“While Western man works to rid himself of the most basic ethical instincts, like defending his kinfolk, animals remain true to their nature. Wild beasts intuit that their teeth and talons are meant for tearing flesh–any flesh, the easier the better. It makes perfect animal sense to attack a thing that is docile, slow, and passive, like the not-so sapient Homo sapiens…
The handful of honest experts left admits that attacks are up because politically correct policies have bred fearless critters. The Pavlovian response to aversive treatment has been bred out of the wild animal population. Mary Zeiss Stange, author of Woman the Hunter, says that hunting ultimately has less to do with killing than with instilling fear in animals that have placed us on their menu. If animal rights activists possessed a dog’s smarts, they’d understand the perils of such a program, for an unafraid animal is a dangerous animal; an unafraid human an endangered fool…”
Read the rest of my new column, “Animals Gone Wild,” on The American Spectator. Comments are, as always, welcome.
Update: There are some very amusing and poignant letters-to-the-editor on The American Spectator about “Animals Gone Wild.” The section is titled “Wolves and Alligators,” and everyone is pretty pissed off.
I like R. Trotter’s missive: “A big paws up to Ilana Mercer’s fine article. Watch just about any nature documentary and much of it is dedicated to telling us simpletons that though many of us are afraid of snakes, sharks, bears, etc., in reality humans pose a greater threat to the critters than they do to us. While that is, at best, arguable, and only so on a statistical and species-by-species basis, it is based upon the flawed premise that the life of a human and, say, a black widow spider, are equivalent…”
Sam Karnick has an interesting comment at Karnick On Culture. Here’s my reply.
Updated Again: Animals Gone Wild has really struck a chord. Writing for the British Spiked Online, Josie Appleton has referenced my essay. As I told her, it’s refreshing to meet a writer who is both professional and ethical as to reference a quote. I do it, but most here don’t:
Hi,
A friend sent your piece on wild animals to me as I was just about to publish a piece on the same subject (hooked off the wild boar rampage in Germany), so I included a couple of your examples. Thanks for a good article.
‘BEWARE OF THE BOARS: From Bavaria to South Africa, rampaging animals are bringing towns to a standstill. Why don’t we just shoot them?’
All the best
Josie Appleton
Convenor, Manifesto Club ((www.manifestoclub.com)