We should be outraged that no one is outraged over this bloodshed. What does it take?

Apparently, if the Michael Vick case is any indication, you have to be a dog to get anyone to care. If you want jail time, kill a dog.

But black folks? Nobody seems to care that they are being killed every day. (Emphasis added.)

So now the argument is that dogs matter more than people. That's worth addressing. There's no denying that dogs -- especially pit bulls -- receive a disproportionate share of media attention. (Of course, if vicious people received a small fraction of the attention vicious dogs receive, there'd be nothing else in the newspapers, and people would either become so desensitized they'd cease to care, or else stop reading the accounts altogether.)

Anyway, back to the view that "if the Michael Vick case is any indication, you have to be a dog to get anyone to care. If you want jail time, kill a dog."

For starters, he didn't just kill a dog. Nor did he just engage in dogfighting. What has so many people (including me) upset is that according to the witnesses, he tortured losing dogs to death. The heinous details have generated many emotional remarks like these from The Football Expert.com:

We hope the judge gives him the entire sentence and fine allowed under the sentencing guidelines. If financing the dog-fighting ring weren't bad enough, he killed these dogs in the least humane way possible. There should be no room for such cruel actions in our "civilized" society nor should we be lenient with unscrupulous individuals performing cruel and cold-blooded acts. This was not a mistake. Premeditated murder is the correct term. Trying to hang a dog and if it fails, chasing it down and eventually drowning man's best friend in cold blood, unmercifully ignoring its heartbreaking look on its innocent face, in a 5-gallon bucket of water to death, certainly seems like something out of a horror movie, not real life. Why should the judge show any leniency to a man that could not do the same for his victims?

The most infuriating and illogical aspect of this case is the way it has caused a backlash against pit bulls! Through this appalling lapse in logic (whether I like it or not) Michael Vick's dog torture is somehow "helping to perpetuate the stereotype that brands all pit bulls as dangerous."

It's a classic case of blame the victim.

And the fact that he'll receive a year in jail is being spun as "you have to be a dog to get anyone to care."

Sorry, but I think that had Michael Vick hanged human combatants because they lost, then drowned the ones who were still gasping for breath, had he electrocuted a woman who could no longer fight another woman, it wouldn't be hard to get people to care. Yes, and I think that even our decadent and insensitive society would not blame the "culture of mortal kombat" or the combatants themselves. [See my post on "dog violence."]

What I do not mean to suggest by any of this that cruelty to animals should be treated the same way as cruelty to humans. This is reflected by the fact that Vick will only receive a sentence of a year to eighteen months. I think what he did was depraved and cruel, and went well beyond dogfighting.

While few people would ever defend dogfighting, Mike Mosedale in the Minneapolis City Pages poses a few philosophical questions:

Dogfighting has no defenders outside its own insular confines. The inherent cruelty of pitting animal against animal is hard to ignore. As sociologist Evans points out, dogmen rationalize their participation by claiming that the animals are expressing their nature in combat, that they enjoy the fight. Of course, all those instincts are the product of selective breeding and training.

Still, the vehemence of society's collective condemnation of dogfighting does raise larger questions about the exploitation of animals by humans. There is a huge spectrum of animal suffering in modern society. Dogfighting, despite its popularity within various subcultures, represents a tiny sliver of that suffering. Which raises the question: Why the vehement outrage and nearly universal condemnation of the practice? Does it serve as some sort of moral inoculation against our collective culpability for the brutalization of other animals? Consider the confinement facilities where pigs--smarter animals than dogs and, by that crude measure, more deserving of our sympathy--are raised for slaughter without ever seeing the light of day, without contact, without affection of any sort. Is the behavior of the corporate pig farmer inherently morally superior to that of a professional dogman with a well-tended yard?

And what of chickens? Under Minnesota law, cockfighting is, legally, the equivalent of dogfighting. It is true that the life of a Thai fighting cock usually ends brutally and painfully. But, as Burkhard Bilger points out in his excellent essay, "Enter the Chicken," the fighting cock's life is hardly as awful as that of the commercially produced broiler chicken: "The average broiler chicken lives for six weeks, wing to wing with tens of thousands of others. These gamecocks, by contrast, typically lived for two to three years. And they lived like pashas...if the birds went a little stir crazy, the trainers might even bring around some nice, plump pullets [young hens] to calm them down."

Back in his office, Streff keeps photographic souvenirs of nature outings. He grew up on a dairy farm in central Minnesota. While vehemently opposed to dogfighting, Streff--like most Minnesotans--regards hunting as an acceptable form of recreation. To Will Grigsby, who fought and raised pits for nearly half his life, hunting seems like the real atrocity. "To me, going out and shooting an innocent animal in the woods, well, that's just not right," Grigsby says. Of course, that's just one dogman's perspective.

Once again, society's rules are an emotional -- not logical -- process.

One of the reasons I call myself a small "l" libertarian is that I have problems with absolutism and dogma, and Glenn Reynolds recently touched on this when he asked whether there is a libertarian theory of animal rights. Glenn links Megan McArdle, with whose view I agree wholeheartedly:

....it seems plausible to me that animals could have limited rights--a right not to suffer for our pleasure, say--even though none of them will ever master the lute.

