21st Century Foxes

By a lopsided vote of 356 to 166, the British House of Commons today decided to outlaw the centuries-old tradition of fox hunting in the UK. Tally-No to Fox Hunting [IHT.com]. The vote followed an emotional debate between supporters, who called fox hunting barbaric, elitist and hopelessly outmoded, and opponents who accused the government of intruding on people's civil liberties and trampling on their rural way of life.

Well I for one think this is just stupid. It's not like foxes are an endangered species. I am not a hunter, but it is indisputable that hunting is mankind's principal occupation -- that which distinguished us from the apes and led to all of human evolution -- so what's the difference between hunting deer with high-powered rifles and hunting foxes with dogs? (None, actually, and so the British IFAW animal welfare group crows about polls showing that 76% of people said they wanted hunting with dogs to be banned and 82% said deer hunting should also be illegal.) Societies everywhere raise domesticated animals (cattle, sheep, etc.) solely for the purposes of killing and eating them. Isn't it just as barbaric to raise animals that are destined never to live and only to be slaughtered, in cold blood, so human beings can eat? At least the foxes have a sporting chance, which is more than one can say for cows.

Meanwhile, the whole controversy has spawned threats of civil disobedience by hunters, security breaches by protesters in Parliment, and a looming constitutional crisis -- since the House of Lords has repeatedly rejected bans on fox hunting. As Frank Furedi of spiked.com puts it well:

 Posted by glenn