A JOKE FOR GK

by Jim Beers

My forte is environmental and animal "rights" issues.  As an old wildlife biologist and law enforcement officer I try to explain environmental issues to bring a measure of common sense to the matter while debunking the "moral" claims and junk science underpinning the efforts to grant animals "rights".

An example of such overlaps occurred in The Well and the Shallows where he observed "Where we say that a social element is dangerous or doubtful, that it must be watched, that it may on due occasion be restrained, the thing
that was called the Modern Mind always cried aloud with a voice of thunder that it must be forbidden" (shades of the anti-hunting/fishing/trapping/ ranching/logging etc. agendas).  Another occurred in A Century of Emancipation when he noted seeing men becoming "strangely morbid and infected with horrors by the perversion of a just sympathy with animals": this prescient comment is so relevant to the incremental elevation of both wild and domestic animals to human-like legal and social status that I think he must have had some "insider" information.

However, I am writing this as a result of reading Sex and Property as I recently flew back from speaking to a group of Colorado ranchers threatened with the loss of the homes, ranches, and communities.  The US Army and a coterie of environmental and animal rights groups, several Federal agencies, and some state agencies are moving to expand a currently massive Army Base by ½ to 2 ½  Million Acres for doubtful and murky reasons.  Two entire Counties will likely become anachronisms as a result of the expansion as well.

In Sex and Property Chesterton compares property to sex in a very insightful fashion.  He observes how "Modernists" "proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility": he goes on to say that "the notion of narrowing property to merely enjoying money is exactly like the notion of narrowing love to merely enjoying sex".  He carries this forward to conclude how the world "has forgotten simultaneously that the making of a Farm is something much larger than the making of a profit, or even a product" and that the founding of a Family is something larger than sex in the limited sense of current literature".  Those words rang so true regarding the callous disregard of rural people and their communities by government and all the swirl of hidden agendas I was leaving behind in Colorado.

Were he still alive, I would love to share with him some of the paradoxes I see daily in my work.

Take horses, for instance.  In 1974 the Federal government passed a Constitutionally questionable law saying all wild horses were magnificent and special and under Federal protection and only Federal bureaucrats could catch them and allow citizens to "adopt" them under strict requirements. This year (2007) the Federal government forbid any slaughter of any wild or domestic horse again because of their "special" nature and in spite of all the people that cannot afford to maintain a horse or buy a horse if they cannot dispose of it for various reasons.  There is even talk of the "need" for more legislation to stop horse OWNERS from selling their horses into Mexico where they might eventually be slaughtered.  Not to worry; for the past eight years the "usual suspects" have been trying to pass Federal Invasive Species authority (also Constitutionally questionable) to eradicate all Invasive Species!  There is no more harmful Invasive Species than horses.  They are domestic animals run wild, they were introduced by
Europeans, and they EAT EVERYTHING from tree bark (thereby killing the tree) to wildlife winter habitat and domestic animal forage.  Question: should we love them or hate them?

Take wolves, ("please" to quote Henny Youngman).  When people in town are told a pit bull is loose they lock their doors, fear for their lives and call the police to demand such breeds be banned.  When people in town are told a wolf attacked and ate an engineer taking a walk or that wolves are hanging out by school bus stops or that they killed livestock or a rancher's daughter's golden retriever they opine "they (the people) were in 'their' (the wolves) habitat", the victim "didn't behave right", "they (wolves) never do that", "they (wolves) always" do such and such, and most egregious "they (the people, their homes, their communities) don't belong there".  On the one hand we have a medium size domestic dog and on the other a 150 +lb. WILD dog.  On the other hand we have something threatening US and on the other something threatening SOMEONE ELSE.

Oh how I wish I could talk to Chesterton about all this.  He would certainly be amused by such paradoxes and inconsistencies (there are many more) but his amusement would spur observations about the true nature of man and the loss of a consistent and agreed-to moral basis that would help explain what is going on.  Alas, I must remain content with steadily mining the written legacy he left.  Like a gold miner deep in the earth, there are days when
you strike "gold" and days when you merely toil and days when a vein of silver or other precious metal surprises you.

It is like that with GK.  I try to maintain my sense of humor and to look for the inconsistencies and then to try and make sense of them for those that can take the time to think about where we came from and where we are
going. It is how he did it and how I would like to do it as well.

- If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others.  Thanks.

http://jimbeers.blogster.com (Jim Beers Common Sense)

- Jim Beers is available for consulting or to speak. Contact: jimbeers7@verizon.net

- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.

Good Neighbor Committee
P.O. Box 155 - La Salle, CO  80645
info@goodneighborlaw.com

| Good Neighbor Law© 2006 |