It seems those two statements are in conflict.
Yes I meant "self aware", good catch. A dog has awareness and some cognitive capability, obviously, but conscious thought seems to be completely absent. I've yet to find the ruins of the great dog civilizations.
In between you said:
I believe Vick did do something illegal by running an underground enterprise at the very least,
What do you mean by 'underground enterprise' and why is it illegal? Do you mean something not sanctioned or licensed by government?
Well is it not illegal to run a business without appropriate regulations, taxpaying, permits, etc.? I mean if I started a business and did all my work under the table but got caught by the IRS, wouldn't I face charges?
Note that I'm not saying it's necessarily right or proper that such would be the case, just that in the real world, would that not happen?
The 'slippery slope' argument; kind of a reverse prior restraint, isn't it? There are already different levels of legal (codified) 'rights.' Children do not have the same 'rights' adults do. Mentally infirm adults do not have some of the legal rights shared by able adults.
True, but what does this have to do with animals?
What is 'meaninglessly'? What is 'meaningful'? What if someone else has a different definition or criteria or their threshold for 'sound and reasonable' is different than yours?
Exactly! You get it, that's why my thinking on the matter should not be the law, it's just my opinion.
If you are familiar with Thomas Hobbes' writings, you are familiar with his advocacy of the social contract, and you understand the concept of self interested cooperation. No need to restate all that here. You further understand the law arising from that social contract reflects the will and conscience of the governed. If some activity is undesirable or offensive to the governed, there will likely come a law against it.
Hobbes is the Freud of political philosophy. That is to say, both men were instrumental in their field to advancing it to higher degrees of thought and practice never previously obtained, but the beliefs and methodologies of both men, we now know, were nearly completely wrong.
That's not to say they weren't important or brilliant or that one shouldn't at least have a passing familiarity with either figure, but rather one must observe how they were the impetus for new thinking and new ideas that ultimately led to something which was far greater than their original work. And at the core, they were both onto something. Hobbes was onto something when he stated that every man has to prevent his own violent death.
However, we have advanced beyond Hobbes' work and found that while it was a sound working theory in Hobbes' time, the "social contract" is ultimately complete bunk. David Hume wrote a paper in 1748 or so establishing an argument against it, and I'm quite partial to this quip from Roderick Long:
"I think that the person who makes this argument is already assuming that the government has some legitimate jurisdiction over this territory. And then they say, well, now, anyone who is in the territory is therefore agreeing to the prevailing rules. But theyre assuming the very thing they're trying to prove namely that this jurisdiction over the territory is legitimate. If it's not, then the government is just one more group of people living in this broad general geographical territory. But I've got my property, and exactly what their arrangements are I don't know, but here I am in my property and they don't own it at least they haven't given me any argument that they do and so, the fact that I am living in "this country" means I am living in a certain geographical region that they have certain pretensions over but the question is whether those pretensions are legitimate. You cant assume it as a means to proving it."
In other words, social contract theory assumes itself. Therefore any argument based on the social contract idea is not sound.
Social contract political philosophy is kind of like the Bohr model for an atom. It's a useful starting point for understanding how it all works, but a serious adherent to advanced thinking ultimately realizes its flaws and discards it.
Your 'laissez faire' argument may be attractive (to some), but it is impractical under anything short of reversion to the state of nature, where anarchy and force rule. That is the inevitable result when you have no standard other than individual opinion.
But you are assuming that everyone will have a completely, radically, different opinion. Now to some degree, you are naturally correct that there will be all sorts of opinions. I have often quipped that I could get 200,000 Americans to agree to any statement if I but had the media and polling resources.
However, I don't see that as being the case. American history is as much consensus as it is conflict. And I believe in the power of good old fashioned greed. As long as there is a sizable moral minority with any sort of economic power, the bulk of society will attempt to placate it.
Don't believe me? I'm working for a major retailer right now, and they are trying to appeal to blacks because as 11% or so of the population, they have considerable buying power. As a result everything this company does is tuned to not offend or discriminate against people of any color, and it honestly has nothing to do with it being right, it's about greed. If we can get one in five people to be so decent as to think that there's at least a problem with making dogs fight each other, we're fine. I'm pretty cynical of human nature, and even I think that's easily done.
I, for one, am completely unwilling to surrender to rule by force and shrug it off as 'that's life'.
Innocent and free men cannot be ruled by force, only criminals can be ruled by force. I for one rather resent that the only reason I pay taxes for things I don't believe in is because if I don't, I'll be shot or imprisoned by agents of the state. Is that okay with you, that I pay money to support things I vehemently oppose because of the threat of violence?
Either or. No standard, no reflection of public conscience, just various individuals doing power according to their ability?
And why not? If you think Big Tobacco is evil, don't buy tobacco. If you think that what Vick did was wrong, boycott his team/games. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Again, social contract, representative government, of, by and for, and yet government is somehow an adversarial power? I don't get it.
There is no social contract. And we don't have a truly representative government, we've been conned into thinking we're a democracy. The laws on the books that say things like it's illegal to own a machine gun made after 1986 doesn't reflect me or my beliefs at all. How is that a representative government?
Which relates to Vick's depravity...........how?
It doesn't, I just wanted to make the point and observe that I think it's messed up to be so concerned about animals but now show the same concern for people. For whatever that's worth.
Again, we have the social contract, reflecting the sensibilities of the governed. That is not 'shoehorning', we are setting a standard.
But again the social contract is a nonstarter, and the government doesn't reflect my sensibilities at all in some ways, that doesn't represent me. I set my own standards and find right and wrong in a power well above some corrupt and ineffectual government.