In a comment on the post immediately below this one, my friend Carlos writes:
It just feels to me that you’re sending a high-pitched, almost indiscernible signal that you do condone violence. I think Gonz accused you a long time of “praising with faint damns” those who use violence to liberate animals… on Facebook you list yourself as a supporter of Animal Liberation Front; on your sidebar you link to the Animal Liberation Press Office. Is this a oblique way of signalling your real views, which may be too radical to put out in the open?
What has happened to your pacifism, a subject about which you used to blog for years?
Here’s my archive on pacifism. It’s true I haven’t written on the subject in more than a year and a half. I came to pacifism after 9/11; seven years ago, following the horror of that famous day and its aftermath, I left the Episcopal parish in which I worshipped to join a local Mennonite church. I had started reading the great Mennonite philosopher John Howard Yoder within days of the September 11 attacks, and his Politics of Jesus seemed like the perfect radical alternative to all the warmongering that was in vogue seven autumns ago.
I’ve thought a lot about pacifism and violence over the years since, though I don’t know if those thoughts are particularly insightful. And though I was attracted to the Anabaptist radicalism of the Mennonites, with their peace witness and their call to simplicity, I ended up feeling a bit like an alien in their midst. (There’s still a strong ethnic element in many Mennonite churches — lots of Yoders and Swartleys and Brennemanns, folks descended from the original Swiss-German founders of the faith.) When I left the Mennonites, I dropped the most doctrinal commitment to pacifism, but remained — and remain — enchanted by the notion that in the struggle for justice, ends and means must be radically congruent. In other words, war is made possible by war, peace by peace. And as a Christian, I must still trust that God is in charge of the final ends — but it is my job to live a life aligned with the means which Jesus modeled when He walked the earth.
But let me be blunt: pacifism is about, literally, making peace. The etymology of “pacifist” is the Latin pax facere, to make peace. It is not passus sum (to suffer), from which the modern word passive is derived. Real pacifism is not afraid of confrontation, it just does everything it can to avoid killing or injuring living beings. Groups like the Animal Liberation Front have generally refrained from attacking human beings. They have attacked property, however. And destroying property is not contrary to pacifist principles! Only in a society truly corrupted by the capitalist heresy could buildings and cars and lab equipment be endowed with more rights than sentient creatures. From an ethical Christian perspective, property does not have inherent rights — rights are found in the sentient beings of God’s creation. Jesus calls me to love my enemies, and that means I don’t get to punch a medical researcher in the face. But can I support vandalizing his lab in a way that does significant damage to property without directly endangering life? Can I support naming and shaming animal researchers, detailing in public the exact experiments they perform? You bet, and I can do so without violating essential pacifist principles.
It infuriates me to have the label “domestic terrorist” applied to those who have never directly sought to harm humans or other living creatures. While burning down an empty lab (empty of both humans and animals) does pose a marginal risk to firefighters, and is thus problematic from a pacifist standpoint, the point is to take direct action against the instruments of cruelty without violating the basic principle of the sacredness of life. I do not support threatening the lives of medical researchers or farmers. I do not support setting fire to homes in which humans or animals are present. But disabling the tools of torture? Who among us would not want to damage the engines of the trains that carried the doomed to Auschwitz? (And yes, I’m comparing the slaughter of animals to the Holocaust. And since both my paternal great-grandmothers perished in the Shoah, one in Auschwitz and one on the way, I am keenly aware of what I say. My father knew and loved his grandmothers. He knew and loved many animals too, and would not be horrified at the moral equivalence I suggest now.)
I give most of my money and time to organizations like PCRM (which fights against medical research on animals) and Farm Sanctuary (which protects farm animals and campaigns for a vegan diet.) The real solution is bringing about a change in hearts and minds, and I’m not sure that burning down a lab or disabling a researcher’s car is going to accomplish a whole lot of good. I’m reluctant to embrace crimes against property primarily because I doubt their effectiveness — but I don’t doubt that damaging property can be a highly ethical choice, consistent with pacifist ideals. God calls us to love every creature of His good creation. A Hummer and a dissection lab do not automatically share in that goodness, and to destroy them is not to violate the most basic principle of peace.
Ends and means, as I said before, must be congruent. I am not willing to embrace the “any means necessary” philosophy, because I know so well that that can lead to mass murder in the name of saving the world. But I am willing to see the unlawful liberation of lab or farm animals, and the willfull destruction of property used for their torture and confinement, as consistent with the call to achieve a peaceful end through peaceful means.
Hugo, I assume you would agree, then, that a violent, abusive ex-spouse who limits themselves to destroying their victim’s property is a ‘pacifist’, as long as they never lay a hand on their victim?
You’re making the entirely specious argument that vandalism to property only affects and stops at the property; that smashing a car doesn’t send a message to the car’s owner, and doesn’t harm the owner in any other way. I must have missed the teachings of Jesus or Ghandi where they said it’s wrong to hit your brother, but it’s OK to scare the bejesus out of him by pouring fake blood in his driveway, because otherwise you’re saying that a driveway is more important than a living being.
Your comment made me think of a chat I had with a fellow LGBT activist the other day about the No on 8 campaign. A mutual acquaintance lives in Sacramento with her wife and their two very young children. They got up last week to discover that somebody had torn up their “No on 8″ yard signs and thrown the pieces all over the yard, apparently not caring - or perhaps very much caring - that the children would see the damage.
