saw. All hail the end of agrarian society.

Posted by phillygirl | July 6, 2008 11:03 PM

Alright. Fair enough -- so acting in accordance with nature requires serving some teleological purpose. Yet when you defend cockfighting, you seem to do so on the basis of observation -- "Anyone who has ever lived on a farm knows that it is the nature of cocks to fight."

Now, obviously observation of a behavior is not enough to deem it "natural" in this platonist definition of naturality. If you came across two men working together to build a school, I suppose you'd say that they're acting in accordance with nature. If you came across two men fighting each other with broken beer bottles, I suppose you'd say that that's a manifestation of a fallen world in which men sin against their nature, acting against their teleological purpose. If you come across two cocks fighting, though, on what grounds do you claim that this shows that it's part of their nature, not a manifestation of the fallen nature of the world? Moreover, how does fighting help cocks achieve their ordained purpose?

Posted by Julian Elson | July 6, 2008 11:21 PM

I think it was Dr Johnson who said that bear-baiting was banned after the puritan/'roundhead' revolution, 'not because it was cruel to the bear but because it was pleasurable to the people who watched it'. I think it is the same with cock-fighting.

Where I lived for 30 or more years in rural Tennessee we had virtually always had cock-fighting. You could see rural folks raising a couple of dozen favored roosters behind their houses. You knew what was happening. No one was bothered; there were no complaints. (FWIW...often enough the next door neighbor to the backyard full of fighting chickens was a Baptist Church.)

There have been recent crackdowns. Lots of arrests and confiscations of hundred of thousands of dollars. Lots of talk about cruelty to the poor chickens.

This corresponds to an influx of mostly Mexican and some Central-American immigrants.

The local Sherrifs have discovered that the money wagered becomes the property of the local Sherrif. So raids have become much more frequent. Local Christians have been shocked, SHOCKED that there was gambling in this casino, Rick. And the cruelty to the poor precious chickens....OH!!!....(smelling salts please)....

It's essentially a huge hypocracy. The anti-cockfighting and anti-dogfighting crowd must show me two things before I will believe they have any legitamacy: First, that they are vegans. Second, that they never, ever buy a lottery ticket. Then I will think they are morally, ethically serious. Until then--another kind of jerk who thinks their moral outrage means that other people should be compelled to live up to their ideals. One could google H L Menkin and find many accurate descriptions of those who eat a MacDonald's chicken sandwich and then condemn chicken fighting.

Posted by JohnMcC | July 6, 2008 11:33 PM

The anti-cockfighting and anti-dogfighting crowd must show me two things before I will believe they have any legitamacy: First, that they are vegans. Second, that they never, ever buy a lottery ticket.

While I almost meet both qualifications without quite meeting either*, shouldn't one be sufficient? It seems to me that if you're vegan (or Werewolfian, depending on how strict one's standards are) and against cockfights on anti-cruelty grounds, then you can play roulette and craps all day long while still opposing cockfights and not being a hypocrite. Likewise, if you're against cockfights on anti-gambling grounds, you should be able to eat KFC every meal or even kill cats for fun so long as no money is gambled and you never gamble in other circumstances.

*I've gambled once with some friends. Bet two bucks. Got it up to four on a video blackjack game. Wanted to pull out. A friend said "go for five!" so I lost it all. I don't think I've ever bought a lottery ticket, but I assume you mean gambling in general. I also sometimes buy things with honey as a minor ingredient, and I have leather shoes and a down comforter in my closet, but they're both probably about a decade old.

Posted by Julian Elson | July 7, 2008 12:02 AM

I thought this was a post about how Matt and Andy spent the weekend.

Posted by my bad | July 7, 2008 12:26 AM

JohnMcC hits the nail on the head.

Posted by shecky | July 7, 2008 12:40 AM

So how is cockfighting cruel? If chickens like to fight and will do it without being baited or forced in some way, why not let them?

Posted by Ragout | July 7, 2008 1:11 AM

While I think that getting cocks to fight to the death with spurs and the like is rather cruel and vulgar, the idea of betting on fighting cocks does not particularly bother me. It is more natural for a cock to fight another than it is for them to be shut up on a factory farm.