Should animals have that right? Obviously, both Julian (who is a vegetarian) and I, who will only eat animals that are not industrially farmed, have both decided that the suffering of animals matters, morally. But should it matter, legally? Creating new rights is a big deal.

Okay, I'll bite the bullet. As a first principle, you shouldn't be able to burn a sheep alive because it's fun.

I will note of existing animal cruelty laws that most contain specific exemptions for agriculture and various other industries, in ways that seem hard to justify. At any rate, I'm having trouble coming up with some coherent view on which "Tender meat is tasty" counts as a justification for the appalling way we treat veal calves but "I like watching violent bloodsports" is no excuse for how Michael Vick treated dogs. If abuse with no better rationale than mild enjoyment is "gratuitous," then factory farming is gratuitously cruel. (Lest it sound like I'm on a high horse here, I should note that, by my own lights, I really ought to either be a vegan or at least consume only dairy of known, humane provenance.) Our inconsistency here suggests that animal cruelty laws are less a function of high principle than of the fact that we like both burgers and cute doggies.

Dogs are property, but they are an emotional sort of property to which we become uniquely attached, because no two are the same and we bond with them. As I said in my discussion of Coco:

A dog is personal. And it's property. But it's different than ordinary property, because there is a personal bond, an emotional investment between a dog and his owner that cannot be measured in economic value. Because of this emotional component, a dog may be the most valuable property that a person can have. I can't speak for other dog owners, but if my house was on fire, my very first thought would be to save Coco! I think many dog owners would feel the same way. That is the real test of value.

So, people who care about property rights ought to care very about this special form of property which, to the people who have it, is the most valuable property of all.

The idea of the government entering into my relationship with my dog is thus more than an ordinary violation of property rights. It's highly personal.

Beyond that, there is the issue of consciousness, which is manifested in the form of a brain.

In an earlier post I began with Bill Quick -- a libertarian who said, "I could advance some libertarian ideas against animal cruelty." My reply was that I could too, although I'm not particularly concerned about whether my view is libertarian or not:

This is the third time I've read about a pit bull (or a close relative thereof) being violated like this, and if "libertarianism" really means letting that son of a bitch do that to the poor dog, then I guess it means I'm not a "real" libertarian. (So what? Will the world weep over my "treason"?) Libertarianism can be criticized for a lot of things, but I just don't see "libertarianism" in allowing this to be done to some poor dog.

It's a little easier to analyze this case because the animal let the humans know it was in pain. In general, though, there's no way to know, as animals cannot complain. Nor can they consent. There is no such thing as a consenting animal, and unless the animal cries, there is no such thing as a complaining animal. While I disagree -- vehemently -- with the animal rights philosophy that animals are like people, I nonetheless consider them more than ordinary inanimate chattel. Thus, while I would support the right of a person to neglect his car until it conked out (say, to buy an old clunker and run it into the ground), treating a horse that way would be unconscionable, and I support making it illegal. Indeed, the first laws against animal cruelty were passed to prevent the routine working to death of harnessed horses in factories once they had outlived their usefulness. Laws prohibiting cruelty to animals may quite properly define cruelty as including having sex with them for the animals cannot consent to sex. This is no more inconsistent with libertarianism than supporting laws prohibiting sex with minors.

Likewise, just as one cannot enforce a contract entered into by a child, there'd be no way to enter into a contract with an animal. Consent would be meaningless; suppose a valuable racehorse was "told" that it might sign a contract by imprinting a piece of paper with its hoof. If it did so, no court would consider that a valid contract because a horse cannot enter into a contract.

Where I think I part company with libertarians is over the question of whether cruelty to Coco would an independent crime against society above and apart from my property considerations, or even special "emotional property" considerations. I think a good argument can be made that because animals can think (albeit at a lower level), that they are entitled to some consideration. Not full animal rights, but a simple recognition that sentient beings have the right not to have gratuitous cruelty inflicted on them. That you can't just take a dog and nail it to a board or roast it alive simply because no one owns it, or you own it yourself. To not punish this because of some view of individual rights, in my view, carries individual rights theory too far. It has to be recognized that people who torture animals are at least as much of a threat to be protected against as people who steal or commit fraud on Ebay. No, it is not as serious to burn a dog alive as to burn a child alive. But common sense and human conscience suggest to me that someone who tortures a dog has harmed society and is a direct threat to humanity.

If there is such a thing as enlightened self-interest, it requires that such people be punished for what they have done -- even if only to an animal.

MORE: Julian Sanchez addresses some of the concerns raised by Megan McArdle and adds,

A libertarian case for animal cruelty laws will only work if it centers on the problem of the harm to the animals themselves.

Hence, I don't worry much over whether my support for the war in Iraq constitutes libertarian heresy. This always makes it interesting to play the "what am I" game, as long as there's no rule that I have to care. (But if I'm not a Libertarian, not a Liberal, not a Conservative, not a Centrist, then what is to become of me?)

MORE: Overlawyered's Ted Frank asks some thoughtful questions:

If one accepts limits on the libertarian principle for animal cruelty, does that not imply that a democratic society can rationally choose to bar production of foie gras? I'm happy to have dogfighting outlawed. I'd prefer not to outlaw foie gras. Do I have any argument for the distinction besides my personal preference? Is it just the intelligence difference between dogs and geese? If so, why do we allow bacon?

It's a cruel fact of nature, but some animals are more equal.