Stop Fighting Animal Abuse

It is time to stop fighting animal abuse. The fight reached the point of diminishing returns a long time ago. Activists are no longer fighting people who beat animals to death. They're fighting people who try to provide comfortable lives for animals and the industries that produce our food. The fight generates a lot of profits for lawyers, so-called humane societies and shelters, and politicians. It also allows the most anti-social element of our society to band together to damage other humans.

When Dwight David Eisenhower left office as President of the United States, he said "beware the military-industrial complex." The puppy mill raiders have developed a little military-industrial complex of their own. They have become dependent on finding people guilty of animal abuse in order to gain donations and a bit of money from the people whose homes and businesses they invade.

This does mean that the humane societies have sought and obtained undue influence over the process of law-making and law enforcement. They first demanded licensing then treated the results of mandatory state inspections with contempt, re-inspecting and "finding" things wrong. They handle and interpret all of the evidence. They get the local prosecutor to present the animal owner with a choice: Give the animals to the Humane Society or be charged with a felony. A lot of kennel owners have no choice but to comply, largely because they are also forced to secure their property by posting a bond. Their property can be taken from them for failure to give a lot of money, tens of thousands of dollars, to the county and to the Humane Society that has stolen their property under color of law. This is done to the owners before a trial. Doing this denies them due process. An organization that would do this is as criminal as it gets and should go to jail for doing it, let alone have any credibility with the press, the judiciary, or the police. This is a tremendous fault in our justice system, that rarely does law enforcement get prosecuted for violating civil rights. The prosecutors often help them do it, and for the sake of animals! They are already acting as if animals have more rights than humans do.

Fighting against animal abuse makes this kind of corruption a lot easier to perform. People excuse it thinking that we're getting at the bad guys. Our bad guys turn out to be people who humanely breed a variety of animals to sell to consumers, essentially honest farmers who do take good care of their animals. When "fighting animal abuse" sometimes so-called humane society officers will pick on as little as a few hairs and a piece of dogfood on the floor, as they did to Linda Brown for the high crime of selling a purebred dog to the Vice President of the United States. This is because, corrupt or not, a "fight" includes a bone of contention, no pun. It's hard to contrive a better illustration of how corrupt fighting animal abuse has made the humane authorities.

I used to say that I was fighting abuse when I fed an animal, gave it comfort, took it to the vet, and so on. Not any more. In a way it's a good position to take but that's giving PETA, the HSUS, and their various followers far too much credit. Anything that a human does with an animal can be and has been interpreted as abuse of that animal, by people who although human harbor a sick grudge and contempt against humanity. It's giving them too much credit to say that doing this is anything but malicious, even if this malice is disguised, poorly, as some kind of philosophy. Now I say what I should have said all along, that I'm caring for the animal. "Abuse" or "not abuse" is not rightly judged by isolated incidents or a little bit of dirt on the floor, and certainly not by malicious lies about cruel exploitation. It is judged by whether, on the balance, the care of the animal is of benefit to that animal. The caged tiger doesn't tell me that she's miserable and that the cage is "all that can be done." She tells me that she is happy and wants to play. She and the pet dog range between "happy" and "ecstatic" most of the time. And no matter how happy they are, I will always wish that I could make their lives even happier, and that's a fight I'm happy to join.