Cruel To Be Kind (To Animals)
Current events, Dennis Prager is talking about:
With the recent charges that a major National Football League player had allowed cruel dog fights on his home property, the issue of cruelty to animals has been brought to national attention.
What’s with the dry, circuitous wording? Why not put all the words that come after the comma in front of the comma, and vice versa? Little punchier now, isn’t it?
Above: Radio show host, columnist and author Dennis Prager is momentarily distracted by his favorite sound
Of course, it is a well known to the many of those among us who have read his writing fact that the syntax of Pastor Grant Swank displays its respect through passivity for his mastery of language, and which he also tortures. But most of the religio-authoritarian gasbags like Prager write the same way. There’s much throat clearing and harrumphing and burying of ledes and splitting of infinitives. It’s like they don’t want us to understand them so much as just sit there and listen to them.
As for the substance of this week’s column…
Kindness to animals is entirely unrelated to kindness to human beings — except perhaps in the reverse order: People who treat people kindly are less likely to treat animals with cruelty … Indeed, if there is any connection, it is more likely to be in the opposite direction. It seems that at a certain point of preoccupation with animals, there is a real chance that such a person may well treat people worse.
…let’s just say Mike Vick’s name appears in this piece at a 0:2 ratio to Herman Göring’s.
For those tempted to caricature the argument presented here, I should make it clear that no one is making the absurd argument that animal rights activists are likely to be Nazis.
Genuinely clear writing requires no such disclaimers, but anywho.
As I understand it, the National Animalists have already started rounding up the animal beaters and sending them to concentration camps.
When the Nanimalis came for the dog fighters,
I remained silent; I was not a dog fighter.
When they came for the conservative talk radio hosts,
I did not speak out; I was not a conservative talk radio host.
When they came for teh sammiches, there was no one left to speak out.
Place Hugh Hewitt in that camp of modern day Torquemadas who perhaps look down upon torturing animals because, unlike humans, animals cannot truly suffer the deliciously conscious pain which Republicans above all else desire to inflict upon Muslims, Arabs, and other swarthy people in hot rooms with very little clothing to be had by victims.
Dammit and I hope that he was going for a Jonah Goldberg style reasoning. You know, something of the order of “Hitler had a dog. Hitler liked dogs. Animal rights activists love dogs. Ergo, animal rights activists are worse than Hitler.” I’m glad to see that Denis Prager’s deeply held belief that my love for puppies is not an inherent sign of Nazism, merely a sign that I show cruelty to my fellow man.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Sugar is, among other agents used by bakers in the course of their activities, the one most universally recognized as be sweet
Such sweetness, however, though used metaphorically by great dictators and religious figures throughout history, should have no bearing on any particular issue that occasioned the writing of this heartfelt love poem to my significant other.
“For those tempted to caricature the argument presented here, I should make it clear that no one is making the absurd argument that animal rights activists are likely to be Nazis.”
Self Godwin’d?
Stand aside, people!
Travis speaks Swank.
(Nicely done, I might add.)
It’s baffling that the people who support Abortion are speaking out against Vick here.
Clearly Dogfighting, while cruel, is nowhere as cruel as abortion.
While innocent dogs are maimed in these dogfights, it is not as bad as the innocent unborn babies murdered by Abortion. 50 million murdered in 34 years. It’s a silent genocide.
Chicken-fighting and Dogfighting are pretty bad.
But not as bad as abortion.
People who treat people kindly are less likely to treat animals with cruelty
Of course, people who treat animals cruelly as children sometimes grow up to be serial killers – or president. You just never know, do you?
What a load of bullshit. Nazis liked animals, therefore liking animals never has a positive affect on character? Even ignoring the fact that “The Nazis” were not a monolithic entity with uniform thoughts and opinions, this is just stupid. Sounds like somone needs to take a logic class.
The fact is, I’m calling fake Gary.
Doesn’t Prager have it exactly backwards? Haven’t studies indicated that humane treatment of animals is a marker of decent treatment of one’s fellow man?
