… and in
which I attack New Zealand’s hunting culture, and remarkably, this once, thank the Exclusive Brethren.
The
subject of animal rights and
classical liberalism, for me, has always been an interesting one, given, if I
could ever be radicalised in favour of a group of complete misfits, it would be
those anti-classical liberal nutters from PETA. It's the chink in my rationalist
armour.
The
Libertarian politick is such a wide school, the below post would go down
uncontroversially with most Libertarians, however, I do fall foul of
Objectivism for the views I’m about to express. The latter is primarily because
despite my admissions on this blog that man must live by his mind, (and he
must), and the welfare state is currently feeling its way toward the police state, (which it is), in a case of animal cruelty, I’m prepared to chuck out
every shred of philosophy and politick, save the animal, then think about the
philosophical issues later. But having said that, I don’t see any contradiction
here.
There will be no classical liberal (free) society, until such time as
individuals understand the need to lead reasoned, responsible lives. I’ll call
it a reasoned, civilising humanity, which includes thinking and caring about
the welfare - used in its innocent, correct sense, as in ‘humane’ - of all
sentient beings, animals included. There lies in this the further notion of how
someone treats an animal, may well indicate how they treat their fellow humans. And thus if they do not behave responsibly in the humane treatment of
animals in their care, then there will be a high likelihood of irresponsibility
in other spheres. I’m thinking further of the studied cases of those that have
gone on to commit heinous crimes against humans, who started out doing acts of
animal cruelty when young. Though I am quick to point out there is another
school of people who are not knowingly abusive, though that is the result: they
are simply ignorant: people – let’s call them stupid - who somehow have an
inability to rationalise the world they live in, to the extent of
compartmentalising empathy in a manner that’s almost schizophrenic, and cruel.
Via that I could turn this whole post into railing against the insidious manner
a welfare state works on the psychology of the participants, but I won’t; there’s
something more important I’m trying to figure out in this.
Libertarians
are not the ‘rugged (read uncaring) individualists’ that the Left try to
simplistically paint them. Indeed, if there is one thing the new classical
liberal party that hopefully arises from the Libertarianz conference this
weekend, must try to broach, finally, is that it is the classical liberal
society that makes possible the ‘decent’ society, not the welfare state which
has so cruelly turned ‘nurture’ on end, taking away self-reliance and the clear
heads needed to make responsible decisions, financial and otherwise, about the
care of children and pets. A libertarian society would not see people ‘dying in
the streets’, as detractors inanely proclaim, quite apart from anything else, you’d
have to be some sort of monster to leave someone dying in a street, (or an animal in circumstances of neglect), and the
only uncharitable societies I can think of where that happened, to humans, are communist
and totalitarian ones. Libertarians realise as much as anyone we ‘live in the
village’: we just don’t think the village owns us. We want communities based on
voluntarism, rather than state coercion from above; the twentieth century
showed how cruel that was. One of the favourite quotations I have come across
this year - hat-tip to Café Hayek - is the following from pages 77 and 94-95 of
David Schmidtz’s contribution to David Schmidtz’s and Robert E. Goodin’s
important 1998 book, Social Welfare and
Individual Responsibility: For and Against:
If communitarians are right to say Western society
has been atomized, then surely one of the causes has been the state’s penchant
for making itself (rather than the community) the primary focus of public
life….
What explains market society’s unparalleled success
in helping people to prosper? The key, I have argued, lies in background
institutions, especially property institutions, that lead people to take
responsibility for their own welfare….
The
welfare state would have made people better off if it had led neighbors to rely
on each other and on themselves, but it seems to have done the opposite.
