[Cultural Jihad]

Let's just drop the invective. You raise valid points regarding the consumption of protein and Asian culture in general, but I would like to ask whether someone in your state should be allowed to torture their own dogs. After all, it's a mere possession, and according to the libertarian ideologues, it's all just nobody's business what anyone else does in the privacy of their own homes. So your neighbor decides to set up some sort of torture chamber for his own pets, and let's say it's right in his front yard. The neighbors are outraged, hearing the pitiful screams of tortured animals, and seeing the blood dripping off of the torture implements. What are free citizens to do? Nothing but shun the guy, according to the ideologues. All the rest of your words on this thread are meaningless unless the readers understand the lengths to which a libertarian police force would be used to protect the supposed "rights" of torturers to afflict sadism on their pets and neighbors.

[A.J.Armitage]

I'm a little divided about laws against cruelty to animals. The cruelty itself is obviously wrong, but of course being obviously wrong does not, in itself, justify getting the government involved. I don't think I'd vote for an animal cruelty law. But if someone was beating his dog bloody with a baseball bat on his front lawn, and someone ran up, grabbed the bat, beat him bloody, and got charged with assault, I'd practice jury nullification if I were on the jury.

[Kevin Curry]

I would like to ask whether someone in your state should be allowed to torture their own dogs. After all, it's a mere possession, and according to the libertarian ideologues, it's all just nobody's business what anyone else does in the privacy of their own homes.

Fair point. Libertarians have no basis for objecting to animal torture right here in the United States. None. They might be personally outraged by it, but they are forbidden by their own ideology from doing anything about it.