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Fear Factor

By Bart Culver

A coterie of animal rights fanatic organizations with the deceptive names like Animal Protection Institute and International Fund for Animal Welfare have been able to raise millions of dollars while doing virtually nothing for animal welfare, conservation or public safety.

All they do is use these financial contributions to campaign for unnecessary and draconian laws that forbid people from ever again being allowed to experience the up-close love of animals, and this will effectively remove the motivation to do what is necessary to save animals from extinction.

Animal charities have always been the perfect scam because animals can't tell the public they are not benefiting from the contributions. Grossly exaggerated and even fabricated stories of cruelty to animals have long been the stock and trade of scamstuaries. Professional fundraisers have been convicted of fabricating and recycling these horror stories, selling them over and over to their fanatic clients.

But the amazing apathy of the American people limits the amount they will give out of the goodness of their hearts, even when milked by masters of deceit. As more and more scamstuaries got into the animal charity racket, they were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Then they discovered a motivator far more powerful then compassion. Fear.

The fear of large predators is a primal, precognitive fear that ignorant people tellingly describe as a ‘no-brainer’. Appeals to this fear immediately gained two powerful allies for animal charity con artists, the press and the government. Fear sells papers like nothing else. Primal fear short circuits reason and compels you to pay attention, outperforming all other subject matter in tabloid profitability. But why have ‘conservative’ legislators, professing to champion liberty, private property, small business and hands-off government, joined forces with what you would expect to be a liberal cause? Because they use the same tactics of motivating and controlling people through fear and ignorance. Opposing and exposing these fraudulent tactics could kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

Fear mongers know that fear is cumulative and contagious. If you benefit from public fear the more fear there is, the better. It debilitates the rational mind and enhances ignorance, leading people to accept your simplistic solutions and charge off in the direction you want them to go, like sheep. That is why our government has allowed a small group of cynical and selfish liars to shoehorn their fanaticism into our lives and threaten to destroy the last hope of many endangered species. Another reason is the authoritarian mind, an epidemic disease among conservatives. Authoritarians believe they have a God given right to control other people, most especially people who “worship the creation, and not the creator”. This makes the love of nature a sin. They also believe that we must dominate animals. Animals who don’t instantly obey us don’t make good pets. No one has the right to have animal friends, or actually love or respect animals. The only animal these professed animal lovers really love is the greenback buck. It is amazing how their propaganda has obscured the truth even when that truth is readily available. Here is the truth about the danger posed by exotic cats. Big cats have killed sixteen people in seventeen years. All of them were involved in deliberate interactions with the cats. If you do not seek interaction with big cats, your chances of being harmed by them are zero. By comparison, 100 people are stuck by lightning every year, over 20,000 people are murdered every year, horses kill 600 people a year, dogs send 800,000 people a year to the hospital, motor vehicles kill 40,000 to 50,000 people each year.

How do you wipe all these hard facts out of the public’s mind in an instant? Fear.
Poor Haley Hilderbrand has become the poster child of the irrational fear and loathing of exotic felines animal rights con artists are selling. Haley was the only member of the public ever killed by a big cat at a USDA licensed facility after she was assured it was safe for her to ride the tiger. This was a violation of USDA regulations. “Haley’s Bill” would criminalize this violation. It would also criminalize contact with baby felines. This is irrational. It goes beyond protecting the public. It forbids a perfectly safe activity, which endears animals to us and makes us want to protect them. The effect will be far more anti-conservation then pro-safety. The harm this misguided effort would do is enormous. If this contagion of hysteria is not quelled, it will not only empower the fiends and fools who unleashed it, but it will outlaw the only chance for the tiger and a cascade of other species to escape extinction.

The late Steve Irwin argued passionately that if we cannot touch these, our fellow Earthlings, we will not care enough to make the necessary efforts to save them. I have touched a few tigers and the experience was as profoundly moving for them as it was for me. I have loved them and they have loved me. If I wanted to climb Mount Everest, no one would try to stop me, even though she has killed more people then all the tigers in the world. Most are content to admire her grandeur at a distance. But a few are compelled to scale the heights. Most are content to see a tiger at a zoo. But a few are compelled to a closer communion. It is our choice. It can only endanger those who make that choice.

The AZA recently published a study of the reason people come to zoos and the effect it has on them. Not surprisingly, people come to see animals that normally remain hidden, and being able to see these creatures up close inspires people to support conservation. There is a curious force that attracts people to the other Earthlings. Like all natural forces, it varies inversely with the square of the distance. When the distance is reduced to zero, the force is infinite and transformative. Love is the only word that can describe it. The difference between looking at animals and touching them is as profound as the difference between reading a love story and making love. What you can caress, you can cherish. What you cherish, you protect. This is the process that created all the great conservationists. Fascination . . . dedication. . . conservation. This is the epiphany of conservationists and there is no other.

I have looked into the eyes of a tiger and seen eternity. Then I have reached out my hand and touched the face of God. Nature is my religion and I have a right to my communion. No one who has not experienced this communion has the right to forbid it or dismiss it as trivial. To outlaw this magic for money or a fleeting moment of power is a sacrilege beneath contempt.

Even people who don’t care about animals at all need to care about this: The tactic of using hysteria as a means to power must be repudiated now. It implants in the public consciousness the terrible idea that safety always trumps freedom and fools must be protected from their own folly no matter how many people must loose their freedom, no matter how much wisdom must be buried under rhetoric. If the love of animals can be outlawed even though statistically it is safer then almost any job or sport then you can think of, what other activity can avoid the same demise? Model airplanes? Hunting? Motor racing? Scuba diving? When hysteria forces the tyranny of mediocrity on us all will you ever hear the truth again? Will you ever be free again? Already conquered by America’s domestic enemies, reduced to just a drone, passively entertained by others with no chance to have an adventure or significance of your own, what will be your motivation to defend America, land of the free, from invasion?

People who love exotic cats are a small minority. Nature lovers and conservationists are still a minority. But the weapon of irrational fear used against us has now been used on all Americans. Government neo-con-men have used it to squander our treasury, devalue our savings, steal our privacy, conceal corruption, and destroy habeas corpus and the bill of rights. Americans are tired of being stampeded. The animal enterprise terrorism act is a sign the tide is turning. If we do the work to show that our attackers are liars and fear mongers we will find that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and we have lots of friends.

Bart Culver has over twenty years experience living with dozens of exotic felines. Contact him at Klandaga@yahoo.com

Published January 2007