Katerina Lorenzatos Makris, Animal Policy Examiner
This very sad material has recently come to our attention—Eds

DATELINE: June 1, 2011 –

ON MEMORIAL DAY Edward Gardner saw a group of wild ducklings on an Illinois interstate and couldn’t just keep driving. He had to stop. He had to get out and try to help the animals off the busy roadway, where they might have lost their lives.

As a result, after a passing limousine struck him, he gave up his own.

Gardner, 38, loved animals, his best friend told WLS-TV Chicago. “It was no surprise what he did,” said Jim Gollwitzer, “that he would risk his life to save another. That’s the kind of guy he was. Just an amazing spirit.”

Every hour of every day, Gardner’s fellow animal lovers around the world also make sacrifices small and large for the cause they care about so deeply.

Things like dusting the furniture, combing the hair, and a good night’s sleep go by the wayside.

Things like friendships, marriages, jobs, and health go into question.

Often they are ridiculed, labeled over the top, crazy, or radical in their passion for defending and improving the lives of the most helpless among us.

Sometimes they’re harassed, arrested, or worse by authorities for challenging the intolerable status quo.

There are those who would call Edward Gardner foolish for stepping out of his car on the highway, stepping out of safety, stepping out of his own comfortable world, simply because a family of ducks were in danger.

There are others who know that, foolish or not, they would have done exactly the same thing.

As they feed the family of needy animals who’ve come their way over the years, they might whisper a prayer for Gardner.

As they tap out emails to congress members about animal protection laws, they might stop to send thanks and sympathies to the family of such a caring soul.

The name Edward Gardner might never appear on a monument, as do those of many heroes. But to anyone who knows a little too well what was in his heart at the moment he stepped out of his car, that “amazing spirit” who gave his all for something that mattered to him is a hero nonetheless.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katerina Lorenzatos Makris (a.k.a. Kathryn Makris) has written 17 novels for major publishers; thousands of articles during four years as a wire service reporter; numerous pieces for publications such as National Geographic Traveler and Mother Jones; features for KQED-FM in San Francisco and “Marketplace” on public radio, and a teleplay for CBS-TV. Her interviews include George H.W. Bush, Ted Danson, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, Tori Spelling, the “real” Colonel Sanders, and Benji the dog.

Find out how to donate to a memorial fund in Gardner’s honor.

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(Essay reposted as a result of specific requests by various readers. This article first ran in February of 2007.)

Adventures in the left blogosphere while trying to introduce a discomfitting issue—

It’s a little known fact that factory farms produce more greenhouse gases and land pollution than ALL modes of transportation combined. To be a defender of animals you only need to be a serious environmentalist.

By Patrice Greanville

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]OT TOO LONG AGO I posted, mostly on impulse, as a result of hearing about yet another execrable crime committed against helpless animals (by the usual suspects)…a plea for “progressives” to consider amplifying their scope of moral consideration to include all sentient beings subject to tyrannization. As a lifelong leftist and animal liberationist I am well acquainted with the temperament and idiosyncrasy prevailing in both tribes, and knew quite well that the “left”—however we may define it, has been less than helpful in the struggles to introduce a modicum of compassion in the brutal interactions between humans and non-humans. I know that it seems inane to ask people who are already horribly busy and overstretched coping with the constant tsunami of crime and idiocies produced by this system by the hour…to take yet another “cause” on their shoulders. I am also quite clear about the fact that the Left has never weaned itself off of the 19th century hangover proclaiming “man” (generically speaking) as the measure of all things and therefore center of the universe. This victory of secularism and democracy with a very small “d” was in fact the result of long centuries of struggles against church and king to give rationality and the “common man” a legitimate place at the table of societal decision making. This impromptu essay, therefore, reflected some of these theses.

I posted the blog, as a trial balloon, on SmirkingChimp and DailyKos, large sites occupying what we might call the centrist-liberaloid part of the spectrum. The vast majority of the folks who visit (and participate in) the sites probably see themselves as far more progressive in their politics than they really are, as their commentary reveals a preponderance of mainstream Democrats, ABBrs (Anyone But Bush), Obamabots, a sprinkling of social democrats, and a vociferous contingent of extreme centrists (who naturally never see themselves as extremists). Refreshingly, most of the featured writers seem to be well to the left of the audience (at least at these sites).

He who says speciesism says fascism—

(DailyKos diary at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/2/22518/25695)

Fri Feb 02, 2007 at 08:22:40 PM PST

By Patrice Greanville

We have become indeed not only the most appalling tyranny over every other sentient creature on this planet, including many segments of our own breed, but also a raging, self-righteous cancer extending itself with impunity to every corner of the earth.

