True Critic, this discussion obviously isn't getting us anywhere. I am not a radical or a moralist. I just call 'em like I see 'em, and would never in a million years refer to a disabled person as impotent. However, a man in a wheel chair can just as easily put a bullet through my brain as a healthy one on 2 legs. When an animal is surrounded by fences, it's still not a fair chase and my idea of a sport, is when there's some challenge involve. You obviously chose the particular words you felt would serve your case. I am not trying to prove anything. I already know what is right, so I have no battle with you as I have previously stated. To me, when the truth is spoken, it's not something that can be weighed and measured with examples and justification. It would be like proving that the sun has risen. If you can't open your eyes to the daylight, then we will always disagree.
You also mentioned you support the fur industry, where baby seals are often skinned alive while they are beaten with clubs. Trapped animals often chew off their own legs to release themselves from traps where they will surely die from starvation or exposure. We began by discussing "canned" or "controlled" hunting which is no different than putting fish in a barrel and shooting them. Only the targets are bigger so the shooters feel more satisfaction from the kill. It's like going to the zoo and even sportsman are troubled by thes baited killings where hungry animals are lured to feeding stations, only to be gunned down. Animals feel pain and suffering. When the fox hunt with hounds issue in the United Kingdom was challenged (and banned) the following was said:
“Killing for pleasure is wrong and should be banned. Fox hunting, stag hunting and hare coursing are moral issues. It is time that we stood up for morality. The commandment “Thou shall not kill” may be hedged with exceptions. “Thou shall not kill for pleasure” is not; it is a commandment for the 21st century and it is time that we respected it unambiguously, without prevarication and without procrastination.” -- Lord Harrison
In my personal opinion this was not a "radical" statement, but the view of a rational, moral individual.
I obviously don't impress you with my beliefs, although that wasn't my intention.. just to express both my sadness and my outrage. Perhaps people who have had a greater impact on the world than I might shed some brigher light on this issue.
Ghandi:
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated.
I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.
I feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants.
I do not regard flesh-food as necessary for us at any stage and under any clime in which it is possible for human beings ordinarily to live. I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species."
George Bernard Shaw:
"Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends."
"When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity."
Tolstoy
"If he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because...it's use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to the moral feeling -- killing."
Percy Bysshe Shelley
It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion; and that the sight of its bloody juice and raw horrow does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust. "
Albert Schweitzer
"It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed. It was once considered foolish to suppose that black men were really human beings and ought to be treated as such. What was once foolish has now become recognized truth.Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life."
Albert Einstein
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegtarian diet."
Leonardo Da Vinci
"One day the world will look upon research upon animals as it now looks upon research on human beings."
Samuel Johnson
"It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them."
Mark Twain
"It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions."
H.G. Wells
"In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be, but now we cannot stand the thought of the slaughterhouses. And it is impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. I an still remember as a boy the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughterhouse."
Jacques Cousteau
The real cure for our environmental problems is to understand that our job is to salvage Mother Nature...We are facing a formidable enemy in this field. It is the hunters...and to convince them to leave their guns on the wall is going to be very difficult."
Edward Abbey
"Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one."
Clint Eastwood
I take vitamins daily, but just the bare essentials not what you'd call supplements. I try to stick to a vegan diet heavy on fruit, vegetables, tofu, and other soy products.
James Cromwell
"If any kid ever realized what was involved in factory farming they would never touch meat again. I was so moved by the intelligence, sense of fun and personalities of the animals I worked with on Babe that by the end of the film I was a vegetarian."