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by Jim Beers


The warm farm kitchen table was as comfortable a place to sit and talk as
there is.  My host and his wife had opened their home to my wife and I and
treated us to two fine meals.  As the moon rose over the southern hills, the
conversation shifted from our families and grown kids to his farm operation.
Cattle, horses, specialty pigeons, and calling doves were all visible from
the kitchen window.  A dog slept soundly in a doghouse out near the pigeon
coop.  A leather collar and light chain kept him from running out into the
road when no one was around.

The next morning as we rode around his farm with the dog either in the back
of the pickup or running free after squirrels I smiled and observed that
there is whole bevy of animal rights activists from veterinarians and a
gaggle of single urban professionals to pet groups and even show dog groups
that would like to make it illegal to keep a dog chained, or outside, or
even as your own property (you are to be only a "guardian" for now and
eventually what - a "neighbor", a "relative"?).  He laughed and said they
would probably really get their knickers all bunched up about the gamefowl
he kept in the outbuilding on the edge of his farmstead.

Gamefowl are the varieties of chickens that have been raised for millenniums
in Asia, Africa, and Europe for their colorful feathers and for the males'
propensity to fight each other at the drop of a hat.  Cockfighting has been
a very popular pastime passed down through generations ever since our
ancestors first watched wild junglefowl cocks fight in the tropical forests
thousands of years ago.  Today a passionate interest in cockfighting is also
very strong in Central and South America as well as the United States.
Early European colonists in North and South America raised and fought
gamefowl.  Distinguished and well-known persons like George Washington
raised and fought gamefowl every bit as enthusiastically as renters,
sharecroppers, and other less wealthy rural residents.  Cockfighting, like
trapping or hunting or fishing or rodeo or circuses or ranching or farming
or using dogs any number of ways, can get into the blood of a family and
create a tradition that both identifies members of that family and forms the
culture in which they live.

The farmer knew all about the animal rights lies and propaganda that have
vilified cockfighters in recent years.  He shook his head in disgust as I
spoke of all the Federal politicians and Federal bureaucrats that have tried
(to gain urban votes and national animal rights' support) to pass
unconstitutional Federal legislation to ban cockfighting.  He also knew how
(as with so many of these issues of late) a recent state ballot initiative
to continue permitting cockfighting in Oklahoma counties that permitted it
was passed in every county but one and that one county was Oklahoma City and
all those urban voters (that neither owned nor raised nor fought gamefowl)
carried the day and outlawed cockfighting.

He mentioned how a few years ago there were quite a few men in this rural
area that raised and fought gamefowl like their fathers and grandfathers
before them.  They used to travel together to places like Oklahoma for a few
days of fun with each other and their kids.  But then teachers and
newspapers began to picture them as villainous and sadistic.  Local moms
began to worry that letting their kids accompany their friends on the trips
would make them vulnerable to politically correct stereotyping.  Urban
activists and the occasional rural contrarian (much like the suddenly
anti-war activist during a war or the anti-trapper that goes on a campaign
after reading some bit of anti-trapping propaganda) didn't miss any
opportunity to paint the cockfighters as sinister men in need of reeducation
or jail or both.  Donations to animal rights organizations followed lurid
articles about cockfights just as surely as they followed tales and staged
photos about animals chewing off their legs in a trap or chimpanzees hooked
up to monitors in a cage of some medical laboratory.

I mentioned the nasty e-mails from three veterinarians that I have received
whenever I write about cockfighting.  It is funny to me how we readily
accede the power over our lives to "experts" and how such "experts" come to
think of the rest of us as dolts that should have no say over our property
unless the "experts" approve.  While the opinions of veterinarians are to be
respected and understood, they should no more have the final "say" about
cockfighting than medical doctors should have the "say" about terminating
human life or bureaucrats should have the final "say" about government lands
or fish and wildlife.  Like the protection of human life or the uses of
public lands, such decisions rest ultimately with the guarantees in our
Founding Documents and the people we ELECT to direct our government.  Human
life is protected by our Constitution: public land and public resource
decisions should reflect National needs AND Local interests not radical
agendas.  Under the American system of government the protection of property
(MY chickens in this example) and a respect for and protection of the rights
and traditions of all Americans should be paramount.  Regulations or
prohibitions concerning cockfighting, like alcohol regulations should be
local decisions for communities to make, not opportunities for unaffected
majorities far off to impose on others.    When "experts" like veterinarians
or "college-educated" bureaucrats, or University professors, or animal
rights radicals are given any more than an equal role with other citizens a
precedent is created that will spread with great harm to far more than the
current cause of the hour or even the animal issues we speak of here.  When
we permit one man's rights to be destroyed by others, no man's rights are
safe for there is always someone who will detest you or what you do.

