My Frustrating Appearance on BBC World Service: "World Have Your Say"
The show is World Have Your Say. The topic was animal rights. The guests, in addition to me, were a member of the Dutch Animal Rights Party, a Brit vegan, someone defending European farming practices, and a German man whose perspective I never quite got.
The show was something of a frustrating experience. It wasn't so much that I didn't really get to say very much because they had so many guests and permitted the Dutch Animal Rights Party representative to pretty much filibuster. But the discussion never left the periphery, and thus, the crucial issue in this debate was never addressed: The distinction between animal rights and animal welfare. Nor, were we able to discuss the tremendous human harm that would follow from the animal rights agenda prevailing.
I was planning to read this quote from PETA's infamous Holocaust on Your Plate Campaign to illustrate what is so wrong and misanthropic about animal rights/liberation. I think it is important because it blows past the smoke and mirrors game they often play when on the radio, pretending to be for animal welfare, and gets right the crux of what is so poisonous about animal liberation ideology:
"Like the Jews murdered in concentration camps, animals are terrorized when they are housed in cramped, filthy warehouses and rounded up for shipment to slaughter. The leather sofa and handbag are the modern equivalent of the lampshades made from skins of the people killed in death camps."
So, to the liberationist, any of the readers here at Secondhand Smoke who wear leather shoes are akin to the SS Camp Guards. People who think this way have no right to preach morality to anyone.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:10 AM
10 Comments
10 Comments:
It's nice to get a vegan's perspective on the situation. I think that it's noble that you stand by your convictions and that you really practice what you believe.
As to PETA and their ilk, I don't know that I'd agree with the "media seeking blow hards" comment. They do want media attention because they want radical transformation, but the lengths to which they go to make your typical media-seeker seem tame in comparison. I really can't think of any reason to fire-bomb a research lab in the name of "animal liberation" except for pure maliciousness.
You have an honest and honorable belief. You probably would like me to stop eating meat but you recognize that it is my choice. I respect that you have a different opinion and will always defend to the death your right to disagree with me. You are a normal person and I am as normal as any member of my family is likely to get.
So why aren't you out there with PETA or ELF and ALF? Simple - you're a good person. You don't want to hurt people or break the law. These people want to break the law. They want to do harm.
That's the only thing I can figure. They get some kind of thrill being "bad" and they get rewarded by looking good on camera.
Tabs
Actually, PETA got its big start in the notorious Silver Springs Monkey Case, in which they almost ruined the life of a respected researcher. It took him years to get back on track, and he has since come up with a great treatment for people paralyzed from stroke with the technique he was using monkey to experiment with. For those interested, check out my articles archive.
"I think most people want to be humane towards animals. We understand the power we have over them."
Precisely, Deep Toad. Which is one of the things that makes humans so exceptional.
Watch those B12 levels, Deep Toad. :-) My husband assures me that B12 can be obtained only from animal products and that supplements are obtained from animal bones. You can't do without B12. I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but I'm curious: What's the vegan take on that? Is it just that it's okay if the animals used to obtain B12 supplements were treated well? But in that case, why wouldn't eggs or cheese from well-treated, free-range chickens and cows be okay?
Lydia - I work in a deli (flexible hours to accomodate classroom schedules, you gotta love it), and we used to have a vegan working there. Non-kosher deli, I might add. She had no problem with eating cheese ("It doesn't hurt a cow to milk it, so why shouldn't I?") but wouldn't eat meat or use any animal products - no leather, no cosmetics that used animal testing, etc. When I asked her about the fact that she cooked meat for work and that she sliced meat all the time, she told me, "I have to take insulin, you know, and some vitamins that are made from animal products. That's not bad. Jesus fed the multitude with loves and fish. As long as I do my best not to do harm, then God will apprecite my efforts." She's Mormon, just to clarify.
I guess it all depends on one's personal convictions. She never had a problem slicing meat that was already packaged - the animal had already died and would have anyway, even if she didn't work in the deli, and what other people want or need is their own business. She's a beautiful lady and I admire her, and Deep Toad, very deeply for keeping their convictions.
Tabs: Your friend was not a true vegan if she ate cheese. Animal liberationist purists believe that keeping milk cows is cruel and does hurt the cow since they are kept in confinement and repeatedly impregnated. They will not wear wool because sheep farming is cruel and sheep sheering is deemed abuse. A true vegan will use no product derived in any way from animals.
I'd never heard that about wool. I knew only about the dietary aspect and understand that the term "vegan" is usually used to refer to a person who does not eat any animal products. The trouble is (I'm told) that you can't survive long-term without vitamin B12, which can be derived only from animal products. You run into immune-system problems, extreme fatigue, and so forth over the long term. (I believe this problem doesn't arise for vegetarians who are not vegans, as the vitamin in question is found in dairy products or eggs.)
I've just listened to the BBC discussion. I think it's unfair to say that the newly elected MP for the Partij voor de Dieren (literally, "Party for the Animals", not "Animals Rights Party") was allowed to "pretty much filibuster". She spoke only when spoken to by the moderator.
When asked about your distinction between animal rights and animal welfare, she talked about the need to extend animal welfare, and she quoted Jeremy Bentham's dictum that "The question is not, can they reaason, nor can they talk, but can they suffer?" This suggests that her approach, and perhaps that of her party, is utilitarian, and not rights-based. Utilitarians seek to maximize overall welfare.
It was interesting that she said something like "The chances are, when you are unable to show compassion to the weakest members of your family [i.e., animals], you are unable to show compassion to other people." So she was explicitly linking our treatment of animals and our treatment of humans. While it's not clear whether she is an advocate of animal rights per se, she was making the kind of connection that philosopher Tom Regan makes when he says that the animal-rights movement is part of the human-rights movement, and its goal is to protect the least powerful among us.
Perhaps the crucial distinction is not between "animal rights" and "animal welfare" so much as it is between those who believe that many animals are part of "us", and those, like yourself, who believe they are essentially "other".
Glad you tuned in. By filibustering I meant she gave long answers and hence, the rest of us were unable to really speak. Recall I was told I had 30 seconds to answer a question.
Her obfuscation was precisely what was so frustrating. At least while I was on the show, she was never challenged to explain what it meant for animals to live in their natural state or whether she agreed with PETA's Holocaust on Your Plate assertions--because I never had the time to bring them up.
Animal liberationists tend to obfuscate the depth of their radical views and are rarely really challenged on their core beliefs. I agreed to do the show on Thanksgiving so I would have the opportunity to do that, but never got the opportunity. Hence, my frustration.
Most of the show was about whether animals in industrial farming feel stress. Not a very helpful discussion, all in all, since the real agendas were never reached.
As to your last point, I agree. There are those who think humans are just another animal in the forest, and those, like myself, who think we are unique and special, which does not as some liberationists argue justify using animals as mere things, but which gives us unique rights and duties--including the duty to treat animals appropriately and humanely.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home