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 '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
James Delingpole:
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.
By these lights, antibiotics and anti-parasitics should be outlawed, and for heaven's sake don't smush that tick or flea. It might be fair if the people who believed these things were the only ones to suffer the consequences of their belief, but they seem determined to visit the consequences on all of us. When one fails to make proper moral distinctions, one is often prey to the most violent, whether man or beast.
May '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
@Brian : I suspect it would be a behavioral thing. Animals have become unused to bad things happening to them if they get too close to humans. That's what's happening with the geese and coyotes here in suburban Chicagoland anyway. It would certainly have the effect of culling the boldest (and stupidest) ones.
Oct '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
James, I'm in complete agreement with you on this. As to Yeti's point that animals shouldn't be punished for instinctual actions, I agree. Forget the term punishment, I'm happy to just call it killing and we should get on with it until the numbers of large, dangerous predators are culled to a reasonable point.
I recognize that ecological balance is important, but as it stands now, any killing of Great Whites is illegal in many areas. If it has to be managed, fine. But allow them to be culled to a certain point and observe the results. Continue until there's hard data that harm is occurring and then back off. I don't buy the charge that by the time you observe harm irreparable damage is done. Too many species have gone from very small populations to vigorous health.
Mar '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Welcome back to the Sceptered Isle, James (the weather was crap while you were away - no climate change there, then) - I was wondering whether you would ever return. I always think of you when I see pictures of Mr Cameron and Mr Obama yukking it up - you are right about Mr Cameron - a Cino squish if ever there was one.
But I fear you are wrong about the Great White Shark - if Nature had intended us to share the same habitat it would have left us with our gills and flippers that we had millions of years ago. And bigger teeth.
Personally, I wouldn't go in the water in areas where I'm likely to have bits bitten off, but that's just me.
Although, I admit I am a hypocrite - my house is Arizona is surrounded by poison to stop things like scorpions and black widow spiders entering - but if they cross my threshold they deserve it!
Apr '12
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
When I was honeymooning in South Africa (why yes, yes I do work that phrase into as many conversations as possible), they told us about lions that would hide near the breaks in the fence of Kruger National Park, waiting for Mozambican refugees to sneak across... and be eaten.
Animals that have killed humans before are liable to kill again. That's a good enough reason, in my opinion, to eliminate the threat. I'm also sympathetic to the "punishment" claim, but I have to ask: might there not be circumstances in which man and beast pit themselves against one another in a fair contest? And then, if the beast emerges victorious, would it not be dishonorable simply to kill it? Think, for example, of a bull that kills a matador.
Jun '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Oh, I see. If you cull the boldest and stupidest sharks from the greater population of sharks you get smarter and more fearful sharks who know to avoid humans and places where humans scuba dive and swim. Good luck with that. You do realize that Finding Nemo was not a documentary, yes?
Mar '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Rachel Lu:
Animals that have killed humans before are liable to kill again. That's a good enough reason, in my opinion, to eliminate the threat.
Again, living in Arizona is instructive - if you stray off a well-beaten path you are very likely to come across something that with hurt you or kill you (including the plants) - there are many more snakes, scorpions, spiders, etc in Arizona than we humans, who are recent arrivals.
So, it just ain't practical, let alone ethical, to kill everything that might kill us. Reasonable precautions are in order, though.
Edited on May 21, 2012 at 8:55pmRe: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
If you are stupid enough to wade into a clearly marked alligator infested lake to retrieve a $2 golf ball, you deserve to be eaten. To penalize the alligator for doing what comes naturally seems grossly unfair to me.
May '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
True enough, I suppose, but it 's not the two dollar ball, it's the stroke and distance penalty that I detest.
Jan '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
I enjoy eating shark not only for the flavor but also because I'm munching a predator.
Oct '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
If the offending creature can be identified, by all means, dispatch them post haste. Sadly, humans are easy prey cannot put up much of a defense and must be tasty.
Common sense and respect for the surroundings is one thing, the other might be not to present behaviours that make one appear to be a Fast Food item.
Mar '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
I think "man eating anything" should be driven to extinction.
Apr '12
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Right, so, these are examples of why I think circumstances matter. Higher animals with a demonstrated propensity to kill humans (such as the lions in my example) should be killed. Mosquitos, scorpions etc aren't advanced enough to be deliberately vicious. Just treat them as natural hazards. Higher animals that are, for example, defending their own territory or offspring, or participating in a "fair fight" (like the bull in the ring) should not be "executed".
