Liberty Hall
I’m confused – I must be, because I really don’t understand this at all. I usually like Polly Toynbee (not that I read everything she writes), but this seems to me to be a very odd thing to say:
The countrysiders in the Lords will oppose the hunting bill again, but others will oppose it for good liberal reasons – proving the need for a second chamber. Liberals should always be wary of banning people from doing as they like. There needs to be an overwhelming case for the serious harm done: hunting just doesn’t meet that criteria (killing a few foxes is not more cruel than battery farming).
Wait – what? ‘Liberals should always be wary of banning people from doing as they like.’ But isn’t that awfully sweeping? ‘Doing as they like’? Doesn’t that cover an awful lot of ground? Underpaying and mistreating employees, abusing children, driving dangerously, vandalising parks or libraries, threatening or stalking people? And all sorts of things. People get banned from doing as they like all the time. Obviously. What does she mean ‘overwhelming case’, what does she mean ‘serious harm’? Overwhelming according to whom, serious by whose measure? My point isn’t about fox hunting, it’s about the generalization itself. I don’t think there should be some presumption that people should be allowed to ‘do as they like’ – it depends very much on what it is they like. Ah well – I must be confused.
She seems to be assuming in this argument that all purposes are equal: the cruelty in fox hunting (and it isn’t just the foxes’ deaths, but the manner thereof) is entirely purposeless cruelty (unless there is a sudden rash of foxes plaguing the English countryside, foxes so clever they can only be brought down by hounds), whereas ‘battery farming’ (which I assume would be ‘factory farming’ in the US) at least has as its justification the efficient feeding of the population. I’m not a big fan of ‘ends justifies means’ arguments, which this might be, but it seems like, if you’re going to be against cruelty to animals, you start with your strongest case: cruelty against animals that serves only the purpose of entertainment for a very small portion of the population. Then you move on to the harder, less isolated questions.
“(unless there is a sudden rash of foxes plaguing the English countryside, foxes so clever they can only be brought down by hounds)”
Actually many hunt supporters like to claim that 1) hunts don’t actually result in many deaths of foxs 2) hunts are vital as a pest control measure. These strike me as inconsistant claims. If they don’t end up killing many, it can’t be that vital as a pest control measure.
Jonathon: Actually, factory farming is arguably not very efficient at all. The EU has imported (I’m not sure if it still does) grain from poorer countries to feed its own farm animals, a rather galling diversion. It takes something like 5-10 pounds of grain to produce just one pound of meat.
We keep farm animals in cruel conditions, in many cases maximally confined to satisfy capitalist production imperatives… basically to satisfy our palates. (Oh, and since Atkins, some eat it to satisfy their pseudoscientific diet plans.)
Why, yes, I am a vegan. Thanks for asking!
Yeh. Surely (correct me if I’m wrong) the real purpose of fox hunting is fun, not pest control. I mean, just for one thing, (again, correct me if I have this wrong) isn’t it notorious that foxes are actually protected? I don’t mean legally, but by gamekeepers, estate managers, landlords, etc. Don’t various parties protect the dens and the kits? So that there will be foxes to hunt?
And yes, surely killing for yippees has more justification to do than killing for food.
But it was really the larger sweep of Toynbee’s statement that I was and am so puzzled by. Things people ‘like doing’ come up against other goods all the time, surely, and it’s not generally assumed (except by libertarians, and even then only by considering only one half of the equation) that it’s the other goods that should give way unless they have ‘an overwhelming case for the serious harm done.’ That seems to me to be a remarkably high standard. People can and do like doing things that make large numbers of other people miserable, uncomfortable, sick, inconvenienced, etc. I don’t see why the presumption should be in favour of their ability to do what they like at the expense of other goods.
This seems to be about nothing to me. Polly Toynbee wrote “should be wary” not “should not ever,” and with that in mind, she seems cogently liberal.
Nor do I understand OB’s counter-examples. “Underpaying and mistreating employees, abusing children, driving dangerously, vandalising parks or libraries, threatening or stalking people…”
The first two and the last of these seem to be a straightforward conflict of interests of “human rights.” (Scare quotes to emphasise that I’m using the term loosely and not legally.) Driving is not banned in any country I can think of; it’s merely a restricted right, granted according to age, a level of skill, legal restrictions, and sobriety, but in many ways that’s reducible to conflicting freedoms. And as for vandalism, that’s indirect harm to others.
Finally OB finds “There needs to be an overwhelming case for the serious harm done” vague. It think that vagueness works in Ms Toynbee’s favour. “Reasonable doubt” is also a vague phrase, but it seems to serve as an instruction to juries.
Perhaps I’m the confused one here, but the obverse of “I don’t think there should be some presumption that people should be allowed to ‘do as they like’ – it depends very much on what it is they like” seems to me to be that there should be a presumption that people can’t do as they like, until their tastes have been examined. That isn’t what I’d call liberal. And it was liberals Ms Toynbee was talking about.
Yup. Fair points. It may be that I have just misunderstood what Toynbee meant – she didn’t elaborate.
But I don’t really agree that the vagueness of ‘overwhelming case for the serious harm done’ works in favour of Toynbee’s argument. Wouldn’t ‘overwhelming’ rule out most nuisance laws for example? Some people of course do think that nuisance laws should be done away with – but they’re more usually libertarians and small-government-conservatives than (modern) liberals, aren’t they?
