Correspondence
Correspondence HAPPY AS A PIG IN PRINT ALLOW ME TO RESPOND to Wesley J. Smith's "Life, Liberty, and a Mudhole to Lie In" (Sept. 16), on the Florida ballot initiative to let voters decide if mother...
...As many of the other letters sent in response to my piece clearly demonstrate, the true radical agenda in this initiative is to include animals as beneficiaries of constitutional rights...
...He quotes Florida's constitution to say that it was established to "perfect our government, insure domestic tranquility, maintain public order, and guarantee equal civil and political rights...
...For example, predicted copper shortages never materialized because someone decided to replace old-fashioned phone wires with fiber-optic cables...
...Here, PETA exposes the factory farmers' dirty secrets...
...He inaccurately states that the measure targets "farrowing crates," which, he says, "prevent mother pigs from accidentally rolling on and crushing their offspring...
...Thank goodness our society has evolved since those days and we now universally regard (at least legally) the rights of all humans to be equal...
...Wilhelm Keitel became then "Chief of the OKW," not Chief of the General Staff...
...In an attempt to codify this most basic humane standard—allowing sows to turn around freely—the initiative adds one simple provision to Florida's 38,000-word constitution, which already contains provisions dealing with the lottery, fish and wildlife protection, and mass transit...
...As to the letter from the PETA representative: Let us not be fooled...
...PETA does not believe that humans should be allowed to engage in animal husbandry...
...Nothing in the world deserves this kind of treatment...
...OKW was de facto Hitler's personal staff...
...Besides the pointless insinuations, there were quite a number of avoidable errors in the short piece...
...These changes have been in the works for about two years...
...In fact, when it was written, it was primarily a guarantee of the rights of white men who owned land...
...The view that human beings are inexorably outstripping the globe's capacity to sustain them is one of the most vivid, powerful, and enduring economic myths of the modern era because the chicken littles who argue it forget one simple fact— with bodies come minds...
...Second, there was never a position called "Chief of the General Staff and High Command" in the German army...
...The text reeks of anti-German venom...
...Pigs should not have constitutionally enforceable rights in the same way that people do...
...CARLA BENNETT People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Norfolk, VA WESLEY J. SMITH'S DISMISSIVE argument against a Florida initiative to combat animal cruelty on industrial farms is stunning in its misrepresentations...
...He himself took the title "Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces...
...Be fruitful and multiply...
...In contrast to The Scrapbook's uncalled for and false insinuations about recreating the General Staff, the General Inspector would have in the future only larger responsibilities for Bundeswehr planning...
...The idea that Florida's constitution deals with only basic human rights, as smith asserts, is false, and even a cursory glance at it reveals that fact...
...and his successors until 1918 were Chiefs of the Great General Staff...
...Moreover, should pregnant pigs be granted the constitutional right to have sufficient space to turn around, any further changes that might be required to the law could also require a constitutional amendment, further enmeshing animals into human constitutional processes...
...Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke Sr...
...When Hitler created the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht (oberkommando der Wehrmacht—OKW) in February 1938, he abolished the Ministry of War...
...These pigs never hurt anybody, but we treat them like, like, like I don't know what...
...Minds matter economically as much as hands and mouths...
...In this regard, it is worth noting that Florida already has statutes that prohibit animal abuse...
...And minds arrive only in company with bodies...
...We are not cattle that graze until there is no grass...
...Keitel was Hitler's executive officer in the administration of the Wehrmacht and in carrying out Hitler's policies and plans...
...16) that the central premise of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, is itself unsustainable...
...Indeed, many animal rightists take the misanthropic position that pig farming and cattle ranching are akin morally to holding human slaves...
...Our species, unlike all others, can consciously apply problem-solving techniques to the project of expanding its resource base...
...One has to wonder whether the editor of THE SCRAPBOOK slept on his watch or if he was just blinded by his knee-jerk Germanophobia...
...In John Robbins's Pulitzer-nominated book Diet for a New America, he tells of one factory farmer who said, with tears in his eyes, "It just tears me up, some of the things we are doing to these animals...
...Similar nonsense was expressed in Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1968), which warned: "In the 1970s, the world will undergo famine—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked on now...
...After February 1938, and until the end of the war, the post of Chief of General Staff of the Army continued to exist...
...They were the result of increased planning and coordination requirements for the Bundeswehr employment on various peacekeeping missions overseas...
...As schopenhauer said, all truth passes through three stages: First it is ridiculed...
...Malthusian thinking fails to grasp that human beings are the ultimate resource, that with more bodies come more minds that create more ideas...
