I am eager to talk today about animal rights. This is an important issue because it reveals a lot about us as a nation.

People who advocate for these rights are zealous. They understandably oppose hunting, slaughterhouses and the use of animals in research.

Advocates feel they are progressive in their zealousness. They assume America will have progressed when it has more respect for animals.

But animal rights advocates do not seem willing to listen or to admit they might be wrong. They do not acknowledge that maybe hunting is a wonderful way to be outdoors, that people enjoy meat and should not be forced to do without it, that researching on amimals helps science develop new medicines.

Advocates respond saying hunters murder. They say that there are other things to do outdoors besides hunt. They also say animals are in prison waiting to be slaughtered and that scientists are sadists torturing amimals.

Adocates think that they shine the light of morality and spirituality on American selfishness. They don’t. Their vision, like a lot of our American passion, is fashionable. They love to claim Western culture and science have destroyed the world – if only we were like the Hopis.

If somebody else is humbled by passion in The Bible, terrified of the hatred the Athenians and Spartans had for each other because it reminds him of ours and disgusted because previous presidents tried to transform our republic like Ceasar did his, animal rights advocates will smile at him. They well say those things are irrelevant today.

They will say we need to get beyond them. The person marvelling at Western history and culture will be told he needs an imagination cultivated by anything not Western.

A person listening to the advocates feels small. The person feels small because he is talked down to and because the advocates are narrow.

Nobody wants to feel small. When somebody makes someone else feel small, it is because that person is small himself.

Animal rights advocates do not ask themselves why they feel small, why they use their right to free speech to insult people, but do not form unions to give themselves rights at work and do not knock on doors to invite people to oppose our police state and the decreasing number of rights we have.

When animal rights advocates talk about animals in zoos as being in jail, the advocates forget that millions of American men need rights and guidance so they do not end up in jail.

Advocating for animal rights would be noble if it was based on respect for animals. As it is, advocates hate big business, hunters, meat eaters and any group of people who succeed in our system, more than they love animals.

Some animal rights advocates have gone to jail for their actions. They are proud of it. But it would be more courageous and a challenge or inspiration to others, if you were fired for starting a union at work, arrested for speaking against the Patriot Act and hated for saying most of our prisons should be closed and our young men provided jobs and job training.

Then you would be making people feel small in a proper way. They would feel small because they realize what they are up against. They would feel small because they are not doing anything to fight for themselves.

The world does not need to be conquered to be improved. I’d like to see animal rights advocates find out where the barking dogs in your neighborhood live, then force the owners to keep them quiet. You would benefit yourself, your neighbors and the dogs.

Think how good it would feel knowing that you kept cool while infuriated, that you did not speak rudely though you were determined to win. Think how proud and how strong you would feel.

Think of the example you would set, that you weren’t rude like the rude neighbor, that the neighbor, if he hated you, would hate you for your maturity. You would inspire others to feel big, and to seek the spiritual power that you have.

Copyright © 2025 by David Vaszko