Monday, March 08, 2010

Swiss Animals, Lawyers and Fools

Yesterday, the Swiss put to a vote whether the government should assign lawyers to all the animals residing in Switzerland.  The Wall Street Journal noted this in a piece headlined Scales of Justice: In Zurich, Even Fish Have a Lawyer.  Though the Swiss did reject this foolish legislation, and though I am not licensed attorney, further commentary on this subject is required.

The WSJ’s piece provides us with an example of how, exactly, one could have expected such a Swiss animal attorney to ply their trade.

Last month, Antoine Goetschel went to court here in defense of an unusual client: a 22-pound pike that had fought a fisherman for 10 minutes before surrendering.

Mr. Goetschel is the official animal lawyer for the Swiss canton of Zurich, a sort of public defender who represents the interests of pets, farm animals and wildlife. He wound up with the pike as a client when animal-welfare groups filed a complaint alleging animal cruelty in the fish’s epic battle with an amateur angler.

So this Mr. Goetschel actually represented a dead fish, albeit a fine speciman of a 22 pound pike, in a Swiss court of law.  Though Goetschel lost the case, the fact that such nonsense made it into a court of law exemplifies the foolishness of the overly zealous animal rights activists.

In an attempt to actually apply rationality to the above, I’m wondering how actual sentient beings, rational human beings, could reciprocally apply for damages under the law if they are damaged by an animal.  For example, say a group of Swiss chamois stampede a poor Swiss hiker off a cliff causing permanent disability, or a rogue Swiss marmot pillaged a storehouse of Swiss cheese.  Would human beings be able sue these wild, unruly critters in the Swiss courts for damages?  No, rational human beings would not be able to do this, and if they could, would the chamois or the marmot recompense the humans, if the humans succesfully sued and were awarded damages, with their first born young, some unprocessed cud, in the case of the chamois, or a store of berries, lichens, or roots in the case of the marmot?

The fact that the above examples I concocted are utterly ridiculous perfectly illustrates the depth of foolishness within the pea brained mind of the collective masses.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/08 at 01:04 PM
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The Folly of Working Through Channels

Wendy McElroy has been penning some wonderful essays lately.  Wendy adds to this body of thought provoking ideas in an essay titled Libertarianism as a numbers game, which buttresses my stance in regards to not voting.  From Wendy’s most recent essay.

What would have happened, do you think, if the likes of Paine and Jefferson had “gone through channels”? If they had petitioned the king, run for the local school board or a higher position, if they had tried to repeal the Stamp Act and other laws one-by-one. I suspect there would have been no America because there would have been no revolution, no vox populi repeal of government itself. Instead, the American revolutionaries went to the source of all real social change—the hearts and souls of men. They did the hard work and they showed how quickly a society could be turned around; it took something akin to 15 or 20 years for their ideas to create an expanse of freedom in the world.

How are you working to expand freedom?  Are you going through channels trod deep with futility, or individually acting, showing others that freedom is attainable through the action of individual men?

Posted by John Venlet on 03/08 at 11:13 AM
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Census 2010, the Constitution, and Compulsion

The Center for a Stateless Society posts a piece on the census written by Thomas L. Knapp titled Count, Dracula which I recently commented on at their site.

Roderick T. Long read Knapp’s piece and also commented, stating the following.

Although as an anarchist I don’t especially care what the Constitution says one way or another, it’s worth noting that all the Constitution authorizes is the mere conducting of a census; it doesn’t authorize mandating compliance, since forcing people to answer is not essential to the conducting of a census. (Private groups conduct surveys all the time without enjoying such power.) So as I read the Constitution (though of course the government doesn’t give a damn about how I read it), even if one accepts the Constitution’s authority there is still no legally binding obligation to answer any of the questions.

Will you allow yourself to be compelled, forced, by the government to complete the census form via their threats of fines?

Posted by John Venlet on 03/08 at 09:10 AM
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“Then and Now”

Most individuals, upon hearing mention of the word Holocaust, will “see” images in their minds of this evil, well except for possibly certain Iranians.

Photographer Alan Jacobs, working with The Auschwitz Museum, created a series of photographs which poignantly contrasts works of art created by inmates of Auschwitz and Birkenau, shortly after their liberation from this man made hell, with the photos taken by Jacobs in our contemporary time.  The series of art and photos are well worth viewing and reflecting on.

Then and Now

Via Fred Lapides’ GoodShit.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/08 at 08:56 AM
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