It’s from
ourselves, and then the community that a free society will have to arise: by
definition it can never arise from the powers wherein statism resides, because
it involves the state, itself, falling on its pen (name one instance from
history that has happened voluntarily?) To bring this down to micro-level, and
the issue of this post, regarding an individual act of animal cruelty, or
neglect, the starting point to fix this thus has to be within the community of
individuals dealing with one another – in the first instance remonstrating
directly with the people concerned. If that does not work, then, it's unlikely
the state would provide a remedy, without making things worse, and by this I
mean the state in the form of the local council: indeed, looking at the
increasing council restrictions from public walkways I am allowed to walk my
dog anymore, including for large parts of the year not being allowed to take a
dog along almost always deserted Caroline Bay, I have formed the opinion the
Timaru Council hates dogs - and I guarantee my wee dog would get more enjoyment
from that beach, than most of the adults there. No, even if first attempts
break down, then solutions will nearly always remain most effective in
the voluntary community; namely, those charitable groups such as we support
each year financially, RSPCA and a Canterbury Dog rescue group, because such
voluntary charities are where compassion for animals is to be found in the
people involved, and success or failure is always about the people involved: in
this case, volunteers with a passion to ensure no cruelty is transacted on an
animal by the mindless, (see, this is about mind over emoting, after all).
Although something else, also, when considering issues of animal cruelty: New Zealand’s
hunting culture. I grew up on a farm, albeit one where my father wouldn’t allow
guns - though I suspect that was to do with my family, then, being Exclusive
Brethren (and regards that I was sickly fortunate to have an intellectually
handicapped sister who the whiskey alcoholics running the Brethren took to be ‘evil’,
and thus my direct family were thrown out - mindlessness again, but yay) - plus a father whose most hated
farm job, and one which he never stopped hating, was killing sheep for our own
table. It was good he never stopped hating that: it defined him as a thinking,
compassionate, empathetic human. But this meant I’ve always been around the
hunting culture of our rural communities, and though it was never something I
thought about overly when growing up, for whatever reason, now, perhaps because
I’m spending more and more time living in the Marlborough Sounds, it’s
something I seem to be pondering.
I have to say I’m ‘over’
hunting culture. Completely.
Yes, I know we have to control pests, such as possum, I’m
grown up and understand that, but that’s not what hunting culture is about. Nor
is it about feeding ourselves anymore: in the twenty first century we farm our
meat humanely, and have you ever tried eating wild meat? Wild boar is so tough,
it’s hard to get off the bone, and hare is as tough as old rope: farmed meat is
much more palatable. But that’s by the by. As far as I can tell, hunting
culture is supposedly about, at best, testing oneself against nature, and also,
I’ve had the odd hunter - and these were odd hunters - who have tried to
inform me there’s some sort of mystical communing with nature involved (that
woo woo Robin Hood set to Enya nonsense; stag heads rising out of the mist,
druids, and all that …). I say a pox on both counts.
Here’s
what hunting is: hunting is sitting on one hillside with a bazooka and
telescopic sight while you bravely try and destroy every completely
defenceless, living thing on the hillside across the valley, your only risk the
rifle of the mate you’ve taken with you (mindlessness again rears its head). I
just don’t buy into the bullshit anymore. If you want what you profess,
hunters, take up tramping, or vege gardening, otherwise, arm the wildlife, or
go into the bush only armed with a spear, killing at arm’s length: that would
be a test, just like in the days hunting was an essential for living; the days
of cave men, that civilised men have responsibly walked away from. And I’ve not
seen a single pig dog - and I’ve seen a lot - whose life wouldn’t be improved
by being euthanized.
Considering
all of the above, indeed, I reckon I’m only a $7,000 BBQ and my stomach away
from an ethical vegetarianism.
Anyway,
my public service for this week, and for the mindless who are incapable of
thinking these issues through, let me give a guide to dog ownership. Note this
is an ‘and’ test, not ‘or’, that is, you must pass every limb, failure on any
one counts you out, you should voluntarily choose to never have a dog – it is
only via such informed, voluntary decisions that animal cruelty will ultimately
be stopped.
The test is simple - (and for this single post I’m
breaking my blog’s self-imposed no swearing policy):
The Rules:
If you are currently sitting at home and your dog is by itself outside in a
kennel: you are a shit, you shouldn’t own a dog.