But I guess that kind of activism is what you would consider “pacifist”. After all, you don’t value a mere yard sign over the institution of marriage, do you? And certainly nobody actually punched the two women or their little daughters. Just like Jesus would have wanted.
Mythago, Jesus overturned tables and chased moneychangers out of the temple with a whip. And I bet the moneychangers — and possibly their children — were scared. We’re here sometimes to afflict the comfortable as well as comfort the afflicted, aren’t we?
“God calls us to love every creature of His good creation.”
I am not familiar in scripture where God calls us to love every creature. I do know of scripture where it is good to eat those creatures with thanksgiving.
1 Timothy 4
1 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
3 Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:
5 For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
Fred, I’m sure you know the specific context in which the letter is written. Those who insisted that the kosher laws still applied to those baptized in the new covenant were a problem, as were those who argued that since JC was coming back any minute, celibacy was the only way for a Christian. The problem wasn’t vegetarians or vegans, it was those who wanted kashrut to still apply.
But the best responses, from a biblical perspective, can be found at the website of the Christian Vegetarian Association: http://www.all-creatures.org/cva/default.htm
Lots of scriptural responses there!
I can’t get comfortable with the idea of destroying property–for one thing, it’s an insult to all the people who worked hard to make the machines, or whatever. And an insult to those who could do better things with the equipment but can’t afford it. 3rd, it might incite others to do worse things.
Afflicting the comfortable–well, maybe, but can you do it without scaring the poor kids who didn’t even ask to get mixed up in whatever is going on?
Let me be clear. I don’t support pouring blood on driveways. I do support, for example, breaking into a research lab, rescuing the animals (and getting them into real rescue situations, not just releasing them to certain death) and then destroying the equipment. No kids around.
When it comes to medical researchers, I think destroying their work product is more important than targeting their homes. And more consistent with the goal.
Putting a bomb in somebody’s car or mailbox or starting a fire is not merely “destroying property”. Some of this behavior hasn’t “targeted human beings” only by luck.
And while I wouldn’t and don’t support research or animal experimentation that is needlessly cruel or without purpose, let’s face it, people’s lives are riding on the medical research that is being done, and which groups like ALF are attempting to destroy. My grandmother is an insulin-dependent diabetic. The means to first extract, and then to synthesize, insulin was learned through animal research. Should my grandmother have just died? Our efforts to treat, and hopefully one day vaccinate against HIV and cure AIDS are dependent on animal research. Should we tell millions of people around the world, nearly a third of the people in much of southern Africa, that they should just die because we aren’t willing to do what we can to find a way to save them and their communities? Should we tell that to their children, who will die too when AIDS carries off their parents? That’s a choice, if we do that, not just an innocent omission, but an informed and clear choice about what our priorities and values are.
Hugo, Jesus wasn’t pretending to be a pacifist when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple. (And he whipped the sheep and cattle, but you don’t seem to be bothered by His animal abuse.) He didn’t, though, go to the moneychangers’ homes and threaten their children, nor did he destroy their chariots or pour blood on their front doorsteps.
If you really want to pretend that destroying property is not real violence, and cannot possibly be seen as a proxy for a threat to human beings, maybe you ought to talk to some domestic-violence advocates. I understand they have rather a different view of the argument that it’s OK to destroy property, that it’s not real violence, and it’s not actually intended as a threat to human beings.
I also understand that violent anti-abortion activists have the same approach you do: it’s OK to bomb a clinic as long as nobody’s inside, it’s fine to post the address of abortion providers to “shame” them, because property and people’s feelings of safety are far less important than the lives of the unborn.
I pray that you will someday set aside your ego and arrogance to see that you are making excuses for your own hate and violence, and that cathartic destruction against “the bad guys” actually harms the animals’ cause.
Hugo, how DO you separate your situation from activists who bomb empty abortion shelters? I don’t think it’s possible, unless it’s just to say, “My cause is worthier than your cause.” They’re even using the same rhetoric that you are, “All life is sacred, animals/fetuses have rights, yadda yadda.” I think you’re approving of dangerous things here.
Don’t give him ideas, B. Hugo’s opposed to abortion.
I didn’t think he was…
I think destroying their work product is more important than targeting their homes.
Seriously? “more important”? As in, once we finish smashing up their labs, then we should go for their homes? I’d like to think you meant “more appropriate” but at this point I’m not at all sure.
Well, I make no bones about not being a pacifist.
I can give ALF one good reason not to visit my house - the life they save may be their own. People breaking into homes in my neck of the woods generally live on the suffrance of their victims - I don’t know of any sheriffs down in my neck of the woods that are going to look very hard at “It was dark, I told them to freeze, they moved, looked like for a gun, so I emptied the clip into him. Nope. Light got turned on afterwards. I think I need my lawyer now.”
My property does not have a right - I have a right to my property. You destroy my property and you aren’t violating my property’s rights; you are violating my property rights. The difference is significant.
In a libertarian fashion I am neutral to abortion - let the states decide, and pay for your elective procedure. Morally I am opposed. But I am utterly horrified by the terrorist act of burning, blowing up, or otherwise vandalizing an abortion clinic. It is monstrous. You never know who is doing clean up, or working late in an office with the blinds down, for one.