‘seems to me to be that there should be a presumption that people can’t do as they like’
Hmmmno, I don’t think so. I think I would say that I’m claiming the presumption should be neutral. Neither t’one nor t’other.
Thanks Ophelia. I’d like to believe in your “Neither t’one nor t’other” but I can’t imagine it. That could just be me. The model I prefer is the legal one of the presumption of innocence. If you can’t think of a reason why I can’t drive, I should be able to. (That’s probably a weak example.)
As to the “overwhelming” my personal taste might be “strong.” I’m probably more in favour of nuicance laws myself than some heavy libertarians, but David Blunkett is pushing me in their direction.
Agree, Dave.
The innocent purpose of an individual does not have to be justified to others.
Except… there is a very debateable conflict between core values here:
1) People should avoid needless cruelty to animals;
2) People are free to pursue life, liberty and happiness as they determine it to be.
Its obvious neither trumps the other. Just have to find the appropriate balance. So then we enquire – to what extent is there actual cruelty? What is the social benefit to balance against it?
Here the debate wanders into the muck of reality. To what extent is cruelty here used like ‘racism’ as a stick to beat one’s ideological opponents?
And how are we to value the freedom of people who make cases with logical inconsistencies, like ‘hardly any kiled’ versus ‘essential pest control’?
I come from farming in Australia, so have no allegiance to the supposed toffs. I also have experience of cruelty, both doing it and avoiding it in working with animals. To me, the level of cruelty in the end of a hunt in the fox ‘torn to pieces’ is actually modest. The terror of the chase is a massive adrenaline rush to the fox, and part of its everyday existence. There is no problem with recognising it is very stressed, or that being very stressed happens to foxes on a regular basis with no cruelty whatever.
The trauma from the moment the first dog gets a grip to actual death is gory but we have testimony from humans (eg me) going through car accidents or other trauma that the first moments are not hugely awful due to the effects of adrenaline; suffering sets in with time as the injuries hit home adn the adrenaline wears off.
Compare with say, mulesing lambs, shearing, tooth clipping, footrot treatment, flystrike, branding cattle or slaughtering, I suspect that the true suffering of the caught fox is very modest compared with a farmed animal’s life. Compare also with the missing predators in our environment, the wolves that would similarly kill the foxes in the old days.
Of course hunting with rifles or shotguns is more humane – and bloody difficult in my experience. Poison is far more effective and common and the deaths are neither quick nor pretty.
Now the utility to people that is set against that suffering – pest control via poison – is pretty modest. A few hundred dollars worth of turnover (not profit) for the farmer, a reduction in aggravation as the damn fox no longer kills a lamb or chicken… or in Australia’s case, eats the tiny marsupials headed for extinction…
But the utility to people of the fox hunt is huge. The sport, the pleasure, the horses, the competition of the chase, the pride in achievement and tradition, the employment, the satisfaction of breeding and training many animals… for one fox a week in the season, a hunt gives a very great sum of good (satisfaction or utitlity).
So as far as I can see, the balance is better in the past situation than the future one. The gain is the enormous pleasure of the ‘free riders’, smugly slapping down the moral reprobates who visit cruelty on defenceless animals. This is a ‘moral status’ marker issue and the mob will have their way.
Prohibition, false sex abuse, and fox hunting. Spot the common ground.
Dave,
“The model I prefer is the legal one of the presumption of innocence. If you can’t think of a reason why I can’t drive, I should be able to.”
Hmm. But the analogy doesn’t work very well, for one thing, because there is a difference (surely?) between punishment and prevention. People (such as libertarians) often frame the two as identical, but that doesn’t mean they really are. However, I accept the ‘If you can’t think of a reason’ stipulation. But, of course, what I (and some people) think is a reason, other people won’t. And so on.
This kind of thing comes up a lot, it seems to me, in everyday political rhetoric and chat. And the situation so often seems to be framed as ‘Everyone should be free to/has a right to do X’ instead of being framed as ‘Everyone should/has a right to be free of the side effects of other people doing X.’ But it’s just not obvious to me why the first should be more self-evident or more important than the second. It often seems to me it should be considerably less so, since the pleasure of one person can result in side effects for a lot of other people. But of course I take all that kind of thing to be a reason – so I’m certainly not saying everyone should be prevented from doing everything unless and until everyone gives a good reason for being allowed to do anything.
Chris,
Hmm. I don’t see why people can’t get that utility without the fox. And as for smugness and moral status and the rest, well, sure, maybe, but 1) maybe not and 2) people could be smug and still be right or have a good case.
OB,
Sure!
I find I am more interested in understanding than outcome. I want to see what is behind the curtain, more than pursue my preferred version of what the Wizard decrees.
Besides, it feels so good to be an underdog against an overwhelming force. Self-righteousness is actually a drug!
Chris, Yep, I do definitely know what you mean. (There was a hell of a lot of conspicuous moral preening in that Washington Post article for instance.) Amusing that there’s been quite a lot of self-righteousness from the pro-hunting side as well.
Well – that is the point Toynbee is making, yes, but whether it’s ‘perfectly’ reasonable or not, whether it is ‘certainly’ a reasonable thing to say or not, is just what I’m disputing. So, no, I don’t think it is necessarily perfectly or certainly reasonable – I think there are problems with it in the form she stated it.