Dear Source,
Sorry, Eric Roeske, the break you're looking for is not going to come from me. All of your carefully chosen points in your article Perspective Needed on Crimes and Polar Bears in truth and fact do belong together because they all consist of one thing that binds them together: suffering and violence.
This is so because of a grateful and eagerly paying customer (society) that craves sensationalism. Violence! – in the front page of our newspapers, our television shows, the movies, even cartoons designed for the smallest of children. It sells. And, oh boy, is it profitable.
Just spend a day in the courthouse and watch as the loopholes in the law and the plea bargaining allow perpetrators to waltz away and return to society. Look at the faces of the policemen who risk their lives every day: watch as the person they arrested the night before is let go at breakfast.
It is the same energy and passion we use to speak out against the suffering of these polar bears that we use to advocate for children.
And show up at legislative hearings to speak for strengthening the laws to protect humans if you want to separate the species so mercilessly. (I wonder how many people would sign a petition requesting the death penalty for the rape of a 3-year-old? Because that's what I would be asking for!) And that's in addition to holding down a regular job. Why? It's because we care.
To quote Mahatma Gandhi: "If animals had voice, they would state a damning case against the human race." The moral progress of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
Get the picture?
Rita Roth
St. Thomas
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