If your
dog is sitting in its own shit in its kennel: you’re an even bigger shit, in
fact, you should be prosecuted or re-educated if that ignorant, with your kids
taken off you in the meantime. Go live in your own toilet for a week, make sure
it’s a small one like your dog’s kennel, and don’t pull the chain. When you
come out green, wonder why your dog, with a sense of smell one hundred times
better than your’s, would want to live that way. Plus a dog won't sit in its
shit, so you've just halved the size of an already paltry sized kennel.
Indubitably you also are struck out on the first criteria above, so well done,
you've turned a kennel into a concentration camp for your poor dog.
If your dog has to live outside all its life, never allowed inside as one of
your family, you don’t really like dogs, so don’t own one. A dog is a sociable
animal.
If when
deciding to get a dog, the first breed your mind lands on is buying a fighting,
aggressive breed of dog, then you don’t like dogs, so don’t own one.
If you are buying a dog as an accessory for your five year old child, stop,
read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies,
and bugger off. The dog doesn’t need you.
If you’re
planning on feeding your dog the exact same diet of dry biscuits every day: you
can’t really be bothered with a dog; don’t own one.
If you
don’t kiss your dog on top of its head, once a day, and give it a stroke
whenever passing, or whenever it wants one, you don’t really like dogs, so don’t
own one.
… See. Easy, when you just think about things for a little bit.
Finally,
in an actual case of harm, which my wife and I are now tackling the owner’s
over - this is, finally, one very uncomfortable D-Day - the family is mum and a
grown up son and daughter. The Labrador concerned belongs to the son, a hunter:
his attitude toward the poor dog is succinctly summed up in his phrase, quote: ‘its
just a hunting dog’. Although
there’s the problem, for the dog is not that; it lives in a suburban kennel/dog
concentration camp, and gets taken hunting, if its lucky, five or six times a year,
I imagine, I can’t remember last seeing it go: it has no other dogs for
company, and gets no stimulation or affection from any human, at least not that
we can see. They don’t appear to have an understanding a dog is a pack/social
animal, and to deprive it of all companionship is in itself a real form of
cruelty, despite no law saying so, quite apart from everything else they’re
doing wrong – the dog sitting in its own faeces rule above comes from this case.
Indeed, both the children treat the dog as offhandedly bad, if not worse, than
the mother, so it would seem to be learned ignorance. When those children have
children, guess what’s going to happen if something doesn’t break the vicious
cycle of ignorance here of how animals should be treated … starting to sound
like the argument against the welfare state, isn’t it – note these are all hard
workers. I would say a welfare state and Antonio Gramsci in our schools, over time,
by stopping people thinking (self-reliance), leads to this. The Left who take a
cynical view of man would say we need the welfare state precisely because of
this, man’s fallen nature; people must be coerced to do the right thing.
Who is right?
Me. Of
course. Only voluntarily made decisions and actions stick for the long term.
(Did I
say I was thinking about ethical vegetarianism? Jeez, I’m feeling a bit faint.
Better go throw a farmed steak on the BBQ).
Dog 'Rescue' - Final Update:
On so many levels I don't understand this, but am very glad about the nature of this update, and it's vindication, at least anecdotally - at D-Day plus two and a half weeks - the above community based, leave the authorities out of it, approach, has merit.
The little dog concerned now spends its night in a clean kennel, all faeces have been removed and the kennel is kept clean with fresh water. It also has bedding, now, in the hutch for comfort. Better, it only spends its nights in the kennel anymore (it used to sometimes spend three days in there), its out all day, and thus far is walked once a day. The family is even mowing my front verge! While I'm glad we tackled it - though there was no choice, a dog must not be left like that - I'm even feeling 'slightly' guilty because I 'pulled no punches' telling them what I thought, and what dog welfare was. So, while I don't believe in miracles, and it will never be what I think as adequate dog care - read my rules above, all dogs should be inside and part of the family - it's been two and a half weeks, the family have been 'big' about it, because they had the choice to really go dog, so I'll take over a peace offering in the form of a couple of nice bottles of wine soon. If I can get things back on track, I can offer to walk the pooch with our own Daisy dog when we're in Geraldine, on the days they can't.
Anyway, would seem to be a good result.