Destroying lawfully owned property is wrong. It deprives the owner of the use. It is stealing. This isn’t a venial sin. This is Ten Commandments wrong.
Jeez, man. I may think some of the texts you use are bunk, or lies, or even subversive, but if I went around taking them and burning them….
This is some serious rationalization, Hugo.
Oh - and in the line of “Assigning rights to property” - I happen to consider my livestock Property. I paid for, and invested a great deal of time and effort. And any ALF terrorist who disputes it is cordially invited to take it up with my attorneys, Mssrs. Glock and Mossberg, Esq.
In a libertarian fashion I am neutral to abortion - let the states decide
I know this is off topic, but I’ve never come close to understanding how it’s more libertarian to force women to carry a pregnancy to term if it’s a state government rather than a federal one. They’re both exercising the same coercive power from the individual’s point of view.
On the question of property and property rights, I haven’t taken Property yet (next semester), but I am taking Criminal Law now and the argument that ALF is engaging in mere “property crimes” or violating “property rights” fails due to the intent with which these acts are done: to create fear. Think about it: if someone spray-painted a swastika on a synagogue, or, to use an example already presented, bombed or burned an unoccupied abortion clinic, the argument that they were merely engaged in a “property crime”, rather than in a hate crime or an act of terrorism, would be dismissed outright. Intent, the intent to threaten, create fear, and interfere with lawful activities, can be inferred from the nature of the conduct (or, in the case of ALF, the words of its spokespersons and members who have been arrested provide evidence of intent). That intent makes it a serious and violent crime against the person (putting people in fear). In addition, Hugo’s qualified statement that ALF has “generally refrained from attacking human beings” should be read to mean that ALF has attacked or attempted to attack human beings with the intention to maim or kill. They’ve left firebombs in front of people’s houses, in one case in front of the wrong house, where it could have killed a neighbor’s child. Sooner or later, it is certain that ALF is going to kill someone unless they’re stopped.
Reasonable people can disagree over whether animals ought to be used in research or testing, and those with ethical objections to such practices have all the tools of political organization, economic pressure, public oppobrium, and civil society action available in a free society to agitate for an end to it, or at the very least to seek reasonable restrictions, regulations and reform. That’s an argument worth having on its merits. Setting a bomb or threatening someone’s life or family is terrorism, an attempt to compel people to accept your position through fear, rather than through reason, compassion or decency, and it is never defensible when those alternatives exist.
The fact that ALF is targeting medical personnel and facilities makes it all the worse, and belongs in the same moral gutter as bombing a hospital or strafing an ambulance in wartime. Even if the hospital or ambulance were unoccupied and only “property” were harmed, that’s still a crime, and it is one, philosophically, out of recognition of the fact that medicine has existed since the dawn of human civilization to fight for all people against the suffering caused by disease and injury. To attack medical personnel, facilities or the “property” associated with their mission is to side with death and suffering against the human race, and puts one into the ignoble category shared by pirates, slavers and torturers, hostis humani generis: an enemy of mankind. ALF and it’s ilk richly deserve the full weight of state and federal criminal law dropped on them from a great height. I’d say invoke the RICO Act, and put 20-year federal racketeering counts on anyone involved in ALF activities.
DJW, I did indeed mean more “appropriate” in the section you quote.
Folks, ever hear of the Berrigan brothers? The nuns arrested for bashing on missile silos in the Midwest, and the pouring of blood on military installations? This is what I’m talking about here — not terrorizing a family, but the forthright attack on the instruments of cruelty.
I have addressed the issue of medical research here.
I loved my Daddy with all my heart. I held him as he died of stomach cancer in 2006, the year I went irrevocably vegan. I won’t give a penny to research that seeks to cure what killed him, if that means giving to those who experiment on other sentient beings.
Tom, Gonzman, djw, you just explained it all better’n I could. Thanks for the clarification of what was in my head.
That said, I do hope that someday our research methods will evolve to the point of not needing to hurt or even upset sentients.
I agree with all of Tom’s points.
What do you mean by support?
“Chinchilla man burns down another cruel lab!”
Insert past credentials
Actions my man, or are you trying to incite the young and ignorant.
Paul, to borrow from the apostle whose name you bear, we all have different gifts. And we use those gifts differently to accomplish the same goal.
In the animal rights world, I honor what Jerry Vlasak does (google him). He is a hero to me for what he has endured. I honor Ingrid Newkirk and Paul Watson; I honored the folks at Earth First! and the Monkey Wrench types so celebrated by Edward Abbey. But I also honor the more moderate voices.
We need our Malcolms and our Martins, our Nat Turners and our Frederick Douglasses.
I’m still pretty much not in favor of the destructive actions of the liberation groups. That said, Hugo, you’re absolutely right about the fact that destroying inanimate property cannot in any way be put on the same level of wrongness that harming human beings is. People seem to be losing sight of that point, especially Gonzman, who is a complete hypocrite in arguing how bad it is to destroy property while coming right out and threating human beings with physical violence.
We need our Malcolms and our Martins, our Nat Turners and our Frederick Douglasses.
…because without them, we will not be able to terrorize people into doing what we have proven unable to convince them to do.
