Animals with rights - and so it begins...

[Wolf]

Education works for those who care enough to do the right things when they are pretty sure what those things are, but for those who don't care it always boils down to having to have laws. And it still leaves me on a fence. If the law is a good one great but a law that is written full of loopholes and open to be misused is as bad in many ways as no law. Just my thought.

[Navre]

People scoff at the slippery slope argument. They say you are overreacting when you say that the same people who want to give animals "rights" and appoint them lawyers would love to see the law forbid the ownership of any animals.

To that I say this: Remember when the non-smokers only wanted a corner of the restaurant for themselves?

[Pajarita]

Wolf, do you see any big loopholes in the Swedish bird law? Personally, I don't. Mind you, I am sure there are and that bad people will find them but they look pretty good to me!

And, Navre, you are right, of course. I am and have been an animal rights activist for many years now and I would never dream of supporting a law that would prohibit people from having pets... I think that pets bring immense benefits to the humans they live with and, when the humans are good owners, the pets have much better lives than they would on their own. The truth of the matter is that animal right activists all love animals (why would they even bother asking for better treatment of them if they did not care?) and the greatest majority of them have them themselves so they would not advocate for such a thing -at least, I don't know of a single one that does! Besides, this argument is the one that PIJAC has been using for years to frighten people into rejecting better animal cruelty laws, it has never been our goal.

[Wolf]

Pajarita, I have already weighed in with my opinion of the Swedish law as you are well aware of and you also know that I am in support of it. You are also aware that I was sharing my general perceptions of the laws that we already have that are worthless due to being written to be misused and to provide loopholes that allow for the further mistreatment and abuse of many species of animals and not just birds. I am in favor of laws that can be made effective and close the loopholes such as those allowing the mistreatment of other living being simply by listing them as lab animals. I am also in favor of fixing the current laws to give them enough bite to actually punish those who intentionally abuse animals both of their own and those belonging to others. And I still don't like that we need them because some people are so lacking that they can't see the simple truth that what we do to these animals is going to eventually have similar effects on us as a species. But, I freely admit that although many of these laws are basically flawed that we apparently have a huge need for them. And I still don't trust the lawmakers or the governments.

[Navre]

I think I will bow out of this one. I had a response typed up that pretty clearly showed the absurdity of a nation criminalizing the clipping of wings while allowing other practices that destroy life, but I'm afraid it will drag us into territory too political.

[Wolf]

My only point, in the end is that there is no single pat answer to these things and that all of these things that we are discussing here are both a part of the problem as well as the solution and it all boils down to what we do and don't do whether that is in out personal lives or as part of the whole. I know that we need some laws, but also that government intervention is nearly always a double edged sword that cuts both ways. Everytime we pass a law we give up a freedom and if we are going to do that then we need to be careful of what freedoms we give away. and I don't have any more to add at this time.