AN ADMITTED "CONSERVATIVE" DEFENDS ANIMAL RIGHTS

Matthew Scully is a former special assistant and senior speechwriter to President George W. Bush. He said in the Introduction to this 2002 book, "Dominion... today requires our concentrated moral consideration, and I have tried in the pages that follow to give it mine... Where we find wrongs done to animals, it is no excuse to say that more important wrongs are done to human beings, and let us concentrate on those. A wrong is a wrong... I hope that more of us might pass from moral discomfort to moral conviction... leading over time to legal reforms... [If] a spirit of kindness and clemency toward animals is stirring in the world, I hope with this book to encourage it." (Pg. xii-xiii)

He admits, "I suppose I am an unlikely friend to the animals advocates of our day in that I count myself a conservative, and conservatives tend to view the subject with suspicion. But the whole matter can also be understood within the conservative's own moral vocabulary of ordered liberty and abuse of power." (Pg. 24) Later, he adds, "conservatives above all should see in modern dominion the eternal question of earthly power and its abuses, the corruption to which any power in the hands of man is prone... Conservatives are wary of environmentalism and its more radical strains of nature-worship. They would do well, however, to examine their ... laissez-faire outlook toward animals and where it sometimes leads." (Pg. 101-102)

He repudiates the beliefs and actions of groups such as the Safari Club: "...something has gone horribly wrong, something involving our own human dignity every bit as much as the animals'... it's just beyond belief... the pornography of bloodlust..." (Pg. 88) He adds, "Nothing supports dominion, Safari Club-style, in the New Testament, either. Never do we hear the Lord say, 'Kill this in remembrance of me.' His is a quite different message... In his own words I detect only a theme of gentleness..." (Pg. 95)

He asserts, "I could hardly care less whether any formal doctrine or theory can be adduced for these creatures. There are moments when you do not need doctrines, when even rights become irrelevant, when life demands some basic response of fellow-feeling and mercy and love." (Pg. 287) He suggests, "This principle of treating natural equals equally is... in the tradition of our own laws, the rational basis for the legal protections we place upon human life, too." (Pg. 310) He observes, "Nor must one be a scientist to know that something has gone seriously wrong, any more than one must be a farmer to know that veal crates are cruel or a skilled marksman to know that canned hunting is cowardly." (Pg. 377)

Progressives will be pleased with Scully's book, and conservatives not inclined toward sympathy with animals should also give it thoughtful consideration.

Some chapters in this book are captivating -- particularly the author's research into the Safari Club and the world of big game trophy hunting. Great investigative journalism. But then he juxtaposed a few of these chapters (including another good discussion about whale hunting) with discussions into animal rights which focus on an attack of Professor Singer's animal rights perspective and fail to offer his own cogent theory of animal rights or welfare. I felt that the author had several ideas for books and meshed them together -- fairly unsuccessfully -- in this book. He should stick to reporting and recognize that he is not a gifted philosopher or ethicist. He is clearly trying to live an ethical life within a fairly conservative religious backdrop, and so maybe for those who've never encountered the breadth of animal rights philosophies, this could offer a compelling view. But I found his arguments fairly weak and disconnected.

This book deserves four stars for bringing animal issues to conservatives. He persuasively demonstrates that conservatism is not at all inconsistent with caring for animals. This book is also accessible and practical, setting out thoughtful recommendations of how to protect animals through law.

Why not five stars? The first reason is his writing style. It is flowery and ornate, which becomes frustrating after a while. It is often sarcastic. And it is littered with sexism: man does this, man does that, etc. Why insist on this anachronistic language when it would be just as easy to replace "man" with "humans" or "persons" or "humankind"? The second reason is that he skims over important issues, such as his summary dismissal of moral relativism and his inadequate defense of natural law moral theory.

Despite these problems, it is an excellent book for people who are new to the issue of animal protection. Nobody could read this book and still think that to be concerned about animal welfare is to be a fringe extremist.

Dominion is an excellent read and so far my favorite in the genre of making a case for animal rights. Matthew Scully is an unexpected voice for animals--he is a conservative, a Catholic, and a speechwriter for many republicans including President George W. Bush. He is the first person to admit that his party does not always do the best job of reflecting his politics when it comes to animals--and he is not shy about calling out specific names either. Perhaps this is why I like the book so much--because he brings a different political orientation and point of view to the table that is sparse to begin with but is primarily stocked by progressive voices like Peter Singer. You get the feeling with some of these works that there is a lot of "preaching to the choir" going on, but in Dominion we know (partly because the author tells us) that many of the statesmen he admires most have poor records when it comes to securing rights and detailing what our obligations to animals are.

