But What Do They Like?
Ah. That’s reassuring. Perhaps I’m not so confused after all, since Norm makes a similar point. Not an identical point, because he doesn’t focus on the Toynbee column, he merely mentions it; but a similar one. The basic disagreement with what she said and with what Harry said at his place I take to be the same.
Harry endorses a piece by Polly Toynbee in which she belittles the importance of the fox hunting issue relative to the ‘things that really matter’, like social injustice. In response to which I offer the following.
(1) One should care about the suffering of other sentient beings. Indifference to the suffering of others is part of the definition of cruelty.
(2) Putting the interests of human beings above those of other species is all right as a general principle, but it doesn’t by itself settle all particular cases where these interests compete. Otherwise you would have to allow that someone who mildly enjoyed beating an animal to death with a club every morning should be allowed to do so. But one shouldn’t allow that, and in fact as a community we don’t.
Exactly. What I said. Cases where these interests compete. It’s no good just saying liberals shouldn’t stop people doing what they like, because people like doing all sorts of horrible things. And if it were any good saying that, then you would have to allow that someone who mildly enjoyed beating an animal to death with a club every morning should be allowed to do so. Yes, factory farming and battery farming are horrible too, but since I’m a vegetarian (okay apart from a little fish now and then) I’m not being hypocritical in being against fox hunting as well. But I’m even more against saying vaguely that people should be allowed to do what they like.
Being an American, I have little idea what the controversy over fox hunting is about. But, as to the larger question, raised by Toynbee, I do recall reading, in ages past, an English writer, John Stuart Mill, who expressed the classic notions of liberalism in On Liberty:
“Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest. This conduct consists first, in not injuring the interests of one another; or rather certain interests, which, either by express legal provision or by tacit understanding, ought to be considered as rights; and secondly, in each person’s bearing his share (to be fixed on some equitable principle) of the labours and sacrifices incurred for defending the society or its members from injury and molestation. These conditions society is justified in enforcing at all costs to those who endeavour to withhold fulfilment. Nor is this all that society may do. The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law. As soon as any part of a person’s conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any such question when a person’s conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like (all the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary amount of understanding). In all such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences.”
Of course, Liberals aren’t like this anymore. But it’s nice to reminisce.
Yup. I thought of Mill. I yield to no one (well hardly anyone) in my admiration for Mill, but I think he defines things too narrowly in some places in On Liberty (though most of it is [needless to say] brilliant and still very much to the point).
“The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law.”
I don’t know what he means by ‘hurtful’ there, but I doubt I agree with it. And rights don’t cover it either. We don’t have a ‘right’ not to have foxes hunted, but there is an argument that they ought not to be hunted all the same. (One could instead talk of the foxes’ rights, but of course animal rights is a highly controversial unsettled subject.)
There is a (predicatable) thread on Samizdata (http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/006687.html)
from which this…
My position regarding bear baiting and cock fighting (the later of which I have watched on several occasions in Ghana. I found it quite interesting) is that captive chickens and bears are property… and if people want to hunt feral cats in Milton Keynes, catching and killing them in the local supermarket car park before smearing the blood on their children’s foreheads… as long as the local supermarket does not mind, I have no problem with that either. It is entirely up to the owners of the property on which the hunting occurs. Don’t like hunting? Fine, feel free to forbid hunting on your property, I have no problem with that either.
(To be fair this was in response to a comment from me using cat hunting etc as an example!)
That’s a very daft argument.
Just to be clear – its not MY argument!
Yeah, I got that!
Libertarian arguments so often are daft. In fact that’s my problem with what Toynbee said, it’s too libertarianesque.
It’s an even dafter argument for anyone who’s had experience of the feral cats of Milton Keynes. Although the sight of a pack of libertarians in welding thrashing impotently through the undergowth next to a Tesco car park is probably worth the hassle that legalisation would require.
Erratum: insert ‘gear’ between ‘welding’ and ‘thrashing’ above. I blame my frequent typos on trendy British 1980s comprehensive school education. And the lack of a preview option on B&W’s comments page.
I wonder what the establishment would say if fox-hunting were part and parcel of Islamic culture, brought to England by muslim immigrants?
Well, I know what would be said, but it’s an interesting thought experiment.
Projection alert!
“All the ethnics would be allowed to get away with it”
Would they? It beggars belief to hold that an activity as potentially anti-social as fox-hunting could be introduced by anyone in the modern era, let alone an unpopular minority.
Halal slaughter? Goes on behind closed doors, like a lot of other unattractive features of what sometimes gets defended as ‘muslim culture’.
Perhaps MD could tell us what _would_ be said, and we can judge it according to its plausibility.
Methinks, we protest too much.
The premise of the thought experiment is, the practice having been introduced, to consider the reaction of say, the Commission on Racism etal, the university elites, the liberal media, the blabocracy, our multicultural gurus, and the zealous promoters of “pluralism.” At least in the US, in considering such questions, some “cultures” are decidedly more equal than others.
Now of course, given that we live in the “modern era,” nothing that is “anti-social” could ever be introduced into our social life, because we live in such an enlightened age. This gives me great comfort.
As for fox hunting being an “anti-social” activity, for hundreds of years great numbers of people considered it to be quite the contary. We can take the position that what we don’t approve of is “anti-social” and what we approve of is “social,” and this is surely a defensible arm-chair privilege, but the greater question is whether the coercion of law should be used to sanction a thing merely because we don’t like it. I refer you to Mill.
My understanding, and it could be completely faulty given that I am not wholly familiar with the fox hunting debate in the UK, is that the hunting has been banned not because it is “anti-social,” but rather because of its unavoidable cruelty to animals (foxes in this case). One could maintain that all cruelty to animals is implicitly “anti-social,” but if that is the principle then many activities, as suggested by OB, that are now practiced without a blink of shame would come under suspicion, including some scientific research projects.
Oddly enough, some of the pro-hunters have attempted to go down the cultural relativist route: their line is that it’s an integral part of rural British culture, and thus the urban British are not competent to comment on it. This is blown out of the water by the fact that opposition to hunting is at the same level (and appears to be felt more strongly) in rural areas, but hey – we all know that it was untenable anyway, right?
By ‘potentially anti-social’ I mean that hunting foxes (or indeed anything) with dogs, and following the dogs on horseback in large numbers, often tends to spill over into places (farmyards, school playgrounds, gardens, etc) where it disrupts ‘normal life’ (whatever that is) and (horror of horrors) the rights of freeborn English people to enjoy their freeholds without having the rabbit ripped to bits in front of the kids, the lawn trampled (this is a Bad Thing) or other noisy things ruin their slumber. It’s not like running a BDSM club in a room above a pub, or slaughtering chickens in Medieval stylee behind a butchers’ shop. Hunting is the kind of activity that everyone gets to know about, and the majority of property-owners in the area have to actively tolerate.
NB – My gut reaction to hunting, which is almost certainly horribly inconsistent and to be pitied, is ‘don’t ban it, sab it’.