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"Animal Rights" vs Individual Rights
by Glenn Woiceshyn
Dear Editor,
Re: Plants are People, Too--Editorial--The Ottawa Citizen--Oct/29/97
Bravo on a superb reductio-ad-absurdum editorial regarding the SAW gallery's experiment
where two humans are spending a week in a chicken coop to obviously make the public
feel guilty about eating eggs and chicken. The broader ideological motive is to suggest
that, morally, humans should "extend rights" to animals.
What "animal rights" advocates evade is that individual rights derive not
from our capacity to experience fear and pain, which we share with animals, nor that
we, like plants, are living beings. Individual rights derive from the fact that reason--unique
to humans--is our basic means of survival.
Reason allows us to acquire the knowledge needed to guide our lives, and to produce
our needs rather than fight over the little nature provides "ready-made."
Reason allows us to resolve any conflicts rationally instead of by brute force. But
reason is an individual and volitional activity--one's choice to think is not automatic.
Individual rights protect those who choose to live by reason from those who attempt
to survive by brute force.
Since animals must live by consuming other living species, so must humans. One couldn't
convince hyenas to stop brutally killing deer and antelope who, in turn, chew to
bits live blades of grass. Extending "rights" to animals is a gimmick to
destroy individual rights, and would constitute a blatant act of self-sacrifice.
Throughout history, people were told that it is moral to sacrifice themselves to
God, their king, the proletariat, the state, or the Fuhrer--all with deadly consequences.
Why it's moral for others to "benefit" from your life, but not you, has
never been defended in reason. But the moral code of self-sacrifice (or altruism)
is a perfect gimmick for power lusters to rule, loot and murder others.
To sacrifice oneself to nonhuman species by extending them "rights," as
animal-rights groups (and environmentalists) advocate, is the climax of the creed
of self-sacrifice.
Individual rights was a product of the Renaissance (rebirth of reason) and the 18th
century Enlightenment, when people highly respected reason. Anti-enlightenment philosophers,
such as Hume and especially Kant, effectively undermined reason--leading to the modern
age of pathological skepticism, relativism and emotionalism--climaxing in modern
nihilism (as best exemplified in modern art).
Since reason is the root of individual rights, one would expect an anti-reason trend
to destroy individual rights. The 20th century saw a return to statism (fascism,
communism, nazism, etc.) and an unprecedented slaughter of humans by humans. "People
set us down as the enemy of intelligence ... We are!" boasted Hitler, who told
people to "trust your instincts, your feelings, or whatever you call them"
and ordered people shoved in barbed "chicken coops" before being exterminated.
The chicken-coop stunt at SAW gallery is designed to make us drop our "intelligence"
and follow our "feelings" of empathy for chickens, in hope that we will
surrender our individual rights to whomever wants to rule us.
As Remembrance Day approaches, we should give some thought to how much we owe to
the discovery of individual rights, and what happens when people surrender them.
Best Premises,
Glenn Woiceshyn
© 1997 Glenn Woiceshyn. All rights reserved.
This article can be found on-line at at http://www.capitalism.org/glennw. |
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