Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

I’m not a hunter. It’s not that I have some moral objection to hunting. That’s not it at all. It’s mostly because I prefer hamburgers to steak, don’t like venison, and prefer animals to most people. Don’t misunderstand: I’m not one of those amoral freaks who’d rather see a landfill overflowing with the corpses of their fellow humans than see one trophy head mounted on someone’s den wall. I just don’t have the heart for it. Makes me kind of a rarity where I live, let me tell you.

So when I tell you that I killed a fox a few months back, that it was a conscious decision, and that I stand by it, I want you to understand what this act meant to me. And why it reminded me so fully just why I’m not, and can never be, a pacifist.

A few of my in-laws raise chickens. As someone who can’t get over the texture of eggs to even begin to appreciate the taste, I don’t get the whole chicken thing, but to each their own. Over a period of days, they’d been infiltrated a few times by a fox who’d get into their yard, at their chickens, and away with his catch with no one the wiser until the next morning.

So, one day, while visiting their house, my sister-in-law looks out a window and sees the offending chicken thief skulking his way through their yard on his way to another prize. For some reason that I still can’t explain, I offered to drop the little bugger. In the drop of a hat, I was outside, my brother-in-law’s rifle in hand, sighting in on the thing. It saw me and started making a slow beeline for me.

Now I’ve been told that when wild animals start coming toward you that it’s a better than average chance that they’re rabid and just giddy at the chance to pass it on. I’m not a smart man, so I’m not at all sure if this is true or not. All I know is that as I gawked down the sights at the thing, it trudged toward me, intent on making my acquaintance.

So, I sighted in on the thing, and once the shakes had passed, I shot it, killed it, and went back inside.

The feelings that tried to overwhelm me then are embarrassing to admit—the shakes and slight nausea—but after all it was the first time I’d ever killed something. Something that had until then done me no personal wrong, but had inflicted financial problems on kin, with the ever-present possibility of biting one of the children that either live in or visit their house. So, for better or worse, it had to go, so go it went.

Understand that I took no inherent joy in the killing of that fox. It may have briefly awakened an apparently natural bloodlust in me that had me looking into local hunting seasons, what I could kill, and how many, but that eventually passed as well, and I can hope that I will never be in a position to take a life again.

Which I suppose gets me to the point. I have no inherent inclination to shoot another human being. It is my sincere hope, as well as my prayer to God, that I am never in a position to do so. But, likewise, if I ever find myself up against it, in a position where the lives of myself or another innocent person are at stake, I hope to God that I have the courage to do what’s necessary.

Because of where I live, and the people that I interact with, I am surrounded by pacifists. So, again, as a non-agressionist, I stand out in these little social circles. Like them, I don’t go out looking for trouble. In fact, if I suspect a place of being somewhere trouble might start, I avoid it unless left with no other choice. But, unlike them, I am not willing—or, indeed, able—to allow myself or someone else to die when to do otherwise is possible.

I have random conversations with my kids about good deaths, mostly in regard to books and movies. In most cases, I use two examples: 1. ) Spock at the end of The Wrath of Khan; and 2. ) literally the entire cast of Meredith’s brilliant and criminally out-of-print We All Died at Breakaway Station. As with so much, I can sum it up Biblically: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)” (A special thanks to Dean Koontz for introducing me to that one in his Watchers, which I read decades before my spiritual awakening. )

See, I do feel that there are things greater than oneself. Without something more important than you, why bother? Completely self-centered folks are generally jerks, and really why give them the time of day? There’s plenty of nice people out there, without having to deal with the wankers.

I look at my kids, each one a miracle and a gift for some good deed that I, for the life of me, can’t remember. I look at them, and know that their secured existence is more important than anything I’ll ever do for myself. If I have to die so that they might live, then so be it. I’ll go to the hereafter with arms open and a grin on my face, knowing that I went out giving them more time.

And that’s why I can’t ever be a pacifist. It’s why I can’t ever look at the world and say, “There’s nothing that would ever make me hurt another human being, or take their life. ” I think it was Charles Askins who said, “Some people just need to be shot. ” It is because of those people, the ones who need to be shot—the pedophiles, rapists, and casually violent monsters that contemporary society seems hellbent on not just defending, but actually excusing—that I cannot be a pacifist. Because there’s literally nothing that I wouldn’t do to keep my children safe, up to and including the laying down of my life or the lives of those that would do harm to the ones that I love most.

I didn’t kill that fox a few months ago because I enjoyed it. I did it because it was something that needed to be done, and I was in a position to do it. Likewise, though I hope to never have to hurt or remove the life from another human being, I will not shy from doing so. Because some folks need to go, and it’s left to the rest of us to see them on their way.