アメリカの民主主義: コミュニケーション有能への進化(14)

コミュニケーション有能への進化（１４）

アメリカの民主主義

  今月は、メールの引用でお茶を濁させていただきます。これを読むと、アメリカの民主主義が、もともと特定のローカル権力がない場所、ローカル権力の真空地帯に集まった出自の多様な人びとの間で自然に生まれたマナー、自然に生まれた生活方法であることが分かります。そこでアメリカの（というか本物の）民主主義の基盤は、国家など上位権力レベルではなく、具体的なコミュニティにあります。国家権力は、コミュニティにとっての、あくまでも便宜的な機関です。

  民主主義の自然な生成史を持たない日本など多くの国では、権力の観念が古典的に倒錯しています。

  しかし、にもかかわらず、似非社会主義国や中近東のような、粗悪なローカル権力(*)が強大な地域ですら、ヒトの知性の進化は、個人の自由をベースとする民主主義社会を求めます。その希求はまた、グローバライゼーションのざわつきに呼応し、そのざわつきから意思の栄養を得ています。

  （*:粗悪でないローカル権力、というものは存在しません。）

Hi,

I noticed your signature. What are you doing to stop cruelty?

> *stop cruelty* Annual number of euthanized cats&dogs: US 5M, JP 500K.*for our better karma*

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your attention.

Chris Kutler wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I noticed your signature. What are you doing to stop cruelty?

Only a drop in the ocean.

Here is an idea

Have a fund raiser, such as Walk for Animals.

Use the money to have free spade clinics.

Use the money to buy animal traps. Give free t-shirts to people who borrow the traps to trap ferrel cats and bring them in to get spade. Then they can be re-released.

This is an inexpensive say to prevent the creation of animals so that they don't have to be euthanized.

Thanks. May be a good idea.
But, I'm afraid we don't have that skill of fund raising.

Fund raising animal protection organization is something like
an institution. We are mere individuals who have happened to
have become aware of animal issues. There are always five to ten
dogs and twenty to thirty cats in our house and we are looking
for adopters via the net.

The day one or two are adopted, we pick another or two on street.
That's endless !!

Hiroshi,

You do not need to do it on an institutional scale. You can do it for your community or for an area in your community. Maybe you have a friend or know of someone who raises money for a church or a cause. Ask that person for advice.

I had never raised funds before. Then last year a close friend of mine died. She was loved by many so I had a fund raiser to raise money for building a memorial walking bridge. I ran a golf tournament fund raiser and it was very successful. A walk-a-thon would be much easier. Make 100 posters and put them up all over. Ask each person in the walk-a-thon to raise money. I would think that many people would want to do this.

If you only raise money to buy one trap and to spade 10 animals think of how many future animals will not be produced to live a life of misery in the streets. If 10 cats have 5 femail babies each over their lifetime and each of those babies have 5 female babies each and so forth, you will prevent the misery of 1,250 cats within 4 generations.

Adopting stray animals is a very generous thing to do. My dog is an adopted stray. I don't adopt cats because they get run over because we live next to a road where people drive fast. However, there is not enough room or money to save all the animals that way. Better to prevent their birth.

Good luck with your efforts and making people aware of the problem.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the advice.

> trap and to spade 10 animals
Yes. We understand spaying/neutering is the most important. We use
traps leased from a large animal protection organization.

> raise money for building a memorial walking bridge
I have felt the beauty of American grass-roots native democracy, which,
unfortunately our tradition doesn't have.

America was, has been and still is the flagship of the global democracy.

In the nation so advanced, however, why feeble animals' rights to live
aren't valued rightly? They helped our lives in a historical past. I have
this question all the time when I think of US.

with best regards,

Hiroshi,

Although animal rights are not taken care of on the national level, they are taken care of on the local level. That is part of the democratic tradition. We have what is called states rights. What that means is that the government does not dictate to us all the rules. We get to make most of the rules at the state level.

Please know that most communities have locally funded (non-governmental) kennels for stray animals. These kennels do not euthanize the strays.

Also know that many communities provide the traps for catching strays and will spade them for free if you bring them in.

There are also rescue societies that work with the government-run pounds. When the pound gets a dog of a certain breed, they call the rescue society who has a waiting list for that kind of dog. Volunteers take in the dogs until they get adopted.That is how I got my dog. I called the boxer rescue society and they called me whenever they got a new stray. I would travel to someone's house to see the dog. The first time the people decided they wanted to keep the dog, so I had to go twice before I got my dog.

So, Americans really do care