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Conservation Is Conservatism. Animal Rights Radicalism Is Not.
Michael Scully has apparently decided to take leave of his senses and join PETA.
Then, to take a final illustration, we have the 5 or 6 percent of our population who still think it is normal, and indeed praiseworthy, to stalk, sneak up on, and dispatch animals for no better reason than the malicious thrill of it, memorializing these moments with their “trophies.” It’s a passion captured by an American bow hunter who wrote of deer, “I have so loved them that I longed to kill them,” and these days it extends well beyond deer to “game” of every kind. The creepiest of the lot is a type whose low character can escape no outsider to the trophy-hunting mania: thousands of people who compete throughout the world to kill the most and biggest animals. Members of outfits such as America’s own Safari Club International, these hunters are mostly men of means who still assume it is their prerogative to kill even elephants, rhinos, lions, grizzlies, and every other kind of creature in every place on earth.
Sorry, Michael, but being at the top of the food chain means we get to take our pick of everything that’s underneath us. To quote the inestimable Professor Reynolds, any creature that wants to knock me off the top of the food chain had better be prepared to wind up as a rug. Don’t like it? Slather yourself with bacon grease and walk through a pack of lions, then see how “humane” and “caring” they act towards you.
I will never understand why it’s considered more “humane” to let animals slowly and painfully starve to death rather than hunt them and ethically put them to use for humanity. Hunting conservancies provide much-needed job opportunities and food for some of the poorest people on Earth, and a properly-managed wildlife conservancy balances the needs of the hunter and hunted alike, preventing such tragedies like the forced culling of 200 lions in a Zimbabwe this year due to a lack of hunters.
I was born in western Canada, and I spent my summers on my uncle’s farms, raising chickens and hogs destined for the supermarkets of the world. Growing up, I learned to appreciate the beauty of God’s creation and understood that it is there for our use and should never, ever be abused or taken for granted. I know what’s needed to make a living as as a rancher or a hog farmer, and while I occasionally hunt, it is not my primary hobby. I do, however, have very good friends who are passionate hunters and very good friends who are professional wildlife managers in some of Canada’s largest national parks.
One thing that unites hunter and park ranger alike is a hatred for poachers and the understanding that what we enjoy most about the outdoors will go away unless we balance the needs of humanity with the needs of Mother Nature. Mankind is uniquely able to shape the world to suit ourselves, and acknowledging our place in this world and taking our responsibilities to ourselves and generations to come is at the core of the modern conservation movement and conservatism itself.
Let’s leave the histrionics to others, and go out for a nice steak dinner tonight.
Published in Environment
Thinking more about it, I had a pastor who told me once that “If you’re being a jerk while talking about Christ and people object to what you’re telling them, that’s not persecution, that’s you being a jerk.”
This is a lesson that most vegans, cross – fitters and BMW owners have yet to learn. ;)
You choose to hunt. Bambi does not choose to be hunted.
Farmed animals owe their lives to us. *You* could easily eat farmed animals, to not spend three days in the freezing cold glassing for a buck.
There is moral clarity to eating farmed animals. In a society with enough farms to feed all, there is no reason to hunt. To destroy one of God’s creatures for mere sport is immoral.
Wild animal rights are as valid as human rights.
I have guns. I use guns, although not to kill things; just to practice, so that if I have to kill someone, I can do so. And I support the Second Amendment as written, without compromise, just as I am absolute on the First Amendment.
“Congress shall make no law…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
These are absolutes. I support your right to own guns and to kill things, even as you admit that it is perverse to do so.
God’s creatures deserve our respect. He created them. What we need to eat, we should farm. What lives wild, we should respect. I would only kill the man or beast that threatened my own safety or that of my nation, my family.
Even in the absence of religion, respect for autonomy and suffering should teach us this.
Does this make me a “mangina”? I think not. I think it makes my hobby-time consistent with my ethics as a Christian and physician.
Howaboutit, DocJay?
