Animal Rights

“To make covenants with brute beasts is impossible, because not understanding our speech, they understand not, nor accept of any translation of right, nor can translate any right to another: and without mutual acceptation, there is no covenant.” Hobbes, “Leviathan”

PETA has all the marks of classic religious fanaticism. They take an idea, Natural Rights, extend it to absolute extremes, (equal rights for animals) in order to feel morally superior to others and then attack those they consider their moral inferiors. Such extremes violate the principle of virtue described by Aristotle in his Ethics. There are many famous or infamous advocates of Animal Rights in history. Adolph Hitler and Heinrich Himmler were vegetarians because they disapproved of the brutality of slaughterhouses. Himmler was the architect of the Holocaust. Doubtless as they were planning the Holocaust the confidence in their own moral superiority to the common masses of mankind reassured them of the righteousness of their designs. This sense of moral superiority to others which vegetarianism and fanatic animal rights activism promotes lends itself easily to grotesque abuses of Human Rights.

In this book it has been shown that Natural Rights derive from the Social Contract in context with Human Nature. It is unjust for the Social Contract to deny a human being his Natural Rights because the purpose of the Contract is to improve on the State of Nature. It is unwise for the Social Contract to deny a human being his Natural Rights for this violates a real Natural Law as real as the laws governing airplane design. These rights are not just Natural but necessary and if violated the Society which violates them will either crash or perform less efficiently than if they were respected.

The discussion thus far ties Human Rights to Human Nature and to participation in the Social Contract. People who violate the Social Contract can forfeit various Rights, by imprisonment the right to liberty, by death penalty the right to life, etc.. Thus these rights are reciprocal. They are possessed on the condition that their possessors will respect the rights of others. Are animals intelligent enough to understand and participate in the Social Contract? If not, how can they have Natural Rights? On what basis are Animal Rights deduced? Do Animal Rights even exist?

There is little room for Animal Rights under this theory of Natural Rights. They cannot be derived directly from Human Nature, for animals are not human. They can only be derived from the Social Contract if the animals are participants in the Social Contract or if it can be demonstrated that denial of Animal Rights will deny Humans the ability to satisfy Needs they could have satisfied in the absence of the Social Contract.

This provides two theoretical bases for deriving Animal Rights. Those animals which participate in the Social Contract or another similar contract deserve rights proportional to their contract with Humans. Other Animal Rights may exist as necessary incidentals to the protection of Human Rights.

This is a formal description of the basic arguments related to all rational discussion of Animal Rights. These points while not formally classified as above are present and represent the strongest arguments for Animal Rights in debates concerning them. They are generally accepted as valid by the vast majority of people.

Pets Rights are an example of the first category of Animal Rights. Pets form close relationships with human beings. While pets do not hire lawyers, read contracts, and then sign on the dotted line; there is an implicit contract between a pet and his owner just as there is an implicit contract between the members of the Social Contract. The same arguments discussed in the discussion of the Social Contract above which demonstrate the reality of its existence support the real existence of this Contract. It is also demonstrated by the special privileges and dignity which almost all Americans feel pets deserve. Somehow it is just wrong to treat dogs and cats like other animals. We don’t eat them. We don’t use their fur. We don’t hunt them for sport. They are special to us because we feel a real sense of obligation to them, a special relationship which is a sort of contract.

Humans love meadows and flowers and birdsong and the sight of animals in the field. This environmental stimulus is a part of what any human being could have experienced in a State of Nature without work or effort. As such, it can be argued that to destroy the environment so that humans cannot experience these things is a violation of the implicit purpose of the Social Contract and thus a violation of the Natural Rights of all Humanity. This is a general moral or ethical principle. As such it is imprecise and may be carried to inappropriate extremes. Such principles can be useful guides to general thought.

More specific concerns relate to the documentable benefits which a healthy environment brings to humans. The ecosphere of this planet is complex and complexly interrelated. Damaging it will greatly impair the quality of life for humanity as a whole. There is a sort of ecological or natural contract which will destroy humanity or at least degrade humanities quality of life if violated. As in the example of wolves and deer raised in the discussion of the Social Contract. This does not require treating animals as people. In the Natural Contract the strong kill and eat the weak. Only if they destroy their food source or environment do they suffer.

Hunting is protected under the Natural Contract. Deer and other vegetarian species can be safely maintained in close proximity to human populations where wolves and other carnivorous species cannot. In the absence of natural predators the population of deer must be kept down as wolves would have done. Wolves hunt in packs, they panic their prey, then mob them, drag them down and gradually manage to kill them. It is a long, terrifying and painful death compared with the clean kill of a hunters bullet. Hunters have strong moral standards about the treatment of their prey. They strive for quick and relatively painless kills. Many choose not to hunt what they will not eat. Humans have been predators of deer as long as wolves and have as much right to continue that role as wolves. It is a part of this ecological or Natural Contract. When hunting is done appropriately it serves the same ecological role as wolves. It shows a supreme conceit, a confusion of humanity with some absolute moral authority like God, to suggest that this is wrong. Of course it is typical of religious fanatics like PETA to confuse themselves with God.