Time to do some rethinking

Today, as a result of a voracious industrialism, ecological destruction (to which meat production contributes a significant share) and other related issues, self-defined progressives can’t afford to go on pretending that suffering on such egregious scale is just a peripheral issue, the concern of kooks or affluent diettantes with little interest in other social issues.

Due to a deeply embedded and largely unexamined 18th Century heritage of philosophical “superhumanism” (“man is the measure of all things”) and the rest of that self-celebratory rubbish, which, we should mention in passing, arose as a reaction to a greater form of human stupidity, the one granting God and King total control over human agency, the Left continues to endorse or acquiesce in human supremacist attitudes toward animals.

This moral blindness is inexcusable for those who rightly see themselves as the moral vanguard of humanity. [Check this article, for example: Rethinking Revolution: Animal Liberation, Human Liberation, and the Future of the Left by STEVEN BEST . It’ll probably challenge many of your assumptions.] The bottom line is that speciesism—an underhanded and primitive form of fascism applied to animals and nature in general—is by far the oldest and most pervasive form of enslavement known on our planet. I don’t use the word “fascism” as purely hyperbole in this context or for dramatic effect. I wish it were mostly hyperbole, but the similarities run too deep. Fascism, which worships institutionalized violence, is distinguished for its unilateral proclamations of superiority by a certain race or breed, with such spurious superiority endowing said race with the “right” to dominate, exploit, and annihilate at will any group deemed “inferior.” If that pretty much doesn’t describe eloquently our despicable behavior toward non-human animals, I don’t know what does.

But such narrow-minded and intellectually lazy positions will surely be exposed—sooner rather than later—for the pretentious sham they truly are. For now, in the age of an utterly deranged industrialism, with a global system blatantly proclaiming as its organizing principle the pursuit at any cost of infinite growth in what to any sensible person is a very finite and fragile planet, the tyranny of humans over nature has acquired monstruous proportions. The colossal dimensions of animal exploitation by the industrial method and the death of one species after another grimly attest to that.

COMMENT BY PAUL DONOVAN—[WhatsLeft]

The Status Quo Never Knows Best

This quote sums up the violent opposition met by narrow-minded thinkers on this thread. We are destroying this planet at a rapacious rate, and animals are just as entitled to live in it as we are.

Moreover, you all think you can have your cake and eat it too, and go on living the American nightmare without an ounce of accountability.

I am a leftist, way further to the left than most of you, but I almost hope the Republicans win, just so you will learn your lesson that you can’t support mediocrity and get real results. The animal struggle is no different than the struggle against Bush. These problems of ignorance and mass stupidity are systemic, and the sooner you learn it, the better off we will all be.

To stand against global morality, equality for all (not just a select few as usual), and truth, is to be a reactionary.

Centrism is the problem!

•••

*Paul is here referring to a guy who taunted me by saying he owned TWO beaver hats and was mighty proud of that.—PG

Notes
⁽¹⁾ The precise figure is difficult to ascertain due to the immensity of human/non-human interactions of an exploitive kind, but 75bn creatures of all kinds is currently regarded as extremely conservative, especially now that growing affluence in China, South Korea and even Vietnam, have pushed the consumption of meat and other animal foods to new heights.

Studies in Human Pathology

A Tale of Two Teds

The Strange Case of Compulsive Hunter and Fulltime Asshole Ted Nugent

Proof No. 654,871 that God doesn’t exist: Ted Nugent does (and thrives!).It follows that at the Nugent compound meat doesn’t come from the supermarket. Oh. no. In the Nugent tradition, the men go out and hunt their meat, and that’s no sissy figure of speech. But. wait, there’s a bonus. Ted, who claims with a straight face that he’s never done drugs and that he’s thrashed anyone who ever offered him some, is certain of another thing: killing animals for food and fun can also keep you clean. Yes, the ills ofsociety‑‑crime, despair, drugs. poverty—they will all miraculously vanish if people will just stay away from junk and go hunting, er, bow hunting, that is. So after decades of cutting a figure as an unreconstructed rebel, a visceral anarchist without a program, Teddy has arrived, to become, of all things, a wholesome, clean‑livingAmerican, a real stand‑up guy kids can look up to. In fact, as he never tires of saying, why do drugs when hunting and the outdoors are much greater highs?

[READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE]

RELATED:

TED NUGENT: KNOW YOUR RIGHTWING SPEAKERS (CAMPUS PROGRESS WEBSITE)

 

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THANK YOU.
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