A lion and unborn children are in the news, competing for our sympathy. The country can be divided into several camps:
‐those who recognize only the wrong done to the lion;
‐those who recognize only the wrong done to the unborn children;
‐those who think that the wrongs done to the lion and to the unborn children are more or less equivalent;
‐those whose stress is on the lion, though they’re not prepared to rationalize Planned Parenthood’s selling body parts of unborn children, either;
‐those whose stress is on the depravity documented in the Planned Parenthood videos, though they think the dentist shouldn’t have shot the lion.
I’m with that last group.
From G. K. Chesterton, a few apropos words:
There is a healthy and an unhealthy love of animals: and the nearest definition of the difference is that the unhealthy love of animals is serious. I am quite prepared to love a rhinoceros, with reasonable precautions: he is, doubtless, a delightful father to the young rhinoceroses. But I will not promise not to laugh at a rhinoceros. . . . I will not worship an animal. That is, I will not take an animal quite seriously: and I know why.
Wherever there is Animal Worship there is Human Sacrifice. That is, both symbolically and literally, a real truth of historical experience.
— G. K. Chesterton, “On Seriousness,” The Uses of Diversity (1920).
h/t Dale Ahlquist.