II. The Movement.
The environmental and animal rights movement encompasses a broad spectrum of
people in a variety of organizations. These organizations vary from small,
local societies to large organizations that exert significant influence on
national and international affairs. Organization or group purposes will
range from "saving" or "preserving" some property to
"eliminating" some
human activity like hunting or pet ownership or logging to restructuring
national and international laws in a more socialist model to use government
to force changes in lifestyles and rights and traditions in line with
environmental and animal rights principles.
Before we examine those principles and where they come from and how to deal
with them, some basic understanding of the Movement is necessary.
Consider the breadth of these organizations and associated allies that not
only meet together formally but also share financial and technical and legal
resources.
- When some campaign begins to
"save" a waterway or a woodland you
will see The Nature Conservancy and The Sierra Club and a local citizen
group working with certain State and Federal agencies and bureaucrats who in
turn engage certain politicians and their staffs to buy or control land or
pressure local landowners to sell or purchase easements or as a final resort
simply to condemn the land and establish government ownership.
- When some government agency or
politician or environmental group
wants to prevent animal management or logging or hunting or fishing or
trapping on publicly owned land you will see The Wilderness Society and the
Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the Animal Protection
Institute and the Defenders of Wildlife and Animal Welfare Institute and
Forest Guardians emerge to engage certain State and Federal agencies and
certain government employees to work with certain politicians and their
staffs and often with certain courts and judges. The result will be new
laws, new regulations, and court rulings that close (Wilderness
designations, Roadless Areas, Prohibiting Timber Sales, Road Closures, etc.)
areas and restrict or eliminate human activities like trapping, hunting, and
fishing.
- When predators are to be used
to destroy big game hunting (western
elk herd surpluses) or ranching or hunting dogs or just to make rural life
more difficult (to abet increased government controls), bureaucrats and
agencies will work with many of these groups such as Defenders of Wildlife
to spread propaganda like there is no danger to humans or wildlife and
wolves don't kill people and that any human injury or death is the fault of
the human. Local wolf advocacy groups are then formed by the national
groups and schoolchildren are taken to view tame wolves and schoolteachers
and the media (written and broadcast) readily reinforce the dangerously
untrue myths and propaganda.
- When some campaign begins to
"stamp out puppy mills" or "stop
horse slaughter" there emerge the international groups like the World
Society for the Protection of Animals and national groups like the Doris Day
Animal League (now incorporated by HSUS) and local groups like the Animal
Rights Foundation of Florida or the New England Anti-Vivisectionist Society
and ad hoc groups like the rich horse owners or celebrity groups.
- When trapping or fur protests
spring up we see groups like PETA
and the Fund for Animals and the Society for Animal Protective Legislation
and HSUS and In Defense of Animals organizing protests and filing lawsuits.
- When marine (oceanic) mammals
or fish or areas are being declaimed
we discover Greenpeace and Friends of the Manatee and Global Warming
groups
about everything from icebergs and claims about historic numbers to the need
to prevent any fishing.
- When international hunting or
animal shipment or animal parts use
are topics of the moment we become suddenly become familiar with the World
Wildlife Fund and numerous United Nations bureaucracies and bureaucrats with
purported authorities and jurisdictions.
- Just as the US Congress and
the Administration of certain US
Presidents are noted for "growing" authorities over environmental and
animal
rights matters, so too do their counterparts in European nations and the
European Union cooperate with and influence the growth of United Nations'
authorities and bureaucracies under the surreptitious influence of money and
other emoluments from these groups and or their international counterparts
and parent organizations.
- Whether the topic is circuses
or rodeos or exotic pets or breeding
animals or euthanizing unclaimed pets or declaring Marine Sanctuaries and
Wildernesses, or forbidding ear clipping dogs or bobbing their tails, there
are one or more groups specifically devoted to incrementally restricting and
ultimately eliminating it or conversely adding one unit at a time until
there is no more.
- Animal testing opponents range
from individual lab destroyers to
the violent Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty (SHAC) in Britain to their
American cousins dedicated to the same goals in the US.
- Rainforests are the focus of
the Rainforest Relief group in
Brooklyn.
- The constant "rescue and
protection" of farm animals and "stopping
the cruel practices of the food animal industry" is the forte of the Farm
Sanctuary group in New York.
- Many of the above facets
include vegetarians but there are the
vegetarian groups from the Christian Vegetarian Association and Vegan
Suppliers to the Saint Louis Animal Rights Team involved in the elimination
of any animal use or consumption for any purpose.
- There are hundreds of
Foundations for Ecology and Harmony of
Spirit and Doing Things for Animals outfits across this great nation.
- Mixed in with, meaning
cooperating with, these groups are
celebrities, feminists for Animal Rights, Abortion Leagues, and a mélange of
socialist and anti-capitalist and globalist groups.