Oct '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
If the point is "human life is more valuable than any other on earth" (a sentiment with which I agree), how does killing a man-eater of whatever species advance that point? Unless the man-eater is likely to eat other men, and is not simply a one-off manivore, how is man's place at the top secured by killing the man-eater?
I'm not a Lib saying the man-eater has a right to anything, I'm just saying there seems to be a significant disconnect between the idea that we're tops and the idea that we have to kill whatever eats one of us to reinforce (to whom? the animal kingdom? to our own vanity?) that we're tops.
Kill 'em for sport, kill 'em for food, kill 'em to impress the ladies. But kill 'em because one of 'em got one of us? Not a compelling argument.
Aug '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
I'm not sympathetic to the killing-as-punishment claim at all. Revenging yourself on a dumb animal? Pointless.
However, I do agree that culling a population of the likely man-manglers makes sense (some tigers develop a taste for human prey and so on), and that in general, culling can be a good way to keep an animal nuisance down.
(I am convinced that Canada geese believe that our suburbs were designed especially for them. Our deer are too numerous even for their own health. Coyotes... don't mind them so much, at least not yet: maybe they'll eat some of the geese and deer we're not allowed to cull, and the occasional chihuahua is no great loss.)
That said, you cull the animals that seek out man and make pests of themselves. When you enter a wilderness area, you go at your own risk. Well, as a general rule. The boundaries between civilization and wilderness are hardly clear.
Sep '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Alligators do not chase down golfers. They do chase down toddlers, haul them back into the water, drown them, and conceal their bodies underwater. Before, eventually, eating them.
I find that there is an inverse relationship between the population density where a person lives, and their understanding of the threat some of that "natural wildlife" poses.
It doesn't have to be a grizzly, an alligator, or a shark. That cuddly raccoon, rustling for supper in your trash can? There's a strong likelihood he is carrying rabies. That really pretty red fox? It's practically a certainty he's carrying rabies.
Government programs to "re-introduce" long-eradicated predators into populated areas is state-sponsored madness. And city-dweller-backed restrictions on shooting those cuddly little foxes only puts the lives of rural families at risk.
Sorry--we're at the top of the food chain. And we should keep it that way.
May '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
James, like many here I have missed you, but I am firmly in the Yeti's camp. I fear the sea, because the sea is dangerous. If I am eaten by a shark (presumably after my tenth scotch, as little else--save shipwreck--could compel me to swim with said beasties), well, that sucks for me. I would have failed to protect myself, and possibly others, from a creature I can't have had any expectation of behaving otherwise; I don't see why my failure should entitle me to (rather after the fact) revenge. And keep in mind that several independent organizations have confirmed that I am, in fact, Special.
Oct '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Southern Pessimist
True enough, I suppose, but it 's not the two dollar ball, it's the stroke and distance penalty that I detest. · 6 minutes ago
What's even worse is that the penalty would've otherwise just been "stroke." The "distance" penalty is only for OB shots, so a shot in the water would only have been either a "water" or "lateral" hazard. One shot penalty, and a 3-dollar golf ball (2-dollars? where do you shop, pray tell?!), at the risk of being alligator food? Not a good trade-off.
Sep '11
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
When you enter a wilderness area, you go at your own risk. Well, as a general rule. The boundaries between civilization and wilderness are hardly clear.
The boundaries between wilderness and civilization are moving. As fewer and fewer people farm, rural areas are losing population. My in-laws grew up in a small farming community--now only one house remains, and all the farmland has been planted (by a USDA program) as trees.
The result: the land has reverted to wilderness. What used to be bucolic pastureland is now miles of solid forest, home to coyotes and several bobcats. A hard-and-fast rule at Grandma's--you do not go walking in the back pasture without loaded weapons.
Edited on May 21, 2012 at 9:19pmAug '10
Re: If Ever I Should be Eaten by a Great White Shark.....
John Murdoch
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
When you enter a wilderness area, you go at your own risk. Well, as a general rule. The boundaries between civilization and wilderness are hardly clear.
The boundaries between wilderness and civilization are moving. As fewer and fewer people farm, rural areas are losing population. My in-laws grew up in a small farming community--now only one house remains, and all the farmland has been planted (by a USDA program) as trees.
The result: the land has reverted to wilderness. What used to be bucolic pastureland is now miles of solid forest, home to coyotes and several bobcats. A hard-and-fast rule at Grandma's--you do not go walking in the back pasture without loaded weapons.
Oh, completely agree.
When I said, "You go at your own risk," I didn't mean you go without protection.