Legislating cruelty -- the origin of the SPCA

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 9, 2008, at 5:48 AM, Joel Berson wrote:

> A reminder of earlier discussion here:
>
> "Thanks to the work of Anita Guerrini, I am aware of early 19th C
> attempts to legislate cruelty to farm animals, the foundation of the
> SPCA in 1824, and the Cruelty to Aniamls [sic] Act of 1876."
>
> Written -- I infer in haste -- by an Associate Professor of English
> at Kent State.

one more:

Narveson: I admit to being of mixed minds about this. I do rather
suspect that cruelty to animals tends to go with cruelty to people,
but that’s a bit of an evasion. In general, though, no: I don’t think
the state may legislate cruelty to animals. I do think such cruelty is
rather sick, and don’t quite understand why it is done when it is
done. But I think it’s up to animal lovers to talk the others out of
such practices, and not for the law to prevent them.

http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/interview-with-jan-narveson/

(Jan Narveson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo
where he has been teaching since 1963. He works mainly in moral and
political philosophy...)

also hits for "legislate hate" 'legislate against hate (in hate crimes
legislation)' (as well as 'further hate by legislation'), "legislate
illegal X" (for various Xs, like "immigration" and "and offensive
content"), "legislate vice", "legislate smoking", "legislate drugs",
and so on.

there are plenty of hits for "legislate X out of existence",
"legislate X away", and the like, which are of course just fine.  that
opens the possibility that some of the plain "legislate X" examples
arose not from P dropping, but from truncation of the adverbial
complement.  not all of the examples are easily subject to this
analysis, however; the Narveson quote, in particular, is resistant.

arnold

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