Who's "we"?

This facile piece of intellectual flummery invalidate's the author's essay, as does identifying society with the State, a proposition or rather mere assumption which the author does not even identify, let alone offer any reason or justification for.

The author is also incorrect generalising about

"It wasn't so long ago that Australia, like other countries such as the United States, had a whaling industry that employed many people, yet no one now calls for that trade to be revived."

The Japanese whaling industry calls for whaling to be revived, continued and also expanded.

Modern whaling is also conducted by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling#Whaling_by_country :

- Some in Indonesia

- The Canadian Inuit

- Greenland Inuit

- Iceland

- Norway

- Some in the Philippines

- Some in Russia

And in other countries.

Many of the above want a revival or expansion in whaling.

There seems to be no mention of hostages having their throats cut without being stunned.

Animals should be treated decently, but they are not human beings. Live animal exporting is questionable, but banning greyhound racing is absurd. Greyhounds are the only animals doing what dogs, pack animals, are meant to doing: chasing things with other dogs.

If you want to see real animal cruelty? Go to the Bunya Mountains and look at the results of placing a ban on feeding wild birds.

Ignored is, generations of tourists flocked there just to hand feed wild birds, with the result that the wild bird population exploded and since the ban have virtually starved as the very first foreseeable consequence.

Another example of this green ideology occurred on Fraser Island where the only remaining anywhere pureblood asian wolf (dingo) is to be found!

There was a time when wild horses roamed and provided food for the last remaining, pureblood Asian wolf. In their wisdom, animal activists removed the horses to protect the woodlands!?

Locals took pity and replaced the natural food with bowls of dog food, thus virtually domesticating these fearsome creatures.

Again animal activists got into the act, banned the feeding and then stood back until a child was mauled, then decided they should cull the animals! Why? because it was cruel to let them starve!

Even so starving animals continued to impact negatively on the tourist trade, with dogs taking beached fish of the hook!

What did they expect?

As for the mauled child? The first rule is never run. The second is never try to stare down a dog, but avoid sustained eye contact. The third is, grab something in each hand and point at the sky with them to increase your height in the animal's eye.

Even works on the wild hunting dogs of south africa.

Last but not least, never kneel to put your face level with that of the animal then parody it with growling sounds.

And then we wonder why our pets suddenly turn on a child and chew their face off?

That said, the very worst example of animal cruelty has to be aggressively assertive tails that just want to wag dogs?

Stop it, we've had as much of this diabolically disingenuous activism and folks who give themselves trespass rights no other law abiding citizen has! No wonder this group, to a virtual person, want our guns gone?
Alan B.

The forceful prohibition of unwholesome practices, undermines the ability of individuals to repent and conscientiously avoid those practices.

Prohibition just leaves us in a dull society of latent whale-killers, latent dog-race-watchers, latent cock-fight-watchers, latent slaughterers, latent gamblers, latent druggies. Those tendencies are bound to find new and unforeseen ugly avenues to express themselves through.

Nobody can choose for us to be better persons. Only through our own conscious decision to do good and abstain from evil can our inherent goodness and virtue shine.