Well I share your faith and profession. The perverse thrill statement was to set up the quail joke. Nothing more.
I hunt quail with the 410 my grandpa put food on the table with. I consider hunting the apex of human occupations. Respecting an animal is important and the teaching if that respect to the next generation is part of being a hunter. I doubt we are going to agree on this though.
The mangina is someone referenced in the OP who wants to remove my rights while mocking me. I don’t think that substantial difference is worth personalizing to your more balanced view, albeit a view I don’t share.
Thank you. I learned my ethics from my hunting Grandfather too.
Hence why I qualified my statement with “(at least in most cases).” The percentage of the overall population who depend on hunting to survive is, I imagine, quite small.
That stated, when I first posted I also forgot about another good reason for allowing hunting: managing certain species’ populations.
Nope. Bambi is prey. I, you, and all of us are humans are predators. Don’t like it? Yank out your incisors, they were put there to rip and tear meat off the bone.
Bambi did not chose to be eaten, as an herbivore, Bambi was CREATED to be eaten, and eaten he shall be, whether it’s by me or by a gator or one of the Florida panthers (the feline, not the hockey team) that live in my neighborhood.
The concept of animal rights gets thrown out of whack once we put animals outside of their natural places on the food chain. Prey and/or farm animals are not to be taken for granted, they are a gift from nature’s abundance to us. In our abundance, we have forgotten that, and we take food for granted, leading to things like PETA and Type II diabetes.
Personally, I find open displays of gluttony like “eating contests” to be far, far more distasteful than ethically stalking and harvesting one of God’s creatures. One respects food for what it is, something that is created by the sweat of our brows, and the other treats the consumption of food as a sport.
I would point out that most wild anjmal populations need to be managed in some way, at least the large animals. At the smaller end, for example, mice and rattlesnakes will go through crash-boom cycles out of synch with each other. But do we care how many mice or rattlesnakes are out there? No. Can we in any reasonable way apply the concept of rights to them? I say, not as individuals, but as species, yes. I see extinction and destruction of habitat as inherently wrong.
With bigger animals that impact humans more, they really cannot be left alone. Whether it’s deer in the suburbs here or elephants eating farmers’ crops in Africa, some have to be killed, while at the same time, you can’t just allow uncontrolled killing. The US worked out a pretty good balance of these things by replacing market hunting with sport hunting. It hitches the interests of the humans to the futures of the animal species. No, sport hunters only rarely need the meat. But if hunting did not exist here, who would have any reason to care whether any particular wildlife goes extinct? And where would the money come from to manage animal populations? The profits that can be made by developing land need a counterbalance with another faction of our society that has an interest in the fate of other animals.
African countries are now where we were about a hundred years ago. It would be a shame if their chance at using the same techniques as we did to manage wildlife were snuffed out by people who don’t understand any of this. The people around the world who got all worked up over Cecil the Lion don’t have to live with all the other lions.
It has been remarked, more than once that “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result..” (Churchill, Mattis).
I would only add that the thrill is much more satisfying if experienced as the bomb doors are opening and 40K Lbs or ordinance is being released on an enemy target.
Loved it. Every time.
Animal Rights. Animals do not have rights. Of any kind. Only human beings have rights. The reason is because animals do not have immortal souls. They live. They die. Period.
Humans have an immortal soul. Because of the immortal soul, humans are accorded rights that allow them to exercise their free will to be good humans or not. Animals do not have a free will. They do not get a choice to be a better tiger or a better pocket gopher. Animals are on earth to serve and be husbanded by humans.
Those of you who do not subscribe to a Biblical version of life will find this argument totally unconvincing. I understand. It is what I believe and informs my shopping decisions.
Civilization is an ipso facto placement of the most cunning animal–man–outside of zis natural place on the food chain.
Accepting God’s grace as a Christian, is another.
