What a boring world it would be without extremists.

Oh, there would be freedom, for sure: The freedom to fall asleep on the job.

Imagine being a practicing (critical distinction there) Christian and having a clear path to feed and clothe the hungry and build relationships with lost souls, while having no joker in the East Wing of the camp around to whack them across the head with chapter and verse.

Contemplate the nirvana that would ensue if more of your tax dollars went to repair the potholes that derail your commute to work every morning, and if there weren’t an entrenched statesman intent upon diverting said dollars to his constituents, who openly choose not to seek employment or insure their vehicles.

And now, think of the pleasant silence if the majority of us who love animals and understand their placement on the ladder of life were given the wiggle room to manage their population appropriately, without a chorus of hand-wringing Darwinists buzzing in our ear.

Thank you, Eight Belles. Sincere, posthumous thanks to the filly for a courageous, unforgettable effort in the Kentucky Derby. Tongue-wedged-in-cheek-with-a-hole-gnawed-through-it thanks for bringing the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals out of its love nest with the spotted owl and into the politically expedient real world for the remainder of the Triple Crown season.

Eight Belles, if you consumed Eight Beers and stumbled out of the sports bar or off-track betting the nanosecond Big Brown tripped the wire, collapsed after crossing the finish line Saturday afternoon at Churchill Downs. The horse suffered compound fractures in both front ankles. It was the equine equivalent of the Joe Theismann injury, not survivable by her species. She was euthanized on the track.

Though incorrectly labeled tragic – again, by people who don’t comprehend what ought to be a self-evident truth that animals are not equal and in fact were created in subjection to humans – this was a sad day in the storybook of sports and the matchless history of this race. If you watched the heart-wrenching interview with Eight Belles’ trainer and didn’t feel your eyes well up when his did, well, you aren’t much of a human being.

If only that mere matter of semantics were the most stomach-churning postscript to an already nauseating event. Instead, we’re left with the juxtaposition of ducking haymakers from the peaceniks at PETA, who are wholly convicted that the lion shall lie down with the lamb as soon as they can convert each of us into sheep who cease thinking for ourselves.

Through its spokeswoman, Kathy Guillermo, PETA demands the suspension of Eight Belles’ 20-year-old jockey, Gabriel Saez, on the sheer speculation that he might have suspected something was amiss with his mount’s mighty legs before the two of them reached the home stretch.

Seriously? That’s like claiming that Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the Daytona 500 after completing the final 125 miles with a blown engine. Or believing that a fighter could summon a knockout in the 11th round of a title fight with a blood clot weighing on his brain. Or dreaming that David Wells could throw a perfect game after a night of playing Animal House drinking games with Will Ferrell.

OK, bad example, that one. Point is, the suggestion that Saez sensed anything wrong is absurd, but I’m guessing that neither Guillermo nor anyone in her special interest gang ever had the courage or inclination to throw their 92-pound body across the back of a horse traveling faster than the posted speed limit in a residential area.

You’re going to notice that hitch in the giddy-up, and you’re going to bail, lest you be confronted with the realization that you’re going to die.

So PETA demands an investigation. No word on whether or not they demand that Al Gore and Susan Sarandon conduct the thing. They didn’t stop there, though.

No, as they are wont to whinny in situations such as this when a sympathetic media provides a bully pulpit, the group is calling for no thoroughbred to race until it reaches age 3, no more dirt tracks, no more whipping, and limits on the permissible number of races per year.

When did this movement graduate from Bob Barker imploring us to have our pets spayed or neutered to having society spayed or neutered? Hey, we all have our utopian moments. I walked up to a dead deer in the bed of a family friend’s truck at 5 years old and accused him, between sobs, of slaying Bambi.

Most of us outgrow that stage. Eventually, I realized that deer don’t talk and that they are dependent upon a responsible society to humanely control their population through hunting, rather than allowing them to suffer a mangy, undernourished death in the thicket.

There are real problems that PETA should use its name recognition and credibility, whatever that is, to fight. Dogs and roosters nibbling each other to death in a barn while people cheer and wager would be a good start. Fools who horde 26 dogs in their squalid, fly-infested shack of a home are a close second.

Then again, forget it. Keep taking your act to the airwaves, worshippers of the four-footed beast.

You make life infinitely more entertaining. And you cheapen your misdirected cause with every trot, gallop and flap of the wings. And gums.

Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is [email protected].