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Author: Matthew Scully
Quotes of Author: Matthew Scully

Matthew Scully _ Dominion: The Power of Man,
at their disposal. So they assemble in protests to convey their objections. What's wrong with that? A similar outpouring came recently from American Walter Williams, one of my favorite columnists and a conservative economist known
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Matthew Scully _ Dominion: The Power of Man,
Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us. Animals are so easily overlooked, their interests so easily brushed aside.
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Matthew Scully _ Dominion: The Power of Man,
lives when we may begin to see even the commonest animals on their own terms, fellow creatures with their own needs to meet and hardships to bear, joined with us in the mystery of life and death-and frankly, for all of our more exalted endowments, not all that much less enlightened than the sagest of naked apes about the meaning of it all.
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Matthew Scully _ Dominion: The Power of Man,
The corporate farmer is the absent farmer, the stranger on his own property, too important to worry about little details like whether a pig has room to turn or straw to sleep on. He is our modern hireling, too busy with bigger business than the care of his own animals, and we were warned about him long ago: The hired hand-who is no shepherd nor owner of the sheep- catches sight of the wolf coming and runs away, leaving the sheep to be snatched and scattered by the wolf. That is because he works for pay; he has no concern for the sheep.
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Matthew Scully _ Dominion: The Power of Man,
If animals are just commodities, then we are just consumers, with no greater good than material pleasure and no higher law than appetite.
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Matthew Scully _ Dominion: The Power of Man,
Philosophical theories can in this way become a destructive venture, confusing matters with false choices and sterile power schemes the cruel are only too happy to accept. In hostile hands, they become a pretext for doing nothing, for brushing off real and urgent moral duties in the care of animals.
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Matthew Scully _ Dominion: The Power of Man,
Reforms will come as all great reforms have always come in ridding us of evils against both man and animal--not as we change our moral principles but as we discern and accept the implications of principles already held.
book-quote morality principles reform
Matthew Scully _ Dominion: The Power of Man,
An author describing the methods of intensive farming, or the excesses of sport hunting, or even the harsher uses of animals in science writes with confidence that most readers will share his sense of concern and indignation. Sounding the call to action--convincing people that change is not only necessary, but actually possible--is more problematic. In protecting animals from cruelty, it is always just one step from the mainstream to the fringe. To condemn the wrong is obvious, to suggest its abolition radical.
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Matthew Scully _ Dominion: The Power of Man,
Where we find wrongs done to animals, it is no excuse to say that more important wrongs are done to human beings, and let us concentrate on those. A wrong is a wrong, and often the little ones, when they are shrugged off as nothing, spread and do the gravest harm to ourselves and others.
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Matthew Scully _ Dominion: The Power of Man,
As sentimentality towards animals can be overindulged, so, too, can grim realism, seeing only the things we want in animals and not the animals themselves.
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Matthew Scully _ Dominion: The Power of Man,
The elephants we have seen taunted and tormented and slaughtered by the likes of Safari Club do not have time to wait while the world's ethicists work out some centuries-long paradigm shift in moral thought.
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Matthew Scully _ Dominion: The Power of Man,
Though reason must guide us in laying down standards and laws regarding animals, and in examining the arguments of those who reject such standards, it is usually best in any moral inquiry to start with the original motivation, which in the case of animals we may without embarrassment call love. Human beings love animals as only the higher love the lower, the knowing love the innocent, and the strong love the vulnerable. When we wince at the suffering of animals, that feeling speaks well of us even when we ignore it, and those who dismiss love for our fellow creatures as mere sentimentality overlook a good and important part of our humanity.
book-quote love humanity