PETA Urges Children to Fight Against the "Hunting" of "Sea Kittens"
Remember, PETA is always after your children to get them to buy into animal rights ideology. The latest is the renaming of fish "sea kittens," in an online interactive aimed at children. From the "Save the Sea Kittens!" Web Page:
Ask the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to Stop Promoting the Hunting of Sea KittensThese people are shameless. PETA well knows that the "littlest lobbyists" (as Secondhand Smokette once called children who were being exploited by their teachers to publicly support a teacher's union political position) will never succeed in outlawing fishing, er sea kitten hunting. Not to mention that real kittens, cats, bears, and other animals love to eat sea kittens, and that sea kittens eat each other without mercy. But actually outlawing fishing isn't the point. Getting kids under PETA's influence is what the group is after. Pretty cynical to take advantage of innocent children in my view.
Given the drastic situation for this country's sea kittens—who are often the victims of many major threats to their welfare and ways of life--it's high time that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) stop allowing our little sea kitten friends to be tortured and killed. Who'd want to hurt a sea kitten anyway?!
Sea kittens are just as intelligent (not to mention adorable) as dogs and cats, and they feel pain just as all animals do. Please take just a few moments to send an e-mail to H. Dale Hall, the director of the FWS, asking him to stop promoting the hunting of sea kittens (otherwise known as "fishing"). The promotion of sea kitten hunting is a glaring contradiction of FWS' mission to "conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats."
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 2:15 PM
26 Comments
26 Comments:
Taking advantage of innocent children is taking candy from a baby, etc. This isn't being done to take anything from, or to use, children; PETA's objective is to spur people to think and act in kinder terms toward other animals -- to be humane, and the younger they are when they hear the message, the more apt people are to learn it. A next generation that will not accept what is neither in other animals' nor humans' best interests -- and I hold that humans and other animals are united in interest and that we pay the price for lack of humanity with regard to them -- is a very good idea. I'd much rather PETA influences society than that unethical science, utilitarianism, and futilitarianism do -- and no, I don't agree that they have similar agendas, effects, etc. But then what else is new.
When I was little, the kittens at our house really liked to eat sea kittens.
Fish are just as intelligent as dogs and cats? An outright lie.
That's not the worst of it - in Ealing, West London, the council is using taxpayers' money to turn children into "Junior Streetwatchers" and report adults, including parents, for their "enviro-crimes".
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/2577151/part_4/as-orwell-warned-children-now-spy-on-adults.thtml
I have to admit, I just love the taste of sea-kittens.
I don't understand why PETA picked "kittens" myself (could be because Ingrid is an only child, not a parent, and has to hypothesize re things having to do with children, and I can't imagine what is meant by fish being as intelligent as cats and dogs unless dophins (which are mammals), for example, are in the intended category, but I don't think this is analogous to teachers getting children who are under their direct influence to do things in support of their union's political agenda, and I do think that the targeted activity here is fishing for sport and entertainment as opposed to fishing for food, and that the intention is to make children aware at an early age that all living creatures are capable of feeling pain and should be respected. If the generation of futilitarians we've got to deal with now had been raised this way, doctors and the medical establishment would be less callous, and we wouldn't have to be afraid to go to hospital.
It is cynical manipulation of children.
If fish are worthy of protection from being harvested for food, fine. Argue that. The emotional gut-punch of telling a little child that (sea) kittens are being eaten is indefensible. This kind of thing backfires, of course. Even children don't appreciate being emotionally manipulated when they find out what's been done to them.
I like hunting fish, because my babies (twin calico cats!) love fresh fish. They adore salmon.
Of course, if they can't have fish, they'll hunt their own goodies. They have a particular love of lizards.
Now, *that* bothers me because I love little house lizards. They're cute, they're gentle, they eat spiders and other annoying insects, and they don't freak out if you pet them the way frogs do.
However, you can' reason with a cat. Ginger, she's my own baby (Callie is my Dad's baby) will stalk a lizard from the other side of the living room if one sneaks in, and before I can get the little green body into a tupperware cup to get it outside, she's pounced.
This is why I prefer feeding them fresh salmon. They get their tummies full and they don't hunt the lizards as much. A full cat is not a stalking cat.
If non-human animals eat other animals because that is what they are designed and able to do and it is necessary for their survival and thriving, and humans eat other animals and experiment on them for scientific and medical purposes because that is what we are designed and able to do and it is necessary for our survival and thriving, then we are animals, and utilitarian, too, and in order to distinguish ourselves from the other animals and prove that humans are exceptional and not merely utilitarian, we would have to exercise restraint wherever we can.
