On February 15, 2011, Luke Swanhart wrote (and I use that term loosely) an article about "rehabilitating fighting dogs" and how foolish it was. He did this on examiner.com. Sadly, I did not take screen caps, because he promptly changed and edited large portions of the article, including some of the quotes I commented on here. The breedist bigots make their debut, cheering Swanhart for his super brave stance. Which is fine, if any of his information was based on actual facts.
I wonder if you can do that with the New York Times - post an inflammatory, inaccurate, irrational article, then change it the second it's questioned? And I am not talking minor edits to improve the grammar and syntax of the piece. That would have been appropriate (and much needed). I'm talking major edits.
Luke Swanhart's new article with the same link and title starts off with "What is wrong with mandatory spay/neutering of pit bulls and required registration." That's a question, not a declarative statement. His first article started out more along the lines of "PEOPLE NOW WORSHIP PIT BULLS OMG MICHAEL VICK."
Then he brings up cocaine. "The substance cocaine is illegal for a reason - it helps control the people who deal with it." Cocaine became illegal in the United States in 1970. And yet, as of 2008, in a survey of 17 countries, the United States was the leader in cocaine use with 16% of people surveyed stating they had used cocaine. No other surveyed country comes close (New Zealand was second with 4.3%). And guess which drug in 2001 was the number one reason for drug-related trips to the hospital? Cocaine. The percentage of inmates using drugs increased in the late 1990s. And the second most common drug, after marijuana, inmates used? Cocaine. Even after cocaine was criminalized, the percentage of users increased and has maintained a steady pattern in the past decade or so. And as of 2008, cocaine remained the second most common drug found in the system of inmates...those same people Swanhart claims should be controlled by its ban.
While I'm not arguing the decriminalization of cocaine would improve these statistics, Swanhart cannot claim that the criminalization of cocaine has "helped control the people who deal with it" while it remains the second most common drug sold and used in the United States.
I'm not touching the whole "animal activists = dog fighters" claim. That is so tired and worn and stupid, it doesn't deserve any more than that.
But I do want to touch on Swanhart's inaccurate use of the term "speciesism". " It has also created a nation of Speciesism - assigning more rights to one type of dog over another,"
Wrong. Speciesism. SPECIES. Assigning more right to one type of dog would be breedism. That is how BSL passes, because humans assign less value to a Pit Bull than to another dog. In some areas, BSL is classist and racist, because the humans implementing the law assign less value to poor people and people of color than to wealthier people and white people. That is the case, for example, in Lancaster's enactment of its mandatory castration Pit Bull/Rottweiler law.
But BSL is always breedist. It is always discriminatory legislation. It is based on a popular belief that Pit Bulls are "more dangerous" and thus of less "value" than other dogs. There is NO reverse breedism in existence in this country. There are no groups championing the killing of Labrador or Golden Retrievers, even if they may be the top biters in some cities. To claim reverse breedism is as irrational and fallacious as it is to claim reverse racism or sexism is somehow a significant problem in this country.
Swanhart has eliminated his "bold-face makes it true" argument but re-worded it as such, "While millions of other dogs never involved with dog fighting-ever get any press--They get killed in pounds by the millions in the USA every year, and nobody seems to care. They aren't pit bulls."
Which is ONCE again ALMOST too stupid to counter. The fact is they ARE Pit Bulls. I mean, who are the most killed dogs in shelters across the country? They're not Pointers, for cripes sake. There are so many needy Pit Bulls in shelters who have never been fought and who are not adopted, who are killed. If Swanhart is logical, he cares about those Pit Bulls too. But he is not, so my guess is he wants them dead too. Breedism for the fail.
Swanhart removed his telepathic ability to know what a dog thinks, but he might as well kept it in - it's still a bunch of illogical nonsense.
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