Whoever Said it Had a Good Point
My memory has dulled a bit. I cannot remember if it was Lincoln or Fredrick Douglas that said, "I hear many that speak of the virtues of slavery, but I find none who would volunteer to be a slave."
Horse slaughter advocates that claim that we need to kill horses to keep something bad from happening to them seem to me to make the same moral equivocations.
If a humane horse owner supports horse slaughter because of all of the neglect claimed to happen without it, would it not be a more humane and virtuous stance to take to offer up all of your horses that, after all have had such good lives, to the slaughter house and replace each of them with horses from rescue operations? That would free up more space in the rescues. Doing so doubles the number of horses that have an opportunity to have years of good lives. Seems like a more humane trade off than simply killing those that you have deemed neglected, which will not increase the number of horses that have had the opportunity to have a good life. This must be so, unless you find slaughter so appealing that you find the value of a good death to equal that of a good life.
The return of horse slaughter will give those of you who cry such crocodile tears over the fate of the neglected horses a chance to really demonstrate how much you care. Put your daughter's show pony on a slaughter bound truck and replace it with a neglected horse. Now there is a win-win, for everyone! I mean you do really care about all of those neglected horses don't you? I understand that you cannot save them all. I understand that you cannot even afford to take in even one neglected horse. But therein lies the beauty of horse slaughter's return. After you allow each of your horses to make that one last road trip you will have room to give a great life to a neglected horse that you now have room for. And think of all the Belgians you will be making happy by giving them the opportunity to enjoy high quality American horse meat. So if you really love your horse, don't give him treats. Help make him into one!
This is a great solution, unless you are one of those that merely preaches the virtue of slaughter with out being willing to volunteer to offer up your horses to the blood factories. You need to act now. We certainly cannot expect those that run rescue facilities to take up the slack by emptying their pastures of horses. Obviously they do not care as much about neglected horses as do you or they would be on the forefront fighting to bring back the horses best friend, the slaughter house.
Morality only becomes difficult when one seeks to actually apply it.
The "rules for thee, but not for me conundrum that Sinclair Lewis did such a fine job of articulating a century and more ago...
ReplyDeleteOr more recently the Not In My Backyard mentality...
-Lloyd
How true! I read the comments from people who "love their horses" BUT feel we need horse slaughter to continue! Horse slaughter (ALL horse slaughter) is wrong - ! As the BLM continues to round up wild horses & put them in LTH & STH pens - their answer is also send to slaughter - to "save " them. But in the meantime - the BLM proposes to spay wild mares & "chemically" castrate wild stallions. According to them, the PZP doesnt work??? Steve, you are doing your best to bring back our wild horses - they may be all we have if the eradication of our "free-roaming wild horses & burros" continues in the West! Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteMaggie