More on the Vick Dog Fighting Case
I have a piece in today's Rocky Mountain News about the Vick case, entitled, "Vick Charges Speak to Our Humanity." It is pretty succinct. Here is an excerpt:
People are outraged at this scandal, and rightly so. But few are asking why, exactly, we are so upset. For example, do we contend that the dogs acted wrongly by fighting each other to the death? Of course not. Only human beings have the capacity to understand right from wrong...
Then are we furious because, as animal-rights activists would have it, the victimized dogs had a "right" not to be treated in such a brutal fashion? No. Animals don't have rights. They can't even understand the concept. Indeed, for rights to be true rights, they must apply universally. Yet anyone seriously asserting that a lion violated a zebra's right to life by hunting it down would be laughed out of town.
So what was the real wrong allegedly committed here? Simply stated, the purported crimes of Vick and his alleged co-conspirators are rightfully viewed as despicable because their brutal actions violated their (and our) humanity...
This conclusion springs from the extraordinary nature of human beings...[I]f Vick and his cohorts trained dogs to rend each other mercilessly and brutally killed the animals whose natures were insufficiently vicious to win fights, and, moreover, did so merely to make money by satisfying a barbaric blood lust in their customers or to provide them with a gambling adrenaline rush, they deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law and to be shunned socially as pariahs.
By treating helpless animals as if their pain did not matter, by engaging in such blatant cruelty, they not only inflicted inexcusable suffering and terror upon helpless, sentient beings, but, even worse, they besmirched the higher nature and noble calling of the human race.
Thanks to the Rocky Mountain News for publishing the column.
Labels: Human Exceptionalism. Vick Case
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 6:16 PM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
"By treating helpless animals as if their pain did not matter, by engaging in such blatant cruelty, they not only inflicted inexcusable suffering and terror upon helpless, sentient beings, but, even worse, they besmirched the higher nature and noble calling of the human race."
*rolls eys*
I think the author contradicts himself. The above is an implicit recognition of the rights of sentient beings to not receive pointless suffering.
This contrasts the lame zebra-lion analogy. The suffering of the zebra is not pointless, because (1) it feeds the lion, which must eat to stay alive, (2) strengthens the herd as the lion targets the weakest members of the herd, (3) follows the natural order of things.
Keep trying, Royale. Maybe someday you will get there. Humans also have the right to raise and eat food animals, so long as we do so humanely. But only humans have the duty to not engage in activities that cause the kind of suffering on animals as we saw here. Moreover, take cats. They toss and torture their mouse and bird prey, and are just being cats. If we did it, shame would be rightly placed on us.
As I write this, I am battling my little canine companion the use of my arms--she is still tired and doesn't want to forego my body heat just yet. Dorothy (or Dot, as we call her) is a chiuaua, and as such, is about as far removed, I expect, from her wild brethren as is possible for a canine to be. She is nonetheless a beast; certainly not a member of the, "only truly conscious and "free" species in the known universe." Leaving gross hyperbole aside for a moment (lest we digress into a discussion about the World Series or the Miss Universe Pageant), her faithfulness to me and her instrinctive and carefully bred attentiveness to my mood is the very thing, it seems to me, that endears her species to ours. To say that ours is the only species that has the capacity to recognize and feel pain in others is to miss the primary reason 'we' were so incensed by the crimes Vick admitted being guilty of.
I am always suspicious of arguments of those who find some bald trait that separates man from beast, rather than recognizing the difference as being one of degrees. Absolutes may be a handy way of learning high school history, but surely is no way to 'write a book about the animal rights movement.' Besides--absolutes are easy to poke holes in, thus calling your entire thesis into question.
Thank you for your time,
Sean Hallisey
Thank you for taking the time to write, Sean, but the animal liberationists are the absolutists. Moreover, you seem to have missed the point of my article, which is that humans have the duty—simply because we are human—to treat animals humanely. We are the only moral species in the known universe. If being human alone is not what obliges us in that manner, I don’t know what does.
i think the punishment should fit the crime.
"Humans also have the right to raise and eat food animals, so long as we do so humanely."
I would argue that:
(1)The lioness *must* kill and eat the zebra, as she and her cubs are carnivores. Humans are omnivores, not carnivores, which means they can eat and survive on a diet of plant and/or flesh. A human *chooses* to eat flesh, they do not *need* to eat it.
Further, the argument that it is okay for humans to raise and eat animals is okay is a moot point, considering the fact that the procedures/facilities in place for raising and killing food animals is *rarely* humane. So-called cage-free or free-range animals, otherwise known as "happy meat" are sent to the same slaughterhouses as factory-farmed animals. If humans have a duty to not engage in activities that cause suffering to sentient beings, the logical conclusion is that humans should not engage in eating the flesh of animals as it is unnecessary and causes suffering to sentient being.
Actually, a vegan diet is less healthy than a well balanced omnivorous diet. This is particularly true for children.
I never said and don't believe that we have a duty not to engage in activities that cause suffering to sentient beings. As I will argue in my book, we have a duty to balance the human good received thereby with the suffering that such activities might cause, and if suffering will be caused to work to keep it to a minimum/ and or to find alternatives. Using animals is necessary for human thriving and a proper activity. Of course, as in the Vick case, people can act unconscionably toward animals. And in such cases, we have a human duty to intervene.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your views.
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