Animal rights groups take the offensive

I was going to hammer global warming this week, but with this weather, I’m sure most of you already have your own stories on that issue. Instead, a happenstance deflected me to an even nastier subject this week: animal “rights” groups.

Connie had the misfortune of fracturing her hip last week and I spent Saturday morning alone in the surgical waiting room of Kent General. As any of you who’ve gone through such ordeals can attest, the anxiety is only stoked by the boredom. Walking around, I espied a glossy covered magazine with a beautiful picture of a red and green macaw in flight on the front. It was certainly eye catching and as a lifelong naturalist, I picked it up. I should have known to put it down with I saw the title: “Defender”, the “Conservation magazine of Defenders of Wildlife.”

Folks, it’s obvious natural selection isn’t working. Prejudices and principles are taught and learned, neither born nor inherited. If you truly want to your children to be a viable part of tomorrow’s future, you need to teach them two important traits that will impact their lives forever. Those are “reasoning” and “objectivity.” Even if their ideas clash with your own, they have to become reliant enough on all the information out there and objective enough to separate the heartthrobs from the heartbeats.

In the past week alone, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Humane Society of the United States have protested Groundhog Day uses of big hairy and hoary marmots, animal rights activists have sent death threats to an Olympic skater for using fur in his costume, and idiotic referendums are inundating states on animal rights issues that range from anti-tethering laws for pets in several states, banning pest control trapping in Washington, D.C., and pushing for a “Creature Caucus” in California , to the simply harebrained idea of reintroducing “sterilized” wolf packs into states with deer overpopulation problems.

Though PETA and HSUS vehemently deny it, animal rights activists are supporting what the FBI has classified “domestic terrorists” in the Animal Liberation Front and the Environmental Liberation Front. Both these groups have claimed responsibilities for vandalizing, property destruction, and arson in the name of their “cause.” Conservative estimates by the FBI state they are responsible for nearly $150 million in damages over the last 20 years. Catching these deranged people has proven to be a monumental task for government officials since ALF, ELF, PETA, HSUS and many splinter groups overlap in their memberships. Even the ASPCA has been implicated since monetary donations all end up being funneled to these radical groups.

We teach our children to listen to adults and listen to teachers, but that’s from an era where teachers taught subjects that had time-tested methods and results. Today’s kids are inundated with such a conglomerate of opposing issues, entrusting their future blindly to some adults and teachers simply asks for trouble later on.

Just think what a 6- or 8-year-old seeing a high quality magazine with colorful wildlife pictures would do. Certainly, like it was to me, it would be attractive. The commentary is often factual, but just as frequently it’s science fiction where a true statement is turned into a cabal to taint the readers’ minds. This issue is a prime example.

One article follows the animal smuggling trades from across the world where legitimately threatened and endangered animals are boxed up and shipped to “exotic pet” shops worldwide (the truth). Just a page later, however, the picture of a beautiful grizzly sow and cub is titled “The Great Bear Count.”

“Things are looking up for threatened grizzlies – in some places”. Now exactly what subliminal message was that title? Much like “have you stopped kicking your dog;” either a “yes” or a “no” is pitifully wrong. In order to read that story, you’ve already accepted that grizzlies are “threatened” (they positively are not throughout their current range – in fact Canadian studies show populations rising much to the chagrin of animal rights groups). Toward the end of the book is a Madonna and child- like picture of a sow polar bear and cub atop a very small iceberg (likely strategically cropped) extolling the death knell of polar bears due to “global warming.”

This particular copy of the magazine was filed where it belonged, but this is a well funded operation with thousands of other copies floating around. Some strategically placed like the one I found. Your children deserve better and you should demand it from anyone supplying them with tainted garbage like this. We must remain forever vigilant as they are not going to go away quietly.