Sep 02 2010
James Lee, RIP?
What did gunman James Lee accomplish yesterday when he took hostages and made his outlandish demands at the Discovery Channel headquarters? (Other than making An Inconvenient Truth seem like a re-write of The Turner Diaries…)
Not much.
It’s fair to assume that no one of sound mind will follow wherever Lee thought he was leading. But he did at least prove that it’s possible to take love of animals and the environment too far. Way too far.
Just as no one should blame Al Gore for inspiring Lee’s rampage, it would be equally unfair to lay the whole thing at the Humane Society of the United States’s feet. Forget HSUS’s longstanding connections with the “zero population growth” movement. And set aside the laundry list of animal species that Lee listed as being more important than … well, people.
Saving the environment and the remaning [sic] species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.
The humans? The planet does not need humans.
The squirrels? He might just as well have written “the prairie dogs”—a rodent population that HSUS spends its donors’ money to “save.” But even though HSUS and PETA hold views similar to Lee’s, it’s still not fair to blame them.
Most commentators are walking the line between condemning James Lee’s actions and exhibiting a fair amount of sympathy for him. But what no one seems to be able to wrap their minds around is the hatred and intolerance at the root of what he ultimately stood for.
It goes without saying that not everyone agrees with the idea of sterilizing people to thin the human herd. And hardly anyone would agree that “nothing is more important” than saving ants or squirrels.
There’s a robust online debate about just how we should regard James Lee. Was he a crazed “eco-terrorist” on a par with the Unabomber? Or was he merely a “mentally ill” misfit? (Could he have been both?)
However you want to label him, James Lee’s philosophy was clearly the result of taking a benign-sounding idea (being kind to animals and not destroying the planet) and putting it on steroids. Which, in some ways, is what can happen when any idea becomes a “movement.”
In the case of radical environmentalism and animal rights, there’s a certain amount of hatred and intolerance at the root of a decision—however lucid it may be—to strap a bomb on your body, take hostages, and force your will on a group of people. The late Robert F. Kennedy said it best:
What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.
Often, when leaders from the Humane Society of the United States talk about farmers, ranchers, pet breeders, circus trainers, furriers, or hunters, there’s a hint of that intolerance behind their words.
They’re better than you, so the narrative goes.
Lee wasn’t the first confused activist to hear that kind of extreme rhetoric often enough to go off the deep end. He probably won’t be the last.
The Humane Society of the United States, and many other like-minded groups, should take a long, hard look at its messaging and understand that some members of its audience aren’t playing with a full deck.
But oh, they do love their squirrels.
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Posted on 09/02/2010 at 05:53 PM by the HumaneWatch Team
Announcements • Courtroom Drama • Wildlife • (15) CommentsComments
Guy was off his rocker, but to say that humans are more important than any other animal on the planet…. you guys are out of your minds. There are billions of humans in the world and we don’t try to control the human populous, however, we do every thing we can to control the populous of other species. WTF? I’d say… other species are more important than our own, when you consider we’re overpopulating the earth with OUR species, consuming all the resources that house and feed the other species and destroying the land AND resources that most humans don’t believe are important.
Think about it. We look at other species like .. Deer and we say they’re overpopulating the areas because they are running across our highways, eating our gardens and wandering around on runways. However, we never think about overpopulation of humans when a kid runs out into the road and gets ran over by a car. Maybe we should rethink our agendas… OR, maybe the people that write these articles should think about their wording and the real priorities of saving the ‘planet’. It’s not about saving the human species, we’re pretty well founded. It’s about saving the species we’re driving out. Maybe they should think about this before they write another article about it.
Thank you for a very good “write up” of what that fellow was (see how nice I can be sometimes and didn’t call him a fruitcake?) I’m so sick of the media, even the media people that I LIKE, getting it WRONG!
This is a man who evidently had no one to talk him down from this confrontation. When you just ignore those who have extreme ideas, you become part of the problem, not the solution. Sure, it’s easy to march in a group for humanity, but do you have the courage to befriend someone with an ideal that is over the top and try to calm them down a bit?
The more I think about it, the more I agree about “movement” politics being intolerant. This goes for he Left and the Right, for animal people and tea partiers and women’s issues and everything.
We have “hate speech” laws that put you away if you attack someone on the basis of their race or gender or sexual identity. But it seems perfectly okay to attack them on the basis of what they wear, or what they believe, or what they do for recreation, or what they do for a living.
Either it’s time for farmers and hunters and zookeepers to lobby for their own “hate speech” law, or maybe everyone needs to grow a thicker skin. I don’t know.
Please keep doing what you’re doing, HumaneWatch. My husband and I have been in the “animal politics” world for decades, and we appreciate the fresh perspective.
squirrels? squirrels??? do they, by chance, have a red Swingline stapler on their desks?
To be honest, After reading Nina’s comment above; I believe I see what the central issue is with animal-rights people: total preservation of the animals can only be achieved through elimination of a large part of the human race.
And they are fine with that, I suppose, unless they are talking about their own lives. If there truly are 1 million members of the HSUS; think how much better the US would be for the animals if they all killed themselves—1 million less people sucking up the resources of the planet!
