This Blog considers assisted suicide/euthanasia, bioethics, human cloning, biotechnology, radical environmentalism, and the dangers of animal rights/liberation. My views expressed here, as in my books and other writings, reflect my understanding that the philosophy of human exceptionalism is the bedrock of universal human rights. Or, to put it another way: human life matters. (The opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of any organization with which I am affiliated.)
A recruiting office was bombed in the early morning hours in Times Square today. Nobody was hurt. That means, according to the nonsense spouted by animal rights terrorism apologists, the bombing was merely a compassionate act of peaceful protest.
Labels: Animal Rigths Nonsense Talk
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 6:55 PM
2 Comments
I am a Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute and the author of 12 books, including A Rat Is A Pig Is A Dog Is A Boy, which is relevant to the issues considered by this blog.
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2 Comments:
I don't know how this relates animal rights. Anyways no one is claiming that this is a "peaceful protest." This was an act of sabotage plain and simple, and a damn good one. mass murder and exploitation is being perpetrated by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afganistan and if blowing out some windows can help bring it to an end I say "two cheers to the bicycle bomber". But I'm sure Ol' Wesley and his buddies at the discovery institute would disagree. I guess the "culture of life" only applies to the unborn and terminally sick.
The "culture of life" applies to all human beings in all situations. That means protecting all human beings from anyone who would do them harm, such as the bicycle bomber, who probably wouldn't have cared if there were people in that building.
Statistically speaking, the operations in Afganistan and Iraq have had fewer casualities than many of our previous wars/police actions/whatever. I would need to contact my former prof at U of Houston for the exact statistics that he provided, but he pointed this out to his seminar and I must add that U of Houston is a fairly liberal campus, having one of the most diverse populations among U.S. schools. My prof was hardly conservative.
There's no such thing as a good act of sabotage. Doing harm to anyone, or threatning harm to anyone, or risking harm to anyone, who is not willingly at risk, is immoral. It's as immoral for someone to bomb a building in the name of animal rights as it is for a soldier to attack unarmed citizens. If a soldier meets an enemy soldier in battle with the intent to stop him from doing harm to others, then while it's a regretable action, it is morally justified. Do the least amount of harm possible, but act to stop someone else from hurting or murdering another human being.
Animals have no sense of morality. They will hunt, kill, rape, and maim without hesitation because it is in their nature. Dolphins have been seen raping the females of their species and murdering dolphin calves so that the mothers will be ready to mate sooner. Dogs have raped female dogs and will occasionally rape male dogs as a sign of dominance. My cats have played with lizards in terrible ways before killing them and eating them.
Humans intervene to protect animals as much as possible, but we cannot function without them, and we cannot save them all from each other. We recognize that we are way smarter than they are - humans arrest and jail those who rape other people. We punish those who kill small children. We aren't like other animals.
Many animals are predators. They kill to survive, or they steal from other animals. We are like them, but we feel compassion, something animals cannot.
Compassion is what drives a man to go into the army and become a soldier willing to fight and, if necessary, die, to protect those who cannot defend themselves. Compassion is why humans look for humane ways to slaughter animals for food, clothing, medicines, and all the other things we need them for. Compassion is what leads humans to take pets and treat them like family, to give them love and affection and to see to their health and well-being.
A person who is devoid of compassion will condone evil actions - like a bicycle bombing. Instead of looking at the evil that was done, he will try to justify such actions by saying that the people deserved it, and then throwing around accusations like how the U.S. is responsible for killings in other countries. He never takes into account that perhaps the people being threatened by that bomb are anti-war, for example, or may have religious reasons to be adverse to fighting in another country, or may believe that the U.S. has an economical interest in pulling out of Afganistan and Iraq. If someone in that building felt this way, then how can one sling about complaints about our foreign policy and lay such blame on the people whose lives were at risk in this bombing?
Or are you going to pin the blame for the general actions of the government on these individual civilians? Are you saying that because the U.S. government did something you disagree with, that these people automatically deserve to be punished by animal rights activits? If that's the case, justify how *you* are not equally liable for such claims.
Personally, I think yours is a non-argument, because no matter what you say about U.S. foreign policy, it has nothing to do with the behavior of the animal rights activists or the people who were targeted. You're basically throwing around any excuse you want to, in order to make the victims look like criminals who deserve to be punished.
Imagine the reverse - suppose a militant humanist group targeted anyone who ever donated money to an animal rights group and sent a bomb into that person's place of work, even if nobody was home. Imagine that the person was simply a guy who believed in animal welfare and made the donation because he thought he was helping a group to find new homes for strays. And imagine that these militant humanists claimed it was legitimate to bomb this man's house because the liberals in the U.S. voted Clinton into office at one point, and Clinton refused to take Osama bin Laden into custody once well before the 9/11 disaster. Now these humanists say that every liberal in the U.S.A. is equally responsible for the WTC buildings coming down and for the Pentagon crash, and that anyone who would donate money to a liberal cause like animal rights is just as deserving of being bombed as any member of al Quada.
Normal human beings would think these guys were off their nut and would condemn them.
Animal rights activists would start screaming about how they're being persecuted for their beliefs, and that animal rights has nothing to do with 9/11. They would also scream that there is no justification for this bombing because there's no link between the two topics.
So you see, yours is a faulty argument, that doesn't break down logically.
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