Laura: That is a good point about telling a little child that kittens are being eaten being emotionally upsetting to them and I agree that children don't appreciate being emotionally manipulated and that doing that to them is wrong, and can backfire. For those reasons, I think it would be better if PETA had gone about this differently. But everything they do that increases awareness and promotes more humane behavior is worthwhile.
Jeepers, did you see the "bedtime stories?"
Awful.
And not even correct. They have the flouders with eyes on either side of their heads. Duh. Those tasty flounders that my family used to eat after fishing for them (yum! fresh flounder!!) looked nothing even remotely like the propaganda "sea kittens" in the book.
So, are you saying that no one should ever try to teach their values to children? Do you talk to your children (if you have them) about what you believe in and what you value? Of course you do. Sure, you disagree with PETA, but I think its a little disingenuous to call them out for trying to do what everyone does all the time. I mean, if it was a video teaching children about human exceptionalism, you'd probably applaud.
As an aside, why not create a video for children about human exceptionalism? Seems like that would be a lot more effective than criticizing PETA on a blog read mostly by people who already agree with you...
For God's sake, Doug, what kind of a world do you want the kids that saw the human exceptionalism video to make? We already HAD little Nazis growing up saying we're better than every other kind of creature and we can experiment on them at will because there is no one like us and we have rights and no one else does. The only difference is that human exceptionalism seeks to protect all humans by pushing the rest of creation down the ladder and calling it ethical to do the unethical when it's in our own best interest, when the nature of our best interest is something it doesn't even fully comprehend and acknowledge, just like the fiasco of the Nuremberg Code and the U.N. and the mess they've made. I like SHS, which is doing a great service, though, and people who don't already agree with it do read it and post here.
Doug, I'm sure Wesley appreciates your supervision. He could never decide how to conduct his life and his blog without other people's direction.
You don't want your kids to eat fish? Tell them that you don't want them to, and why. No one objects to that. "Not lying to children and emotionally manipulating them" is not equal to "never trying to teach values". The fact that you can't see the difference is fairly alarming, actually.
Doug: Plenty of people who read this blog disagree with me. But warning people that PETA isn't just about being nicer to animals, but has a subversive ideology and is willing to interfere with family relationships--as their "comic book" warning children that if their dad goes fishing he might kill the family pet does--is important.
But thanks for stopping by. Your views and criticisms are welcome.
Darn -- what I just wrote ended up white space and I can't remember and reconstruct it now. "Sea Kittens" may not be PETA's best work, and if it's not brand-new, I think I saw it a while ago and drew that conclusion, but PETA is deliberately cutting-edge, sharp, and controversial, not subversive, and was created by Ingrid Newkirk and comes out of Ingrid's own frame of reference and experience. She offered me a full-time job with PETA in 1985 after I helped put together a position paper for an organization of physicians opposed to use of animals in medical school training -- the same genre of physicians, and many of the same individual physicians, who whom the medical establishment tells "do it our way or you can't work here." I know how hard PETA works, I know what they have seen, and I know what sacrifices those at PETA make in order to do that work because of what they have seen, which most people do not. Personally, I feel very lucky to have had a father who did not hunt and fish for sport, who would stop the car if a bird hit the windshield and take it to where an attempt to save its life could be made, who took me to see a slaughterhouse and a meat-packing factory so that I would understand the price of life, etc., and if I had not, it would have been good for me to be taught more sensitive values than those available to me at home; nor does it interfere with family relationships for a child to learn a different perspective from that of their parents; in fact, that can be healthy. I understand what SHS means about "littlest lobbyists," but the objective here is to help to create a kinder next generation rather than a f/utilitarian one. Most people do not see what PETA has seen, which it destroys our souls to benefit from while hiding from it because it is just too unpleasant and we don't want to think about it. (Nothing like a dog lover who "can't live without a dog" but gets one (the kind they want, just as with a "selected" foetus) from a breeder rather saving one from an animal shelter because "it would be just too upsetting" to go to one, for example, just as self-deception and euphemism enable futilitarianism.) I don't expect PETA's tactics to make sense to those who have not seen, day in and day out, what PETA is aware of constantly, and trying to stop on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves at all. Those who are callous toward non-human animals also are callous toward humans, and futilitarianism is the end product of what PETA is fighting in every way it can imagine rather than just saying gee that's too bad but we want and believe we're entitled as humans, and too bad so sad for the rest of creation.
