A Pickax to the Head

In yesterday's New York Times, Mark Bittman calls for more regulations! Shocking, I know. This time he’s doing it not for the children, but for the animals.  He really is a champion of the disenfranchised, isn’t he?  No. He’s a food personality who has earned a national pulpit from the owners of the New York Times to spout his out-of-touch – money is no object, the expansion of government is good – bullshit.

The problem is the system that enables cruelty and a lack not just of law enforcement but actual laws.

Despite his utter devotion to the regulatory state, it really is the group of individuals involved that is the problem. Not all individuals who work at animal processing facilities are immune to the sentient nature of animals; a person who purposefully mistreats animals should become an outcast among his peers and seen as a company liability to be dealt with by management.  And that should be the extent of his punishment.

While Bittman disdainfully points out the foolish stretching of the Constitution to include a restriction against videotaping and texting pictures of pet store animals, he neglects to identify that he is calling for an extension of the protection of rights guaranteed by the Constitution to animals as against the actions of men. The Constitution is a proscription for the limits of government, not on the actions of men.

Finally, he plays his trump card in choosing not to believe that eating animals is immoral because he eats meat. So, if he were to become a vegan would he determine eating animals to be immoral? Perfectly unprincipled.

The proper role of government is to protect the individual rights of men. Those who champion the use of government force in an attempt to control every action of their fellow men that they find objectionable are immoral. They certainly have more in common with those who would take a pickax to a cow’s head than I do.