The Narrow Way
Fraught with peril, ripe with adventureArchive for June 24, 2009
Seal hearts and solidarity
Bleeding hearts everywhere were aghast when our Governor General, Michaelle Jean, helped herself to a taste of raw seal heart while in the northern parts of our wonderful democratic nation.
There’s been plenty of time to mull over last month’s over-killed media incident and all its ghastly glory.
But really, it’s kind of hypocritical to label seal eaters and clubbers as cruel souls, numb to the plight of cute baby seal populations everywhere.
Some people stuff themselves with chicken wings and sweet and sour meat balls, yet sympathize with anti-seal hunt radicals, as if all undomesticated creatures weren’t created equal.
We do have our peculiar preferences when it comes to animal eating.
Heck, they eat dog in some fine eating establishments, at least that’s the story in Russia, where police recently pulled over a vehicle that had 15 skinned dogs in the trunk.
The meat had been sold and served unknowingly as mutton.
Unless you’re a vegan, isn’t bashing the Inuit way of life hypocrisy of the worst kind?
If you salivate over baby beef liver, chicken fingers, barbecue ribs, fish n’ chips and lamb chops, then there’s no way you can point a finger at those whose century-old traditions include eating animals you won’t find on the East Side Mario’s menu.
Whether all animals are equal or not, or edible for that matter, is up for debate, but not our own place in the food chain.
Are we better than seals, or dogs, or yaks or zebras?
Absolutely.
But although their “betters,” we mustn’t use that position to exploit and drive our animal friends to extinction.
And we certainly shouldn’t employ overzealous factory farming methods, in which animals fattened for slaughter are done so with the help of modern science.
Drugging up our soon-to-be-hamburgers, save for the medication necessarily for animal health, is bound to cause us harm irreparable human harm in the long run.
I get why people get turned off meat, ’cause slaughterhouses and butcher shops are miles away the innocence of the fast-food fryer, backyard spit or gourmet grill.
But it’s a radical notion to suggest that our refined tastes are somehow better than, say, the Inuit, the horse-eating French, the sheep-gut eating Scots or the cat-eating Koreans.
In a culture of abundance, we’ve grown accustomed to eating only the parts of animals we really like, especially if they’re breaded and battered just the right way.
What our Governor General did last month wasn’t barbaric, but courageous in the face of the pseudo-ideology that says our way of life is more humane and therefore superior to our less civilized brethren.
Since Jean feasted on raw seal heart, we may assume that we must stand up for the rights of cute, harmless animals, even if we gorge ourselves on the fruits of modern farming practices driven by profit and greed, not conscience.
I wish there were more of us gathered around that seal carcass alongside Jean, in solidarity for a world in which traditional ways of life are honoured, and left-wing drivel about animal rights is treated as nonsensical.
The only thing crazy about what our Governor General did was that she bore the scrutiny of politically-correct drones worldwide.
At least somebody had the heart to do it.
© June 11, 2009. Elmira_Independent. All rights reserved.
A Democratic Blight
There is a growing belief in today’s society that critical thinking is critically lacking.
It would be easy to trace this mental void to our insatiable appetite to be entertained. We are mesmerized by the television, the Internet and glossy magazines. There is perhaps an easy correlation to be found between our tech-savy society and the comfortable lives many of us live, free from oppression and state control.
But let’s be clear about one thing: democracy is not all it’s cracked up to be. This is not to say that democracy is a failed system, but we herald it as the be-all and end-all for the success of others nation. Everybody should be doing it.
Then again, all human systems are bound to be corrupt. Western-style democracy is no different.
We must take the blinders off if we think that Canadian or US-style democracy isn’t rife with problems. Oh sure, it has it’s good points and we’re a whole lot better off than some other nations where corrupt government have run the state amok. However, while we’re preoccupied with our day-to-day struggles, there are those in government and among the corporate elite who are making the rules — and bending them as they please.
Such malpractice is exposed by the likes of Greg Palast, an investigative journalistic who has not only had an inside look at corruption, but is leaned on by whistle-blowers to let the truth be known. (More about him here: http://www.gregpalast.com/about-greg/)
In his book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Palast let’s the facts speak for themselves, and they aren’t pretty. And those facts cast a pall over a democracy that can be bought and fixed in free-election irony. His expose of fudged voter rolls in Florida that ultimately put a president that didn’t win in office, or so he claims, is eye-opening you’re not going to see it on CNN stuff.
Wikipedia’s definition of Democracy: a form of government in which power is held directly or indirectly by citizens under a free electoral system.
Along with voter fraud, there are stories of key political and world leaders bullying nations into privatization of major assets, backroom deals between politicians and corporate elites, and the shady practices of those who take the faithfuls money to invest in personal ventures. It’s disheartening stuff, especially for those who can’t stomach injustice or the thought of the rich getting richer by exploiting the poor and helpless.
THE PROBLEM WITH FACTS
While the book does nothing to shake my faith in mankind (that’s been lost a long time ago), it does underline the importance of truth — and the problem with facts. You see, facts aren’t always pretty. Often times, we’d rather they’d be swept under the carpet or kept in sealed documents out of sight and out of mind.
And I think we owe it to ourselves to seek truth, along with justice, in this world. We cannot ignore the pursuit of truth by turning a blind eye to government, to big business and to those who say one thing, but mean something else — especially as Christians.
I’m not talking about digging up dirt on respectable leaders, or going out of our way to nail a key player. But we must always be in the watch tower, never content to allow those who govern us, lead us or rule over us to have free reign.
Democracy may be far from perfect, but on the same hand so are we. However, we expect basic things such as honesty and integrity in the way we live our lives, and why would we expect anything less from anyone else? Especially if they got our vote and are using our money.
NO DEMOCRACY WITHOUT CHRIST
Of course, it also makes me wonder if democracy is even possible without Christ. Given the success of democracy in the Western world, and the problems it has had elsewhere, the argument has been made that without Christ there can be no democracy.
“Democracy is not a machine that can run by itself. The machine can, for a time, compensate for the inadequacies of the citizenry. But over the long haul, the machine needs mechanics — and mechanics of a certain cast of mind and soul — to make it work such that the machinery serves the ends of human flourishing,” says George Weigel in a speech entitled God and Politics: Thoughts on the Democratic Future.
(More on that here: http://www.europe4christ.net/index.php?id=137)
Within Christianity, we find a call to treat one another in a certain civil way, or as Weigel calls it, the turning of tyrants into democrats. Of course, other belief systems may contain elements of this notion, that treating people in a civil manner is the only successful way to organize a society.
Yet, Christianity asserts that if anyone comes to Christ, they are a new creation. That means death to the old, sinful nature, a nature hell-bent on getting its way, perhaps without personal regard for others. The type of people Christ-followers are called to be goes even deeper than the reformation of selfish behaviours: it attacks the very thought of contempt for others. Which makes the need to treat others in a civil way not just something that’s physical, but also mental. A total respect for ones neighbours.
A country comprised of citizens of this nature would indeed be ideal, the perfect democracy in which equality and free speech would be so much more than a right to ones own primary concerns, and in which governance and integrity would be synonymous.
© 2009 Chuck Kuepfer. All rights reserved.
