If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Hello Ricochet. At last I'm back from my Australian travels and am itching a) to remind you of my existence b) to tell you about my Aussie adventures and c) to tutor you in the ways of libertarian conservative righteousness. A couple of good Radio Free Delingpole podcasts coming up, I hope, shortly.
Let me kick off with an issue which Blue Yeti assures me will divide you all greatly. Well, Blue Yeti and I argued about it - me calling him a total lightweight and possible crypto-communist for his worryingly liberal stance - which is a good start. It concerns what we should do to animals that kill or attack humans.
My view: the sentence should be death.
Blue Yeti's: they're animals. What do they know? Why punish them for doing something they don't understand is wrong?
I'll tell you how this discussion came about. The first leg of my Australian tour was in Perth, Western Australia, which has now supplanted Florida and South Africa as the shark attack capitol of the world. There have been four fatal great white shark attacks along the coastline in the last seven months. Plus, just months before I went swimming in a place called Turquoise Bay there was another attack (that I only heard about afterwards), this time by a tiger shark.
Now a thing you often hear after shark attacks these days is friends and relatives of the victim - especially if he's a surfer - saying stuff like: "He wouldn't have wanted revenge. He knew the risks. After all, it's their domain not ours...."
For the record, if ever something similar happens to me that most definitely is not the position I want adopted on my behalf by well-wishers. I want revenge. Got that? I want whatever beast killed me hunted and killed, preferably as painfully as possible. Capisce?
And if a member of my family got "taken" (as the euphemism has it) then I'd feel even more strongly. The last thing I'd want is some finny (or scaly, for that matter: saltwater crocs are even worse) creature swimming round with impunity after it had got one of my loved ones. No way. And I don't care whether or not it's an innocent creature which knows no better. The point is that as a human I am the top species: my life - or that of any other human - is worth more than any animal's.
What strikes me as odd is that I even have to argue this point. Twenty, thirty years ago it would have been a given that man-eating animals needed to be expunged from the earth. In the early 1900s, when the famous Man Eating Lions of Tsavo consumed an estimated 135 people, no liberal bleeding hearts would have dared argue that the lions should be preserved for they were carnivores with magnificent manes and cute little cubs to care for. Even in Jaws in the 1970s, it was considered perfectly sensible for the police department of Amity to track down and kill the serial-killing great white.
Yet today, so extensive has been the brainwashing conducted by the environmental movement that we have now begun to take almost for granted that animals have at least as much right to life - if not more - than we do.
Sorry, but I don't buy this nonsense that whenever we stray off the land (our natural domain) into water we deserve to be eaten by sharks or crocs, any more than I accept that every time we take to the air we deserve to have a plane crash because God did not give us wings. This primitive, misanthropic drivel is now standard thinking in the green movement, but it's not an idiot-trap I have any intention of falling into.
God gave us such powerful brains so that we could be king species, not so we could rationalize ourselves into shark bait insignificance.
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Comments:
Nov '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
I'm glad you are back. I was beginning to get worried...
BTW, I agree with your point.
Oct '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Doubtless in the domestication of wolves into our beloved camp sentinel, hunt partner, and faithful companion dogs, there were incidents in which our ancestors “selected out” those with an atavistic proclivity for “taking” (a phrase I first heard in Cairns in 1986, speaking of salt water crocodiles, and still find chilling) their children.
Perhaps with a couple of hundred generations of similar selection, the few remaining species who occasionally prey upon humans will give them as wide a berth as wolf populations do to humans not perceived as defenceless.
Think of it as evolution in action, with a little help from the apex predator.
Edited on May 21, 2012 at 8:00pmDec '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
I agree, but how do we determine which shark, croc, whatever to kill?
Nov '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Hear, hear! I'm totally with you on the principle that I'd want man-killing animals put down: it's especially important to show these animals who's in charge or before you know it it's Planet of the Apes time.
Personally I think I should add a codicil to my will that in the event of wild animal-related death, the people who wanted to benefit from my estate should hunt down the animal in question while crying "Revenge!" in order to receive anything: the amusement derived therin perhaps being the only way to motivate such behavior because the paltriness of my current estate would not do so on its own.
