No, I‚ÄövÑv¥m not talking about the boot shoot at Meehanschloss. (Note to my fellow bloggers: I have pictures of the boots shoot and am not afraid to post them if anyone blogs about ticks. Ever heard of the phrase ‚ÄövÑv Mutually Assured Destruction?‚ÄövÑvp It‚ÄövÑv¥s not just for mad dictators anymore!)

(Looking at those pictures, I am amazed at how young and thin we look. How did we stay so slim when at least half our calories were consumed in liquid form?)

(Many posts ago, the Maximum Leader explained that he didn‚ÄövÑv¥t go into politics because politics was no longer about ideas. Cow manure. He didn‚ÄövÑv¥t go into politics because he knew his liberal friends had pictures of him drinking beer out of footwear that would mysteriously arrive at the Washington Post as soon as he had sewn up the nomination.)

At any rate, here is the real reason for this post.

I had previously argued that animal rights advocates were misguided partially because they seemed to believe that animals lived in a Utopian environment. The Analphilosopher has handed me my head on a platter with his April 26 ‚ÄövÑv Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part III‚ÄövÑvp post.

While his strawman setup of:

‚ÄövÑv Animals kill each other, so why can‚ÄövÑv¥t we kill them?‚ÄövÑvp

Doesn‚ÄövÑv¥t address the full nuance of my argument that humane farming actually decreases the suffering inevitable in ‚ÄövÑv Old Bitch Nature,‚ÄövÑvp it is close enough to cause me a bit of intellectual discomfort. He continues:

Aw, the heck with it: go to his site, bump up his traffic numbers and come back. I‚ÄövÑv¥ll wait.

Back already?

So here is the deal. My argument that farming can be more humane is skewered by KBJ. Try transposing my stance on the morality of killing and eating animals to the human realm. If ‚ÄövÑv mother nature‚ÄövÑvp is shown to be analogous to, say, just to make our example have the greatest emotional impact, a concentration camp, would you find the following argument persuasive?

‚ÄövÑv Well, I am giving a better life to the Jews in our humane camp than they would otherwise have in the other camps,‚ÄövÑvp claimed OberKommandant Kleinhalter, ‚ÄövÑv We offer our workers health care and nutritious food so they can serve our purposes. Of course, we do kill them in the end, but we strive to do it quickly and without pain.‚ÄövÑvp

I, for one, wouldn‚ÄövÑv¥t want to defend the morality of that position. So KBJ has me squirming. This is not to say that I am about to betray my Forty-Eighter Wisconsin Dairy Farmer roots and become a vegan; he still hasn‚ÄövÑv¥t convinced me that animals have a claim to moral standing. But his destruction of one element of my defense is well crafted and convincing. I will have to rethink things a bit‚ÄövѬ

A good argument is a joy to ponder. Kudos to the professor.