“People seem to be losing sight of that point, especially Gonzman, who is a complete hypocrite in arguing how bad it is to destroy property while coming right out and threating human beings with physical violence.”
Gozman is not being a hypocrite on this subject. The police threaten people with physical violence every time they arrest someone for property destruction, or any other crime. During natural disasters, the state can authorize the National Guard to threaten people with physical violence for crimes against property.
Fred,
It didn’t seem to me that Gonzman was mentioning that in the context of being a police officer or National Guard member. It was more so in the context of a vigilante.
Once again, I ask. All other things being equal (so excepting instances of abusers who damage property as a means of hurting people), what’s worse; getting shot, or having your goods stolen or destroyed?
In fairness, Gonzman would do well to study up on the law regarding self-defense and what constitutes voluntary manslaughter. Too many people say “I’ll jes’ shoot ‘em” without realizing what standard they’re going to be held to after the fact.
That being said, going specifically of Gonz’s example, the intent of a person who is breaking and entering, trespassing without lawful purpose, or destroying property cannot be determined before the fact. The victim can’t know what their intent is.(maybe to steal, maybe to commit a violent crime, etc.) Such acts also themselves create a risk that someone will be hurt even without the purpose to do so. Consider the common hypothetical of a burglar merely intending to steal property who is surprised by an occupant, panics, and caves the occupant’s head in with a lamp. The burglary itself created the risk of such an eventuality. That’s why residential burglary is treated as a serious and violent felony (also, burglary is any illegal entry with the intent to commit any felony. A rapist who breaks into a home to find a victim is also guilty of burglary). That’s also why, in most jurisdictions (including California), the law presumes that anyone in their dwelling who encounters an intruder, who is not a lawful resident or family member, whom they know or have reasonable cause to know entered forcibly, is presumed to be in fear of death or serious bodily injury, a standard that allows for justifiable homicide.
Ben,
Perhaps I’m one of the few commenters who has experienced both events..and in my case, having my car (and the items inside) stolen had a much greater impact on my life and hurt far worse and far longer than when I got hit either time by hot shrapnel.. of course, had it been a sucking chest wound, maybe I’d feel different.
According to Polner and O’Grady’s book, the Baltimore Four (Phil Berrigan being one of the four) used duck blood and calf liver juice in their concoction — but it was for a good cause so that’s okay.
Oh, and Mythago made the points I was thinking — in a shorter and finer fasion than I would have. However, I was curious if you seemed to have changed your position from the person who wrote the following: “Far be it from me to defend those who vandalize our sacred campus property.”
Col Steve, you know my archives better than I do!
I am against poking holes in campus property for the sake of having sex. Vandalism to gratify personal pleasure is different than vandalism in the name of justice. I’m sure you’d join me in vandalizing the Auschwitz death transports, no?
Lab animals. That’s interesting…do you support destroying all labs that use animals in research? A complete stoppage of the whole practice? Or do you draw the line anywhere?
I’d like to see the use of animals ended completely. Vandalism is a last resort, and it is far better to wage a battle for hearts and minds — as well as to do what the wonderful folks at Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine do, which is make the case that there are good alternatives to animal research. It’s possible to be pro-progress while remaining steadfastly opposed to the use of any animals in research.
Now, I’m more strongly opposed to some forms of research than others. Rseearch that causes pain or discomfort is particularly heinous. But being against animal research, for me, is like being against genocide. If someone is going to commit genocide, I suppose I’d rather that they shoot their victims in the head than burn them alive. But I’d rather that they refrain from killing them in the first place.
We-ell…the problem is, if we don’t use animals, we risk humans. Really. You’d prefer to risk humans?
Medical subjects should be those who grant consent. The moral standard of animal rights ethicists is sentience — and “consent” means to direct that awareness towards a certain action.
Southern slaveowners said that the end of slavery would bring the economy to its knees, and that slavery was essential for the functioning of agriculture and trade. They were wrong. Computer modeling is making amazing progress — and if progress is delayed so that we can do the right thing for animals now, I’m willing to risk it. And the health of my family. I’ve proved that with my father, I think.
Pro-vivisectionists always ask the same question at this point: shouldn’t I also renounce the use of medicines already discovered through animal research? Silly question. It’s like asking me to move back to England or Austria because I’m currently sitting on Gabrielino Indian land that was unlawfully stolen. It’s like refusing to set foot in a building built with slave labor two centuries ago. What’s done is done, and any of us in the white American middle class reap the benefits of colonialism and slavery in some tangible way — even though we abhor those institutions now. The key is reparations, and a resolve to change how things are done in the future. But we do the slain animals no good by rejecting the fruits of their torture, just as I do the descendants of the Gabrielinos no good by moving away from their stolen territory and returning to Vienna.
I’m gathering that your answer is “Yes, you prefer to risk humans than animals,” is that correct? I’m having a hard time telling.
Given that only humans can give consent, yes.
That’s an interesting way of looking at it…it occurs to me, though, that animals can’t give consent for any human intervention in their lives, including agreeing to being a pet, for instance, or to medical treatment of any kind, be it chemotherapy for cancer or sterilization. Should we cease performing any of those actions upon animals, since they can’t consent to them?
No. We don’t require human infants to consent to emergency surgeery, and we don’t let them volunteer as test subjects very often. And infants don’t pick their parents!
