Dog Fighting Should Be Legal

Many apologies to ThinkBig for the forfeit; weekends are too busy for me to get on DDO. Re: The Moral Status of Animals1. The government does not recognize animal rights. My opponent completely dropped my contentions on this point. A) The vast majority of humans are not vegetarian. That means we slaughter and brutally kill animals for food when we don't have to. If we were to accept the concept of animal rights, Con would have to argue that the 98% of humans who keep meat in their diet must stop eating meat in order to be morally consistent with his proposition. This would have devastating effects on both the economy and people's health; many people rely on eating meat for convenience or due to lack of available resources. It's easy to recycle a syllogism from a textbook, but it's harder to actually argue a case that considers real world implications. Con is responsible for the latter. Con must explain how 98% of the population ought to supplement their diet effectively and in a way that counts for the economic repercussions and devastating global effects that avoiding eating meat would have. Also consider - if animal rights were upheld, we would not be able to eliminate animals in cases where they threatened our crops, homes or resources. Moreover, if animals have rights, then does a lion have the right to hunt and kill a zebra? Con would have to explain how animal rights/consent work regarding each other. B) We do animal testing that completely ignores the concept of animal rights. This has led to scientific and medicinal breakthroughs that have helped humanity significantly. If animals have rights, we have no right to use them for research. Animal testing has saved countless human and animal lives through the development of treatment and cures. Animals are appropriate research subjects because there is no adequate alternative to testing on a living, whole-body system [1]. The alternative is using human subjects which is obviously problematic, or disregarding the concept of research and developing cures all-together. That would have devastating effects and is not remotely pragmatic or arguably moral. If we accept Con's position, then it would be ethically impermissible to do research on animals for testing which is preposterous. C) Con dropped that our preferences for animals are largely dictated by culture, and that this culture gives us property rights (legal and moral dominion) over animals. We are allowed to OWN animals; they can be enslaved on our property as pets and bought and sold like commodities, thus proving our legal system does not grant animals the right to life or much else. 2. Scott Wilson's argument on the alleged moral status of animals loses ground to other arguments against animal rights. P1. A right is a claim that one party may exercise against another.P2. Rights only exist among beings who can make moral claims against one another.P3. The attributes of human beings that give rise to their ability to make moral claims against others are lacking in animals. These attributes are intellectual, and include the ability to understand ethical principles and guide one’s actions accordingly.P4. Therefore, animals cannot make moral claims against others..: Therefore, animals do not have rights.“[Nonhuman animals] are not beings of a kind capable of exercising or responding to moral claims. Animals therefore have no rights, and they can have none… The holders of rights must have the capacity to comprehend rules of duty, governing all including themselves. In applying such rules, the holders of rights must recognize possible conflicts between what is in their own interest and what is just... Humans have such moral capabilities. They are in this sense self-legislative, are members of communities governed by moral rules, and do possess rights. Animals do not have such moral capacities. They are not morally self-legislative, cannot possibly be members of a truly moral community, and therefore cannot possess rights.” -- Carl CohenErgo, animals do not have moral status and thus no rights. While Con quotes Immanuel Kant in the last round, Kant did not necessarily advocate animal rights. Kant believed we should "respect people because they are autonomous. Autonomy is the freedom that human beings have to pursue their own ends (goals). Kant believed that autonomy was extremely valuable, but in order to have it one must have free will, which requires having self-consciousness and the capacity to be guided by reason. But animals, according to Kant, are not autonomous. Therefore... we have no direct duties to animals. That is, we have no duty to respect or foster the ends of animals" [2]. Some would argue that plants are sentient; research shows they react to stimuli and behave intentionally [3]. While the status of plant sentience is certainly questionable, I disagree with sentience alone at establishing rights which is the point. The status of personhood qualifies one for rights, which requires both sentience and other attributes.One of the clearest and most forceful denials of animal consciousness is developed by Rene Descartes, who believed that only human beings have rational minds and souls. Better yet, John Rawls' infamous standard of justice, a.k.a. The Veil of Ignorance, suggests that a just society is one in which the rules governing society would be preferable/chosen by individuals if they did not know much about themselves (age, race, sex, etc.). However these individuals would know they were not animals, so would not give special permission to animals [4]. "Animals fight for territory or partners. They hunt, kill and eat each other. They rape, pillage and plunder at will. Humans have established official codes of conduct that prohibit such activities impinging on the 'rights' of others. While the very nature of 'humane' treatment prohibits any human-caused torture of animals, there is no such natural prohibition against torture in the animal world" [5].“A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context,” wrote Ayn Rand in her essay Man's Rights. People do not 'have' rights in the sense of having a body part. Rather, rights are principles that apply to people, and that people should apply to others in society... 'The right to life is exclusively human, because rights principles only apply to and can only be applied by humans, of all the species we know of. If some other being (a space alien, perhaps, or a genetically modified earth-animal) developed sufficient rationality to grasp and apply principles, and to live by production and trade, then rights would apply to it as well'" [6]. But until then... only humans have legal rights; at least the highest regarded rights. Re: Dog Fighting Harms the Community1. Con argues that children who are exposed to animal cruelty have a tendency to exhibit violence later in life. You can have legal dog fighting while posing age limitations and restricting children from attendance, the same way children are prohibited from seeing violent movies. The American Psychological Association has demonstrated a link between playing violent video games and aggression [7] yet we do not ban violent games on that possibility - we simply trust children will not be exposed to those things. 2. Con claims that dog fighting is accompanied by other illegal activity. This point is moot as dog fighting is currently illegal, thus illegal activity will accompany it considering the fights are not subject to government regulation. We have legalized horse racing which involves the whipping of horses, yet we do not see illegal activity at these events because they are open to the public and monitored. On the contrary, dog fighting rings are kept secret and hidden. They are specifically run by criminals because the entire enterprise is criminal. Therefore, Con would have to prove that other crime would surround dog fighting if it were legal which he won't be able to do. That's like saying other crimes surround drug dealing. Drug dealing is an illegal enterprise! But similar crime doesn't surround liquor stores where they deal drugs (alcohol) legally. 3. Dog fighting could benefit the community if A) we stopped sending people involved in this endeavor to jail, and B) the government taxed this business an collected revenue. The same way the government collects revenue from other businesses. ConclusionRights are civil and political concepts. They require laws, an established system of government and a justice system. Animals don't have laws. The concept of justice does not exist for them. They don't live by a moral code. They have no rights because they have no (moral) responsibilities. We can own animals like pets and pass along animals as property according to law [8]. Can dogs legally own another pet? No. Dog owner's rights trump dog's rights. We can legally "put down" dogs and choose to end their life on dog owner command [9]. We euthanize dogs all the time. Sometimes government agencies do it. Animals don’t reason, don’t understand rights, and don’t acknowledge or respect our rights. Further, animals are not capable of communicating consent. No aspect of rights as it pertains to government effectively apply to animals. "Moral" status does not apply to animals, because they cannot make moral claims against others or reason through moral claims themselves. Their behavior is dictated by natural instinct. My opponent has failed to demonstrate why dogs should morally or legally have rights. More importantly, he completely ignores all of the repercussions of acknowledging animal rights, which has negative effects pragmatically on food resources, safety, and animal testing. I have proven human rights > dog rights and that it makes no sense to criminalize dog fighting if we are perfectly okay with factory farms and other things that harm animals. SOURCES: http://www.debate.org...