Another specific concern relates to the effects of gratuitous abuse of animals by people. It is generally accepted that the kind of people who grow up to torture and murder other humans frequently as children torture and murder animals. There is a general tendency of people to project human qualities on animals. There is a general tendency to treat humans and animals in a similar fashion because of this. A society which allows gratuitous cruelty to animals encourages gratuitous cruelty to humans. The Social Contract must act to inhibit this by establishing reasonable standards for the treatment of animals. This reinforces the special rights of animals which have traditional contracts with people. Allowing the gratuitous violation of such naturally felt obligations encourages similar abuse of people. Would you want to work for a man who enjoys kicking his dog? A Constitutional basis for this sort of legislation is advanced as a general principle in the section on the 3^rd Amendment, the behavioral conditioning effect of laws on the population.

These are rational bases for the establishment of detailed provisions for Animal Rights based upon Contracts between animals and people, on concern for the environment, and on concern for the psychological effects of not setting such standards. These are sufficient to justify all reasonable provisions for Animal Rights. Political discussion and debate over Animal Rights should be discussed under these heads, not on quasi-religious moral principles which are easily carried to fanatic extremes and used as justification to abuse and degrade the Citizens who are full participants in the Social Contract.

In accordance with the principles advanced in the section on Medical Ethics scientific experimentation on animals is permissible because the psychological effect is limited to scientific and medical professionals and does not impact the general public. The value of such work to humans is far greater than the harm. On the other hand vivisection of animals as a sport engaged in by the general public can reasonably be outlawed because of its negative social and psychological effects. Though this is really a community standards issue and not a Federal one.

What about the rights of cattle, swine, poultry and other animals whose existence on this planet depends on people having a use for them? It is the position of PETA that any use of animals for human profit is immoral and wrong. What about Rights derived from existing Contracts? For humans to stop raising these animals for food and other uses would condemn them to extermination. Without an economic justification for their maintenance, they would all be put to sleep and their various kinds and varieties if not entire species would disappear forever from the world.

PETA is indirectly advocating genocide of all the kinds of animals with which humans have had informal contracts for thousands of years. Humans are not the only species which domesticates other species. It is no more wrong or unnatural for us to do so than for ants to domesticate aphids and fungus. Again the moral condemnation of humans for behaving towards animals as animals behave towards other animals reflects a supreme conceit on the part of Animal Rights advocates. Like most extreme Liberal positions a God Complex is at work. The principle argument is that humans are morally superior to animals and thus should behave more nobly than animals. On the other hand the moral argument for humans exploiting animals is that humans are superior to animals and have the right to use them.

An alien civilization examining our world might look upon our relationship with our domesticated animals and see a fair exchange of goods and services. In exchange for what we derive from them we secure them range, provide them with food, and guarantee the continuance of their kind. On a species level, it is a symbiotic, not a parasitic relationship. Such an alien civilization might not define them as helpless victims but equal participants in the contract. It might indeed find the human species in violation of Galactic Standards concerning Common Law Contracts Between Species if we condemned animals who have been our partners for millennia to genocide because of some passing moral fanaticism. Under this line of reasoning, these species which have been partners of man for millennia have a right to continuance of the contract. They have a right to provide us with meat, leather, feathers and eggs in return for their continued existence. An existence which depends on their usefulness to man.

Moral reasoning is slippery, especially when carried to extremes. There is as much justification for condemning PETA as immoral and evil as there is for believing its message.

I personally rejoice every time I see a news article about dogs smelling cancer or detecting bombs. These thing promise that our ancient contracts will be honored. I am bothered when technology promises to remove all use for dogs by creating more perfect sniffers. I grow concerned that we are preparing to betray contracts thousands of years old.

Animal Rights do not derive from the same sources and reasons which make Human Rights necessary. This does not mean they do not exist. There are valid bases for their existence and protection but they are not the same as and should not be confused with Human Natural Rights.

The Social Contract was created to improve on the State of Nature for the benefit of the Citizens. Humans could and did exploit animals for their profit in a state of Nature. To deny them this ability arbitrarily under the Social Contract is a violation of a Natural Right, something that was inherent to them in the State of Nature. Such action is a violation of the implicit purpose of the Social Contract and thus inherently and automatically an abuse of the power of the state. To do so for moral reasons is a violation of Separation of Church and State. PETA and similar movements are not legitimate political movements, but religious fanatic organizations, not different in kind from the fundamentalist Islamic terrorists. They have no political message only a religious one, and their religious beliefs have been held by many of the most ‘evil’ men in history.