UK Animal Liberationists Attack Anglers
A gang of animal liberationist thugs, wielding baseball bats, attacked peaceable fly fishers in the UK, roughing people up and breaking rods and reels. Mark my words: These people are becoming wild, based on their zealous embrace of misanthropic animal rights ideology. Unless their less zealous colleagues in the animal rights movement convince these thugs to cool it--they sure won't listen to law enforcement or writers like me--then sooner or later somebody is going to get badly hurt.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 5:59 PM
9 Comments
9 Comments:
I'd like to see these creeps try this in Texas. Those of us who have concealed weapons permits would shift the paradigm for them.
Too bad that the people in the U.K. have been stripped of their God-given right to self-defense.
I just obtained a copy of Peter Singer's Animal Liberation for 98 cents but I had qualms about bringing such a book across the threshold of my domecile. Oh well, I can put it next to my Nietzsche, etc. I have difficulty understanding this kind of thing like I have difficulty understanding Al Qaeda, in some ways, although I do see a certain amount of logical procession from erroneous beliefs in both cases. Brennan Manning writes that "the hearfelt compassion that hastens forgiveness matures when we discover where our enemy cries." A strong, sensible environmental and animal ethics seems the best way of undercutting the percieved moral ground that these people feel they have. So far as it is not pretense and a wayu of attacking Judeo-Christian human rights,et., and they really care for the welfare of animals, there is some element that I think can be picked up and used in a better wiser synthesis. For instance, in the Proverbs in the Bible it says that the wicked man is cruel to his animal, etc. There is a certain element of positive agreement that might reach some.
It seems to me that it is indisputable that humans, being moral beings, have a positive obligation not to abuse animals. Hence, I support animal welfare, which also keeps the human benefit in mind and the ability to reduce or eliminate animal suffering, for example is the slaughter house.
But animal rights Peter Singer and PETA style is to deny the unique worth of humanity, and indeed, is deeply misanthropic.
But if you believe in reducing animal suffering, where does sport fishing fall into that? Fly fishers, for the most part, aren't killing fish for the sake of their own nutritional survival; it's a pastime to them.
The human and family value of recreational fishing is immense. It is wholesome fun and a nice day in the open air Catch and release, if no barbed hooks are used, doesn't cause permanent damage to most of the fish caught and if the fish are eaten, so much the better.
But even if fishing is deemed cruel, which is a radical position usually reserved for PETA types, there is no excuse whatever for attacking anglers with baseball bats and destroying their equipment.
Here is a descriptioon by Jane Austen in Mansfield Park (ch. 2) of an animal liberationist spiritual anscestor, it seems to me:
"To the education of her daughters Lady Bertram paid not
the smallest attention. She had not time for such cares.
She was a woman who spent her days in sitting, nicely dressed,
on a sofa, doing some long piece of needlework, of little use
and no beauty, thinking more of her pug than her children,
but very indulgent to the latter when it did not put
herself to inconvenience, guided in everything important
by Sir Thomas, and in smaller concerns by her sister.
Had she possessed greater leisure for the service of her girls,
she would probably have supposed it unnecessary, for they
were under the care of a governess, with proper masters,
and could want nothing more. "
"The human and family value of recreational fishing is immense."
The family that fishes together stays together? Can't they all just rent a rowboat and enjoy the gentle lapping of the waves?
"It is wholesome fun and a nice day in the open air Catch and release, if no barbed hooks are used, doesn't cause permanent damage to most of the fish caught..."
But that's equivalent to holding humans' (or other mammals') heads under the water for a minute or so before letting them up. If you don't need to kill them for your own survival (which would arguably be consistent with your "kind dominion" criterion), what's the sense of pulling them out of the water?
Again, you can criticize PETA, but they're more consistent than those who only find it wrong when somebody kills one of the "cute" animals (dogs, cats, dolphins, horses, etc.). My problem with Ingrid Newkirk is her filthy attitude towards unborn HUMAN animals...
I find Newkirk's general misanthropy disturbing, for example, wishing that humans had never evolved.
But fishing is not animal cruelty. They are fish. I have seen animal cruelty while fishing. I was on a boat and a man caught a fish that was not good to eat. Instead of just throwing it back, as the rest of us were doing, he broke its jaw. It was a little fish, called a lizard fish, off the pacific. It was disgusting and reflected a very real problem in that individual.
So, seals can fish but humans can't? I don't think so.
I thought we were supposed to be more morally advanced than the seals...
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