As repulsive as Michael Vick's actions were, what I've heard and read in the aftermath has struck me as being far worse. The dogfights themselves, and Vick's executions of the under-achieving canines, as vicious and sadistic as they were, involved only the Atlanta quarterback and a handful of his feebleminded lackeys. However, his defenders have been crawling out from under rocks all over the place, parroting all sorts of ignorant nonsense. And I find that even more troubling.

By and large, his defenders fall into one of three camps. There are those who want the rest of us to get over our outrage and be willing to give Vick another chance because we're all mere mortals, after all, and humans make mistakes. This argument falls apart as soon as you acknowledge that wearing brown shoes with a black suit is a mistake; guessing incorrectly on a true-or-false test is a mistake; torturing and killing dogs over and over again isn't a mistake or an error in judgment. It's a felony and, I'd venture, a sin.

Another equally fatuous defense is that killing dogs is no big deal, considering that hunters are free to shoot just about every other animal under the sun. Even though I'm not a hunter, even I can readily see the difference. In spite of their having four legs and a tail, dogs are not exactly animals. They are members of our families. Calling them man's best friend is only a slight exaggeration.

Many blacks, including some high profile ones, have leapt to Vick's defense. All that proves is that they have no moral sense, and that, in spite of Martin Luther King's inspiring words, they are still judging men not by their character, but solely by the color of their skin.

But the stupidest defense of all comes, as one would expect, from the multi-culturalists in our midst. So far as these pinheads are concerned, we Americans are never supposed to be judgmental of what others do. So, for instance, if black and Latino teenagers choose to wear their baggy pants below their butts, that's their culture, and who are we to ridicule them? Or, for that matter, who are we to say that the music of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, is in any way superior to the noise which we have come to know as rap and hip-hop?

Likewise, how dare we sit in judgment of Mr. Vick? After all, there are places on earth where dogs aren't pets, but, instead, are a major source of protein. To which I can only respond that there also hell holes where, dogs being scarce, they make do with people.

The whole concept of tolerance has been turned topsy-turvy in contemporary America. Perhaps it's because our Baby Boomer journalists and academicians have contended for so many years that America is the source of all evil that millions of our young people have come to be so accepting of any culture just so long as it's not our own. Even if it happens to be one that sanctions honor killings, beheadings, female mutilations, suicide bombings or, in Vick's case, the massacre of dogs.