I don’t think that just ‘teaching us to be better toward one another’ was the whole meaning of Jesus’ message.
I think He was trying to urge us to evolve in every way, and with regard to everything we encounter in this material life - and He was actually suggesting an ‘evolution’ of the Old Testament dispensation.
What really bothers me about this thread is that some people here seem to operate under the robotic notion that all who generally adhere to Conservative principles must think in exactly the same way about every issue.
Except for mindless ideologues, that simply isn’t true. We all think and apply conservative principles differently with regard to different issues.
I happen to disapprove of ‘sport’ and ‘trophy’ hunting. I think it creates a cachet about the whole thing that isn’t healthy - for the individual nor endangered animals. The impulse for that disapproval comes from what George Washington described as ‘that spark of celestial fire’ - Conscience.
Authentic Conscience doesn’t derive from philosophical or ideological cant and rote, or from anywhere material; and it isn’t intimidated by nameless blokes on the Internet.
My opinion isn’t going to change your opportunity to shoot elephants; and you can disagree with me - which you have done. And , as far as I can recall, you’ve argued your point in a civil manner, without the usual FR blanket epithets and ridicule to which some of’robot mind’ have resorted.
We aren’t going to change one another’s minds.
Thank you for the conversation.
“I happen to disapprove of ‘sport’ and ‘trophy’ hunting.”
I have no problem with that but I do have a question. What’s the alternative? Here on the ranch I can run 16 to 22 head of cows per section depending on weather and pasture conditions. If you run 30 or more they’ll have the pastures eaten down in 7 months. In 2011 we had one of the worst droughts in many years, pastures were eaten down and water was drying up, I lost about 40 cows that year. I had two options that year, either sell them in a very poor market and take a big loss or haul feed and water and take a big loss. I did both but still didn’t manage to save them all.
What I just described happens in Africa all the time and they have to make the same decisions. You have to do one, the other or both just to make sure you don’t lose them all. Africa isn’t the wide open area it used to be and fencing is slowly cutting into smaller and smaller sections. When you restrict an animals ability to migrate or range, you’ve restricted the number of healthy animals you can keep in that area. Now it becomes your responsibility to keep that population under control or it becomes a threat to itself. Too many Elephants for the area and you lose some to starvation and nobody benefits. Cull the population by paid hunts and as many have already said the meat goes to the local tribes, much needed revenue goes to the Outfitters, the lodging and travel and shipping industries. It’s just plain old ranching but on a huge scale.
As some have mentioned it seems the Average Elephant hunt runs about 50,000 for a 12 day all inclusive hunt. It looks like about 40% of that goes to the Government as a trophy fee and the remainder to the outfitter. This doesn’t include travel, Taxidermy and shipping.
So one dead Elephant feeds and benefits nobody but the scavengers, the other dead Elephant feeds and benefits many. Only difference is in the way they die.