I believe you are mistaken in this, cinives. Here is one of the best descriptions of political conservatism that I've ever seen, from Stephen J. Tonsor:
Conservatism has its roots in a much older tradition. Its world view is Roman or Anglo-Catholic; its political philosophy Aristotelian and Thomist; its concerns, moral and ethical; its culture, that of Christian humanism. Most old-fashioned conservatives are free of metaphysical anxiety and are happy as clams in a world that bears the unmistakeable imprint of God's ordering hand. They are free of alienation, and they have absolutely no hopes of a utopian political order. They live with sin and tragedy not as the consequence of inadequate social engineering but as a consequence of man's sin and disorder. They believe that human institutions and human culture are subject to the judgment of God, and they hold that the most effective political instrument is prayer and a commitment to try to understand and do the will of God.According to Russell Kirk, American conservative political philosophy has roots in four historical cities, Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London. To focus on the contribution of just the last of these, classical liberalism (not the bastardized so-called liberalism of the Democrat party, which is essentially socialism): We find a major intellectual influence on the creation of our own founding documents in John Locke, a British Whig and father of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which deposed James II. To get a good sense of the philosophical underpinnings that informed classical liberalism/conservatism, consider these lines from Trenchard & Gordon, from the enormously influential (on our own revolution) Cato's Letters:
All men are born free; Liberty is a Gift which they receive from God; nor can they alienate the same by consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by crimes....In all the above senses, I am a conservative, and you are (probably) a Libertarian. The huge difference between conservatives and libertarians is the former center their world in inherited tradition and ultimately in God, and the latter are agnostic about God (if not outright atheist), and evidently think the world came into existence on the day they were born -- so little respect for culture and history do they evidence.Liberty is the power which every man has over his own Actions, and the Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labor, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Member of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.
The fruits of a Man's honest Industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbiter of his own private Actions and Property....
Another major difference is conservatism places the individual in the context of the wider society, while libertarianism sees the individual as an absolute end-in-himself. That is a HUGE difference in point of view.
Jeepers, cinives, who are you to judge me as someone who wants to bring us closer to a socialistic society? Nothing could be further from my idea of a well-ordered society than socialism.
All of which seems to be quite a digression from our issue at hand, what to do about abused and neglected horses.
You seem to think I'm not prepared to offer any help here, totally dissing what I said in an earlier post to the point of acusing me of hypocrisy. So, what exactly is your proposed solution to this problem?
Well you typed a lot, but not sure what it all has to do with the topic. Also if you were hinting that I am an athiest- not guilty. I am also not guilty of ignoring history or not being familiar with history. As to whether or not you are a socialist, I have no idea- but many that fought to stop slaughter expect the government (taxpayers of course) to solve the issue of the unwanted horses once again just as they had to do when the “wild horses were saved” so many years ago. It does seem socialist to me for people to expect the taxpayers to pay to support unwanted horses. I freely choose to rescue horses when I can, and have taken in old horses when their owners did not want to go to the trouble to care for them- but that is my choice- I want to decide which horses and how many I can afford to care for. I don’t want the government or well intended people to decide that for me. When the unwanted horses grow to a number that cannot be dealt with, and people are dumping them- I am sure the “government” will be forced to solve the issue, just as they had to take over the care of the wild horses.
How many horses have you personally saved while you were fighting to stop slaughter, and how many have you saved since? I’m not sure where you live, but in most places there are abused and neglected horses that need help so you can put your money where your mouth is and help them; instead of patting yourself on the back about fighting for the horses.
No one who knows you would doubt your conservative credentials.
And a simple click on your handle would have shown him/her that you have been on this - the world's largest conservative political forum - for nearly 10 years.
Thank you both for your wonderful essay-posts!
Your post: Liberty is the power which every man has over his own Actions, and the Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labor, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Member of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.
Yet you want to remove our liberty to do the thing that seems right to us for a humane outcome. You don’t mind killing a steer for food, but draw the line at horses. That’s a very arbitrary distinction to remove liberty. Show me where killing a horse is murder, but killing a steer is not. And please - no “it’s a pet” argument.
My proposed solution ? Slaughterhouses. If a person can no longer keep a horse and cannot sell it, then the slaughterhouses were always a good way to not only dispose of the horse but to do it with some benefit to society (food) and no cost to the owner. My personal way to do it is to donate it to my local foxhunt for hound food. I feel about it the same way that I feel about organ donation - once I’m dead, I’d still like to be of some use other than taking up space in a 6 ft hole.
Again, horses are not pets. Just one costs hundreds of dollars a month for care and at least one acre, at the very least, on which to live.
If you own a horse that is no longer useful or find yourself in a circumstance where you can no longer provide hundreds of dollars a month in support and cannot sell or give away the horse to a good situation, then the only options are rescues which are already stuffed to the brim, or euthanasia. To euthanize a horse and not be able to use it for food costs over a thousand dollars around where I live - you pay the vet, you pay to have the carcass hauled off, and you pay for the bulldozer/backhoe to lift the carcass into and out of the truck, and you have to pay for its disposal.
Look at reality. It’s not always what you want but it is what it is.