Animal rights. Hah. What a contemtible construct. Look. Animals do not, and can not, have “rights”. As humans, the intelligent if not always empathetic species, we take care of and protect from harm the lesser of all because it’s about the kind of people we are, and the kind of people we want to be. We don’t hurt animals because we suffer a real, visceral psychic damage when we do. We feel sad, and sickened, and we will intervene to protect animals, even sometimes when we wouldn’t intervene to protect other people.
With apologies to Bill Munny, I’ve pretty much killed everything that walks or crawls, and while one might debate the necessity or un-avoidable-ness of much of that, I was never one for cruelty. If you’re going to kill, kill fast and clean. Mr. Vick, I’m talking to you. Where did all this fancy shit with electrocution and drowning come from? Did you sleep well afterward? Did you find yourself, a bit self-consciously with an erection? When a simple sixty-five cent 9mm round at the base of the skull would have been, if not a humane solution, at least a painless one.
When we killed a village’s water buffs, sometimes the fucked-up guys would give ’em a burst of 5.56 into the lungs and watch ’em die. Took upwards of ten minutes, while they were scared and hurt and didn’t know what was wrong, not to mention what to do. And the people who fed them and worked them and took care of them didn’t come and help. These animals are not stupid animals, not like you’d think. They knew something was really wrong, and they knew “their people” weren’t coming around to fix it. There was a strong, ugly vibe around their pain and fear. And it was usually one guy, one rotten fucker who lived for the suffering of others, and a bunch of guys who didn’t want to rock the boat. I never minded rocking the boat. If I was there, I’d grab a shotgun and give the buff a nice pat on the snout, some soothing sounds and two rounds of 12 buckshot in the brain. I hate these fuckers who don’t understand that suffering is something to be alleviated, not created, who cannot express their own power except by hurting something else.
But c’mon. We eat them, we wear their skins, we raise them for our benefit. They are animals, a source of protein and personal satisfaction. They are never going to vote, and we don’t really need to ask their opinion. We just need to recognize the obligations of our own humanity. Our society should punish people like Vick. Not because the crime itself was so egregious, but because of what it tells us about the perpetrator, what he’s capable of and what he finds pleasure in…
mikey
Chicken-fighting and Dogfighting are pretty bad. But not as bad as abortion.
You can stop worrying, Gary. Retroactive abortion is still illegal, no matter what your mom tells you she wishes she’d had the sense to do.
Therefore, the following holds true.
DP: Intelligent animals are entirely unrelated to human intelligence — except perhaps in the reverse order: People who believe humans are intelligent are less likely to believe animals are intelligent … Indeed, if there is any connection, it is more likely to be in the opposite direction. It seems that at a certain point of preoccupation with animals, there is a real chance that such a person may well treat people as if they have no intelligence whatsoever. Take me for an example. My dog is more intelligent than I am and yet I talk down to you like you’re the dumbass. Hah!
Clearly Dogfighting, while cruel, is nowhere as cruel as abortion.
Clearly, breeding and raising generations of animals for the sole purpose of getting torn to shreds in a fight is nowhere near as cruel as aborting a fetus before its brain has developed enough to support consciousness (especially when one considers the high rate of pregnancies that terminate naturally and are also referred to medically as “abortion”).
After all, a man who purposefully and repeatedly brutalizes animals that trust and depend on him their whole lives is not even remotely as bad as woman who purposely terminates two or three accidental or unwanted pregnancies during 25-30 years she is fertile.
Because the woman had sex and is therefore a slut.
I’m pretty sure that people who oppose abortion are speaking out against Vick, as well. And people who support the death and destruction of the Iraq invasion are probably speaking out against Vick, as well. QED, mofo…
The mind wobbles that someone could take the Vick story and somehow twist it into an attack on people who treat animals humanely. Seriously, what possible fucking point could he be trying to make? Or maybe he’s just going for the Limbaughsian “fraternity pranks!!” argument with this.
‘It seems…’? A ‘real chance…’? Based on what research or experience? One can only wonder how he views veterinarians, who spend all day mending puppies and kitties instead of helping The Man by passing out Viagra like nuts at a Xmas party.
