The First AmbivaBlog Award . . .

. . . goes to Matthew Scully, whom George Will, writing in the current Newsweek, calls "the most interesting conservative you never heard of."

I've been wanting to present this award to Scully ever since I read about his book DOMINION: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy. I thought I should wait until I'd read the book. Ha ha. I haven't had time to read a book all the way through since . . . well, I don't know since when.

And now Scully has published an essay, ''Fear Factories: The Case for Compassionate Conservatism—for Animals," in Pat Buchanan's magazine The American Conservative. This conservative argument for the moral obligations we owe to our fellow creatures got George Will's attention, and now it's gotten mine all over again. (Hat tip: The Yellow Line.)

I conceived of the "AmbivaBlog Awards" as a way of bringing attention and praise to thinkers who violated the conventional boundaries of left and right in the course of doing justice to reality. For instance, it's long struck me as absurd that most liberals are concerned about the pollution of the physical environment but not about the pollution of the moral environment, and most conservatives' concern is just the reverse. I actually already had Matthew Scully in mind when I first thought of the Awards, and that was last August. I'm not waiting any longer.

In short, Scully is a conservative, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and other major political figures on the right, who has become gripped by moral anguish at the suffering we humans impose on animals, particularly in factory farming. His piece in The American Conservative is all about why conservative principles should lead to compassionate treatment of animals, and how conventional thinking on both the left and the right has encouraged most conservatives to evade the issue:

I viewed factory farming as one of the lesser problems facing humanity—a small wrong on the grand scale of good and evil but too casually overlooked and too glibly excused.

This view changed as I acquainted myself with the details and saw a few typical farms up close. By the time I finished the book, I had come to view the abuses of industrial farming as a serious moral problem . . .

Conservatives have a way of dismissing the subject, as if where animals are concerned nothing very serious could ever be at stake. And though it is not exactly true that liberals care more about these issues—you are no more likely to find reflections or exposés concerning cruelty in The Nation or The New Republic than in any journal of the Right—it is assumed that animal-protection causes are a project of the Left, and that the proper conservative position is to stand warily and firmly against them. . . .

As it is, the subject hardly comes up at all among conservatives, and what commentary we do hear usually takes the form of ridicule directed at animal-rights groups. Often conservatives side instinctively with any animal-related industry and those involved, as if a thing is right just because someone can make money off it or as if our sympathies belong always with the men just because they are men. . . .

A certain moral relativism runs through the arguments of those hostile or indifferent to animal welfare—as if animals can be of value only for our sake, as utility or preference decrees. In practice, this outlook leaves each person to decide for himself when animals rate moral concern. It even allows us to accept or reject such knowable facts about animals as their cognitive and emotional capacities, their conscious experience of pain and happiness.

Elsewhere in contemporary debates, conservatives meet the foe of moral relativism by pointing out that, like it or not, we are all dealing with the same set of physiological realities and moral truths. We don’t each get to decide the facts of science on a situational basis. We do not each go about bestowing moral value upon things as it pleases us at the moment. Of course, we do not decide moral truth at all: we discern it. . . .

This applies to questions of cruelty as well. A kindly attitude toward animals is not a subjective sentiment; it is the correct moral response to the objective value of a fellow creature. Here, too, rational and virtuous conduct consists in giving things their due and in doing so consistently. . . .

[T]he act of cruelty is an intrinsic evil. Animals cruelly dealt with are not just things, not just an irrelevant detail in some self-centered moral drama of our own. They matter in their own right, as they matter to their Creator, and the wrongs of cruelty are wrongs done to them. . . .

More than obligation, moderation, ordered liberty, or any of the other lofty ideals we hold, what should attune conservatives to all the problems of animal cruelty—and especially to the modern factory farm—is our worldly side. The great virtue of conservatism is that it begins with a realistic assessment of human motivations. We know man as he is, not only the rational creature but also, as Socrates told us, the rationalizing creature, with a knack for finding an angle, an excuse, and a euphemism. Whether it’s the pornographer who thinks himself a free-speech champion or the abortionist who looks in the mirror and sees a reproductive health-care services provider, conservatives are familiar with the type.

So we should not be all that surprised when told that these very same capacities are often at work in the things that people do to animals—and all the more so in our $125 billion a year livestock industry. The human mind, especially when there is money to be had, can manufacture grand excuses for the exploitation of other human beings. How much easier it is for people to excuse the wrongs done to lowly animals. . . .

Those religious conservatives who, in every debate over animal welfare, rush to remind us that the animals themselves are secondary and man must come first are exactly right—only they don’t follow their own thought to its moral conclusion. Somehow, in their pious notions of stewardship and dominion, we always seem to end up with singular moral dignity but no singular moral accountability to go with it.

