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This explains a lot ... including a question I've had for a long time, that I've never been able to wrap my mind around ("Why do so many pet-owners who claim to love their own animals, go rabid-right-wing-wacko and oppose any and all legislation that would make life better for animals?"). I always thought it was a very warped and paranoid sort of fear that their own "rights" would be taken away by meddling outsiders ... and even if they themselves weren't mistreating their animals, they supported the "rights" of others to do so, lest any laws and requirements be a foot in the door that would eventually affect them too. (Kinda like gun-owners who protest the notion of background checks for criminal/psychotic history, in the fear that they, law-abiding citizens, are next on the list of people to be denied.) Still wasn't an entirely sensible explanation to me, but it was the best I could come up with. In light of the "cheap-labor conservative" theory, it makes a little more sense to me. Here's a copy of the e-mail I was compelled to send the ConceptualGuerilla webmaster:
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Hi ... found your site through a link from Democratic Underground. A really excellent read - the whole cheap labor explanation reveals a lot! I'm often so baffled at hearing right-wing opinions ... I keep thinking, "Are they crazy? Are they completely *blind*??" No ... apparently they're protecting their heirarchy. It starts to make some sense now. My only doubt is, are most of them really smart enough to realize this? Or are they just repeating the drumbeats of their corporate masters, for whom it really *is* a matter of protecting their own heirarchy? Your average working-class Republican is getting just as screwed as is your average working-class Democrat .. and yet they support the very policies that keep them down! (Or, as a great bumper sticker once proclaimed: A working person who votes Republican is like a chicken who votes Colonel Sanders.) The ideology is cloaked in appeals to god, patriotism, and "morality." Talk about irony.
Anyway, I digress ... what I really wanted to do was add another topic to your list of things cheap-labor conservatives hate - and this one has been infuriating me personally for *years*. Cheap-labor conservatives hate humane treatment of animals. Why? Because being able to view animals as property, as inanimate *things,* to do with and treat as one pleases, is more economically profitable than to realize that animals too have the right to be treated humanely and with care - even those who are eventually destined for the food supply. But it *costs more* to raise free-range chickens and feed cows biologically appropriate food (as opposed to *cheap* reconstituted animal protein which is reaping, lo and behold, mad cow disease in this country today). It *costs more* to raise puppies by careful and responsible breeders, than churning them out in a puppy mill. Gods forbid a person's high-and-holy income were reduced by minimum animal-care requirements. I was always shocked that so many of my fellow pet owners were rabidly opposed to any legislation that would make life better for any animal anywhere - from pets to farm animals to animals in the wild. Again, I thought, are they crazy? Are they stupid? Are they *blind*? Some of them are stupid, no doubt. Some of them, though, are highly intelligent and articulate. But crazy. In light of the cheap-labor explanation, it's starting to make sense. And it's monstrously sick.
Keep up the good work on the site. I will pass along the URL at every opportunity.
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