Jun '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
In Alaska you are required to carry a rifle in most parks to protect yourself against bear attacks. Maybe surfers should practice surfing with shotguns.
Mar '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
May '12
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
I couldn't help but think of old Thomas Granger, executed in 1642 in the Plymouth colony along with his...friends. (If you don't know the story, don't look to me to tell you.) I wonder how that little episode goes over at PETA?
Oct '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Skeet surfing!
Nov '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
1. As Instapundit often writes, David Baron, call your office.
2.
Ha. Reminds me of Dennis Prager's take on the death penalty debate. He thinks people should all have one of two stickers on their IDs (or one of two colors of bracelets), with a green sticker signifying, "If I am murdered, I would prefer the killer not be treated harshly and executed," and a red sticker meaning, "If I am murdered, you're darn right I want my murderer executed." Maybe we need a separate color scheme for animal attacks.
May '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Wild animals are losing their fear of man, which is generally not a good thing. Time to remind them who sits on top of the food chain. If we don't get the exact croc or shark that is the culprit, pour encourager les autres, they'll get the message.
Jan '12
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
James you have become more liberal while you have been in the land of the beach. The sun must have got to you. There you are telling all of us that we have to take revenge if you are killed by a monster but there you are writing articles about it instead of shooting the surf in Australia reaping revenge on the said monsters.
You need to get those sharp teeth set into the sharks and not discuss the eco-freaks. Don't let journalism keep you from your life's mission.
Mar '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
What do you expect from a Yeti? Talk about divided loyalties!
Apr '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Ha! Your post reminds me of that rogue circus elephant they actually hanged in Tennessee in 1916 for killing a man. Hanged, forsooth! As though simply destroying the animal in a humane and pain-free manner would not have been enough. Crying, "Revenge!" indeed. Seems to me that poor old Mary hardly deserved the humiliation of her sentence. Can animals process the emotion of humiliation? This photo has always struck me as simultaneously horrifying and (sorry to say) funny, because of the pure (ahem) overkill, and how it says far more about humans than about rogue elephants:
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Another thing: Australia's saltwater crocodile population is out of control. They're moving south towards places like Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, which really don't need any maneaters raining on their parade, what with the bull sharks they've got there already.
Mar '12
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
I don't mind having animals that kill human beings killed, not at all. The only limitation I recognize is that the other animals of like type won't recognize human justice when it occurs, and that is too bad. If they were able to recognize human justice, they might be less inclined to kill human beings themselves.
Nobody will say to the other sharks, "Tom was killed by the humans after he bit one of them in half. Maybe we should avoid the humans and avoid Tom's fate."
Having written the above, I, like Dennis Prager (and Adrian?), recognize that the death penalty does not always deter killing but want killing deterred anyway. For the sake of justice, the red bracelet might do a lot more to dissuade murderous problems.
Are sharks color blind?
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
@justine olawsky. I love that photograph. It definitely ranks among my all-time Favorites of Weird. I agree hanging an elephant is maybe a bit extreme.
May '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Blast away, I say. A saltwater croc probably makes a fine set of boots, too. It's a win all the way around.
Jun '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Sharks and crocks don't convene meetings and discuss whether humans are exacting more retribution upon them, do they? I think you may be giving them more credit for rational thought than they are capable of. Let's face it, in certain environs, humans are prey and ought to be conscious of that and take the necessary safeguards to protect themselves. Exacting justice on sharks for the sin of one shark is a pretty damn silly notion.
Jan '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
James Delingpole:
Sorry, but I don't buy this nonsense that whenever we stray off the land (our natural domain) into water we deserve to be eaten by sharks or crocs, any more than I accept that every time we take to the air we deserve to have a plane crash because God did not give us wings. This primitive, misanthropic drivel is now standard thinking in the green movement, but it's not an idiot-trap I have any intention of falling into.
· · 32 minutes ago
I agree. Also, when did trees near elementary schools become not part of our natural environment (story alluded to in P. Robinson's interview w/ Thomas Sowell)? A few years ago there were a series of cougar attacks on cyclists riding in a state park in So. Cal. Also, cougars were threatening young children. Kill them. It is our nature to protect our young and ourselves.
Jun '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
John Walker
Skeet surfing! · 24 minutes ago
The Skeet Surfing video is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Please, everyone, check it out.