But “being a pet” is hardly something that has to be done on an emergency basis, making it justifiable to ignore the doctrine of consent. How can you justify restraining the liberty of creatures without seeking their permission, when there is no critical issue at stake?
Given that we have domesticated certain breeds to the point of total dependency, anything short of attentive human guardianship for, say, dogs means certain suffering and likely death for most of these animals. From both a rights-based standpoint and a utilitarian standpoint, the best thing to do is offer care and love to those who are dependent as we would to a child or an ageing relative.
And spay and neuter. We have already intervened unnaturally to create a massive overpopulation of domesticated animals. Involuntary sterilization is, I think, the best long-term strategy for avoiding animal suffering.
I am not saying animals have free will — I don’t generally think they do. But the severely retarded may lack free will, and those with Alzheimer’s — and we still grant them very specific rights to life.
Mmm…the problem with those arguments is the following:
(1) Sterilization is not emergency surgery for most animals, nor do we perform it on human infants–why would it be ethical to perform it on an animal that cannot consent and not a human infant than cannot consent?
(2) Human infants cannot survive without adult human supervision and care. Animals can. Why is it all right for us to force animals to live with us when they cannot consent to it?
(3) If animals are not used to test the safety and efficacy of drugs, medical devices and their various components, we will have to use human infants as test subjects for medications and procedures intended for them. An example is standard medical-grade tubing used in all IV delivery systems, and sterile filtration devices used to make every parenteral (for injection) drug used in human treatment, including simple saline. As federal regulations stand now, all tubing and filtration devices must be tested for biological reactivity before being released for sale to ensure that no toxic leachables or extractables are present beyond a certain concentration that will have unexpected effects on a living biological system (they’re all present, I assure you–it’s the concentration that matters, and the smallest fluctuation in the manufacturing process can result in quite dramatic deviations from the specification). This testing must be performed on living beings of some sort. If we don’t test animals, the tester will be the individual who gets the saline IV drip. In this case, we have chosen to test the system on a human infant who can’t consent, to save the testing on an animal that can’t consent. How is this sustainable in terms of morality?
At this point, I think I’d better direct y’all to the answers provided by those who have been working on this for years.
PCRM’s Animal Experimentation Ethics site
Gary Francione’s FAQs about abolitionist animal ethics. Excerpt:
3. Question: Does the institution of pet ownership violate animals’ basic right not to be regarded as things?
Answer: Yes. Pets are our property. Dogs, cats, hamsters, rabbits, and other animals are mass produced like bolts in a factory or, in the case of birds and exotic animals, are captured in the wild and transported long distances, during which journey many of them die. Pets are marketed in exactly the same way as other commodities. Although some of us may treat our companion animals well, more of us treat them poorly. In America, most dogs spend less than two years in a home before they are dumped at a pound or otherwise transferred to a new owner; more than 70 percent of people who adopt animals give them away, take them to shelters, or abandon them. We are all aware of horror stories about neighborhood dogs on short chains who spend most of their lives alone. Our cities are full of stray cats and dogs who live miserable lives and starve or freeze, succumb to disease, or are tormented by humans. Some people who claim to love their companion animals mutilate them senselessly by having their ears cropped, their tails docked, or their claws ripped out so that they will not scratch the furniture.
You may treat your animal companion as a member of your family and effectively accord her or him inherent value or the basic right not to be treated as your resource. But your treatment of your animal really means that you regard your animal property as having higher than market value; should you change your mind and administer daily and severe beatings to your dog for disciplinary purposes, or not feed your cat so that she will be more motivated to catch the mice in the basement of your store, or kill your animal because you no longer want the financial expense, your decision will be protected by the law. You are free to value your property as you see fit. You may decide to polish your car often or you may let the finish erode. The choice is yours. As long as you provide the minimal maintenance for your car so that it can pass inspection, any other decision you make with respect to the vehicle, including your decision to give it to a scrap dealer, is your business. As long as you provide minimal food, water, and shelter to your pet, any other decision you make, apart from torturing the animal for no purpose whatsoever, is your business, including your decision to dump your pet at the local shelter (where many animals are either killed or sold into research, or have your pet killed by a willing veterinarian.
Many years ago, I adopted a hamster from a law school classmate. The hamster became ill one night, and I called an emergency veterinary service. The veterinarian said that the minimum amount for an emergency visit was $50 and asked me why I would want to spend that amount when I could get a “new” hamster from any pet shop for about $3. I took the hamster to the veterinarian anyway, but that event was one of the first times my consciousness was raised about the status of animals as economic commodities.
As someone who lives with seven rescued canine companions whom I love dearly, I do not treat this matter lightly. Although I regard my companions as family members, they are still my property and I could decide tomorrow to have them all killed. As much as I enjoy living with dogs, were there only two dogs remaining in the world, I would not be in favor of breeding them so that we could have more “pets” and thus perpetuate their property status. Indeed, anyone who truly cares about dogs should visit a “puppy mill”–a place where dogs are bred in the hundreds or thousands and are treated as nothing more than commodities. Female dogs are bred repeatedly until they are “spent” and are either killed or sold into research. We should, of course, care for all those domestic animals that are presently alive, but we should not continue to bring more animals into existence so that we may own them as pets.
Thanks for a great response, Hugo.
