From: smith@ctron.com (Lawrence C Smith)
Newsgroups: misc.rural
Subject: Re: the threat from animal-rights and environmentalists
Date: 28 Jan 93 14:39:32 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

In article <1993Jan27.154026.9781@cbnewsl.cb.att.com>, spf@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (Steve Frysinger of Blue Feather Farm) writes:

>Animal rights activists come in all shapes and sizes too.  While I don't
>label myself one, and indeed come into conflict with many because of my
>animal husbandry, hunting, and omnivorism, I also oppose unnecessary cruelty
>to animals.  So what's your label for me?

I'll volunteer one: I'd call you a "humane person".  The activities of the
Humane Society and similar organizations over the past several centuries and
particularly in the early part of this century have done more good for animals
than all the property damage and shrill demands of the so-called "animal-
rights" activists have done.  They are quietly and effectively continuing the
work, and I, for one, support them - even financially.  But the Humane Society
claims but one "right" for animals, the right not to suffer needlessly.  They
oppose animal testing where the results are already known or easily demon-
strated differently.  They would oppose demonstrating acid damage on a live
animal, for instance, because we already know what acid will do to a live
animail.  They do not, last I heard, oppose animal testing of new vaccines.
In fact, our local chapter points out that it is animal testing of human
vaccines that lead to the development - as a side-effect - of the vaccines
we now give our pets.  Without the research money for human ails that paid
for the work on feline leukemia, we'd have never had the vaccine that now
saves thousands of cats every year.

>Well my old machinery makes a lot of noise, and my barn smells, and my
>kids like to rake up sheep pellets to put in the garden.  But can I still
>be a hippie-dippie please?

I don't think you want to be.  It first requires that you surrender your
reason and ability to think to the sloganeering.  You will no longer be
able to do cost-effectiveness surveys, since the lunatic econazi he is
describing is automatically against anything he _thinks_ may damage the
environment and automatically for anything he _thinks_ will save it, without
much effort actually being expended on the thinking.  Sort of like demanding
electric cars without figuring in the coal-fired electrical plants that will
charge them, and not remembering the vast upgrades to the power grid to
support them - you remember the power grid, right?  All those nifty high-
voltage lines dangling from dead trees soaked in eco-friendly creosote, messing
up the view of the landscape, radiating magnetic fields all over - very good
for the environment, I'm sure.

>> [Use of] natural resources in a responsible manner?  Or, the "environment-
>> alism" of the extremists, who seek to create a plastic fantasy of a world
>> untouched by man?

>I think by now I've clearly staked my claim.  And I'll go a step further by
>speculating that the vast majority of environmentalists join me in the
>former of your two inadequate categories.

Ah, but the most vocal and most visible proponents of "environmentalism" are
amongst the latter.  When people take on the environmentalist label, they
are associating themselves with that extreme, and thereby become part of the
problem, not of the solution.  Environmentalism used to a concern for the
quality and protection of the environment, and to most of the electorate, it
still is.  But to many of the "hippy-dippy" set, it has taken on many political
overtones, most of them Marxist or derivative of Marxist.  As one "green"
politico whose name I don't recall once said, "we should use the need to
protect the environment to force changes that we should have made already."
I'm sure someone on the net can supply the chapter and verse for that one.
The point of this, of course, is to make people sympthetic to their cause,
the same way Republicans used "family values" for opposing reproductive choice.

>I respectfully submit that it is you who frequents the extreme.  And I
>suggest that you won't carry your point in a society, three-quarters of
>which regard themselves as environmentalists, by crucifying them for the
>perceived sins of any extreme.

I suppose that makes me an extremist, then.  Well, perhaps I am.  I am
very extreme in my belief that environmental problems need to be identified
and prioritized and dealt with using effective solutions, not starry-eyed
symbolic, or political ones.  Admittedly, I am very extreme in my belief that
if we spend billions on air pollution, that I want to see less of it, not just
different or elsewhere.  And I am very extreme in my belief that sophmoric
insistance on a total dismantling of industrial culture is stupid and very
counterproductive, not to mention unbelievably cruel in the number of human
beings who would die if any gov't was swayed enough to try to implement the
more Luddite visions of the environmentalists.

Be very careful what label you take to yourself.  You may find it pinching.

Larry Smith (smith@ctron.com)  No, I don't speak for Cabletron.  Need you ask?
-
Liberty is not the freedom to do whatever we want,
it is the freedom to do whatever we are able.
Newsgroups: misc.rural