"The Ends Justify the Means."

I was browsing some of the entries at the Blue Dog State blog. In this entry the writer made a very pertinent and useful statement:

What kind of word games are these people playing?

It's all about the animals. [Not.]

Frequently cited, rarely clarified -- and often thoughtlessly uttered -- this statement needs translation. What it really means is:

The ends justify the means.

They really do act as if they are above the law and their actions remind me of a sequence in "Free the Animals!" (only buy used and if you must buy it, buy it from me, please *grin*). "Valerie" and her black-bandannaed friend are at a terrorist camp dreaming out loud and one of them says "think of the things that we will outlaw." There's a statement to make a real American try to get his legislators to impose some social justice upon their hides.

It seems to be working, doesn't it? When Scottlund Haisley terrorizes middle-aged ladies, when Bill Smith lies about pipes being shoved down the throats of dogs, when teenage children set cars on fire, they get what they want. Come on. There should be a natural intransigence against this kind of abuse.

Their kind of "the end justifies the means" involves the illegal and corrupt use of force against people who are engaged in legal activities. Often the people they use this force against are better for the animals than they are,not a high standard to beat. Often they kill the animals that they tear away from loving owners, or they put them in degrading conditions. That's the point of the exercise, to damage humanity first by destroying our animals. The word from Chicago and New York recently is that the animal control people are horribly abusing their own volunteers and the animals. This is a deliberate program of emotional and physical abuse.

Now suppose we took this "the ends justify the means" and look at it another way. Suppose that not the human participants in the program are more than willing? If the means can ever be justified by the means, when the means are most benign that's when. They're telling us that the environment is being destroyed at the same time that they work ruthlessly and maliciously to stamp out private breeding.

The "ends" include the maintenance of populations of animals that are of inestimable worth to the human race. Most of us are willing to contribute time, energy, and money to the cause. "Risk" seems to be an issue, as if only brown-skinned people should risk their lives to allow lions to be their neighbors. The push to erase risk is a swindle. If you look at the means that we sort of let slide, it becomes clear that there is less risk in a more or less properly contained pet tiger than there is in a spread of gasoline bombs in an otherwise quiet suburb.

The "means" are not just benign, but pleasant and life-enhancing. The animals take to it well. Happy animals reproduce and you know that an animal that showers you with love is in some way pretty happy. Animals are pretty easy to keep happy. Good food, good company, comfortable places to sleep, you generally have a happy camper.

What "means" do we want to justify? Burning down civilization or keeping a few pets that are somewhat more dangerous than teddy bears? That's my take on it. I don't know about you but I think that a house that is on fire is a lot more dangerous than a pet tiger.