What shallow, deliberate know-nothingness. Sorry, but sporting with animals in brutal, wanton fashion, while further degrading the moment with the vice of gambling, runs counter to your vaunted Christianity, Hector.

Soldiers gambled while your Savior bled to death on a cross - yet since animal rights is a liberal cause, your silly Manichaean worldview immediately leapt to the opposite stance. Y'know, since a worldly liberal concern must necessarily run counter to your faith.

Twit.

Posted by really? | July 7, 2008 3:56 AM

Old and busted: Cock fighting

New Hotness: Gander fighting

http://youtube.com/watch?v=x5ETrm_-ZuE

Posted by michael farris | July 7, 2008 4:01 AM

OK, as I think about this more I actually do agree that cockfighting as it actually exists should be banned. There's nothing natural about giving drugs to the birds, putting spurs on them, and so forth, and as I said above it is cruel and vulgar sport. I've watched birds fight each other on farms before, but they weren't forced to fight artificially. (Interspecies fights are more interesting, a duck vs. a rooster and so forth).

What I do have a problem with is the idea that this could be the start of a slippery slope towards banning hunting and fishing, or accepting the silly idea that we are just another animal, without a special ontological status.

If you want culture war issues I suspect that abortion is going to be around for a long time (at least as long as we don't succeed in getting it outlawed.) I suspect that the gay-rights issues will be revisited too. Even if not, there's any number of other sexual issues that are very controversial from polygamy to pornography.

Posted by Hector | July 7, 2008 8:15 AM

Animals raised for meat are mistreated, and that’s a problem too, but that at least is for food. Cockfighting has no comparable reason to justify its organized cruelty. It should be banned.

Posted by jason | July 7, 2008 12:05 PM

This is a classic example of a general rule: Progressive are in favor of Celebrating the Cultures of The Other as part of a diversity-driven assault on the stifling conformity of American middle class life, etc etc. ... in theory. But in practice, it turns out that real live illegal immigrants generally bring with them reactionary cultural practices, such as cockfighting, that revolt American progressives, who actually are very bourgeois.

Huh? Saying that this is somehow bad or hypocritical is quite literally like claiming that if you're happy a new falafel place opened down the block you're obligated to support female circumcision.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, there's nothing inconsistent or absurd about opposing cultural practices that are clearly immoral while having no issues with or even encouraging cultural practices that have no moral implications.

Posted by Phaedrus | July 7, 2008 12:17 PM

While I'm sooooo happy for Organic George's divine weekends cockfighting with the Virginia horsey set, the reality is that in NM, cockfighting doesn't usually involve fine wine or delicious dinners out at posh restaurants. It's usually conducted in a place far removed from the eyes and ears of the upper crust, and instead takes place in an underground akin the anti-social subcultures we find in all illegal activites.

In general, it attracts a wide range of lawbreaking that harms human beings and destabilizes our communitites. Offhand, I could list the most notable: methamphetamine, alcohol, prescription painkillers all get sold and abused intensely during the events by many attendees; sexual assaults, domestic assaults and child abuse are common outcomes of the high-adrenaline and drugged up environment; other, non-related gang and criminal activity is actively networked atthe events, including drug and human trafficking; illegal gambling creates debts that have to be paid somewhere down the line...

And for you libertarian types, don't forget that people drag their children to these fights, either to wander around witnessing this compassion-free activity in which "adults" act like animals or to participate in it themselves.

Believe me, banning cockfighting is NOT about the chickens.

Posted by Ella in NM | July 7, 2008 2:15 PM

I'm in favor of regulating cock-fighting. No drugs, no metal spurs and tax the betting (like horse racing).
Let the cocks scratch at each other and jump around until a winner is declared. It is their natural behavior and regulated legal cock fighting would likely drive out illegal cock fighting.

Posted by michael farris | July 7, 2008 3:32 PM

Michael Farris,

I'm, not sure if you meant that ironically but I do agree. "Natural" cockfights can actually be quite a graceful and hypnotic thing, and none of the birds really get hurt. It's less morally problematic than American-style boxing.

Posted by Hector | July 8, 2008 8:02 AM