Taking

 Earlier this summer, the Trump administration decided that the word "harm" in the Endangered Species Act doesn't include destroying endangered animals' habitats so as to render their conditions of life untenable. 

We know this, apparently, thanks to a handy canon of statutory interpretation, "noscitur a sociis," which tells us that "harm" must mean something like the words that surround it in the statute, such as "take," "capture," "kill," etc. 

For this purpose, we handily ignore another canon of statutory interpretation, the "canon against surplussage," which tells us, to the contrary, that words cannot mean the same thing as the words around them, but rather each must add something new. 

I have every confidence in the Trump administration's legal abilities that if they needed to remember this other canon for purposes of weakening or eliminating endangered species protections, they would have been able to call it to mind. 

Now, most recently, the administration has come out with another, even more radical reinterpretation of the Endangered Species Act. 

Now, they tell us that the word "take" in the statute also has a novel and hitherto-unsuspected meaning. It apparently refers only to "taking" with conscious intent—a sort of mens rea standard—and has nothing to do at all with the inadvertent killing of animals in the course of doing business. 

The foreseeable result of this will be that most industries no longer have to take any affirmative or proactive steps to ensure their activities will be safe for endangered animals. 

Evidently, there is something about disregard for human rights that gradually teaches disregard for animal rights as well. 

Donald Trump got up in front of the United Nations earlier this week, after all, and declared to the world the principle of might makes right. He said, in so many words, he can invade and attack any country he wishes, and take their stuff. 

"To the victor belong the spoils," he said. 

(How's that for "taking"? Trump's open thievery of Venezuela's oil reserves would meet even his administration's own new mens rea standard.)

The principle of imperialism against other human communities has—throughout modern history—included as well an unstated corollary or proviso of unbridled imperialism and pillaging of animal habitats and lives and resources as well. 

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt observed this well in his "Satan Absolved." This great dramatic poem not only condemns British imperialism for laying waste to human populations around the globe—but also for driving many non-human species to extinction. 

From the deep Central Seas

To the white Poles, Man ruleth pitiless Lord of these,

And daily he destroyeth. The great whales he driveth

Beneath the northern ice, and quarter none he giveth,

Who perish there of wounds in their huge agony.

He presseth the white bear on the white frozen sea

And slaughtereth for his pastime. [...]

In every land he slayeth.

Mark Twain noticed the same parallel in his Following the Equator—the extermination of other human communities comes alongside the extermination of animal species, in the modern age of imperialism. 

As he writes of the Australian dingo: 

The dingo is not an importation; he was present in great force when the whites first came to the continent. It may be that he is the oldest dog in the universe; his origin, his descent, the place where his ancestors first appeared, are as unknown and as untraceable as are the camel’s. He is the most precious dog in the world, for he does not bark. But in an evil hour he got to raiding the sheep-runs to appease his hunger, and that sealed his doom. He is hunted, now, just as if he were a wolf. He has been sentenced to extermination, and the sentence will be carried out. This is all right, and not objectionable. The world was made for man—the white man.

Shortly above this, Twain similarly ironizes about the likely future fate of a bird known as the "laughing jackass":

It is an odd-looking bird, with a head and beak that are much too large for its body. In time man will exterminate the rest of the wild creatures of Australia, but this one will probably survive, for man is his friend and lets him alone. Man always has a good reason for his charities towards wild things, human or animal when he has any. In this case the bird is spared because he kills snakes. If L. J. will take my advice he will not kill all of them.

Our own imperialist government too reserves its "charities" for reasons of very evident self-interest. So far, it has bombed, invaded, or deployed troops in Iran, Venezuela, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, and Ecuador in just the past year-and-a-half, and has imposed a starvation blockade over Cuba. 

If it hasn't yet invaded still others, we can rest assured the reason is not one of pure altruism. 

Seen in this light, the administration's persistent effort to eliminate any lingering federal regulatory protections for endangered animals is perfectly consistent. 

In Trump's view, the world was made for him. Other animal species and human communities are here for his purposes. If they are useful to him, they can be allowed to live. If not, what are they for but to be consumed? 

"If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take/He would take it, ask for more, and eat them all," to quote the poet John Davidson. 

How's that for "taking"?

Trump's foreign policy doctrine seems to be that of the speaker in Randy Newman's song "Political Science." In other words, other people exist to be useful to America. They can be permitted to exist, like the "Laughing Jackass," if they can prove their utility. 

Otherwise, they are slated for elimination. 

As a character in Robert Tressell ironizes: "Some of you seem to think that it was a great mistake on God’s part to make so many foreigners. You ought to hold a mass meeting about it: pass a resolution something like this: 'This meeting of British Christians hereby indignantly protests against the action of the Supreme Being in having created so many foreigners, and calls upon him to forthwith rain down fire, brimstone and mighty rocks upon the heads of all those Philistines, so that they may be utterly exterminated from the face of the earth[.']"

Tressell's protagonist was kidding when he said this. So was Twain, in his sarcastic remark about the world belonging to man. So was Newman, when the speaker in his song talks about "dropping the big one." 

But... perhaps we shouldn't give Trump any ideas.