Scully devotes a good portion of the book into articulating the legal, ethical, and moral issues around humane treatment of animals and I must admit that while I am interested in the legal aspects of the issue, a lot of this seems pretty commonsense. I don't need or require several chapters devoted to trying to really answer the question once and for all, do animals feel pain. Sentience, consciousness, and all the rest may be possessed by animals to a greater or lessor degree, but having grown up around lots of different animals my whole life in an agricultural community I have no doubt that they do feel pain. And Scully ultimately arrives at the same conclusion but he does so after thoroughly explicating some of the more commonly invoked views on the question of whether animals suffer or not, which is really useful to many a reader approaching this issue for the first time.

I take it as a given that we have certain moral obligations to animals just as we do to people. It seems very clear to me that certain practices animals undergo everyday are barbaric, cruel, unnecesarry and should cease immediately. That is my personal conviction but whether or not there is a good case to be made for enacting laws that give specific protections to animals is a different issue and any compelling case must be made on equally compelling legal grounds. Peter Singer's Animal Liberation is one of the first books to do so, and Singer does an excellent job within the ethical (as opposed to moral) framework he is working in. In Dominion, Matthew Scully also attempts to make a case for the enactment of specific regulations and he does so by invoking Natural Law--something that was surprising and appealing to me.

Dominion is a tough read--who wants to have some of these gruesome facts staring at them from the page?-- and many will think that the issue does not deserve the time and attention of a whole entire book much less several of them. I disagree and I think that what the book drives home most clearly is that they way in which we see and treat animals says something about the way that we live as people and treat one another. If we are not able to show mercy to our fellow creatures, how are we to show it to one another?

The book was written several years ago, so some of the legislation mentioned is a little out of date, and we are seeing a revival of the small, humane, American farm which means a revival of better standards for livestock animals as well. All in all though the book serves as a useful, intelligently written, and meticulously researched case for ending needless suffering.

I was open to being persuaded. But Scully's sarcastic, tendentious screed didn't do the job. I hope I find a better spokesman for the cause. I'm still open to being persuaded.

DNF- disappointed to not have liked this book, just too much god theory for me, I read the first part and the hunting chapter.

I’ve read countless books since becoming vegan in speciesism, animal agriculture and animal exploitation and this is the only one I haven’t read in entirety

The investigative journalism was great, I learned a lot in the hunting chapter but overall this book wasn’t for me, for that reason I have given it 2 stars even though I didn’t finish it

I appreciated the strong sentimentality the writer has towards animals, and I found his arguments and facts emotionally persuasive. I don't think the book needed to be 400 pages though, and I found myself flipping forward in repetitive "we can't just treat animals like this" sections. The parts that dealt with faith were fairly cursory. For a far more condensed read, I preferred The Lives of Animals by J M Coetzee. My main paradigm shift was how, to animals, we must appear like gods- but are we kind gods?

One of the most beautiful books I've ever read. Highly recommended.

A book about animal rights, but told from the perspective of a Catholic, rather than from the traditional utilitarian view we're so familiar with. The book meanders a bit, his style is a bit too chatty (he was George W. Bush's speechwriter in 2000, and I'm not sure I'm into that particular style.) He spends an awful lot of time talking about whale hunting and the safari club, and relatively little time on factory farming.

Still, it's nice to read a book from Christian perspective that affirms our moral obligation to treat animals with compassion and concern. He doesn't argue that we have no right at all to use animals; he simply argues that our utter, complete unconcern for their welfare is unconscionable.

I wasn't sure if I was going to like this book since I already knew it was written from a religious and conservative perspective. There were some chapters that were pretty long and I just had skim through them to get to the end. For the most part, I learned a lot due to the in-depth and thorough treatment ... the chapters on hunting and whaling were very eye-opening. It is good to know that mercy and compassion are not bound by religion or political party boundaries.

Matthew Scully makes a powerful case for animal welfare from a conservative Christian perspective.

The best book, and by far the hardest I've read in 2024. It challenges the morality of basic facts of life that the majority of us overlook, take for granted, or willingly ignore. Calling things by their proper name, Scully challenges us to look in the mirror and see if we are willing to accept what we see, or if we don't, will we have the strength to actually change anything besides shudder. Do we even dare look in the mirror?

Heavily drawing on Christian scripture, the books overly religious focus was challenging for me, but ultimately all of the arguments go back to basic logical and moral arguments.

It is a very well researched book, and in the 20 years since it was published, the general trends it highlights seem to have mostly gotten worse, thus the call to action to be aware is ever more relevant.

Highly recommended, but it is a very hard read. Possibly a life changing one. Not for the faint of heart, but for the strong of character.

For other INSEADers on my feed: I am wondering how much our "Force for Good" is actually working for good post reading this, or instead are many of our community perpetuating and extending this evil to the best of our well trained business optimization abilities?