WORDS HAVE CONSEQUENCES

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (1/12/2011)

Words have consequences which some politicians and commentators now try to deny. Sometimes, the consequences are direct but more often indirect, but they always have consequences. And the same in true for laws, such as permitting concealed weapons. When I was nineteen, I had a fugitive saboteur in my crosshairs. I remember the experience. The words “crosshairs” and “targets” are “sicklied o’er with the pale cast” of death.

I’ve heard the same argument that words don’t count from sleazy movie and television producers who trash the public with needlessly violent movies and shows because they aren’t creative enough to field engaging dramas and use barbaric violence as a substitute.

If words have no consequences, then I wonder why speak at all? Are their words hot air without meaning? If people write, give speeches, make movies, they have to assume that their words have consequences. Why else the words?

Fundamentally, these people who say words don’t have consequences are reckless and disingenuous in their denials. If they have no consequences why pass a law post-haste that would keep hateful words three hundred feet from mourners at a funeral? Or why would they say that their words don’t matter? Their denial is an affirmation of their guilt. The reason that they deny that their words have consequences is that they know that their words did have consequences.

DAVID WOLF’S RANT

Gretchen and Dana Smith (1/8/11)

In the January 3rd Arizona Daily Sun, David Wolf accuses animal rights groups of venality, claiming that they tap government funding using “the emotional propaganda of wolves in danger.” Logically, some of his article is a fallacy because it’s an attack on the motives of the animal rightists.

Ironically, Mr. Wolf has a point to make based on his knowledge of wolves and wildlife in general. So, if he’s knowledgeable, why doesn’t he make on argument based on facts rather than accusing his opponents of being free loaders? He claims these groups use the government as a “gold mine” while pushing biology “to some dark corner.” Parenthetically, most biology takes place in dark corners.

His point is that the wolves reduce the number of deer and elk to be used as objects of blood sport by the hunters. He claims that “many conservation groups” “hope that the expansion of the wolf will eventually eliminate hunting by the human predator.” He may be correct about the animal rightists but, in doing so, he reveals his own motives. He wants to promote the hunting of the wolves so that hunters will have an ample supply of deer and elk. He assumes that stalking and killing wild animals is a sport as though an unequal contest between an armed predator and a defenseless animal were sporting. Hunters favor the euphemism of harvesting while it is actually akin to slaughtering. Ironically, Mr. Wolf’s rant engenders sympathy for those free-loading animal rightists and their wolves.