The deliberate infliction of severe pain on a member of the community of equals, either wantonly or for an alleged benefit to others, is regarded as torture, and is wrong.
Let’s see. Saletan has a problem with apes having a legally enforceable right to life, freedom, and protection from torture? That does sound threatening to humanity. Imagine if we lost OUR “inalienable right” to act with virtual impunity as we kill, enslave, and torture gorillas, chimps, and the like. Horror of horrors! What will be next, prison time for roasting kittens alive or breaking puppies’ necks?
Saletan did get at least one thing right, though:
[Proponents hail the resolution as the first crack in the “species barrier.” Peter Singer, the philosopher who co-founded GAP, puts it this way: “There is no sound moral reason why possession of basic rights should be limited to members of a particular species.”]
Like the Abolition Movement, Animal Liberation has met with great resistance from the myriad people and business entities benefiting richly from the status quo. But this landmark precedent will create a significant chink in their armor.
But Saletan wasn’t done sounding alarms. He’s frantically determined to protect “humanity’s special status:”
[If the idea of treating chimps like people freaks you out, join the club. Creationists have been fighting this battle for a long time. They realized long ago that evolution threatened humanity’s special status. Maybe you thought all this evolution stuff was just about the past. Surprise! Once you’ve admitted chimps are your relatives, you have to think about treating them that way. That’s why, when the Spanish proposal won approval last week, GAP’s leader in Spain called it a victory for “our evolutionary comrades.”]
More red meat for the mean-spirited mob, a mob comprised of people who have been conditioned from birth to be obscenely human-centric and terrified that they might stop “being special.” No one is suggesting that we begin treating chimpanzees exactly the same as we do humans. Animal liberationists are simply calling for humanity to enlighten itself and draw our non-human animals into the moral community, thereby extending sentient, intelligent beings protection from murder, subjugation and torture. Consequences for cruelty to other living creatures…..what a heinous concept!
Further, GAP’s victory nothing to do with supplanting Creationism with Evolution. Ultimately, who gives a damn about that silly argument? Whether an anthropomorphic God created us or we evolved from a primordial soup, the issue here is that we human animals are inflicting unimaginable pain on countless non-human animals every day, and it is a moral abomination!
Wesley Smith chimed in to stoke the ire of the pitch-fork toting villagers:
[Given that animal rights activists believe a rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy, one would think the GAP would be denigrated by them as speciesist because it values apes higher than other sentient or “painient” animals. But of course, they understand the game that is afoot. They know that the GAP is a spear between the ribs of the old order because it explicitly supplants human beings as the premier species. This is a disaster for universal human rights and human exceptionalism.]
Why are these very small men so terrified that they might lose their “special status” and “exceptionalism?” Let’s hope that GAP’s spear pierces the ribs and plunges deep into speciesism’s heart of darkness.
[Animals can’t comprehend the concept of rights, so why grant them such entitlements?]
Human infants and toddlers can’t comprehend the concept of rights either, so we better get busy rescinding their rights. And since when is it an “entitlement” to grant a living, sentient being life, freedom and protection from torture?
[Take, as just one example, the purported right against torture. This seems reasonable until one reads the project’s definition of torture as “the deliberate infliction of severe pain on a member of the community of equals, either wantonly or for an alleged benefit to others.” Clearly, the primary aim here isn’t to stop beatings or punish neglect, but when combined with the putative right to personal liberty, is clearly intended to prevent apes from being used in medical research.]
Ah, medical research. The sacrosanct justification for our sadistic treatment of non-human animals. As David Irving illustrates in The Day of the Bullies (http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=771), medical research involving animals is a nightmare. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine makes a convincing case (http://www.pcrm.org/resch/anexp/position.html) that many viable alternatives to animal research exist, and that it is ethically imperative that we continue to develop and implement them.
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