Now, I have pets. I love my pets, I feed, shelter and pet them. I clean up their messes and play with them, but they are not free. They are captives and completely dependent on my goodwill for their well-being. They don’t choose their food or when they play or go outside. I may be a good mistress, but they would have no defense, or a limited one, if I were cruel. In other words if they were wild their lives would be completely their own, but their survival would not be guaranteed. In reality it’s not guaranteed in captivity either. My ball python just died due to a mortal case of scale rot. I changed his substrate a few months back to help him shed, but it held too much moisture which encouraged bacteria to eat away at his scales. I may have kept him alive longer than someone else would have since he was a runt and he had issues shedding, however, even with the best of intentions, my decision killed him. That is the life of a pet, to be at the mercy of the intelligence, opinion, skill and temperament of his owner.
This cartoon is funny. I think it’s funny not for the reason that the person who drew it thought it was, but because it shows more about his mindset than mine. He thinks people are pets! The government is our master and we should be a good, grateful little beasts, and never question our masters. That is also the position of the people who are the state, they assume that they own us. Any institution that can claim your property, deny you your rights, and then act as if it were for your own good is dangerous just by definition. The cartoon doesn’t go far enough to illustrate just what the state thinks of us: We are farm animals to be milked and fleeced and sold to the slaughter. That is the point he misses, that is the danger of his mindset. While he thinks it shows the absurdity of the libertarian viewpoint, he has really shown how dependent and subservient we are becoming as a people. If it is absurd to think that your rights matter, that you own yourself, and that you can question the wisdom of those in authority, we are a nation of animals. A nation of sheep.
Human beings may be animals, however the question is: Are we wild animals or pets of a small group of other people? The guy who drew the cartoon knows where he stands on the issue and so do I. As long as I breathe I will question, I will refute and I will object to being treated as anything less than sovereign individual. I am not willing to trade my freedom for security. I stand with the dissenting house pets, I am a wild human. No chains, no master.