My wife recently introduced yet another animal show to me. It's on the National Geographic channel and features a guy in Los Angeles who is the Grizzly Adams of the dog world. Called The Dog Whisperer, Cesar Milian goes around and helps people who have difficulty with their dogs. Whether it's a dog who always pulls at the leash, jumps on people, pees on the carpet, or indulges in many other bad behaviors, Cesar comes onto the scene and magically sets things right. And then he moves on, his work done and leaving appreciation and awe in his wake.

I was watching one show this weekend which featured a lady and her pug. The pug was bad news, always running away, jumping on guests, and barking up a storm. Cesar's main strategy is to use techniques which make the dog see his place in the world, as a follower of the "pack leader" owner. And it works. He ran the lady through some exercises and the dog started to obey. But that isn't what grabbed me about this episode, even though I have two dogs which could benefit from these exercises. It was something he said.

I'll have to paraphrase this because I don't have the episode handy, but Cesar was talking about the owner's attitude toward her dog. She said she felt guilty about certain aspects of the dog's life, to which Cesar pointed out that the animal world has no concept of "guilt." Human beings rationalize things by saying "oh, you've had a hard life so here's an extra bone" or "well, it's OK that the dog runs around because he misses our old home in Florida." But the dog doesn't care about any of that. The dog only sees the ability to get more food or more privileges, and will tailor behavior around that since it gives him an advantage. Darwinism, man...that stuff that is considered unassailable by the Education establishment.

And that got me thinking.

If true, and I actually think Milian's basic point holds, then I think it can be applied to quite a bit more than some pug's behavioral tendencies. For instance, let's take a look at how the Democrats want to handle terrorism (before I would have said the fringe of the Democrat party, but Howard Dean moved this type of thing into their mainstream). We are to bear blame for the attacks upon us, for whatever reason. Instead of furthering the "cycle of violence," in which there is no right party because in the world of moral relativism we're all guilty, we should take the high road, understand the beef our attackers have with us, reach out and talk talk talk with them. After all, we bear guilt for those people wanting to kill us.

In the meantime, our attackers, much like the errant canine in the show, have a worldview where guilt doesn't enter into the equation. The endgame for them is to gain an advantage over us, and if exploiting our guilt gets them one then they will be all for it. They'll come up with reasons we should feel guilty, and we can oblige them by wallowing in it.

Let's take another one. Race relations in the US haven't been as smooth as some would like (but to be fair, they have been and are smoother than in many other places in the world). Without a doubt, slavery was evil, which is why the US ended it. And yes, many black people have suffered. But today much if not all of that has been addressed. And yet look at the race baiters of Jesse Jackson and Al "This Is Not My Suit" Sharpton. Anything those guys can do to get an advantage for their followers, they will do. Use guilt? Heck, they use it by the carload! And now they have a SCOTUS decision that says it's OK to discriminate college admissions based on race.

Or another one. Gays in this country are an extreme minority of the population. Even if we go with the wildly inflated figure of 10%, that still means 90% of this country is straight. And yet check out the political and social influence wielded by that 10%. If 10% of this country believed that electricity was evil, do you think that would ever be treated as mainstream? No. But our society affords gays with influence greatly disproportionate to their number, and still it isn't enough. The current demand is to redefine the basic structure of marriage, with far reaching and serious consequences that are too huge to fully grasp. And how is that being advanced? Because we're made to feel guilty about being "homophobes" if we don't acquiesce. Guilt as a way to gain advantage? I can think of no clearer case.

Earlier I made a comment about Darwinism. Is all of this not social Darwinism at play? Survival of the fittest played out on a sociological stage? I also made a comment about Darwinism in general being treated as fact. Isn't social Darwinism similarly true then? Lefties sure seem to think so. You see this attitude in the rotting stench of some of Teddy Kennedy's speeches...that poverty causes crime, as if a criminal has no free will of his own and is forced to rape and kill little old ladies for his crack habit. The fish is programmed to eat or be eaten, and we are too since humans are no better or worse than that fish. Or is Ingrid Newkirk full of it?

And similarly, is it so out of the pale to think that groups instinctively look for advantages when it comes to survival? That exploiting guilt, a human concept, could be one way to gain that advantage? I understand guilt (I'm a recovering Catholic, after all)...but as public policy, it sucks. I think it's time we started recognizing that and stopped substituting guilt for policy arguments.