As we bounced through creeks and the dog chased squirrels I remembered a
group of gamefowl breeders that I spoke to in Texas a couple of years ago.
They were as proud of their chickens as any dog owner of his dogs or any
duck hunter of his decoys or guns.  While I have never been to a cockfight,
my memories of all those cocks crowing as I spoke on that balmy Texas
afternoon and while my hosts explained gamefowl husbandry, history, and
distribution to me are as vivid as if it were yesterday.  Some breeders told
of their families having been in the business of raising and fighting
gamecocks since before the Civil War.  Revolutionary War guerillas like
Francis Marion and Civil War guerillas like John Singleton Mosey were
sometimes referred to as "gamecocks" because of their strong,
fight-to-the-death determination in a fight.  Not a bad mascot for folks
fighting to defend their rights.

On my way back to Virginia the next day I found myself on the interstate
slowly overtaking a shiny red pickup with the license plate COCKFTR.  I
glanced up at the pickups' rear window and there was a decal of two gamefowl
squaring off.  As I passed I saw a 30ish year old dad and two kids all
well-dressed, smiling, and laughing as they went on down the road.  Villain?
Scoundrel?  Sadist?  Not hardly.

Cockfighters painted as bad persons?  They are some of the finest members of
our rural communities.  They raise great families, pay their taxes, go to
Church, and make good neighbors.  Myths about cockfighting leading to
anti-social behavior are lies meant to vilify cockfighters in order to
eliminate them exactly like Nazis vilified Jews and Slavs and gypsies, and
communists vilified businessmen and landowners and educated persons.

Cockfighting is not an animal use to be seized by the government and
outlawed.  Those gamefowl BELONG to THEIR OWNERS.  Animals DO NOT HAVE
RIGHTS, only citizens of a free nation with a strong, respected, and
enforced Constitution that guarantees rights have rights. If you don't like
cockfighting don't go to one.  Tell your children not to go.  Regulate any
disturbance made by cockfighting.  But DO NOT eliminate it or manipulate
pandering Federal politicians to seize jurisdiction over cockfighting from
state and local governments where it was properly placed by our
Constitution.

I say this for good reason.  Not because it is un-American.  Not because you
may want to go to a cockfight one day.  Not because it can be shown to be
illegal for the Federal government to take such action.  Not because animals
are private property like any other property. Not because I want to go to a
cockfight or because anyone is paying me to say these things.

None of us should support eliminating cockfighting for the purely selfish
and readily apparent reason that EVERY argument for so doing is equally
applicable to trapping, hunting, fishing, pet ownership, rodeos, circuses,
ranching, farming, all manner of animal husbandry, and every other
imaginable animal use.  Each of these groups is increasingly being vilified
to justify public acceptance of central government seizure of State and
local jurisdictions and the steady growth of central power in a Nation owing
it's success to Local control of our daily lives and National control of our
defense and interstate commerce. Whether it is the "puppy mill operator" or
the "anti-wolf rancher" or the "cruel trapper" or the "sadistic hunter" or
the "heartless medical experimenter" or the "rich farmer" or the "vicious
animal trainer"; as cockfighters and their rights go, so goes not only all
these other animal/property uses; as cockfighters and their rights go, so
goes each of us and this great nation.

Author's Note:  Today's paper reported that a court upheld Chicago's ban on
the ownership and husbandry of racing pigeons in that city.  My own Illinois
hometown had lots of pigeon racers (many of Belgian descent) whose families
had raised pigeons for centuries back in the "old country".  I often went on
pigeon training trips with friends and waited with them by their coop on
sunny afternoons as racers were expected to return (it was good practice for
duck hunting).  A tiny rooftop coop was a valued item in crowded European
and American cities as well as the larger coops in early American homesteads
but today, like Los Angeles fireplaces, they are disdained by urban
neighbors because of noise (cooing) and droppings and therefore to be
banned.  Should Chicagoans be able to get pigeon ownership (they have
successfully imposed their anti-2nd Amendment views on the rest of the
State) banned throughout Illinois?  Should all the American urban counties
be able to impose their antithetical animal opinions on all the rural
American counties?  How we answer this will shape both the world we grow old
in and what we leave to our descendants.

Jim Beers
28 December 2005

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Jim Beers is available for consulting or to speak.  Contact:
JimBeers7@earthlink.net