Our being omnivorous is another subject entirely. I eat meat, with relish and pleasure. But I eat farmed animals. I don’t believe in killing wild creatures who have done me no harm. It is merely an accident of birth that gives me the ability to kill wild creatures with no danger to myself.
I would kill a fellow human who threatens the safety of my family, of my nation, of my self, before I would kill a deer whose only offence was to happen to live in the forest in which I happen to be hunting. And I would gladly throw the switch to execute a murderer, but I will never abort a human fetus.
It’s a matter of treating the innocent as innocent, of respecting God’s creation.
So while I don’t dispute Kevin’s right (and mine) to own guns, to shoot game, to eat meat, I choose to treat innocent creatures who have done me no harm with courtesy and respect. This I learned from my hunter grandfather Mac.
Kevin’s thesis that this is un-conservative is paternalistic and leftist. You don’t get to define my beliefs.
Huh.
I don’t hunt, but I approve of hunting, partly for wildlife-management issues, partly because venison represents organic, free-range, cruelty-free meat. Up until DocJay pulls the trigger, the deer (or whatever) gets to be a deer, living its deer-ish life. Then it dies, as all living things must do, and something (DocJay, presumably) eats it, which is always the way of things.
I’m not sure that a managed deer herd is actually all that different from a farmed cow herd. “Wildness” isn’t an absolute category, nor does “farming” represent nearly as decisive a break with the hunter-gatherer lifestyle as is commonly supposed. Our “wild” Maine blueberry barrens were actively managed by human beings long before Europeans showed up, both for the berries themselves and for the bear that liked to feast on them. If you’d be willing to pick wild berries, or dig wild clams on a beach and put them on the plate along with a “wild
lobster, why wouldn’t you eat a deer or rabbit or ruffed grouse?
How is it our place to “manage” creatures who belong to no one? What did the poor deer do before the invention of rifles?
What reason, other than sustenance, can possibly justify taking the life of a creature living it’s “deerish” life and doing me no harm?
Now Kate, I *would* eat a deer, rabbit, ruffed grouse, lobster or clams if other foods were not available.
So far as I know, and my undergraduate degree is 39 years old so this may have changed, wild berries are plants, which do not feel pain, do not comprehend or fear death, do not nourish their young, do not attempt to escape.
No writer has yet given a meaningful argument for killing innocents.
I’m sure that the bull elk, the baby elks that he might have sired, the lady elks that he might have pleased, the Oregonians who might have enjoyed catching glimpses of said bull elk, are all grateful that the woman’s hunting dogs got to feast on tough meat from a wild creature rather than a farmed creature.
Kind of makes my point, does it not?
The science has evolved on this.
Full article here.
They respond to stimulus in ways that can be described as feeling pain.
They were managed by whatever predator roamed among them. Or they were hunted by Humans with bow and arrow, or spear and atlatl, or knife (or sharpened rock).
Indeed. Neolithic and near Neolithic peoples have been changing the environment for ages. I suggest anyone really wanting to get a good look at it read 1491 Revelations Americas Before Columbus. America was not a wilderness, it was managed. That big prarie out there? Human made.
That’s the first job God gave us.
Innocence and guilt don’t really apply to animals, only to those of us with moral agency.
It seems to me that the burden of proof should be on the one proposing a revision of the moral code. I don’t see that you have provided any reason for considering hunting immoral other than that you find it reprehensible. I suppose that someday when the sensibilities of a sufficiently large majority of voters are offended by hunting, the practice will end. It will not be because of discerning and correctly applied ethical arguments, however, but because of the application of political force informed by sentimentality. It would be better if people who don’t appreciate the joys of the hunt or chase would be tolerant, in the real and original meaning of the word. You may not understand or approve of the behavior, but there is a lot of gray area, so let it go. Long ago I worked on a ranch that also had a gun club. Better than 50% of the hunters were idiots: my boss’s stock line was, “Well, if it keeps them from killing people in the city, I’m all for it.” I am not sure the reasoning was good, but the attitude was just right.