Dennis Prager doesn’t know shit about people or animals, and should not be trusted to comment on either. What a fucking nozzle…
Animal rights. Hah. What a contemtible construct. Look. Animals do not, and can not, have “rights”.
Sure they can and do, if legislated into law. Where did the human rights come from?
Whoa, Mikey…
Feel very strong about the issue?
…and even, as it were, different without Gary Ruppert, at least at this juncture is his replacement made anew…
Dammit. My brain cannot do it! It comes off sounding like bad Shakespheare and not like the Swankster at all.
I don’t want to think of how much time you have invested, Travis, to learn to do that. I’d bet 4.53:1 odds that I’d suffer a aneurysm. Or die. Or both. In reverse order.
Feel very strong about the issue?
Yeah, I guess I do. But not for the obvious reason. It just seems to me that investing animals with rights they cannot defend, cannot demand, indeed, cannot understand, is kind of a way to absolve people from their responsibility to treat their lessers with kindness. Look, we all know why we’re polite and deferential to the guy that’s six foot seven, 290 with prison tats. He can enforce his own place in the world. Animals, children, any lesser creature is dependent upon the kindness of humans. That’s a trust, whether you think it comes from god or just the way the planet developed diversity. You can’t make animals responsible for their own well-being. They cannot have you arrested. They cannot take you to court. You have to decide, like every other moral decision you make every day, where your obligation lies.
And if you decide you can hurt an animal because you are rich, or simply because it can’t tell on you, if you think you can loot because the opportunity presents itself and besides, insurance will pay for it, if you think you can backhand a woman you love because hell, you live together, it’s not like it’s REAL violence, hell you’re just getting her attention…
The important moral questions we face are not what we do when a cop is watching, or when we have less power that someone else on the scene. It’s when no one is watching, and we have all the power. The good news, for me at least, is how few the ugly ones are. The bad news always has been and will continue to be how much damage they can do…
mikey
And on the other hand are those, especially today, who equate animal worth with human worth — such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which inaugurated a campaign a few years ago called “Holocaust on your plate.” The program equates the barbecuing of chickens with the Nazi burning of Jews.
You see, it would be absurd to say that animal rights activists are Nazis, but there is something fishy about how PETA keeps saying that killing chickens is just as bad as gassing Jews.
“Character is what you are in the dark”, eh Mikey?
Or perhaps “Humanity will decide to express itself when everyone in the room is weaker than you are”.
mikey
the people who support Abortion
Stop pussyfooting, Gary. You and I both know that liberals want to make abortions mandatory.
Shorter Dennis Prager: A pox on both houses, Michael Vick’s doggie dungeon and the Humane Society alike.
I’m somewhat in awe, as I was sure he would go for the low-hanging fruit of the gangsta rap culture. But this was like the 7-10 split of wingnuttery.
My dog took me to court once, but he had a crappy lawyer.
Yeah, mikey, but on the other hand–wait. WTF? Nazis? Whoa. Left field.
But this was like the 7-10 split of wingnuttery.
That’s perfect.
(To be honest, Mikey, I do agree with your actual premise, and admire it. But I also know that even though child abuse is reprehensible and inhuman, assholes still do it and with the laws in place against it, at least we can prosecute the fuckers. I dunno if that’s children having rights or just making a genuinely harmful activity illegal for the sake of society or out of some condescending need to defend children, but either way, I’m glad the laws are there.)
Ok, I read this article about why Paul McCarthy wasn’t playing China anymore…it was because they had factories killing dogs and cats for fur.
This was after he’d played there while they had human slave camps where your piece-rate was the amount of food of you got and if you fell behind and started starving to death they didn’t give a shit and just quit feeding you.
I really try to keep my predation as cruelty-free as I can as a carniverous mammal but I really do think there are serious moral flaws among some of the animal-rights people.
Yeah, mikey, but on the other hand–wait. WTF? Nazis? Whoa. Left field.
Yeah. Guilty as charged. My approach has always been shoot the guy with the gun and ignore the guy in the clown suit.
Oh yeah, I’m all for the laws. Codify ’em all and let judges sort ’em out. Right there with ya.