Doug: I don't know if my previous post made it clear enough that I agree with everything you said up to the part about the video, the very thought of which gives me the willies. I'd rather my child, if I had one, were exposed to Sea Kittens than to that. But then, I don't go in for coddling, everyone has always remarked on how well-adjusted my pets have been, and the kids I've been around seem to be more comfortable with my approach than with parents who end every sentence with "ok?" Better brief trauma from Sea Kittens than the inculcation of an entitled, self-contradictory perspective which would be a lot harder to undo. If "human exceptionalism" got the part in Ayn Rand's I think it was Atlas Shrugged where the character has so much faith in the railroad she just designed which has never been tested that she is willing to be the first passenger, as that relates to animal experimentation, I could find more common ground with it than I do now.
Lanthe, you seem a bit off on a couple things here. In one comment you said:
I do think that the targeted activity here is fishing for sport and entertainment as opposed to fishing for food, and that the intention is to make children aware at an early age that all living creatures are capable of feeling pain and should be respected.
The bedtime story book on the site specifically criticizes the idea of the fish being eaten, period. There are links for veganism on the sidebar. The virtual book mentions not just fish farms, but regular fishing for food as bad. It is not making any distinction between what you call "fishing for sport" (where you need to understand the fish are all thrown back) and "fishing for food" (which is the way most people fish). Fishermen and hunters do so for food. They don't shoot animals and leave them dead for no reason, nor do sports fishermen catch the fish and then leave them on the banks of the river or lake.
You also say this:
what kind of a world do you want the kids that saw the human exceptionalism video to make? We already HAD little Nazis growing up saying we're better than every other kind of creature and we can experiment on them at will because there is no one like us and we have rights and no one else does.
No, the Nazis were not about "we're better than every other kind of creature." They were about "Arians are better than non-Arians, and especially Jews and the scum who help them." There is a BIG difference between Nazis gassing Jews and Catholic clergy and anyone else who stood in their way and me eating shrimp and tuna raised in a fish farm (or caught the old fashioned way). HUGE.
Of course, PETA has also compared eating meat to the Holocaust in the past, so I'm not certain you would agree that there's a difference if you're in agreement with PETA's general message that people and animals are the same.
Naturally, though, human exceptionalism is something that is kind of a given to most people. Those who are religious understand that God's laws are written on our hearts, and that we're made in the image and likeness of God. We're the only creatures (going with the religious view here, remember) that had life breathed into us by God. (Terminology, just in case anyone is curious about this, in Genesis is the same as the terminology used in the New Testament when it's spoken of Jesus "breathing" on the Apostles after the Resurrection. It's a very big deal and signifies the Divine influencing and touching and playing a part in the creation of Man.)
But without this background in faith, there is a loss of that understanding that Man is different than the rest of the animals. The idea of the hierarchy of creation's living things is being lost in our culture today - and even suppressed in some places. And I certainly wouldn't appreciate anyone telling my kids that they're eating "kittens" when they are eating fish. Or telling them that eating fish is going to give them mercury poisoning and make them lose their intelligence. This kind of thing is predatory, plain and simple.
Christine: I didn't read the bedtime stories, or even know they existed. I was commenting based on my impression of what was posted here, a reference to which I believe I ran across a while ago. I'm not surprised that PETA would promote veganism to children, though.
I caught my error with "creature" when I read my post but don't know how to make corrections on posts here or if that is even possible. It should have been "person."
A "background in faith" does not necessarily mean being oriented to religion in the way you are referring to it. I have faith; I'm not traditionally religious. Not to argue religion here; I'm merely pointing out that religion seems to be an assumption as the basis for "understanding," as you put it, that it's not necessary to have as a premise for understanding things. Of course humans are different from all the other species; that's obvious. But if human exceptionalism depends on a certain kind of religious faith and on believing that we are, unlike all the other creatures, made in the image of God, then it's a doctrine inseparable from that kind of religious belief, and I'm not sure that it is. I wouldn't accept it on those religious grounds, which I do not accept, anyway, but my actual objection to it is that it involves a kind of self-defeating circular reasoning, and illogical and self-serving, whether with or without religion in the picture, and that look where it's gotten us; look at the state of affairs we've created. That's what's a "big deal" to me. Nor is PETA's general message that human and hon-human animals are the same; if that were the case PETA would protest other creatures eating other creatures, for example. Also, generally in animal rights field it's laboratory experimentation on non-human animals that's compared to the Holocaust. I agree that most people take "human exceptionalism" as a given; I think that's a problem, and that just because most people do something doesn't mean that they are right. I wouldn't call "this kind of thing" quite "predatory," though it's certainly beyond the norm of what we're used to, and that's in keeping with PETA's general approach. As for mercury poisoning and its effects via fish, all I can say is that more than one doctor has told me that one has to be very careful about eating fish these days because of mercury and other toxins, and, doctors aside, that my vet told me not to feed it to my cats for the same reason.
