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In my 30-plus years working in the trenches, the boardrooms, leading campaigns and nowadays a pundit in America’s center-right movement, I haven’t seen until fairly recently a great deal of appetite to take on animal welfare issues—though I know for a fact that the movement is packed with people who love and appreciate animals.
My guess is that the reason for this is twofold: One, over the years animal welfare has become radicalized. Conservatives aren’t really into nonsense like throwing red paint on starlets, stripping down in the middle of Times Square, or shaming omnivores as murderers for eating a steak. Nor are we into associating ourselves with people who do. The issue in many ways has been totally co-opted and there has seemed little room for common sense at the table.
Two, there hasn’t really been an outlet for conservatives to collectively engage. I’ve read beautiful columns over the years from the likes of George Will and Georgie Ann Geyer and others on the subject and watched as elected officials like former Senators Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Bob Smith (R-NH) take action with colleagues across the aisle to lead on issues like puppy mills. And of course if former G.W. Bush Speechwriter Matthew Scully’s extraordinary, almost poetic 2003 book Domain, devoted primarily to making the case why animal welfare is an entirely conservative cause doesn’t change your life, you likely have no soul.
So, some friends and I are trying to stir the pot and speed the plough with a little coalition we’ve formed called Conservatives Against Animal Abuse. It’s nothing formal at this point, just a band of like mindeds who feel the conservative voice is needed at this particular table. We’re not raising money nor trying to build some sort of empire; we’re just going issue by issue to find ways to have an impact and grow our modest movement-within-a-movement.
And we are beginning this week with our first “thing,” a letter to the Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget and Agriculture Secretary weighing in on the urgency to stop a form of horse torture called “soring.” Here’s the story:
I’ve written before about this despicable practice by trainers in the Tennessee Walking Horse industry – the torture of the animals’ legs with caustic chemicals, ankle chains and medieval shoeing devices and methods, all to force them to step high for the show ring. It’s a practice condemned by the rest of the nation’s horse industry (which by association suffers a reputational black eye with the public), veterinary and animal protection communities.
The US Department of Agriculture is responsible for enforcement of the federal Horse Protection Act, passed in 1970 for the purpose of ending soring. But loopholes in the law, weak regulations and sometimes lax enforcement have allowed the cruelty to continue unabated.
Recognizing these shortcomings, USDA on several occasions proposed to rein in the outliers if the industry couldn’t do so itself, in Federal Register notices, a response to a scathing 2010 audit report of the failure of industry self-policing efforts by the agency’s own Inspector General and ultimately, in a rule finalized in 2017 to amend USDA’s Horse Protection regulations.
Unfortunately, that rule came too late, in the closing days of the Obama Administration, and was stalled along with many other pending regulations by the incoming Trump Administration – which did nothing with it for four years.
Fast forward to the Biden regime under the same Secretary of Agriculture who put forth the 2017 rule and three years in, USDA finally proposed a new rule last August that garnered over 114,000 public comments in support.
On February 27th, the agency’s latest version of the proposed rule was sent to the Department of Management and Budget for final review. Hopefully it will contain the reforms essential to finally crack down on soring, and OMB will move it along post haste.
Reforms such as those contained in the August proposal have broad bipartisan support, across the political spectrum. Humane treatment of our fellow animals is not a liberal or conservative value – it is a human value.
The issue of soring has been debated and discussed for decades, in the media, the halls of Congress and through several Administrations. We know what the problem is, and the solution. Reform is long overdue, and tens of thousands of horses have suffered – and continue to suffer – due to inaction.
So as mentioned, Conservatives Against Animal Abuse has sent a letter to OMB Director Shalanda Young and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, urging that OMB conduct a swift review of the rule within 30 days, and then for USDA to expeditiously issue the final rule in the Federal Register. The signatory list is pretty quality for a first outing—folks like the aforementioned Senator Smith, Ralph Reed, Dr. Henry Miller and a handful of others—and with a little luck we’ll manage to spread the word and grow the gang for the next fight. And what a good and worthwhile fight it is. Good for the soul.
Cruelty to animals is immoral and depraved, a sign of a psychologically sick individual, but it cannot be legally proscribed or legally punished by the government of a free country.
The only way to fight animal cruelty in a free society is boycott, ostracism, public shaming, don’t do business with those engaged in cruelty to animals.