...Nightmare scenarios regarding overpopulation have made the rounds since Thomas Malthus predicted in 1798 that overpopulation would outstrip England's food supply and the British Empire would literally starve to death...
...I'm sure many people at that time would have felt equally outraged at such an initiative if it had been aimed at qualifying just how we should house and treat our human slaves...
...Under the pseudo-guise of anti-Nazi concerns, the piece is without any basis...
...BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY NICHOLAS EBERSTADT rightly argues in "Population Sense and Nonsense" (Sept...
...Also, the correct pronunciation for "Yes, Sir" is "Jawohl" not "Ja wohl...
...But for the purposes of my article, that is a distinction without a scintilla of difference...
...It doesn't mention that we need only guarantee these rights for humans...
...The degradation of humans can be resisted and animals can still be protected from abuse...
...The participants argue that man, particularly capitalist man, is draining the Earth's resources...
...He will be the chairman of the newly established council for the employment of the Bundeswehr...
...The London Times never got the story straight because they either did not read or intentionally distorted the statement by German defense minister Peter Struck on August 26, 2002...
...Presently, mother pigs are confined to crates that do not allow them to touch their babies...
...Similarly, in agriculture the plowhorse was mechanized out of existence, as pesticides and fertilizers and now genetic engineering have created such abundance that we actually pay farmers not to grow food...
...They are then removed much earlier than nature intended, so the mothers can be reimpregnated, leaving the immobilized mothers moaning and crying for their babies...
...second it is violently opposed...
...Today, one of the major problems America faces is not famine, but obesity...
...In conclusion, I did not write in support of gestation crates, about which I am agnostic...
...MILAN VEGO Naval War College Newport, RI...
...Perhaps we could use more radical thinking in this day and age...
...First, the position of the General Inspector (GI) is not new, but dates from the creation of the Bundeswehr in 1956...
...The babies can only stick their heads through the bars of their mothers' crates to suckle their nipples...
...Indeed, the initiative explicitly states that the constitutional right of pregnant pigs that would be created if it should pass will be enforced as if the constitutional provision were contained in an already existing anti-cruelty statute...
...Making pregnant pigs explicit holders of rights blurs the crucial distinction between humans and animals...
...Von Moltke, Hindenburg, and Keitel did not occupy the same positions as you asserted...
...It's a shame...
...The cages are so small the pregnant animals cannot turn around, and they develop terrible physical and psychological problems...
...This body will be responsible for decisions on planning, preparation, and execution of the employment of the Bundeswehr...
...The truth is, the measure only bans "gestation crates," tiny two by seven foot cages in which sows are confined for pregnancy after pregnancy...
...I urge Smith and others to see the reality of factory farming on their computers at PETATV.com...
...But his claim that a state's constitution should be concerned only with human rights is not founded on anything but his own prejudice...
...Third it is accepted as being self-evident...
...I wonder if it was extremist groups with, as smith says, a "radical agenda" such as, say, the abolition of slavery, that helped bring about this evolution in thinking...
...As to consuming information presented by PETA on any subject involving the human use of animals, caveat emptor...
...Neither Malthus or Ehrlich could envision the advances in medicine, science, technology, and biotechnology that would tame disease, increase the food supply at exponential rates, find new resources, or create new substitutes...
...Mark von Schlemmer's letter proves my point quite well, for which I thank him...
...Wayne Pacelle Humane Society of the United States Washington, DC IN "Life, Liberty, and a Mudhole to Lie In," Wesley J. Smith describes quite clearly why the Florida initiative banning farrowing crates is indeed about more than just a cruel animal husbandry practice...
...Click on "Meet Your Meat" and also on the pig farm investigations...
...16), on the Florida ballot initiative to let voters decide if mother pigs should be allowed to nuzzle and interact with their babies...
...It's a crying shame...
...Mark von Schlemmer Baldwin City, KS WESLEY J. SMITH RESPONDS: The crates in question are indeed gestation crates rather than farrowing crates...
...Hence, it is reprehensible to imply a latent rising of Nazi-like inclinations in the German military...
...He seems not to have read the measure itself, but only the literature of the pork industry...
...IT IS HARD TO UNDERSTAND what motivated The Weekly Standard to publish such an anti-German diatribe as "Ja wohl mein General Inspector" (The Scrapbook, Sept...
...However, if these crates are inhumane, they should be outlawed by statute...
...Daniel John Sobieski Chicago, IL GERMANOPHOBIA...
...The Commander of the Employment Command Staff (EinsFueKdo) will be subordinate to the General Inspector only in questions of the employment of the German armed forces...
...As stated in the article, this seems to be the true point of the enterprise...
Vol. 8 • September 2002 • No. 3