I think you make a good case here, but I’m just not sure we’re ready, as DJW said, to hear it.
I do hope, for your sake, your family’s sake, and for the sake of your students who need you, that you are not involved in any illegal activity. Linking to the ALF is one thing. But truly, Hugo, it would be foolishness, total self-destructive and self-centered foolishness, for you to jeopardize your career and your freedom and your family’s stability so you can feel a “frisson” (as you love to say!) of danger from being in proximity to and in solidarity with people who are doing violent, illegal, and usually pretty stupid and ineffective things.
Your advocacy for veganism has made at least two of your students whom I know become vegans. You save more animal lives through your example of crueltyfree living than you ever, ever, ever could or will by supporting or participating in the activitites of the Animal Liberation Front. Be friends with Jerry Vlasak if you want to, but don’t do something dumb and get yourself arrested or fired or imprisoned. You’ve got far too much good to do otherwise, and I worry a bit about that bit of you that still has that “borderline personality disorder” that is so attracted to danger, risk, and extremes.
All the best, Hugo, and I’ll drop by soon.
Carlos
Fascinating link, but it still doesn’t answer the specific question of, “In this case, we have chosen to test the system on a human infant who can’t consent, to save the testing on an animal that can’t consent. How is this sustainable in terms of morality?”
Additionally, while it addresses not deliberately breeding animals, it does not address the morality of preventing an animal from reproducing as it would if humans were not intervening in its lives. You raise another dimension of that argument yourself: “But the severely retarded may lack free will, and those with Alzheimer’s — and we still grant them very specific rights to life.” We have actually in the past sterilized the severely retarded, and as a society have come to the conclusion, enshrined in law, that we have no right to do this and the practice has ceased, though some of the justifications for doing so originally were very much in line with the justifications offered for sterilizing domesticated animals now–the parents would lack the abilities and resources to care for their own young and are unable to control their own mating urges, etc. Why then is it morally unacceptable to do so to humans who cannot consent, but acceptable to do it to animals who cannot consent?
It’s a problematic question, Lisa — and some in the AR community do oppose spaying and neutering. It’s a thorny question, just as euthanasia is a thorny question. Matters of life and death always are difficult, and some of the answers will be worked out over time and in dialogue — just as we are, as a society, still trying to work out “end of life” and “beginning of life” questions for humans! I’m not dodging the question, because I think it’s a good one, and it’s one that the AR community gets to wrestle with.
But it doesn’t raise doubts about our essential premise that animals have rights, and that those rights give them moral standing on par with human beings.
This is a long struggle, proceeding on many fronts.
I do respect those who struggle with these questions–I think complacency of thought is the biggest enemy. I don’t personally struggle with them myself in terms of domesticated animals–unfortunately I think my personal opinion can be best summed up by this quote from the children’s movie Babe:
Cat: Well, they say that you’ve forgotten that you’re a pig. Isn’t that silly?
Babe: What do you mean?
Cat: You know, why pigs are here.
Babe: Why are any of us here?
Cat: Well, the cow’s here to be milked, the dogs are here to help the Boss’s husband with the sheep, and I’m here to be beautiful and affectionate to the boss.
Babe: Yes?
Cat: [sighs softly] The fact is that pigs don’t have a purpose, just like ducks don’t have a purpose.
Babe: [confused] Uh, I–I don’t, uh–
Cat: All right, for your own sake, I’ll be blunt. Why do the Bosses keep ducks? To eat them. So why do the Bosses keep a pig? The fact is that animals don’t seem to have a purpose… really do have a purpose.
I also believe it’s a sign of incipient psychosis to unnecessarily harm animals, so I’m a fan of the animal welfarists. But I don’t consider domesticated animals, as long as they’re treated as the animal welfarists specify, to have any loss of quality of life in being kept for humans to eat versus living in the wild and being eaten by predators. Probably the strongest feeling I have on the subject is what I consider to be the necessity of some medical animal use–if there were absolutely none starting tomorrow, we’d simply have to use humans instead, including those who can’t consent–and I do believe that killing a human, even one that is capable of consenting, with an experimental drug, is worse than killing an animal who can’t consent with one in the name of trying to cure the humans.
Tom, yes, I do know that law very well, how it is applied, and how it is enforced. It’s one of the reasons I won’t live in a state with a “Duty to flee” doctrine.
People seem to be losing sight of that point, especially Gonzman, who is a complete hypocrite in arguing how bad it is to destroy property while coming right out and threating human beings with physical violence.
It is not a threat, believe you me. I’ve actually done it. Never even been charged for it - I do keep within the law. Far as killing - not crossed that line; but if someone threatens me or mine, in a hot minute.
Later on you raise the canard of “Vigilante.” Let me explain you the difference. I am in my home, or about my lawful business. If I am left alone, you are safer around me - even if I have one of those scary automatic weapons - then you are accepting a ride with Ted Kennedy. All my weapons combined have killed one less person than his car.
Lay some kind of seige to me, assault me, break into my home - it is a different thing. That is on you, though.
Now, you run away, I’m not hunting you down. (I reserve certain exceptions for especially heinous actions against my loved ones) I’m not appointing myself marshal. Patrolman. That is a vigilante.
