Microeditorials
Religion is a central pillar of most conservative and reactionary societies. Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and even Buddhist creeds approve of animal sacrifices. They also “give” humans permission to do as they bloody well please [literally] with helpless non-human beings.
Many animal activists have little grasp of politics, and even less of philosophy, a not surprising result of dedication to animal rescue and lifetimes of disappointment with politicians and government inaction.
Nonetheless, the only practical avenue to improving the plights of animals is through laws and government enforcement of those laws.
Unfortunately, under our capitalist system, the voices of animal activists are drowned in a sea of money from business interests which profit from animal cruelty and exploitation.
We may succeed in getting the odd piece of legislation passed, but only ones that address dog or cat issues (which have broad public support) or ones that do not particularly impact business profits.
In all other cases, we are buried by lobbyists’ influence and corporate bribery (legal, by the way) of candidates and officeholders.
In frustration, many decry politics and partisanship, throwing out the baby with the bathwater so to speak, refusing to recognize that it is the political Right which is the enemy of animals.
Conservative lawmakers (all Republicans and many Democrats) who support the horrors of vivisection because of bribes by Big Pharma and the medical lobby; who support habitat destruction and environmental pollution because of bribes by Big Oil and the coal and gas industries; and who allow the cruelty of factory farming, the brutality of slaughter, and the killing of wild horses and wolves because of bribes from Big Ag, cattle ranchers, and meatpackers.
Only by acting as a cohesive political movement can we hope to help animals. That means electing people who value animals more than business, people who care about life more than profit, who think compassion is more important than capitalism.
That means electing Liberals (broadly understood!). The further Left, the better for the animals. This does not mean that we do not find many on today’s left, especially the “formulated left” (i.e., socialists) indifferent or hostile to the struggle for animal liberation. Speciesisim—the idea that humans are “special” and born to rule living nature—dies hard in the human psyche, product of thousands of years of continuous self-indoctrination, in far too many cases the offshoot of anachronistic and barbaric religious beliefs (which, incidentally, the real left also opposes while conservatives defend at all costs).
Do not judge the left by the leadership it currently has. It is in many cases corrupt, misguided and not aligned with its own marching values of compassion and justice. But while the left’s leadership is betraying its central values, which many in the rank and file respect, the same cannot be said for the conservative side. There both leaders and rank and file honor their principles to the hilt, and are on the same side of history and morality.
The wrong side.
