Recently, Bill Maher, the TV host and comedian and a board member of the People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals (PETA), joined,  the controversy over the New York Carriage Horses. In an op-ed piece, he accused actor Liam Neeson of supporting the abuse of horses by defending the carriage trade.  New York City, he wrote, is no place for horses.

In the now familiar liturgy of the animal rights movement, Maher urged us to “just look at horses running joyfully and free in a pasture to see how these complex animals were meant to live. Then look at the sad life of the horses doomed to lug carriages in congested Manhattan and forced to live in tiny stalls with no room to roam free. I love New York, but it’s no place for a horse.”

Bill Maher, like many of his fellow animal rights activists, is not looking for a dialogue, or even a debate. He also refuses to visit the horse stables or meet or speak with the drivers or carriage owners, suggesting that it a transparent ploy to mislead the public.

In recent years, animal rights have become a favorite social cause for Hollywood personalities, many have donated tens of millions of dollars to PETA and put the animal rights movement at the center of many new controversies about the future of animals. PETA has helped polarize the animal world in much the same way extreme political groups and blogs have polarized Washington.

Maher’s comments are important and revealing, they offer a window into the real issues involved in this conflict, an opportunity for many of us to try and have the discussion about animals in our world  that the mayor of New York and the animal rights activists there refuse to have. Maher writes in the all-too-familiar voice of righteousness and arrogance that has sadly come to characterize the modern animal rights movement. No room for civil disagreement there, no consideration of other points of view.

Maher also says a number of things that suggest his outrage is not informed by any real knowledge of horses, their history, or the things they actually need and want. First, he seems not to know the difference between wild horses and domesticated working animals.

The New York Carriage horses are roaming all day, on the streets, in the park.  That is their work. They are in their stables whenever they are not working, and if you have ever been to a horse rescue farm, it would be clear  that the New York horses get to move about as much or more as most horses anywhere. Work horses have always been stalled, otherwise, they will often harm each other fighting for food, and they are so large few pastures can accommodate them. They do not run joyously, they work eagerly. In the park, they get exercise, fresh air and the constant company of other horses. They do not need to seek food or shelter, medical care is readily available.

In animals terms, it is a very good life.

Horses are not all alike, wild ponies are different from draft horses, race horses different from carriage horses.

Working animals approach work just as eagerly as horses in pastures approach running through the grass. When I and many others do go to the stables, I see animals that are excited and eager to do what they have been bred and taught for centuries to do, because they are calm and still, and sometimes lower their heads or lift their hocks, it does not mean they are “sad” – a meaningless term in any case  when it comes to prey animals, who seek safety and sustenance, not human fantasies about life.

Let’s de-construct Maher’s comments, they go to the heart of the future of the horses in New York City, and perhaps the future of animals in our world as well.

– I wonder exactly what pastures Maher is looking at when he describes the horses running joyfully and freely. There is no wild left in America, and the ponies who used to populate the American wilderness are all gone, slaughtered a century ago because human beings had no work for them to do. If they were pulling carriages in New York City, they would almost surely be alive today, getting fresh food and shelter and living 18 to 20 years, as the carriage horses do. Maher sees the horses as complex, but I’m not sure what he means. The carriage horses do not seem especially complex to me.

The needs of horses are comparatively simple, their history clear. They like fresh water, food, exercise, work and the company of people and other horses. They do not need to explore the outer boundaries of the world or play chess or cards together. Pastures can be quite boring and unhealthy for animals used to work and stimulation.

There is this idea in the animal rights world that animals must live in paradise, and that paradise is nearby and ready to receive them. Horse rescue farms all over the country, desperate for money and shutting down. Many are overwhelmed with abandoned and truly abused horses – 150,000 go to slaughter each year in America and there precious few wild pastures for large work and draft horses to roam freely. PETA and the mayor of New York City would send the 200 plus carriage horses out into this maelstrom in order to save them from the horrors of working in New York City, where many millions of human beings and dogs work every day.