But here’s the thing. Like so much of our modern world, it’s a bit of a scam. Prosecution happens after the commission of the crime. All well and good, I suppose, but in my tribe we have a tendency to want to protect the more helpless among us before the fact, not after. It’s the whole point….
mikey
Swank has a sort of Idiot-Savantness, almost a sweetness to his crazy. This guy is just nasty.
Great, now I’m imagining clowns with guns. So much for sleeping tonight.
The mind wobbles that someone could take the Vick story and somehow twist it into an attack on people who treat animals humanely. Seriously, what possible fucking point could he be trying to make?
Hmm. Someone must benefit from Prager promoting the idea that a guy who’s sadistic to animals is therefore going to have more kindness and empathy left over to invest in people.
Is Frist planning a comeback?
Goddam right. The background check oughta ask you:
Have you ever dressed as a clown?
Have you ever worn size 28 shoes?
Did your nose ever light up?
Any “yes” answer would prevent you from the firearms purchase….
mikey
For a moment there, I thought Prager was going to segue into an anti-abortion screed.
shoot the guy with the gun and ignore the guy in the clown suit.
Got that, men? The raid on Mikey’s place is a Clown-Suit operation. Any questions?
No, Plectrum. What part of “No guns” don’t you understand?
You have your water-squirting flowers. The team with the custard pies will stay in the car unless you need back-up.
What do you mean, your balloon animal burst. For fucks sake, Plectrum. Do you need to go back to Quantico and repeat basic Clown Training?
shoot the guy with the gun and ignore the guy in the clown suit.
Mikey, what’s your position on mime artists?
I think the real danger posed by “those animal rights people” is that God forbid, we could look at how we treat animals, realize that animals are sentient beings whom it is immoral to mistreat and torture and kill…..and omigod! have to change our entire way of life. What a DRAG.
I mean, look at how much of our economy, to use just one facet, is dependent upon our blithe ignorance of animal suffering. Fur, leather, meat, fish, eggs. For masses of people to develop a consciousness about animal suffering could be disastrous for Wall Street and the “bottom line.”
These “animal rights people” must be vilified at all costs. Of course! Can’t you see?
Clearly Dogfighting, while cruel, is nowhere as cruel as abortion.
I think this Gary (whether Real or Fake) called the sports talk radio show I was listening to yesterday, because he made this exact same “analogy.” The hosts of the show were smart enough to avoid the abortion issue entirely, and gracious enough not to call the caller a dimwitted fucktard, which would have been my first instinct.
Ok, I read this article about why Paul McCarthy wasn’t playing China anymore…it was because they had factories killing dogs and cats for fur.
This was after he’d played there while they had human slave camps where your piece-rate was the amount of food of you got and if you fell behind and started starving to death they didn’t give a shit and just quit feeding you.
I really try to keep my predation as cruelty-free as I can as a carniverous mammal but I really do think there are serious moral flaws among some of the animal-rights people.
I certainly agree that people are more important than animals, and PETA acts like freaks, and what McCartney did in this instance may or may not be reprehensible (depending on lotsa stuff), but I will say this:
The fact that someone acts on behalf of some cause without acting on behalf of some other cause that you happen to think is more important is not in itself an indication of “serious moral flaws” on anyone’s part.
For the nth degree of that line of thinking ends up being that there is only one cause anyone can support at only one time, and it must be the same one.
…at ANY one time, rather. Sheesh!
The link between cruelty to animals and to humans is pretty well established. See http://www.helpinganimals.com/ga_humanAbuse.asp. Only a complete ignoramus could deny it . . .
Prosecution happens after the commission of the crime. All well and good, I suppose, but in my tribe we have a tendency to want to protect the more helpless among us before the fact, not after. It’s the whole point….
Believe me, I agree wholeheartedly, I just don’t know how we do that. In my experience, people who rape or beat their children, or any children, are deeply evil motherfuckers and nothing short of prison or death will stop them. There’s some leeway when it comes to people who are cruel to animals, I suppose, some of them could get some help and not grow up to be, well, like Dubya or Frist or Romney or Vick or… But I don’t imagine any of them are going to do that unless a court forces them to.
