{"id":2327,"date":"2010-11-02T00:34:16","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T05:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=2327"},"modified":"2010-11-02T00:34:16","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T05:34:16","slug":"slippery-slopes-and-puppies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=2327","title":{"rendered":"Slippery Slopes and Puppies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Charles Kruse, President of the Missouri Farm Bureau, was recently<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/10\/31\/us\/31puppies.html?_r=1&amp;scp=1&amp;sq=old%20foes%20square%20off&amp;st=cse\"> interviewed by the New York Times<\/a> about Missouri&#039;s upcoming Referendum Vote (Prop. B) outlawing overcrowded dog breeding operations and&nbsp; setting living standards for dogs owned by breeders (adequate shelter, rest time between litters, access to outdoors, not living in excrement, and so on).&nbsp; In effect, the proposed law outlaws puppy mills, and the Humane Society of Missouri is behind the proposition. Here&#039;s what Kruse had to say:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>This is just a first step&#8230;. It&rsquo;s pretty clear their ultimate desire is to eliminate the livestock industry in the United States.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Wuh?&nbsp; This is about dogs.&nbsp; They don&#039;t eat those in Missouri, do they?&nbsp; (I went to WUSTL for undergrad, and I don&#039;t remember them serving dog anywhere in St.L., but that was the city, and all.) But seriously, folks, how does making it illegal to make a dog have litter after litter in squalid conditions with no time to regain her heath or even be healthy at all make it so that there&#039;s no livestock industry?&nbsp; Even if this were the Humane Society&#039;s endgame, what&#039;s wrong with treating dogs in ways that aren&#039;t utterly horrible?<\/p>\n<p>You know that Kruse, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mofb.org\/NewsMedia\/Articles.aspx?articleID=103#article\">on the Farm Bureau website<\/a>, has an answer to that question:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&ldquo;Furthermore, if Proposition B passes, these radical animal rights organizations and individuals won&rsquo;t stop there.&nbsp; As experienced in other states, they will work to further regulate Missouri farmers, driving them out of business as well and driving up food costs,&rdquo; said Kruse.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh, I see.&nbsp; It&#039;s not that this sets a precedent, it&#039;s that because the Humane Society promotes vegetarianism, a win for them about treating dogs decently is a blow to anyone raising chickens or cows for slaughter.&nbsp; They won&#039;t stop there.&nbsp; But what if <em>there<\/em> is a perfectly legitimate position, and there are other reasons to oppose where they want to go from there?&nbsp; What about that?&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There&#039;s an old distinction to make between slippery slopes and bumpy staircases.&nbsp; It seems that this is more bumpy than slippery.&nbsp; Moreover, what&#039;s Kruse got against dogs?&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charles Kruse, President of the Missouri Farm Bureau, was recently interviewed by the New York Times about Missouri&#039;s upcoming Referendum Vote (Prop. B) outlawing overcrowded dog breeding operations and&nbsp; setting living standards for dogs owned by breeders (adequate shelter, rest time between litters, access to outdoors, not living in excrement, and so on).&nbsp; In effect, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=2327\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Slippery Slopes and Puppies<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,22],"tags":[855,854,857,858,856],"class_list":["post-2327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ignorance-of-basic-matters-of-logic","category-slippery-slope","tag-charles-kruse","tag-dogs","tag-humane-society","tag-the-new-york-times-should-stop-interviewing-idiots","tag-vegetarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2327"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2330,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327\/revisions\/2330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}