And while we're at it, why don't we abolish veterinary medicine, except perhaps for life-threatening ailments in lucrative farm animals...they're just vermin, after all; let 'em suffer or die if they get hit by a car or develop a hoof infection. And let's have hunting season on stray dogs and cats, too...that way there'll be more garbage and rats available to send to starving Africans, instead of it going to waste on varmints.
As a parent, naturally I'm more concerned that my children learn to be good citizens of their country and the world than that they learn to be model dog owners. It doesn't follow from that, though, that I don't think they're learning valuable lessons in discipline, responsibility and sensitivity to others' needs by helping to care for our dog, much less that I'd shrug it off if I caught them tormenting him. It's one of innumerable small things that helps develop their moral imagination.
All this blather about valuing animals over humans is strawman absurdity--no one was proposing concern for reckless slaughter of endangered animals
rather than concern for slaughter of people. The article wasn't about starving locals hunting gorillas because they have nothing else to eat, it wasn't about medical researchers discovering miracle cures through experimentation on mountain gorillas, it's about criminals armed with assault rifles and landmines
illegally killing endangered wild animals--not domestic livestock being sustainably raised on farms for the purpose--to get in on the gravy train of the international niche market in "luxury" bushmeat. This is senseless ravaging of nature, it doesn't sustainably serve basic human needs.
If you're not doing what (relatively little) you can to pressure your own government to do more to address the Darfur crisis, that's your own damn fault. There are articles on it in the
Times, the
Post, the
WSJ, the BBC, etc., etc., etc. virtually every day; we've been through all this before. But it's not the media's job to make you
do anything about it; they can only inform, and if it makes you feel morally superior to make sure you read all those daily while pointedly refusing to read the odd article about mountain gorilla slaughter, well then go right ahead. I'm sure the Darfurians will be relieved to know that you nobly titillate yourself daily with stellar feature journalism about their miseries, which you then toss aside with a resigned sigh until the next day's installment, yet admirably eschew the dismal moral failing of pausing to recoil for a moment at something as absurdly less "useful" as a story about the illegal slaughter of gorillas.
BTW Ted Nugent is an idiot, I've hosted him twice as he did book signings at the store I used to manage. A nice enough guy actually, but a complete moron.