Now, if you insist I have no right to self defense, and by doing so with lethal force, I make myself Judge, Jury, and executioner, then that is fine. You are at odds with jurisprudence in most states, but you are entitled to your opinion.
I know this is off topic, but I’ve never come close to understanding how it’s more libertarian to force women to carry a pregnancy to term if it’s a state government rather than a federal one. They’re both exercising the same coercive power from the individual’s point of view.
You can always go somewhere else. You’re confusing Libertarianism with anarchism. Anarchists like to pretend they are the purest forms of libertarians, but at best I have found, they are possessed of magical thinking; and at worst, they are themselves bullies who crave a lawless environment from which to exercise their bullying without threat of authority.
If you recognize the right of a state to exist, you must recognize that all that authority will ultimately be exercised at the barrel of a gun. Defy it, and sooner or later there will be someone with a uniform and a gun saying “Comply or die.” This is as true with ordinances against putting signs up to laws against murder.
I find federal laws more onerous because they are universal; and I think these should be reserved for only such things as may be applied uniformly. IMO, abortion does not reach this level - it’s like the dry counties I am familiar with in Kentucky - right at the county line there are bars and liquor stores. Forbid abortion at a state level, and watch them put clinics in at the first exits on the way out of the state.
As long as I am not required to participate, pay for, or otherwise aid or abet an abortion, though, I have other issues which are of pressing importance.
I’m sure you’d join me in vandalizing the Auschwitz death transports, no?
No, not efficient enough - but I’d hope you’d join me in engaging in what would be described as guerrila warfare against such tyranny.
Which comes to the old “One Man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” I suppose only posterity - and what fruit the seed you plant bears - can answer which is which.
Hugo, so, AGAIN, you concede that Jesus was not a pacifist, and you don’t believe it’s domestic violence for somebody to destroy their partner’s things, since property damage is not violence?
We went through this before when you were a fan of PETA. You pretended that they never did anything inappropriate and got very petulant when it was pointed out to you–again and again–that they cheerfully peddled sexuality and women’s bodies in search of publicity. Now you’re embracing the ALF, which engages in threats and violence to achieve its goals.
Since you clearly don’t give a fuck about women, nonviolence, or any of your other professed principles as long as you can pat yourself on the back and say “but my violent inclinations are directed at animal abusers, so they’re okay!”: perhaps you might consider the practical implications of what the ALF does. Do you really think a single researcher is going to say, gosh, I found a firebomb on my porch so perhaps animals do have rights? Do you think a single person who is ignorant of the animals’ plight is going to read a newspaper story about the ALF’s latest home invasion and think, wow, I’m really not happy about what happened to that cow before it turned into my hamburger?
You KNOW these tactics do nothing to really help animals. You KNOW they’re counterproductive. You simply don’t care because you choose to wallow in violent fantasies, and you wave your supposed Jewish ancestry around to pretend you have a moral right to do so.
Myth, I think that’s a bit unfair. I don’t give to ALF — there’s no one to give to! I honor the work they do, and I honor the work PETA does, and I criticise them both when they do something stupid. But my real energy and money goes to legit organizations like PCRM, Farm Sanctuary, Sea Shepherd, and so forth.
And I resent the “supposed Jewish ancestry” crack. I may not be “Jewish”, but my ancestors were, and they died because of it.
Let’s put one load of codswallop to rest, Hugo: your friends in the animal “rights” movement do support genocide. They’ve said so. I’ve worked with people they’ve harmed, whose culture they’ve expressed an intention to destroy. I don’t see that as pacifist in any sense, and none of the mealy-mouthed justifications for this kink of violence move me at all.
Ironically, the people and culture the animal “rights” people want to destroy have a far better understanding of effective relationships with the nonhuman world than all the animal “rights” people I have read, or read about. The obvious contradiction of animal “rights” doctrine lies in its treatment of nonhuman carnivores; if animals have the ability to act as moral agents and bearers of rights, then, by the animal “rights” doctrines, we should hold wolves and falcons and ornicus orca no less accountable than humans who, like myself, eat meat. But the animal “rights” movement clearly recognizes the futility of trying to do so. This contradiction, typical of many fatal flaws that riddle the animal “rights” position, has no resolution in animal “rights” thinking. The First Nations people I know could, I suspect, try to educate people into understanding that we cannot possibly extend our notion of “rights”, a fundamentally sterile and fatally limited construct required to make our “society of strangers” work, to the whole natural world. We need, instead, an ethic of relationship, respect, and responsibility.
But then again, the first peoples of this continent don’t exactly have an obligation to educate their genocidaires.
Myth does have a point, Hugo - Every act of terrorism, every bomb exploded in a Lab (Abortion Clinic) Pushes the legitimacy of the group planting them further away in the public mind. Every time a Scientist (Abortion provider) is assaulted, every time a researcher (Clinic administrator) is stalked it only stokes the ability of the other side to point the finger and say “Look - extremists. It’s what such people always resort to when intellectual arguments fail.”
It also raises the term “Hypocrisy,” and for once in a correct context.
I reject all such actions. Period. No matter how devoutly held the belief in rightness of the cause, it is not the answer. This is on principle.
I rather imagine, though, if someone made similar apologetics on behalf of, say, Operation Rescue, You’d respond, “Well, that’s different…”
No, it’s not. I can think of no tighter analogy. It’s just a different ox being gored.
