http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_n6_v60/ai_18311896Obama has a massive popular mandate, even without the mass of disappeared votes, so maybe.... If you look at recent history, with the growth of genuine democracies - populism! - whenever it has occurred, the people have driven our societies towards greater humanity.
Big-game hunting in Africa and India is mainly, if not exclusively, now, the preserve of poachers. Most poorer people don't want animals used as guinea-pigs even for medical purposes; they want the animal concentration camps we call factory-farms closed down, or coverted into more humane environments for the fowl.
Fox-hunting is dying hard in this country because some of our toffs still don't really understand the meaning of the term "parliamentary democracy". Thing is, the toffs are a bit like farmers - they were brought up with it. I remember watching my grandfather holding a chicken upside down by its legs and swinging it a little, having cut the inside of its throat with a penknife, to bleed it to death, and begging him not to. And he was such a kind, old guy, in reality. But he'd been a farmer all his life.
Personally, I'd prefer to be a vegetarian, but being married, it wouldn't be really practicable or all that kind to my wife. Then again, the whole issue is fraught with difficulties. We scoff at vegans, but my mother said it was pitiful to hear cows lowing when their calves had been taken from them. A vegetarian diet is said to be healthy, and, well, Shadrach, Mesach and Abed-nego sure thrived on it.
I've strayed from concern for human beings to concern for animals, but they say cruelty to the latter is often a precursor of the former.