I guess I’m left with the notion that irresponsible and evil people will not be pre-empted in committing crimes or abuses by appeals to reason or decency, so I don’t know where that leaves us.
I tend to think there will always be some of these people no matter what we do. And I tend to think that at least some of it could be minimized with comprehensive universal mental health care and awareness and screening programs. But we’re never going to catch them all before they start hurting others, and even if we did, there are undoubtedly going to be people for whom it simply doesn’t help.
I believe he stands mute.
I agree with Mikey on the underlying principles; I’m also a fan of ‘virtue ethics’. We care about whether or not a person is kind to animals, in part because it shows they have the capacity to be kind to other beings. (animals, people, Republicans…) Doesn’t matter whether animals have innate rights or whether we have laws protecting them. A person who lacks empathy for animals probably lacks empathy for human beings.
Before the Declaration of Independence, no Gov’t recognized “Human Rights”, let alone enumerated them. Just because countries haven’t YET got together and created an Animal Bill of Rights, doesn’t mean animals aren’t entitled to them. And trees. And lakes. About rocks I’m neutral.
What about fetus fighting? Is that alright?
I guess I’m left with the notion that irresponsible and evil people will not be pre-empted in committing crimes or abuses by appeals to reason or decency, so I don’t know where that leaves us.
Yep. None other than the noted philosopher Ian Anderson pointed out that “he who made kittens put snakes in the grass”. Roses and thorns. Acts of tremendous charity followed closely by acts of war. Something about the way the universe works – we’re always going to have to deal with people who tear away pieces of civilization, even as we try so hard to build it better.
I guess it means that we need all of them – individual deterance, legal proscription and moral persuasion – to stand as bulwark against the darkness. The idea, I guess, it not just to hold back the darkness, but perhaps push it back a little bit.
mikey
How can you bear reading that stuff? And how can you manage to winkle out what he’s struggling to say? Backwards constructs he the sentences boggles the mind until.
What about fetus fighting? Is that alright?
Coffee. Keyboard. Thank god I’m not operating heavy machinery right now.
Mikey et al:
The “animal rights” movement is fake. Okay, not entirely fake–it comprises Peter Singer, about a third of PETA, and a whoooole lotta straw. People actually involved in animal issues (as opposed to walking around naked to protest fur or what the fuck ever*) use the term “welfare,” not “rights,” for the exact reasons Mikey laid out. Whenever you hear someone use the term “animal rights,” chances are it’s some dickwad trying to discredit legit animal welfare initiatives.
Also, what MCH said.
*fur is unbelievably cruel and deserves to be opposed, I just don’t get the whole “stop or I’ll show you my boobs” gambit
Peter Singer
Peter Singer writes clearly and convincingly about animal rights and ethics in general. He’s worth reading and is not, as far as I can tell, some sort of maniac. His Practical Ethics gets used as a text for a lot of college classes and is worth picking up from the bargain bin, as it’s a series of essays about separate issues including abortion and charity and so on.
Of course, it is a well known to the many of those among us who have read his writing fact that the syntax of Pastor Grant Swank displays its respect through passivity for his mastery of language, and which he also tortures.
Owwww. My brain hurts.
R-Bub:
Yeah, it sounded like I meant to slag Singer, but I didn’t. I just meant that he does, in fact, argue for animal rights. I’ve read “Animal Liberation” twice, and it’s fine as far as it goes, but in the grand tradition of philosophical treatises, it’s not terribly useful unless you’re trying to pick up college freshmen.
My beef with Singer is that he condemns the use of animals for human ends pretty much wholesale, whereas with some basic empathy and a lot of overhead, the ones we “use” can live better lives than their wild brethren.
Not much of a beef, though, since he wrote it worlds ago, back when the concept of non-human suffering was radical, and the advances that make my position tenable hadn’t been made yet.
My beef with Singer is that he condemns the use of animals for human ends pretty much wholesale, whereas with some basic empathy and a lot of overhead, the ones we “use” can live better lives than their wild brethren.