Cruelty to animals and animal rights are two different and separate issues. Only a rational animal, an animal that lives by reason and production can have rights. Rights are derived from the capacity to reason, and thus people have rights and animals do not.
If animals had rights then every cat who pounces on a mouse and tortures the mouse for hours before killing it and devouring it would be guilty of murder and subject to prosecution and imprisonment.
The same would apply to any man who grows, kills, and eats cows, chickens, pigs, etc..
The production of veal and foie gras is considered extremely cruel by many, but a proper government cannot have the right to prohibit and punish this cruelty. The only answer is not to eat veal or foie gras yourself and start a campaign to educate the public and boycott the producers of veal and foie gras.
I think along the same line on this subject, and also really fear where the Feds. would run with the ball.
Your reasoning is spot on here,THX. “Natural law” stems from human reason and nature. Natural law is that which all humans know, whether we believe in God or not. Torturing animals is wrong and everyone knows it, whether or not they obey that law.
The place where you go wrong (but not today, obviously), is your belief that man’s reason alone is sufficient to produce what is good — a SUBJECTIVE, not objective standard in which “every man does what is right in his own eyes.” See Deut. 12:8; Judges 21:25.
The Bible gives man dominion over all the earth (Genesis 1:28) and mandates a good stewardship of it – including the care of animals (Proverbs 12:10).
THX, my comments here are in moderation now, but I want you to know I think you did a great job answering my comments yesterday here:
Go back there if you care to see my replies to you today. God bless you, THX. I mean it!
God bless you too Kynarion. By that I mean good will to you too, may the highest possible to you be yours to achieve. May your Higher Self, your Higher Power, the Better Angels of Your Nature, be successful in guiding you always.
“Domain” or “Dominion”? Oops.
PETA was sued for stealing a family pet and having it Euthanized then their yammering about Compassion this try to force their ideologies on kids with stuff like You Mommy Kills Animals Your Daddy Kills Animals Life of a Cow has its members running around naked or wearing stupid costumes forces this Vegan Ideas on us and the HSUS is no better
Abusing an animal needs to be jail time. There has to be significant consequence to the choice of hurting creatures. Hand slaps and fines don’t work.
It can be successfully argued that the industrial farming of livestock (cows, chickens, pigs, etc.) for mass consumption by humans is cruelty to animals. Are you ready to outlaw industrial farming of livestock and suffer the consequences?
If cruelty to animals should be punishable by law, how are you going to apply this law to animals? Nature is cruel, animals are cruel to other animals. Only men can understand human laws so laws against cruelty to animals would only be followed by men, that’s a double standard designed to destroy man and mankind because the fact is LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE. Mother Nature, or if you wish, God, has made life this way.
“I recently came across an article in the London Telegraph titled “Animals can tell right from wrong”. I read with interest, wondering if animals had finally taken up the question of whether it is right to eat smaller animals. After all, the greatest problem with animal rights is getting animals to respect them.” – Dinesh D’Souza
You think too much in the abstract. Unless we are forced to by the fascist WEF and the left no one is going to eat bugs and give up their steaks and burgers
That kind of an edict from the UN and WEF will trigger the civil war you have always dreamed of, with the blue states voting to secede and ultimately starving themselves.
Personally I wouldn’t care they seceded into the oceans,
The issue is gratuitous cruelty. Humans need meat to develop properly and feeding people is good. Factory farming is the only practical way to feed millions of people. Soring, on the other hand, is a cheap way to make a show horse look impressive without putting in real work to train it.
Jail and a Fine would do
I want to join this group. I still remember when we lived in CA & a very liberal neighbor visited & saw our 4 rescues racing through our old Victorian house. She commented “I thought you were a Republican”. As if conservatives can’t love & care for animals.
How do I join this group?
Exactly what I was thinking – how can I join this group?
Matthew Scully’s book is phenomenal
“Cruelty to animals and animal rights are two different and separate issues.”
I must disagree. They both grow from the same evil seed and are actually one mindset.
In this circumstance, i am a Buddhist. Every living creature struggles to live and to live optimally be it a house fly or an octopus, or a tiger, or cow or an elephant. Until and unless we modern humans respect ALL life, we will not be able to pass to the next level.
Liberal Animal Tights Activists Frees lion from zoo and gets eaten