Manners. (I have comprised the writings and teachings of Jesus Christ, William Wilberforce, Mahatmas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr, et al, and
Manners is not to say that God wants us to reform the appropriate times to say "please" and "thank you". But in this case, 'manners'means 'morals.' Basically I am saying that God wants us to lead the fight to redefine what is considered moral- which pads, chains are at this time. We are cognizant of the interrelatedness of all the horse communities and states. We cannot sit idly by in Cookeville, TN and not be concerned about what happens to all the horses around us. As MLKJr. Said "Injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives in the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
In 1999 after our family endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community, we felt that a direct-action program could be delayed no longer.
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling, for negotiation; indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to dramatize the issue that no longer can be ignored.
The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. Too long has our breed lived in a monologue rather than a dialogue. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that the privileged groups seldom give up their privilege voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.In the late 1700's Slavery and The Slave Trade was legal, and considered moral in England, it wasn't just an accepted form of labor- it was an enormous economic force throughout the British Empire. So many people were making so much money on the sale of forced labor that the slave trade was, essentially, the cornerstone of the English economy. "How does this, you ask, relate to our Walking Horses.?" The paradoxical similarities to having horses unnaturally padded, chained and pressure shod for the purpose of showing is an affront to the natural senses of any moral human being.
The Padded Horse industry like slavery is a major economic force in the states that allow this practice to exist, yes, under the law the practice is legal you retort, this is what we want to change.
There are two types of laws: Just and unjust. One has not only a legal but moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. We would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all." Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: "An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just."
Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. We transpose this fundamental belief upon that concept that horses treated in the manner they are with the same type of accoutrement that have been used in past times on humans that degraded those enslaved groups of folks, can only be deemed as degrading and harmful to the horses as well, being one of God's creatures, one would just have to look into the eyes of one of these magnificent animals and watch their body posturing and language to determine that they do not appear to be uplifted by the trappings of the soring, pads and chains.
What is all this just and unjust law stuff have to do with the horses you ponder? The law that says that an owner may stack his horse&'s feet upon 4 inches of pads, and have a large weighted chains dropped upon its pasterns, which everyone knows is not used without the accompaniment of soring agents, which has previously, if not currently being used in his training. Or it has been allowed to show with extremely heavily weighted 10 lbs or more flat shod tungsten steel shoes applied and held on by bands as done with the pressure shod horse. It is not a just law! It is a law of appeasement enacted by the lawmakers to appease a small group of money laden self-indulged groups of powerful and greedy individuals. On its face, the law is an unjust law!
THE HORSE PROTECTION ACT of 1970, is 41 years old...
time to revisit this law and update it to what we now know at this time 2008.
But, you say, "Negotiations are going on right now, groups are talking to each other, a Sound Horse Conference is scheduled, why are you not satisfied with that?" Once again, the approach is wholly inadequate; their approach is to once again try to change, or stated differently,"compromise" with the status quo by the presentation of science and technology, which is not to say that this is all wrong. Science and technology has its place, however, should only be considered as a 'Tool to an adjunct in reforming manners. Conformation, if you will, that supports the question of morality of what is being done.
Until people's hearts are opened to see that what we now accept as legal by the law, is in actuality immoral to natural and moral laws, we will chase our tails round and round, never relieving the problems taken on the backs of the horse.
When, is it ever going be enough? What is going to be considered the cap of acceptance to what we can unnaturally put on these horses? Whereas, instead of adding more to the horse, we advocate a reversal of the status quo of that and say accept less and breed and train for the most and best the horse can do without anything outside the accepted norm for horses by human 'built-up' additions.
This would require our thinking to be so converted to enjoy the natural and honest endeavors of the horse giving its best as it was so blessed with by God to give and not forced into a false engagement as demanded by all the accoutrement nailed onto its feet.
How is the current accepted pads and chains law any different than humans today taking illegal drugs to enhance their sports performance? We call that cheating, we challenge anyone to draw a conclusion that by adding pads, chains or pressuring shoeing is not falsely enhancing a horse's sport performance, thus, this also should be deemed as cheating!
We cannot and should not rely on government interdiction to compel cheaters to remain under a agreed upon level of acceptance in order to remain a 'monitoring agency.' And not becoming a total 'enforcement agency.'
We must confess that over the past few years we have been gravely disappointed with the Walking Horse Moderate. We have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Horses' greatest stumbling block in its stride towards freedom is not the Performance Horse Division people, but theWalking Horse Moderate, who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says:
"I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action" who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Free The Tennessee Walking Horse Advocates to wait for a 'more convenient season.' Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will; lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
We must never accept such laws, ever, our resentment must be always provocative, we wish to embarrass them for making The Horse a slave, and we want to change their minds, not kill them for weaknesses we all possess. We will continue with peaceful, non-violent, exposure till they themselves see the wisdom of abolishment.Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all the ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national and worldwide opinion before it can be cured.
Ecosystem health is often measured by the presence, absence, or abundance of an 'indicator species' in a particular habitat type. An indicator species is a species that has such a narrow range of ecological tolerance that their presence or absence is a good indication of environmental conditions. Their presence does not provide an indication of ecosystem health but a rough indication that the basic ecosystem components necessary to support the species in question are present. We use this 'Keystone Indication Model' to point out that our horses are the keystone indicator of the condition of man's heart.
We watch with nonchalant indifference at all the horses dying from the mysterious and uncontrollable deaths of 'Colic' prevalent in The Padded Horse Division and fail to connect the dots that because of the pads and chains these horses are dying in significant numbers from being trussed up on pads and chains and not allowed to move about as it was naturally designed to do, studies have proven that a horse will walk 10 miles a day grazing, even on a one-acre lot, this to keep the process of peristalsis moving food through its system.
A grazing animal was never been designed to stay sequestered up in a stall.
I draw a nexus that the horse is the indicator of man's hardness of his heart, ignoring the failing of the keystone species to thrive. We must abolish the underlying cause of this failing by abolishing that which hinders its well-being and health.
In closing, we heard a Christian brother tell us "Christians know that the padded, chained and pressure shod horse will eventually receive freedom from its burden, but it is possible that we are in too great of a religious hurry." It has taken Christianity two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth."
Such an attitude stems from the tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can never be used either destructively or constructively.
More and more we feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively that the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes from the tireless efforts of men and women willing to be co-workers with God, and without hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the acknowledgement that the time is always ripe to do the right thing.
We wish to acknowledge some folks that should be commended for initiating the first nonviolent direct action program, raising the alarm of the problems within this breed, at a time when the sacrifice was great and personally extremely dangerous for themselves, their families and property, but without them, who is to say where we would be today. The 'World-Changers' of the cause:
Stephanie Greene, Jennie Jackson, Donna Benefield, Helen Crha, Julie Tranowski, Jacob Israel, Bill Williamson, Ron Wood, Sheila Hershier, Susan Mudge, Tammie West, Cherie Beatty, Angela Nielson-Langdon, Nathanael Jackson and lastly, a fifteen-year-old girl named Natalie Blue Jackson and a magnificent warrior stallion named Champagne Watchout.
One day the Clean, Flat Shod, Sound Moving, Tennessee Walking Horse Movement will recognize its real heroes, Without the above listed folks, we would yet, look back and marvel at our ignorance and wonder.
The Preacher
The Church Of What's Happenin Now!