The Lone Star Girl has officially scared me. Some of you may have read my article, Raising Eco-Terrorists And Other Environmental Concerns of Parenting in the November 2007 issue of We the People News. In it, I discussed the Lone Star Girl's passion for animal rights. I have always been proud of her commitment, even when I have had to occasionally calm her down. After last night, though, I am concerned that she may indeed be more of an Earth Firster than the Greenpeace material I raised her to be.
After the Lone Star Baby was asleep, we had a sort of family movie night and watched Gorillas In The Mists about the life, work and death of Dian Fossey, one of Leakey's famous acolytes whose work saved the mountain gorillas of Rwanda from extinction. I knew this movie was right up the Lone Star Girl's alley and thought that she would find it inspiring. She did, but I was a little shocked at how much slack she was willing to cut Fossey. I saw this movie when it came out in theaters when I was 17. I was a young, vegetarian-idealist type myself (I am no longer young) and I loved the movie and found it inspiring and really admired and respected Fossey ... but I still got that she was also bonkers - kidnapping poaching village children and scaring them into snitching, staging almost-hangings of poachers and burning their village when they killed her favorite gorilla. She was amazing - but crazy, too. I could understand her craziness and empathize, but not excuse it. The Lone Star Girl was not cool with burning the village, but did not seem to have a problem with the other stuff. She said that Fossey did what she had to do to save the gorillas. I told her the ends never justify the means. She said no one was actually hurt, just scared, and it was necessary to protect the gorillas. I told her she sounded like Donald Rumsfeld ... Dick Cheney ... George Bush. She started to ask me if I wouldn't be willing to scare someone if they had information that was needed to prevent a murder .. I said Guantanamo! Guantanamo Bay!!! She was unmoved.
So much for our Quaker values.
When I expressed my concern to her father, the man who eats beef and complains about the "extra" money I spend to buy green products, he said he thought Fossey had shown remarkable restraint.
Who are these people?
3 comments:
That sounds like The Boy- I have had to explain to him time and again why booby-trapping construction equipment is wrong- it sounds like they;d inherit similar FILs too.
We are in trouble.
I recognize LSG's sentiments. I've gone through bouts of them myself at various points in my life. It is so frustrating to see so much wrong-doing in the world that people get away with that when someone is a bit of a vigilante for the "good guys" (i.e. gorillas), it's tempting to say, "Yeah, yeah, sock 'em!" even when the methods for doing so aren't pure.
We can talk more on email if you like. I don't want to commit to too much in print in a public forum.
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