Cruelty Isn't Freedom
Today is Sunday, 21 May 2006.
It’s long past time to recognize horseracing for what it is: cruelty to animals. Torture of animals for human “pleasure.” It’s long past time to make horseracing a crime, like bullbaiting and cockfighting.
I suppose one either gets it or not, depending on the quality of one’s ethics. Either one defines "pleasure" as watching horses being flogged so they run as fast as possible in a circle, or one doesn’t. Either one takes "pleasure" from a race, where horses might stumble or fall, break a limb, and then be “put down” (c’mon, macho boys and girls: murdered), or not. Just as one takes "pleasure" from watching human beings being tortured, or not.
Beyond the ethical cruelty of this vicious “sport,” is the prodigious waste of unrecoverable natural resources. Horseracing is an industry which is capital- and petroleum-intensive. In a world in which over 2 billion humans, 1/3 of the world’s population, don’t have consistent access to clean water, the ethical cruelty of wasting precious resources on the sadism of a few is prodigious cruelty itself.
To change gears (ha ha): Auto racing should be outlawed as well. To see “sport” in watching overpaid fools with a deathwish drive as fast as possible in circles, while many in the crowd lust after a good crash …
Some will cry, “Don’t tread on my freedom!” “It’s a free market! My choice for my money is my vote!”
Well, in a truly free market: there are parents who would gladly sell their children to rapists, there are rapists who would gladly buy, so, in a truly free market: deal. However, only child rapists and abusive parents believe in a truly free market in these circumstances. This is where politics comes in.
A political, or social, choice is made that some transactions must not be allowed: the selling of children for sex, sale of crack cocaine, etc. The "freedom" of the market is curtailed, because some transactions are inherently and inescapably wicked.
No one would suffer a diminishment of freedom were horseracing and autoracing to be outlawed, except those who savor cruelty. (And there is no "freedom" to be cruel.) The Museum of the Bourgeois believes that society should never cater to cruelty and its acolytes.
It’s long past time to recognize horseracing for what it is: cruelty to animals. Torture of animals for human “pleasure.” It’s long past time to make horseracing a crime, like bullbaiting and cockfighting.
I suppose one either gets it or not, depending on the quality of one’s ethics. Either one defines "pleasure" as watching horses being flogged so they run as fast as possible in a circle, or one doesn’t. Either one takes "pleasure" from a race, where horses might stumble or fall, break a limb, and then be “put down” (c’mon, macho boys and girls: murdered), or not. Just as one takes "pleasure" from watching human beings being tortured, or not.
Beyond the ethical cruelty of this vicious “sport,” is the prodigious waste of unrecoverable natural resources. Horseracing is an industry which is capital- and petroleum-intensive. In a world in which over 2 billion humans, 1/3 of the world’s population, don’t have consistent access to clean water, the ethical cruelty of wasting precious resources on the sadism of a few is prodigious cruelty itself.
To change gears (ha ha): Auto racing should be outlawed as well. To see “sport” in watching overpaid fools with a deathwish drive as fast as possible in circles, while many in the crowd lust after a good crash …
Some will cry, “Don’t tread on my freedom!” “It’s a free market! My choice for my money is my vote!”
Well, in a truly free market: there are parents who would gladly sell their children to rapists, there are rapists who would gladly buy, so, in a truly free market: deal. However, only child rapists and abusive parents believe in a truly free market in these circumstances. This is where politics comes in.
A political, or social, choice is made that some transactions must not be allowed: the selling of children for sex, sale of crack cocaine, etc. The "freedom" of the market is curtailed, because some transactions are inherently and inescapably wicked.
No one would suffer a diminishment of freedom were horseracing and autoracing to be outlawed, except those who savor cruelty. (And there is no "freedom" to be cruel.) The Museum of the Bourgeois believes that society should never cater to cruelty and its acolytes.
posted by HH at 8:39 AM
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