Bill de Blasio and his Horses
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A new political leader is swept into power. The voters, with their bleeding hearts and gleaming eyes, are ready for change. They want a great leap forward. “Out with the oppressive old, in with the enlightened new,” they declared at the ballot box.
The newly-anointed king has big plans. He wants to reinvigorate the economy. He wants to lift up the downtrodden and cut down those on top. His campaign plan was simple: children will be fed, bums will be housed, and wages will be raised. Under his guidance, the people will rediscover their raison d’être. All will rejoice at the sound of his oratory voice. To this fearless leader, society is one big oyster, ready to be cracked open with the pearl of radical equality waiting to be plucked.
No; I am not referring to U.S. President Barack Obama (though I very well could be). My focus is on the just-crowned Mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio. For a progressive city like the Big Apple, the former ombudsman is a great fit. He is a leftist reformer seemingly hell-bent on helping the town “rise together.” That’s poli-speak for a massive empowerment of the lethargic bureaucracy and government force directed toward the nebulous concept of “social justice.”
So what’s de Blasio’s first order of business as he gets comfortable in the mayoral seat? Any informed observer would guess this agenda entails immediate education reform to cure the city’s ailing schools. But no; Chairman de Blasio has bigger plans. His aim isn’t for ground-level cronyism in the form of union buyoffs (that comes later). Dear Leader will attempt to “lift up” one of Mother Earth’s most vulnerable creatures: the horse.
The Mayor has vowed to ban horse-drawn carriages within the city limits as he finds them “not humane.” In a press conference two days before his inauguration, de Blasio contested the city’s much beloved tradition as “not appropriate to the year 2014.” Animal-rights groups are celebrating the decision. Allie Feldman, the executive director of the beast empowerment group NYClass, calls the upcoming ban “a milestone.” Many celebrities are in support of the prohibition, including the blithely slurring Alec Baldwin.
The hansom cab industry is refusing to allow their livelihood wither away by government decree. A spokeswoman for the Horse and Carriage Association of New York City had some less-than-pathos words for those who want horses off the NYC streets:
“You cannot just get rid of a business, perfectly legal [and] well-regulated … just because a few people don’t like it. If he wants to ban them because they’re dangerous and inhumane, he needs to prove that.”
On its face, the given impetus for banning a New York City heritage that has existed for over a century is nonsensical. Mayor de Blasio seems to think it was perfectly fine to domesticate horses to pull carriages at some unnamed point in the past. But today, his view is that kind of hard labor offends the senses. It’s the same as declaring slavery was once perfectly legitimate but in our compassionate age, it should be immoral. That is to say, de Blasio has no universality in belief. What’s wrong and right changes by the day, and by the whim. Tomorrow he could declare that women suffrage was fitting for the twentieth century, but times have changed and state patriarchy is past due for a roaring return. Regular folks might be puzzled over such logic. But the mayoral thought leader thinks he is far more in tune to the malleability of law. Thus, any moral pondering should first give total deference over to him.
Mayor de Blasio might be lost in his own befuddlement of determining good and bad for 2014, but animal-rights groups at least have an ethos. Rightly or wrongly, shock-groups like PETA are organized around the principle that animals are entitled to the same rights as humans, regardless if they recognize them or not. Any serious inquiry says these misanthropes are wrong; animals do not have the same rights as people. Spending time with a tame and friendly creature reveals a lack of cognition to offer just a second’s worth of rumination on rights natural to themselves. So forgive me for doubting the effectiveness of telling a bear “remember your rights!” as it prepares to maul my body. As the old Rothbard quip goes, “we will recognize the rights of animals whenever they petition for them.”
Just because animals lack the moral agency to be afforded rights doesn’t give free, moral reign to abuse them endlessly. If horses are indeed being mistreated by their keepers, protesting the practice could take many forms. Boycotts, sanctions imposed by street owners, and public ostracization (aka “shaming”) are all alternatives to government prohibition. If de Blasio’s plan to ban horse-drawn carriages goes through, it will only empower his administration while placating the pro-animal vote. From there, it’s only a matter of time before another nanny-state decree emerges.
Unlike drug markets or the sex trade, the banning of the hansom cab industry is unlikely to spark a black market in Clydesdale-guided tours. A horse that’s strong enough to lug an infatuated couple along Central Park is a horse too big to go unnoticed. That means de Blasio’s war on classy travel will eliminate the practice forever from the City that is supposed to have everything. The soft sounds of trotting hooves on cobblestone will be replaced with more car horns and engine idling. If that’s considered more humane, I would hate to see what animal-rights activists think of as “beauty.”
Horses have been used for drudgery since antiquity. They have been weapons in war, partners in farming, vehicles for racing, and aesthetic prizes to be coveted. To believe the steed should now be given certain rights it hasn’t had in all of human history is pure hubris. Bill de Blasio is free to make the case in the court of public opinion; he should not be free to act on it with government authority. Nowhere in the near future are horses likely to come together, claim their rights, and discover a body of law for all to live by. For the time being, they are still property of their owners.
Considering alternative policy proposals, this four-legged distraction is not all that bad. As Reason editor Nick Gillespie writes, “there’s one upside to de Blasio’s Caligulan first action as mayor, it’s that it will forestall the rest of his agenda for a few days or even weeks (here’s hoping).” Once the deed is done however, New Yorkers should keep a close eye on their wallets. All indicators say the Mayor is just getting started.
This article was originally published at the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada.
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