Social media is going insane over the Minnesota dentist/poacher who paid to have the majestic lion “Cecil” lured from the national park in Zimbabwe so that he could end its life.  What words could possibly exist to describe this piece of human excrement?  None that I can think of are truly descriptive enough, and the ones that first come to mind would make this an x-rated blog.

Now.  First of all, let me clarify that I’m not a big fan of abortion as birth control and as far as the concurrent flap over Planned Parenthood’s apparent side business selling baby parts for Soylent Green or whatever warrants investigation and, if true, is mind boggling-ly immoral.

What makes me want to wrap duct tape around my little philosopher head so that it doesn’t explode are the logical flights of fancy that have taken off on social media. Specifically, the suggestion that because abortion exists and some people don’t care, or because ISIS is beheading humans left and right and we can’t seem to do anything about it, or that little children are being abused and CPS knocks on the door, says hello, marks the paper that an investigation has been done and walks away or (insert your horrific human activity here) that we cannot simultaneously be appalled at what happened in Zimbabwe.  We all have our moral boundaries, mine are not yours, yours are not mine and thus we argue and try to figure it all out and in the meantime people are beheaded and babies are aborted and children are abused.  People rail against those things all the time.  It’s totally irrelevant to the present discussion of poaching. 

We all have our moral hierarchies.  Some things are higher on mine than they are on yours. For example, I would never have dreamed of taking more than one newspaper out of the newspaper box when my kid had his picture in the paper – one quarter equals one newspaper – whereas you might not have a problem with that at all.  I don’t think you have no moral boundaries whatsoever, I just think you’re wrong on that issue.  It doesn’t mean I think you are totally amoral scum who cannot therefore have an opinion on any other moral issue!

The fact that I see the gray area around abortion does not mean I can’t, won’t or worse, SHOULDN’T be steaming mad at the poacher, especially because the jerk paid to have the creature lured off protected land.   It’s just another human moral issue we have to figure out, discuss, solve.

I’ll fight other moral battles tomorrow.  This is today’s battle.  Fight it if you like.  If not, get off the battlefield and go back to your own battlefield.  I’ll be there, if I choose to, when I’m done here.