Last night after my wife went to bed, I began to watch the movie “Gladiator” again. I’ve seen it many times before, but in light of the book I’ve been recently reading, I was impressed by one very simple moment early in the story in a whole new way.

In that scene, the lead character “General Maximus” notices a small bird perched on a branch not far from him just before his final battle as a general of the Roman Army. The bird notices him, also, and they look at each other for several seconds without any comment or action before the bird flies away.

As I watched that scene, several ideas presented themselves to me.

1. Wild animals do not care about nations, religions, or political ideologies. They go where they will, do what they will, and have survived for aeons despite our best efforts to ruin the planet. No bird has to apply for a visa to enter a new country. No wolf has to explain to a government why it won’t remarry after it’s 1st spouse is killed. No bear ever had to apply for a license to catch fish for it’s cubs.
2. Modern society almost never thinks about the welfare of any part of nature, and even when it does it either over reacts or discounts it entirely. We should learn to view ourselves as participants in nature, not the masters of it. We cannot survive by destroying the natural resources that provide the elements of survival we require – earth, air, fire, water – and FOOD.
3. I’m well aware that many liberals would denounce the consumption of meat on numerous different principles – but there are things they have never addressed which are more compelling than all other arguments (imho). The prevailing theories of evolution state that we would have never developed the brain capacity to solve problems at the level we have if we had not begun to eat meat long ago. Will we continue to have such mental capacity if we stop eating meats? Also, our dental development is uniquely suited to both eating meat and vegetables, and finally, NO animal with both a small and large intestine is a vegetarian.