I would want my child to be independent and strong-minded enough to be able to read anything, consider it, understand where it is coming from and why, take from it whatever is of value, and make his/her own judgement. I was that way from long before I was even able to read, because children are capable of being that way, when they are left to their own instincts, intellect, and good sense. This culture, the U.S. in particular, makes too much of childhood and of children as some special category of people that are to be coddled and they grow up into adults who are still children, like the ones who raised them. That's why we've got the "I want and I want it now" hedonism death culture, and loss of civilization. (I also don't like what I've seen of the way religion has gotten involved in the intellectual and political affairs of the U.S., which has played into a polarity that has helped to tear the country apart (and destroyed the Republican party into the bargain, not that party in New York State didn't do a pretty good job of that in a different way) and isn't getting us anywhere but more bogged down.) Ingrid Newkirk, by the way, was not raised in the "traditional" U.S. system, and her attitude toward children is as a result a little different than that of those who subscribe to the American view of them. I'm glad she's on the planet, doing what she's doing, exemplifying a way in which it would be nice if more humans were exceptional.
p.s. How did it get started that people here spell my name with an "L" rather than an "I"? Must be because capital of the latter looks like lower-case of the former. It's a capital "I."
SHS: Is there a way to edit/make corrections to what one has written here once it's been posted?
And while it's true that "Sea Kittens" has drawbacks, as I noted above, in terms of its initial potential to upset children as children are in this culture, and have a backlash effect, particularly among adults, I'm much more concerned about and outraged over the effect of futilitarianism, which came into being on the backs of laboratory animals, on the vulnerable, the elderly, the disabled than I am about Sea Kittens, in which Ingrid Newkirk and PETA are deliberately trying to get children to look at things in a different way, and mental exercise and broadening of perspective is exactly what we need to recover if the death culture is to be defeated; lack of them helped to create futilitarianism. There's a big difference between the effect of Sea Kittens on a child that even in worst-case scenario is not going to be permanently traumatizing and the plight of those at the mercy of medical futilitarianism, and between saying all creatures have feelings, be a vegan and saying "don't treat, pull the plug, his/her life isn't worth anything or worth living" and the former has not, does not, and will not lead to the latter. In fact, the animal rights movement, PETA, etc. arose AFTER the "eugenics" movement of the 1930s which is with us still and the post-WWII "scientific culture" (there's another oxymoron) in the U.S., and in response to the same callousness that is part of both of them. Animal rights is not the enemy; it's an ally to the interests of human beings. The problem is humans not being able to be in control of themselves, and thus not having been able to control science and medicine in a such a way that they, along with us, are harmful to ourselves and the rest of the world. Until that's addressed, blaming animal rights etc. is just defensive finger-pointing, as well as incorrect to start with.
Ianthe: Re corrections. Not as far as I know. Don't worry about typos and etc. If something is factually false, let me know and I can kill the original comment. But I can't do more than that.
Wesley: Thank you. I thought I'd seen at some point some window that had something about editing on it but it must have been someplace my computer had gone that I misunderstood.
If parents would do their jobs properly, few children would be likely to view the PETA "sea kittens" website in the first place. Young children have no business surfing the web unsupervised. Those parents who allow it might as well hand them hardcore porn and hate literature. PETA's ravings have elements of both.
K-Man: I don't agree with you about PETA, but you're right about young children surfing the web unsupervised, and if more parents spent more time with their children these days instead having relegated what were once strictly parental duties to others, e.g. day care, the schools, etc., we wouldn't have a general culture in which the family's wishes are disregarded by hospitals, for example. I didn't realize "sea kittens" was a web site, by the way. I thought I heard about its being in pamphlet form a while ago.
Actually I found it funny, kind of like having a campaign to SAVE THE NAUGA! Imagine this: "Every year thousands of these adorable creatures are ruthlessly hunted down, slaughtered and skinned: and for what? To make cheap knock-offs of naugahyde upholstered Eames and van der Rohe chairs."
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