If this sounds extreme to you; follow their thought process through. Who decides who gets to live or die? Are you saying that we should arbitrarily sterilize every third person? Who makes that decision? You could move to China now, and have that decision made for you by their government. Or you could stay here and realize that our freedom as human beings is a God-given right, and in his own time and his own way, call it “natural disaster” if you wish, things are balanced.
Anyone who thinks the life of an animal is equal on the scale with the life of a human being has far deeper problems than a protest or two. They do not believe in the relationship between God and man, and the soul God has given us; or they could never so glibly talk about “controlling population numbers.”
I love my dogs. They seem almost human to me, and I hope in heaven we will have them in some form. But I believe in the sanctity of human life, and the eternal nature of our souls. No animal on this earth has the same relationship with their creator.
This article is a stretch. There is no evidence that James Lee was a member of the HSUS or ever received any communications from them. He was concerned about biodiversity and human overpopulation.
It’s too bad Lee felt the need to take hostages, but many others feel the same way he does. Jane Goodall, one of the world’s more foremost scientists, has been talking about the dangers of human overpopulation.
And many share Lee’s concern about biodiversity. Most scientists believe the earth is heading for its sixth mass extinction, with this the only one caused by one species - humans.
You make it a point to denigrate squirrels and prairie dogs in this piece. Yet biologists have found prairie dogs have complex language and communication.
Lee was a nut, but he didn’t need to follow the HSUS to be concerned about the future of this planet.
Um ... Jane Goodall is a primatologist, not a human (over)population expert. Fail.
And the IUCN writes that 16,306 species are threatened with extinction—which sounds like a lot, but it’s only about 1/10 of 1% of all the identifiedspecies on earth. And we probably haven’t identified more than a small fraction of what’s out there. (There are 300,000 ID’ed species of beetles alone.) So again, Fail.
I can’t speak to how much Prairie Dogs talk among themselves, but I haven’t seen evidence that they’re capable of writing a sonnet.
Actually, I am more appalled at the news media for the way that they have presented this story. A well known North Texas paper only listed the root issue of this man’s insane attempt as disagreeing with the Discovery Channel’s choice of topics. This actually would lead someone to think that it was a right wing conservative who wanted freedom to hunt animals. When in truth, it was an extremist on the far opposite end who wanted the human population as low as possible. Can the media express the truth for once? Or, is that an impossibility? I am curious how come we aren’t out picketing animals who may eat the last of another species - isn’t that the idea of evolution. Someone explain the logic and how it follows the acts of nature. Hey, I love animals but never at the expense of my own species and I dare you to show me an animal that would kill its own species in order to save a human. They must think we are the ones who are insane to even think that way. I don’t mind protecting a species as long as it doesn’t harm my own and I think every animal species on Earth would agree with me on the logic.
It isn’t just the fact that there are so many species. It’s also a fact that a lot of them closely resemble each other and DNA would show some very close relatives if not actual identities.
You occasionally run across statements to the effect that the animal rights and ecological terrorists have been exercising restraint in not killing a lot of humans. Steven Best and the “Negotiation is Over” website is a good place to find quotes. Bruce Friedrich of PETA wants restaurants to explode, the ALF website congratulates those who bring this about, Jerry Vlasak the Utterly Despicable recommends killing medical researchers, and the whole thing seems to be a steam vessel under increasing heat with no relief valve.
We would have to set aside everything that we know about cults, about the animal rights and environmental groups, and about any hate group in general to think that James Lee’s actions are anything but the realization of a dream for many of these activists. It is also delusional and being taken in by deliberate deception to believe that we are not already in a shooting war. Our legislators are awarding bad laws to people who burn down restaurants, laboratories, animal care facilities, and personal homes and cars.
Nina, we support a lot more humans than animals on our wages and with our industry. I’ve seen 60 billion as an estimate.
Well, Frances, you are clearly just a mean old animalphobic poopy-head who wants to kill all the puppies and kitties and cowsies and piggies and… Uh… Wait… I’m talking about PETA and the H$U$ now, aren’t I?
NEVERMIND…
@ Debbie R,
I confess I didn’t read the Dallas Morning News over the weekend and I actually HAD IT!! If that was the paper you refer to then its no surprise to me that they would say that. They are more animal rights than HSUS I think but they rub elbows with Skip Trimble as well, he has their EAR and he would vote for the ASS if he was running!!
Ouch. I meant to say that we support a lot more animals than humans.
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I am not sure that “intolerance,” which you mention as being the main problem, is actually the basis for what James Lee did. I think it is more a case of not knowing what to do with his extreme feelings towards an issue, and then choosing a harmful and wrong action to express frustration.
I am intolerant of circus animals being abused to entertain humans. I am intolerant of child, elder and animal abuse, any physical or mental abuse. Abuse of power. Smokers who do not care about where their second-hand smoke travels or who it affects. However, rational people do not choose murder to get their point across.
James Lee did accomplish one thing he wanted: there is now one less person on the planet - himself.