It is easy enough to invoke the “pasture” where animals run free, it is not easy to find them for big horses.

These draft horses in New York City eat an average of three to four bales of hay a day, the idea that the rescue system will suddenly absorb more than 200 of them for the rest of their lives – at a cost of many millions of dollars –  is simply astonishing to anyone who knows much about horse rescue right now. Many of these horses will be sacrificed in order to be saved.

Who needs rescue? If PETA were paying attention, they might devote their resources to horses that are in trouble, not to horses that are not. Abused horses are abandoned on country roads, neglected on struggling farms, they are starved, riddled with disease, suffering from sores and infections. The New York Carriage Horses, with rare exceptions, are healthy, fed good fed, sheltered in heat and air-conditioning, inspected regularly and given good medical care. That is not true of many horses in America. Even if you accept the idea that New York is not the most hospitable environment in the world for animals – it isn’t for people either – that does not constitute cruelty or abuse, it does not justify banning animals from the city forever, any more than it would for dogs.

So many animals in America are truly being abused, it is simply stunning to see so much time and money spend on horses that are appreciated, busy, profitable and cared for. And healthy, according to the five agencies that supervise them.  There is simply no common sense or respect for reality in this movement to ban the horses in New York City. NYClass has spent a half-million dollars building a prototype for the ugly vintage cars they intend to replace the horses with. Think of how many truly abused horses that money could save.

If Maher followed his horse history – I recommend “Horses At Work: Harnessing Power In Industrial America,” by Ann Norton Green –  he might know that the draft and work horses that pull carriages in New York have never roamed the wild or lived freely in pastures. They were imported to America from Europe to haul things, pull carts and carriages and goods – to work. They were bred for it, and they need work to be healthy and fit.  They did a great job, and they still work hard for people and give pleasure to many. They literally helped build New York. They have no instincts for life in the wild and would not last long there – they are much too big and slow.

Maher’s notion of the wild might make sense in Hollywood, it does not anywhere else. In New York, the animal rights demonstrators and spokespeople often evoke the “wild,” as if it were truly an alternative for the horses.  The evidence suggests – overwhelmingly, and from many sources – that the New York Carriage horses work quite contentedly,  just as contentedly as Maher’s mythical horses in the open pasture. It is what they are conditioned to do – not spent their lives foraging for grass and dropping manure.

Horses in the wild do not live perfect lives of joy and freedom. They fight with, even kill one another, they are subject to the elements, to bitter cold and heat without shelter, to predators, hunters, disease, starvation, poison, human development and infection. They do not live half as long as the New York Carriage Horses do.

Of all the animals in the world, say the authors of “Horses At Work,” draft horses are the best suited by temperament and genetics to be in cities. Work is the foundation of their life, health, breeding and survival in the world. In fact, Central Park was built in part for the carriage horses – “Central Park: An American Masterpiece,” by Sarah Cedar Miller – they have as much right to be there as the people living in apartments in Brooklyn or celebrities in Hollywood trying to banish them.

In his writings about the carriage horses, Maher cites the case of Blondie, a carriage horse whose driver was arrested after he worked her for several days despite her having a foot infection. He cites the case – the only arrest of a carriage horse driver for neglect in a century, as reason to ban the horses from New York.  The driver lost his license, Blondie is well and and back at work. Does Maher really not know, I wonder, that Blondie would be dead if she had this infection in the “wild,” there would be no police officer to notice her limping, no vet on call to come and treat her hooves? Is the system failing, or is it working?

The carriage horses live longer than animals in the wild, are much healthier, they get five weeks of vacation a year, and are among the most regulated animals in the world.

The Department of Health, which oversees the horses, has repeatedly reported that they are healthy, well-cared for and safe. There is no evidence of any kind that the horses are suffering any affects from working in New York City.

– Maher believes anyone who supports the carriage horses – he seems intent on abusing Liam Neeson to make his point –  in New York is supporting abuse. This idea of abuse, like the “wild,” has also been emotionalized and distorted beyond reason or reality.