- Practically all of these
groups have attracted participants that
either formally or informally create mayhem (attacking opponents, releasing
farmed mink, protesting hunting or fur with violence, assaulting animal
researchers, "spike" trees, burning new homes or new cars, mailing
razor
blades, intimidating young people, threatening opponents and their families,
etc.) while generally avoiding any connection with the groups that attract
and support them. The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Environmental
Liberation Front (ELF) are but two examples of those using a name while many
others remain nameless.
- The non-violent protest
factions of the above groups include the
"tree-sitters" (to stop logging) and the "paint throwers"
(to stop others
from wearing fur) and the picketers at hunts or places of business.
- Each of these groups and
specialties has numerous supporters
("fellow travelers" is a better term) in State and Federal agency
employees.
Likewise they have State and Federal politicians and political staff members
that are committed to the achievement of the environmental and animal rights
agendas.
The above list is not exhaustive by any means. It is but a look at the
spectrum.
Unmentioned are all the groups that support this Movement either by their
silence for personal reasons or by appearing to condone their activities by
seeming to downplay their impact or importance. This would include the
hunting groups and fishing businesses and professional wildlife
organizations that believe that their careers or business or future requires
a "realistic" acceptance of the inevitability of the eventual conquest
of
the future by the Environmental and Animal Rights Movement. The power of
their combined legal and political power and the increasing percentage of
scientists, bureaucrats, veterinarians, and University administrators,
subscribing to this view is disturbing. Then there are specialty
organizations like certain groups that allow the Movement to strangle (the
correct term) various other elements of the dog and pet industry in the
mistaken belief that they will eventually be able to save their own group.
Again this tack is often encouraged by disguised Movement sympathizers in
the animal user groups that are interested in minimizing the coalescence of
opponents to Movement actions as animal user groups are sliced up and
destroyed incrementally over time. The fact that the large sporting goods
stores or the national dog groups or national wildlife conservation groups
or property rights groups allow this scenario to occur is a constant mystery
to me.
The various members of this Movement appear repeatedly when energy
development (ANWR) or irrigation/power (i.e. dams) or nuclear power or oil
refineries or fish stocking or predator control or listing (i.e. Endangered
or Threatened) some new species is mentioned or the way in which such topics
can be related for some lawsuit or regulatory finding by a court are up for
consideration.
All of the topics mentioned above could be argued separately as I well know.
However, my purpose is to try and examine the underpinnings of ALL these
groups as one group. So much of what they say and do and what citizens
accept and allow their children to adopt does not stand up under scrutiny.
The deniability factor regarding basic beliefs across the Movement will be
high. As with the wide diversity found worldwide in many religions there
are nearly always large elements that can say "that's not what we
believe".
That said there is a chilling similarity of belief and enactment by this
Movement and other religious activities today.
Consider the controversies surrounding our attempts to understand and engage
the challenges to the Western World from Islamic elements. There is
considerable variability between say Egyptian and Saudi and Malaysian
believers. There are dramatic differences between how non-Moslems are
treated and the freedoms they enjoy in Moslem nations and non-Moslem
nations. In African communities for instance, there is generally little
friction between Moslems and non-Moslems where the Moslem population is
about 30 percent or less: as the Moslem population approaches about 40%
calls for Sharia Law to reign supreme and for different tolerance for other
religions often causes great friction. Some Moslem nations are looking to
eliminate dogs (sound familiar?) while others tolerate dogs. Sunnis and
Shiites differ in belief and among themselves, yet despite all these
variances they are all Moslems. Imams are not accountable to one central
temporal authority and there is no one-authority figure for outsiders to
deal with. There is a widespread use of suicide bombers that are
encouraged
discreetly by various leaders in private who are then never held
accountable. All in all the challenge of positive engagement and peaceful
coexistence while maintaining our freedoms in the face of some that would
deny us our freedoms is perhaps the greatest challenge of our time.
The most important fact to consider is the deeply held religious belief of
the Movement that justifies (to believers) a reconfiguring of our nation and
it's laws to take things away from and subjugate others. I submit that
they
are indeed religious beliefs as opposed to simply ideological beliefs based
on the way they lead believers to justify the most dramatic impositions of
fellow citizens, other humans, and the way in which governments will control
all people. These beliefs justify taking private property without
compensation, endangering human lives with the introduction and protection
of deadly predators, the destruction of rural economies, the elimination of
American traditions and rights, and the forcible placement by government of
Environmental and Animal Rights values and beliefs on all Americans
regardless of their own beliefs or values.
Next we will look to the origins and some of the basic doctrines that are
the foundation of this Movement and how they have come to be accepted in
Western society.
Jim Beers
22 September 2006