Lofty talk about humanity’s special status among creatures only invites such questions as: what would the Good Shepherd make of our factory farms? Where does the creature of conscience get off lording it over these poor creatures so mercilessly? “How is it possible,” as Malcolm Muggeridge asked in the years when factory farming began to spread, “to look for God and sing his praises while insulting and degrading his creatures? If, as I had thought, all lambs are the Agnus Dei, then to deprive them of light and the field and their joyous frisking and the sky is the worst kind of blasphemy.”

In recognition of the courage and rightness of this unconventionally conservative argument, the first AmbivaBlog award is hereby bestowed on Matthew Scully. I am about to buy and read DOMINION, and my strong recommendation that my readers do likewise -- not only for the sake of animals, but for the sake of good, brave, and honest thinking -- is the well-deserved substance of this Award.

- amba

Comments

[karen]

So much I could say. I wonder what cruelty really is? I've seen how animals treat each other, and it's tough to watch the pecking order established. People are the same, even if they don't want to admitt. I'll have to read the book, amba.

I do know that *pushing* animals with legal drugs, hormones and the best feed in order to produce amazing capacities is cruel. Health-wise. Longevity is greatly compromised. Dairy, beef and probably even horses to get top performance is extreme.

One thing I remember and can't comprehend. A woman from NY, I think, started a *farm* that keeps beef animals from being used for that purpose. She sells *cowches* that she has designed and makes to raise money to keep these many animals. They are black and white cows and you sit on them. I loved them (I love sitting on the real cows, too). I think they are mostly steers.

I thought, what a crazy waste. So many starving people in NY ( I think, that's my impression; starving, homeless, hard-up) and this educated woman makes money to save the steers. That are raised naturally for food for people.

Do we have a set standard of reality or is it the reality of which we each make that counts? To each his own no matter the cause? Her reality, as noble as she may see it, is not the one I live in.

Don't get me started on what I think of the CHICKEN industry. :(

[amba]

Karen,

Just read the link to Scully's article in The American Conservative. This is not the kind of farming you practice. Scully doesn't advise mass conversion to vegetarianism. He asks that the food animals we "raise" (and factory farmers no longer use that solicitous word) be allowed to enjoy their natural lives and have merciful deaths.

Scully's point is precisely that because we can see the "pecking order" behavior as cruel, we are the animal that has a choice. That is our dignity, and that is our responsibility.

[karen]

I know that we don't factory farm, but I know a lot of large farms that do fit the bill for that title, large free-stall farms w/ about 1000 cows and some that are called such are great farmers and care for the comfort of their animals while some very small , selective farms treat their animals like crap and don't even feed them hay you would mulch a lawn with, such poor quality it is.

I think this guy may have had a spot on Fresh Air? on NPR? I heard it and totally agreed with his findings, but he was talking feedlots for beef animals. Not any other type of farming. I realize he wasn't advocating going vegetarian, but there are so many different types of cruelty. Beating animals. Starving animals. Never letting animals have excersize. Always on concrete. Over producing reproductively, like the mares for their urine.

And it ties into the Liberal/consevative mindsets perfectly.

We had a cow that calved and *went down*. She couldn't, literally, get back upon her feet. We had to drag her out of the barn on a piece of plywood. Try doing that with a 1300-1500# beast that can't read your mind as to where the hell she's going.

We put her on the lawn across the road. She would have great traction and we could monito her progress/digression, plus the Down & Deadtruck would have easy access if we had to shoot her.

She was down a week. We used a sling and the tractor to get her up every day to relieve pressure on her legs. We gave her more care than all the others cause we wanted her to make it.

She got up the end of the week and although one leg was always kinda game, she made it two more years.

We learned a year later from a man who moved to the area from out- of- state, that someone turned us in for animal abuse/neglect. It had been hot and she obviously wasn't very active.

Would it have been better to have shot her the day she became *non-productive*? Many farmers wouldn't have screwed with her. We get attached and any loss we take as a personal faliure.

Her name was Louanne. She was such a big baby.

[karen]

I'm humble beyond. :(...

Natural Law again?

[michael reynolds]

Well, that's just great. Now I've got people to my right and left trying to take away my foie gras. Well, you'll get my foie gras when you pry the bottle of Sauternes from my cold, dead fingers.

I actually visited a farm on the France-Germany-Luxembourg border that produces free-range foie gras. I won't say the geese looked happy -- they're miserable, mean-spirited animals -- but they were walking around honking at people.

As long as my appetites can be satisfied I don't object to showing some kindness toward the beasties. But not that goddamned pug of my wife's: him, I'm taking out.