Actually, I think he’d agree with the last portion of this, but concludes that avoiding animal products provides a better practical avoidance of widespread cruel practices. So he’s not condemning animal use wholesale.
“Baaaa” means “No”.
Check out Bubba, playing the “more-familiar-with-the-author’s-work” card. Shameless I tells ya.
I maybe should’ve mentioned earlier that I was only trying to make the PETA reference a little more specific so I wouldn’t sound like the kind of person who makes PETA references, if that makes sense.
The fact that someone acts on behalf of some cause without acting on behalf of some other cause that you happen to think is more important is not in itself an indication of “serious moral flaws” on anyone’s part.
For the nth degree of that line of thinking ends up being that there is only one cause anyone can support at only one time, and it must be the same one.
Sure it is. Or, it can be. What McCartney did betrays his heirarchy of values. To wit, he would willingly play China when he knew it abused people, but would not when he came to know that it abused animals. Choices were made, and one can see what was valued higher by McCartney’s choices.
Yes, you can support more than one cause at a time, but sometimes those causes conflict or just simply diverge. Which cause you choose to follow, which one you choose to devote your energy to, says a lot about you.
I tend to believe in the high correlation of those who are cruel to animals being cruel to people as well. But it’s way too simple to say one necessarily indicates or even begets the other. The common thread is sadism and everyone has a capacity for it, though some will forbid themselves from being sadists to one group, only to allow themselves to be cruel to another. Nietzsche was the guy who wrote that almost all higher culture was based on cruelty; supposedly, his final breakdown was instigated when he tried to rescue a horse being beaten in the street. One knows about Adolf Hitler’s proto-PETAn attitudes; less well known is the fact that Thomas Jefferson viciously mistreated his horses. It’s complicated.
Humans are animals. Animal rights peeps claim we are ‘species-centric’ in our attitudes, which causes us to be evil to (other) animals. But all animals are ‘species-centric’: for any given animal, if another is not prey or a predator, it, for all intents and purposes, does not exist to the former. The former animal doesn’t care; status quo in the animal world is an utter lack of empathy. (In human terms, animals are passive sorts of sociopaths. Exceptions are symbiots which would include domesticated animals.) Moreover, the concept of rights is an entirely ‘species-centric’ conceit; it is thus ‘bigotry’ to extend ‘rights’ to other species. More consistency, please.
Did anyone read in the NYT a month or so ago about the idiots in Georgia who killed their infant by trying to feed it a strictly vegan diet? The other thing that bothers me about extreme animal rights ppl is their abject ingnorance of our own evolution’s impact on our physiology. We evolved as omnivores, as hunter-gatherers. We simply have to have protien, and while we can exist through periods with out it (at great cost, and only under certain conditions), at certain times in our lives it is absolutely crucial. Yes, ppl can live as vegetarians but it is difficult and can only be safely done in adulthood. (India is the locus of world vegetarianism yet they, old and subtle that their culture is, consume vast amounts of dairy. Moreover while Indian culture has developed a moral/religious veneer to justify and perpetuate its dietary habits, the origin is economic necessity. There would be no ‘sacred cow’ had bovines not been the Indian farmer’s tractor for thousands of years.)
I’m against sadism, so I’m against cruelty to animals. But “cruelty” does not mean killing them and eating them. I’m totally sympathetic to the (adult) folks who avoid eating meat because of how animals are treated in factory farms. But i have nothing but contempt for those who think that all carnivorism is “cruelty”, those who would make children be vegan or vegetarian, those idiots who wait outside Safeways to throw pieces of hot dogs at soccer moms and toddlers, those anthropologically-illiterate nimrods who would force others to conform to their religion of (wholly unnatural) dietary purity, those people who, by their choices, betray a moral heirarchy by which they obviously value other animals over people (a la McCartney, if Ed is right about that.).
[One can still be decent, I think, and do this. For instance, it is counter-productive to humanity for it to hunt other species to exinction. At some point, caring about your own species means sticking up for others. But then all animals “know” this at some level.]
You want ‘animal rights’? Get human population under control.
There shouldn’t be things brought to the extreme level. It’s no good to treat people like animals and there’s no need to treat animals like people.