When Maher talks about abuse, or when the mayor does, or when the founder of NYClass, the group spearheading the carriage horse ban does, they are  simply expressing their own personal notion of how a horse ought to live. They have as much right to do that as I do, or anyone else does. But it is just an opinion, mostly from people who do not have horses or know much about them. It is not the law, or grounded in any kind of behavioral theory or science. It came right out of the urban political climate, not the world of horses.

Abuse is a legal notion, not a crime, opinion, or argument.

Abuse occurs when animals suffer extremely, or are severely injured, even killed, as the result of neglect and mistreatment that is cruel or unnecessary. Abuse has nothing to do with whether horses ought to pull carriages in New York or not, no government jurisdiction in America defines abuse as occurring because horses do not look like they  live joyfully in the mind of someone with no experience or training in animal welfare or behavior.

According to the Legal Dictionary, cruelty to animals is “the crime of inflicting physical pain, suffering or death on an animal, usually a tame one, beyond necessity for normal discipline. It can include neglect that is so monstrous (withholding food and water) that the animal has suffered, died or been put in imminent danger of death.”

This definition does not apply in any way to the New York Carriage horses, not a single one has been neglected or had food or water withheld to the point that they have greatly suffered or been in imminent danger of death. There were more than 4,000 cases of animal cruelty reported to the authorities in New York City last year, not a single one was directed at the carriage trade.

People who do know about horses – the famous author and trainer Buck Brannaman for one, the inspiration for Robert Redford’s “Horse Whisperer,” has written that pulling carriages in New York is not abusive, it a proper and fitting thing for draft horses to do. It is good and light and healthy exercise for them, he has written, and pulling light carriages with rubber wheels over flat ground- asphalt – is not hard work for working horses. Brannaman is a well-known advocate for the compassionate treatment of horses, even PETA has not dared to after him.  I know of no reputable veterinarian or behaviorists or horse trainer who believes pulling carriages in New York City is tantamount to abuse for the working horses there, or for working animals anywhere.

This idea of work as abuse is largely the invention in recent years of animal rights activists working outside the animal world, beyond the law or conventional regulatory strictures. It is  about people like Bill Maher waking up one morning or going to a PETA board meeting or going to a Hollywood cocktail party  and redefining abuse while arbitrarily deciding that horses ought to live differently than they have lived for thousands of years, and that the lives horses have lived for thousands of years is not to be considered cruel, the horses banned from human contact and isolated to rescue ghettos, where they will never been seen.

It is simply no more than a new idea from people with little understanding of the real lives of real animals.  It seems difficult for me to understand how a city government can justify putting hundreds of people out of work for that and removing the horses from our world.

-The mayor of New York and his supporters in the animal rights movement do not believe in debate or public discussion, they seem to make their decisions in private, or at fund-raising dinners, almost never in the open. If I were to sit with Bill Maher, one of the things I would ask him is why, of all the the living things in New York City, only horses are unfit for life there? Standing in Central Park recently, I saw all kinds of living things walk around – kids, tourists, elderly people, dogs, cats, rabbits,  commuters, joggers, boarders, walkers. If the city is an unfit environment for horses, can it be a good environment for children? The elderly?

The year before last, two children were killed in Central Park by falling trees. That means people are twice as likely to be hurt by trees in Central Park than horses. Truth is important, perspective matters.

Can it really be that of all the things that live in New York, only horses have to be banished from the city because it is not safe for them?

“I follow the horse-drawn carriage debate closely,” wrote Maher in his op-ed piece. “That’s why I challenge the fairy tales about how happy the horses must be to dodge buses and taxis, with their noses in exhaust pipes day after day, under the blazing sun.” But there is no debate to follow, only raging arguments and accusations, the kind Maher himself makes. The carriage trade owners are begging for a debate, but no one – Maher included – will join them in having one. He doesn’t need a “white glove” tour of the stables, he sniffs.