[Tom Strong]

One of the better aspects of Clintonism, in my opinion, was the stated approach of using "conservative" methods to achieve "liberal" ends. (Now that I think of it, in some ways Bush-ism is the polar reverse of that). I think when it comes to factory farming and cruelty to animals, a Clintonesque approach might be fruitful. Factory farming is, as Karen points out, not easily defined. And yet at the same time, it's very easily defined: it's the seeing of the animals strictly as objects, and then treating them as such.

(We do this with plants, too, by the way; and while they don't "suffer" in the same way as animals, I still think it's a bad way to go).

Of course, that makes it a morality issue, and as us liberals will tell you, you can't legislate morality. Which is why, although factory farming disgusts me, I probably wouldn't make it illegal. I would, however, look for ways to create incentives for farmers to treat their livestock well. How this could be done I couldn't tell you; but I have no doubt that it's possible.

[amba]

BUT we do legislate against cruelty to dogs, cats, horses. We have different laws for livestock. I think some European countries have outlawed factory farming (oops! I said the e-word -- never perceived as a conservative approach) and I think that we should outlaw the worst excesses of it (Florida, I believe has outlawed the confining gestational crate for sows), even if it can't be done overnight.

Organic farming is more intensive and smaller-scale (Karen, correct me if I'm wrong), and so its products are more expensive. Demand for them is increasing, but only among upscale consumers who can afford them. It's ironic that health, as defined by eating unprocessed, drug and chemical-free foods, has become a luxury. The cruelty to factory-farmed animals is accompanied by the subtler, slower cruelty to the people who eat them, the people who buy for price -- the poor and working class.

[Spud]

Amba, you wrote, "For instance, it's long struck me as absurd that most liberals are concerned about the pollution of the physical environment but not about the pollution of the moral environment, and most conservatives' concern is just the reverse."

I respectfully disagree with your stated opinion that most liberals are not concerned about the pollution of the moral environment.I really take offense to that assertion.I have never seen any evidence that conservatives care more about, or are more moral than liberals. I don't even think that most liberals care more about the environment then conservatives. Everyone wants clean water to drink and swim in that I know of.

Any way the article by Scully was one of the best I have ever read on industrialized agriculture. There has been no benefit to the public and to consumers for mega farms. By the way, I farm for a living. We have an organic dairy farm. I would like to point out Amba, that when you add in the cost of farm subsidies that go to conventional farmer's, the cost of organic food is not more expensive.

[amba]

[W]hen you add in the cost of farm subsidies that go to conventional farmers, the cost of organic food is not more expensive. Thank you so much, Spud, for making that point.

[sleipner]

Spud - I think the difference is in the definition of the term "morality." Republicans define morality in terms of sex and religion, whereas Democrats tend to define it more in terms of fairness and equality. In my opinion the conservative definition really isn't morality, just prudity.

And I strongly disagree with you on liberal vs. conservative views on the environment. Bush is the worst environmental president we have had in a century, and appears to be wholly backed by the Republicans in Congress. His mantra appears to be "Who cares what it does to the environment as long as it makes money?"

I do think that it was a rather eloquent turn of phrase, kudos to Amba.

[amba]

Sleip, you illustrate my point that liberals don't see much in the realm of sex to be moral about -- although I agree that social conservatives go to prudish extremes. Another way to put my point (repeating myself here) is "Of the deadly sins, liberals give a free pass to Lust, while conservatives give a free pass to Greed."

Mention (sexual) morality at all and liberals get their back up and think you're moralizing. As for liberal morality, someone made the fascinating point that the "libertine" blue states in New England actually have lower divorce rates than the Bible Belt, and we went on to muse whether people with an internalized or "inner-directed" morality don't need to make as big an outward deal of it with rules, etc., and aren't as personally threatened by the spectacle of libertinism because they trust their own self-control.

[amba]

But then they think it should be that way for everybody, and it's not. We may be talking about an "elite" phenomenon -- people who are highly educated, and who can afford expensive rehab for their alcoholics and addicts. What's good for them (if it really is) cannot be good for everybody.

[sleipner]

The biggest problem I see with conservatives is that the behaviors they worry about and try to control are not their own...but other people's. I don't know how many stories I've read about the "moralist" preacher caught with the hooker, or the anti-gay legislator getting outed.

Regarding why blue states have lower divorce rates - I think it is partly because when sex and lust are put into such a charged "thou shalt not" category, they immediately become things the human psyche yearns for.

In other words, they get divorced because they become too tempted to do the very thing they're preaching against and sleep with their neighbor, a la Desperate Housewives. Which incidentally is more popular in Red states than in Blue.

It could also perhaps be a relic of the "can't have sex til I marry...want sex...you'll do" decision method...or the prevalence of shotgun weddings. In blue states an unplanned single pregnancy is more likely to end up in adoption or abortion than an unwise marriage.