But Who Will Speak For the Man-Eating Cougars?

Great read at TCS:

... Monsters are loose, and some people know it, while others pretend not to.

It's a standard theme, from old tales to modern stories like Harry Potter and Buffy. The modern twist is that some people see it as moral to take the side of the people-eaters. One suspects that this isn't so much in spite of the people-eating, but because of it.

...

There's lots of interesting stuff in Baron's book about ecological change, and the folly of seeking "wilderness" without recognizing humanity's role in nature, but to me the most interesting behavior isn't the predatory nature of the cougars -- which are, after all, predators -- but the willful ignorance of human beings. So many were so invested in the notion that by thinking peaceful thoughts they could will into existence a state of peaceful affairs that they ignored the evidence right in front of them, which tended to suggest that cougars were quite happy to eat anything that was juicy, delicious, and unlikely to fight back.

Read the whole thing.

This idiocy is important in its own right, but I think Reynolds is talking not just about cougars here, but about other "monsters" that self-deluding lefties think they can "love" into peaceful coexistance.

An old piece which I still like quite a bit hits some of the same themes. Reynolds' piece is superior, but the amateur leftist webzine Slate took on the "Shark Apologists" a few years back, the sort of people who would, when a little boy's arm had been eaten off by a shark, piously instruct us that the boy was, after all, swimming in the shark's territory.

Call me crazy, but in disputes between human beings and animals, or human beings and space aliens, I sort of like the sort of people who take the side the human beings, and I'm not very happy with those who say crap like "Let the sharks continue in their magnificient murder spree! It's like a nature film come alive!" or "Let's not blow the brain-sucking aliens up; let's see if we can study them and figure out how to become freinds... before they suck out our brains, of course."

And, again, crazy Ace, but in disputes between my fellow Americans and the French or, worse yet, Islamofascists stroking themselves over murderotica porn videos, I'm not really too thrilled at those who leap to defend our adversaries or sworn enemies.

Sometimes true sophistication and enlightenment means taking your own fucking side for a fucking change.

Thanks to NickS for the TCS tip.

On Sharks and Islamofascists... AllahPundit tips to this great old Mark Steyn riff, connecting up all this years before I, or Instapundit for that matter, did:

On the Eastern Seaboard, the weeks leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, were the summer of shark attacks. Jessie Arbogast, an 8-year old lad from Pensacola, Fla., had his arm ripped off, but his quick-witted uncle wrestled the predator back to shore, killed him, and retrieved the chewed-up limb from his jaws. In a thoughtful editorial, the New York Times came down on the side of the shark: ''Many people now understand that an incident like the Arbogast attack is not the result of malevolence or a taste for human blood on the shark's part,'' explained the Times. ''What it should really do is remind us yet again how much we have to learn about them and their waters.''

In other words, we need to work harder to understand ''why they hate us.'' Just blundering into their waters in ever more culturally insensitive bathing suits will only provoke the vast majority of nonviolent members of the shark community to hate us even more.

Two years after ''the day America changed forever,'' the culture is in thrall to the same dopey self-delusion it held on Sept. 10, 2001: There are no enemies, just friends we haven't yet apologized to. The terrorist won't be a problem if, like young Jessie with the shark, we just give him a helping hand. Or, as the novelist Alice Walker proposed for Osama bin Laden, ''I firmly believe the only punishment that works is love.''

The good thing about movies is that the dopey scientist saying "Let's study them!" usually gets his head wrenched off by the end of Act II. Unfortunately, in real life, those propagating hatefully insipid ideas rarely are forced to confront the actual consequences of their antihuman ideology.

Let's just say that it would make a nice object lesson for Alice Walker to try punishing a wild-eyed Islamomaniac, with "love." Just before a squad of SEALs burst in, risking their lives to save her jackass life, demonstrating what real "love" is... and also, of course, what real punishment is too.

Of course, she could also try reading the Islamomaniac some of her insipid, Oprah-approved prose... that would, like the poetry of the Vogons, also constitute "real punishment," I think.

Sometimes Life Does Work Just Like the Marshall MacLuhan Scene in Annie Hall Update: I woudn't actually wish it on anybody, of course, but when "shark experts" get eaten by sharks and "bear experts" get mauled by bears... well, not only is it a human tragedy, but it sort of calls into question those "expert" credentials.

Primer on Expertise Regarding Bears and Sharks, Chapter One, Paragraph One, Sentence One: They're really, really fuckin' dangerous, diphshit.

Sentence Two: They're not called "wild" animals because they party like Spuds MacKenzie.

Sentence Three: We also call them "predators;" if you haven't seen the film Predator, you really should check it out, because it sort of lays out that whole "really really fuckin' dangerous" theme we were just so amiably chatting about.

Who Are the Real Villains Here? The Undead-Murder-Machine Zombies, or Us Human Beings? Update: In case you're not in the mood to try to have a "constructive dialogue" with a zombie or make it clear to them you "tolerate" their cannibalistic flesh-rending faith traditions, you might want to check out this important essay on suviving a zombie attack.

Every Time I Think I'm Out, The Cougars Keep Pulling Me Back In Update: Good Lord A' Mighty, this one post has set off a chain of links that I just can't seem to break.

Okay... one more. And then not another link about bears, sharks, cougars, poisonous snakes, venomous spiders, or socially-maladjusted Gila monsters, okay?

Upset Reidents Mourn Cougar Shot By Police:

Faced with a storm of protest from animal lovers over the "needless murdering" of a mountain lion shot by officers after it strayed into a Palo Alto neighborhood, police stood by their decision that an attempt to tranquilize the 99-pound cat could have endangered the community.

That's it! This is a political/D&D/porn/invective blog! It's not the g-damn Discovery Channel!

posted by Ace at 03:06 PM

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