The legendary military philosopher Sun-Tzu often remarked that if you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. Ohio voters won the first of many battles with radical animal rights activist organization HSUS last fall in the passage of State Issue 2. HSUS announced late last month that they’re back for round two with the filing of language for their own ballot initiative this fall. Allegedly for the benefit of farm animals, the measure would in actuality dictate terms to the newly approved Livestock Care Standards Board.

In other words, HSUS doesn’t want to let the board to do its job.

The role of the new Board, you’ll recall, is to set and enforce standards for Livestock Care in the state of Ohio. Before the Board is even established via the legislative process begun by Issue 2’s passage, however, the radical vegans at HSUS want to force the Board to adopt HSUS-approved standards for animal housing. This is the equivalent of appealing a court case to the Supreme Court before the jury has ever returned a verdict.

To understand why HSUS would do something so unnecessary, one must first understand HSUS. The “Humane Society” of the United States, a Humane Society in name only, alleges that it is the world’s largest animal care organization. If you read the words of its Chief Executive/Lobbyist/Fundraiser/Activist Wayne Pacelle, however, you understand fully that this is a “sophisticated political organization,” that last year championed over 121 new state laws attacking dog breeders, farm families, sportsmen, and hunters. The organization furthermore hosts annual “Humane Lobbying Days” in every state capital to further engage activists in furthering the organization’s sociopolitical agenda of taking meat off your plate, milk out of your refrigerator, and leather out of your closet.

For the skeptic who thinks I protest HSUS too much, I encourage you to read Wayne’s own words with a critical eye. The infamous Saul Alinsky, in his Rules for Radicals, taught his fellow activists to “pick the target, … personalize it, and polarize it.” Case in point: the Center for Consumer Freedom. HSUS is particularly threatened by the Center because it is one of the leading voices declaring the truth about HSUS’ intentions and tactics. Creator of watchdog sites like ActivistCash.org and HumaneWatch.org, the Center tracks where HSUS actually spends its hundreds of millions in donations (hint: it isn’t to help neglected dogs and cats like their ads suggest), and shares the truth about HSUS stated goal of ending animal agriculture in the United States.

This week, Pacelle once again targeted the Center using Alinsky’s 12th rule to target, personalize, and polarize. By targeting the Center’s founder Richard Berman, Pacelle sets up a straw man whom he can personalize and polarize. Berman’s past work as a public relations professional involved work for tobacco giant Phillip Morris. Given the current societal stigma for cigarettes and the tobacco industry in general, you can imagine the slew of insults and invective hurled in Berman’s direction. In fact, in a blog post asking HSUS’ radical supporters to contribute a special $200,000 to attack farm families and the Center, Pacelle offered that “the donor who raises the most in this campaign gets naming rights to one of our animals… It’s my fond hope to be greeted by a wild (donkey) named ‘Rick Berman’ next time I visit the ranch.”

You get the idea how this works: by targeting the Center for Consumer Freedom, personalizing the Center through public relations guru Rick Berman, and smearing him as a champion of “big tobacco,” HSUS deflects criticism of their own radical assault on farm families and your civil liberties. Furthermore, Pacelle does what he does best: raises money. By targeting the Center and Rick Berman, he whips his loyal band of activists into a donor frenzy, and raises money of which he’s already committed at least 50 percent to attacking animal agriculture.

HSUS raises hundreds of millions of dollars annually under the ruse of rescuing neglected pets, or sweeping in to help distressed animals in natural disasters like the Haiti earthquake or Hurricane Katrina. Understand, however, that as with Hurricane Katrina, less than 20 percent of donations to HSUS ever go to helping actual animals. In Louisiana, HSUS raised over $34 million, of which roughly $6 million actually went to help the animals of New Orleans. The rest went toward advancing HSUS’ radical sociopolitical agenda, to raising more money for HSUS’ war chest, and into the pockets of radicals like Wayne Pacelle.