Not much time to respond, but John, you misunderstand AR theory. Humans have a choice whether or not to be carniverous in a way that, say, orcas don’t. But rights are not contingent upon the possession of free will, they are conditioned on sentience, and those are two different things. Most humans can get all their nutritional needs met while living on a purely plant-based diet — our physiology allows that. An Orca can’t. There’s a vital distinction there.
That doesn’t fly, Hugo. Aside from the logical incoherence, many animals, like humans, are basically omnivores and could adapt to a plant-only diet - but they’re not going to do it unless forced to. (I’ll look forward to seeing ALF trying to explain to the chimpanzee tribe that it doesn’t need to eat the bush meat it finds, and should just stick to the fruits and veggies.) You want to force us to follow your notions about ethical eating, but at the same time shrink from the logical conclusion that you should be forcing other omnivores to do the same thing.
John is correct that a “rights” model is ludicrously out of place in attempting to frame an ethic that encompasses the natural world. You cannot have abstract rights without abstract responsibilities, and there is no way for animals to take on responsibilities in an abstract fashion; they lack the cognitive capacity. (Maybe dolphins could, but that’s one species among millions.)
Animal rights people resist the obvious truth of what John says, about an ethic of relationship, which COULD lead to a much more life-affirming and mutual relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world, because that ethic would be fatal to the twin conceit at the core of the animal rights movement: sentimentality and anthropomorphism.
Really? I resent the “my ancestors were Jewish so I get to pull out the Shoah and you can’t question me, nyah nyah” nonsense, myself.
But I’m glad to hear that you’re no longer claiming to be a pacifist, since you honor the work the ALF does.
I assume that in the future, if any of your students are concerned that their boyfriends may become abusive because said boyfriend smashed their cellphones or pulled the spark plugs from their cars, you’ll assure them that mere property damage isn’t violence; certainly it isn’t as though he’d hit them, so it doesn’t count. And I also assume that you’re not going to dishonor PETA by teaching in your Women’s Studies classes about the impropriety of exploiting women’s bodies.
I’m sorry Hugo, but I really had to take issue with that assertion. You really don’t see the logical invalidity of that claim on its face? What are the computers supposed to model without a working model to begin with? The computers can’t generate the data themselves.
And furthermore, do you have any idea how far computer modeling has to go to even give us a basic working model of proteins, the basic building blocks of cells, and thus life? Folding@home, which is currently the most powerful distributed computing project in the world, can crunch on a time and complexity scale at least three orders of magnitude less than the simplest quaternary-structure protein-subunit. Multiply that a few, uh, trillion times, at least, and you might have a complete working computer model of a simple animal. Really, a man as religious as you ought to have some respect for the awesome complexity of life and how poor our tools really are for understanding it.
Hugo, you or I could assign “rights” to anything we want. I can assign rights to a process operating on my computer if I want. No problem there; you can assign rights to animals if you like. And I suppose you can say that, although carnivores routinely violate the rights you’ve assigned, the poor things can’t help it, so you’ll give them a pass. But the web of life in which we all live and move and have our being requires carnivores. The wolves need the caribou, but the caribou also need the wolves. The process at which you selectively shudder, the eating of meat, forms an essential part of the ecosystem we live in.
I suppose you can say that the Creator made a poor job of things, or you can accept that the ethic of rights, created to serve the needs of an emerging mass society, has always visibly suffered from the limits to formal systems, and has, as Locke’s own life shows, always had to admit of major exceptions. For this reason and others, I consider the attempt to extend the ethic of “rights” to animals and the natural world profoundly misguided and inappropriate. As Mythago, myself, and Tom have pointed out, this misguided attempt to extend Locke’s ideas and their derivatives have let to some very bad results, some very serious breaches of ethics indeed.
John, I’m not arguing for or against extending rights to animals; I’m arguing against Hugo’s intellectually dishonest claim that violence is magically transformed into “pacifism” if it’s intended to benefit animals, and that violence directed toward property is never a threat towards people. He knows that’s not true; he just isn’t quite comfortable admitting that his feelings about animals trump every other principle he professes to follow.
Mythago, I said you pointed out the results, which I think you did; I regret it if I gave the impression that you held beliefs that you don’t. I would personally point out that assigning rights to animals does in fact lead to some extreme positions, since rights in our society have evolved into non-negotiable positions.
This takes spin to a despicable length. If you consider animal “rights” so important they justify risking the lives of firefighters, people in the neighbourhood, people in the street, and others, have the guts to say so.This source gives a good sense of what your “marginal risk” means in practice. The ordinary risks of burning any modern building include fumes from plastics and the possible presence of asbestos. I doubt the arsonists of the ALF do a full materials safety audit before lighting the match. The special dangers of burning down medical research facilities include the presence of propane systems to feed Bunsen burners, drugs and other chemicals, and radio-isotopes for medical imaging. That last has the potential to contaminate large areas, and aside from the obvious ethical issues, while people and even livestock and pets can hope for treatment in the event of exposure, the local wildlife will get none.
I side with Tom here. hostis humani generis.
Where in the archives is there anything about poking holes in campus property for sexual purposes? I missed that one.
Oh, and while the firefighters are busy risking their lives to put out that torched lab, my place or yours could be burning down.