“By their words shall you know them, and by their actions shall you judge them.”

The words and the actions of animal rights activists do not lead one to judge them generously.

In June of 2001, I did a horrible thing. I committed an act so vile, so unspeakable, that it has subjected me to everything from death threats to character assassination.

I’ve had objects thrown at my truck. I’ve been accosted in parking lots and threatened. I’ve received e-mailed death threats galore. I’ve been called everything but a child of God.

What was this act?

I published a book.

Misplaced Compassion: The Animal Rights Movement Exposed hasn’t made me a rich man. It will never make the New York Times Bestseller’s list for non-fiction. I didn’t write it for either of those purposes.

I wrote Misplaced Compassion to expose a dangerous agenda, to debunk one of the largest bodies of junk science ever assembled in one place, and to increase public awareness of a “movement” that hides behind a layer of deceit.

“Animal Rights” isn’t about animals. Not at all. It’s about control. It’s about sanctimonious self-righteousness. And not least of all, it’s about hate.

Yes, hate. Radical animal rights advocates do flavor their agendas with hate, and like most radical fringe movements, they do not tolerate dissent, or disagreement.

Here’s a quote from an email I received roughly two weeks after Misplaced Compassion was available:

“Mr. Clark. I hope you die a horrible death from krutzfeld-jacob(sic) disease.”

A few days later the following gem arrived, reproduced verbatim, spelling and grammatical errors intact:

“you are an evil man, i hope someone hunts you with a gun somtime, then your going to know how it feels. people like you should be shot at and chased with hounds until you die of exaustion.”

I’m very open about my love of hunting. Apparently that last anonymous e-mailer picked up on that. But that was only the beginning.

Compassion is of course, the main virtue animal rights supporters claim to possess in greater amounts than the rest of us. They care about animals; they care much more than you or I. They care so much that they feel entitled to dictate to the rest of us.

Of course, when I started promoting Misplaced Compassion on talk radio and on the Internet, the compassion directed towards my person by animal rights advocates became somewhat more, shall we say, enthusiastic.

In November of 2001, I was approached and obliquely threatened by a self-identified “ALF member” outside the Clearchannel radio studios in Englewood.

I’d just done two hours on KOA-AM’s Mike Rosen show, the number one talk radio show in the Denver market. The show went wonderfully; I was originally only scheduled for an hour, Mike asked me to stay for the second hour.

I’m fairly sure the young man waiting in the parking lot when I left the building was not one of the animal rights supporters who called in to the show. But he evidently felt strongly enough to wait for me outside the building. “You’re the animal killer,” he shouted at me as I walked out the studio’s front door. He walked halfway across the parking lot towards me, and shouted another name I won’t repeat here before realizing that I wasn’t about to be intimidated or shouted down.  Indeed, I began to walk faster, closing the gap quickly, ready for action.

After a moment of eye contact, he turned and walked away. But how might he have reacted if I’d been small, elderly, disabled, instead of large, young, healthy, visibly aggressive?

Later that month, a thrown object broke out one of the rear windows of my truck. Over the months to follow, I was the target of crank phone calls, e-mailed death threats, and so on.  It has now been fifteen years since Misplaced Compassion was released, and I still get the occasional hate mail.

Why all the vitriol?

The answer is simple. The animal rights agenda is based on a tissue of lies. Lies I laid bare for the world to see.

They lie when they say they ‘care’ about animals. By their actions shall we know them, after all, and the radical animal rights groups – groups like PeTA and the Humane Society of the United States, with multi-million dollar budgets – do nothing for animals.

Let me state that again, for emphasis.

They do nothing for animals.

They do nothing to help shelter animals find homes. With all of their millions of dollars, they could fund no-kill shelters, at least one in every state. They fund none.

They do nothing to help wildlife. With all of their millions of dollars, they could buy and preserve crucial habitat. They buy none. Hunter’s groups, in fact, completely shame them in this area, preserving vital wildlife habitat to the tune of tens of millions of acres.

They complain about the use of animals in research, but with all their millions, they do nothing to research alternatives. Indeed, they lie when they talk about ‘alternatives’ to the use of animals in research and medicine. The ‘alternatives’ they speak of – cell culture, in vitro testing – use animals as raw materials, even if they do not use them as subjects.

They complain about raising animals for food, but they cheerfully buy fresh fruits and vegetables at the supermarket, ignoring the butcher’s bill of small animals killed in plant agriculture. Rodents and birds in particular are killed en masse for their dinners, but as long as the bodies don’t end up on their vegan plates, they neither worry nor care.

The animal rights movement is overbearing self-righteousness parading as an ethical system, but that Emperor has no clothes, and the wrath of animal rights supporters is quick to lash at any who would point out their ethical nudity.

In early December 2001, my address and phone number were published briefly on a Yahoo animal rights message board. Yahoo pulled the post in accordance with their Terms of Service, but several hours had elapsed. In December of 2001 and January 2002, I received a series of phone calls, usually a few moments of silence followed by a hang-up. A couple of times I heard someone breathing, and in a couple other calls, someone shouted “murderer” before hanging up.

Harmless pranks? Maybe. Maybe not. People ‘case’ homes that way prior to break-ins. I started keeping a loaded .45 in my nightstand, and carrying a revolver in my truck. The calls continued for a period of several weeks. No break-ins were attempted, but I – and my family – remain vigilant, even to this day.

In Misplaced Compassion I outlined the four major character traits that, in twenty years of debate, I have learned are present to some degree in all animal rights advocates. Those four traits are:

• Misplaced Compassion
• Intellectual Laziness
• Denial
• Arrogance

While you see the first three when you engage animal rights supporters in debate – as I’ve done on radio shows, newspapers, the Internet and in person – it was the last that was displayed in wild abandon when Misplaced Compassion saw press.

And that’s the difference between supporters of totalitarian agendas – like animal right – and their opponents on the side of free society. It’s a hallmark of totalitarians that they will freely resort to threats, to violence, to silence their opponents.

By their words shall you know them, and by their actions shall you judge them.

Compassion? Or control?

You decide.