I’m not sure what the fairy tales are here that Maher is talking about? Horses joyfully roaming the wild in those pastures maybe?

The carriage horses don’t work in the blazing sun, they cannot work in temperatures over 89 degrees.  Many horses, mules and donkeys do work in the blazing sun, and all over the world,  they have for centuries.

There are no reports of any respiratory problems among the carriage horses, and they walk alongside of buses and taxis, I have never seen them dodging any. Are we really to believe that it’s okay for children to have their noses in exhaust pipes every single day in New York, but that the horses are too sad and fragile to survive it? And what, precisely, does Maher mean by “happy?” Is it his anthropomorphisizing belief that these horses are pining for the Old West, which they have never seen and where they have never been? Or are they, more likely, to be waiting for their oats and water and fresh hay back in the stables?

Maher does not seem to understand or know much about horses,  nor does he seem to care much about facts. “One horse toppled in his carriage when he was side-swiped by a bus,” he wrote, “ruining an otherwise beautiful evening for people visiting Central Park.” It’s a disturbing parable, a fairy tale of emotional manipulation.

But there is not one single thing about Maher’s description of the incident involving a horse named Spartacus that is true. The wheels of one carriage got tangled with the wheels of another and Spartacus fell over. He was on the ground for about two minutes, then he was helped up, no person or animal was injured. There was no bus involved in the incident or anywhere nearby, according to police and the city’s Transit Authority, and the incident did not occur in the park, but in a plaza across from Fifth Avenue. It was not in the evening, but early afternoon, no one’s visit to the Park was affected in any way, in fact, scores of people took carriage rides in the park that afternoon and evening.

Why, I wonder, should people accept Maher’s assertion that the horses in New York are being treated cruelly when he cannot get one single fact straight about an incident in New York City that hundreds, even thousands, of people witnessed for themselves?

Maher’s notion of horse welfare in modern New York is also lacking in any historical awareness. New York City is a far safer and better place for the horses  than it was a century ago. There were no paved streets or traffic police then, horses died in collisions, fell into potholes, keeled over from exhaustion, they were attacked by rats and wolves, walked in sewage, dust and lived in filth, tormented by flies and insects, threatened by fire and raging disease.

Thousands died every year in New York City, many simply were left to die where they fell, their bodies picked apart by dogs and rodents. The carriage horses live good lives today, they are intensely regulated. They are safer and healthier in New York City than they have ever been.

It is important to note two relevant statistics – facts, not arguments. Several horses were involved in minor “spooking” incidents in the past several years – none were hurt, nor were any people. This out of millions of rides. Last year alone, more than 15,000 New Yorkers were injured in collisions of one kind or another. Statistically, horses are much calmer in the city than dogs, who bite thousands of New Yorkers each year, often severely.

The horses are  being exploited – by politicians, private organizations and individuals using them for political gain and to raise enormous amounts of money, celebrities looking for a trendy cause. My wish for the New York Carriage horses is that they provoke a true national discussion about the future of animals in America. I believe this is what the horses are calling upon us to do. New York City is the perfect place for this kind of dialogue. They need to remain in New York City, it is right for them and for the people who come there to visit and live there.

The mayor of New York and the people who call themselves supporters of animal rights do not seem to want to talk about the welfare of animals. The people seeking to ban the horses do not seem to want to have this discussion, they simply demand that the horses be removed from the nation’s greatest city and thus from our world.

I guess that means we will simply have to have the conversation ourselves, wherever we can and whenever we can. And have faith that truth and fairness matter and will reveal themselves. It  also should matter that 66 per cent of New York residents wish the horses to stay, along with every tourist, animal lover, and child in the world. A powerful army, stirring and coming to its feet.

I am grateful to Bill Maher for speaking out, there are all kinds of ways to have a meaningful dialogue, even if you don’t really want to.

(Due to some minor technical issues, this column is being re-posted from July 25.

— My new e-book “Who Speaks For The Carriage Horses: The Future Of Animals In Our World,” is now available everywhere e-books are sold for $3.99.