The wrong idea about animal rights

Rocky Mountain News ^ | 01/03/04 | Wesley J. Smith

[Holly_P]

When Ingrid Newkirk, the founder of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), infamously asserted in 1986, "There is no rational basis for asserting that a human being has special rights: A rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy," few believed that she meant it literally. Surely, people thought, Newkirk and PETA understand that humans have far greater moral worth than animals.

Actually, they don't understand that. In fact, it now appears that PETA's moral views have become so distorted and misanthropic that the organization sees no difference between eating a steak and cannibalizing a human being.

Here's the story: Armin Meiwes, the "German cannibal," shocked the world when he admitted to slaughtering, butchering and eating a man he met over the Internet. PETA's reaction to this sickening event? It sent Meiwes a vegetarian cookbook and a hamper full of veggie burgers in the hope of converting him to vegetarianism.

"What this man did to a German computer expert is done to other creatures everyday," a PETA spokesman explained. "The cruel scenario of slaughtering, cutting up, portioning, freezing and eating of body parts," the actions taken by Meiwes against his human victim, "is the grim reality for more than 450 million sentient individuals \[animals\] that are killed in this country \[Germany\] every year."

In other words, according to PETA, when you enjoy a lamb chop or eat a hamburger, you are acting no differently than the cannibal who butchered a man and ate his flesh.

Making odious moral equivalencies between animal husbandry and the worst crimes against humans has become a PETA trademark. Indeed, its notorious "Holocaust on Your Plate" pro-vegetarian campaign literally equates the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust with the eating of chickens. This reprehensible message isn't presented between the lines or done subtly in the hope that the reader will infer the comparison. Rather, it is the explicit and unequivocal theme of the entire national campaign.

First, there are the pictures. PETA juxtaposes photographs of emaciated concentration camp inmates in their tight-packed wooden bunks with chickens being kept in cages. In another truly despicable comparison (on several levels), a picture of piled bodies of Jewish Holocaust victims is juxtaposed with the bodies of dead pigs. (If the KKK did that it would be called hate speech.)

The text of the campaign is just as offensive. In a section entitled The Final Solution, PETA makes this astonishing comparison: "Like the Jews murdered in concentration camps, animals are terrorized when they are housed in huge, filthy warehouses and rounded up for shipment to slaughter. The leather sofa and handbag are the moral equivalent of the lampshades made from the skins of people killed in the death camps."

Forget for the moment that Hitler was sometimes a vegetarian and that Nazi government passed some of the most far-reaching animal protection laws of the era, that PETA can't distinguish between the unspeakable evil of the Shoah and animal husbandry reveals a perverted sense of moral values that is almost beyond comprehension.

But this matter goes far beyond moral revulsion. If animal rights/liberationists actually believe that the activities undertaken by the meat industry are moral crimes akin to murder, cannibalism and the Holocaust, is it any wonder that some of the less stable members of the movement are increasingly resorting to violence to obtain moral and legal equality between humans and animals?

Recent violence against animal-testing facilities, food processing plants, fur farms and other businesses that use animals has gotten so extreme that the internationally respected Southern Poverty Law Center - which did so much to dismantle the White Supremacist movement - has added radical animal liberationist organizations to its list of domestic hate groups.

For example, the SPLC reports that the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) posted a how-to-commit-arson guide on the Internet, advertised as Your Guide to Putting the Heat On Animal Abusers Everywhere. Moreover, according to the SPCL's report From Push to Shove, animal rights/liberation terrorists regularly employ "death threats, fire bombings and violent assaults" against those they accuse of abusing animals.

PETA's sending a vegetarian cookbook to the German cannibal as if his consuming of human flesh is no different morally than eating a pork chop, and its odious "Holocaust on Your Plate" campaign, illustrate the twisted moral thinking that lies at the heart of the modern animal rights/liberation movement.

Rather than promoting the more humane use of animals - a noble calling - animal liberationists see no distinction between humans and animals. Because of these distorted moral views, some are now willing to use criminal means to coerce society into accepting their ideology.

Remember this, and "consider the source" the next time PETA presumes to tell you right from wrong.

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. He is researching a book about the animal liberation movement.

[Holly_P]

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[Monty22]

Are there people out there that think PETA is some normal good organization still?

This article is of course all correct, but are there fools out there that don't know this stuff already?

[Holly_P]

I see cars around here with PETA bumper stickers. I give them a wide berth knowing they wouldn't think twice about running over me to avoid hitting a squirrel.

[Holly_P]

Ping

[Snuffington]

Are there people out there that think PETA is some normal good organization still?

I'd bet the majority of people think of them as a "good" organization. Just like most people still think of the increasingly radical Sierra Club as good. All it takes is noble "intentions" and a good PR machine, and most Americans will buy it hook, line, and sinker.

After all you're not in favor of cruelty to animals, are you?!! (That's generally the sort of question used to stifle any real criticism.)

[Monty22]

"After all you're not in favor of cruelty to animals, are you?!! (That's generally the sort of question used to stifle any real criticism.)"

That's how all these liberal causes work, sigh..

'you don't WANT the environment to be destroyed, so support us'

Endless crap.

[34512a]

I think some of their extremity stems from the fact that we aren't humane to animals at all. Just look at the "mad cow" problem we have now. It is a problem because we feed cows to others cows. It's an affront to the simple diginity we should show anything.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[IronJack]

Do some research on Ingrid Newkirk and you'll find that she is every bit the loon you thought she was. Upon her death, she asked that her body be cut into pieces and certain parts sent to certain places to continue her lifelong campaign of lunacy. She instructs that the "meat" of her body be used as a barbecue, that her skin be removed and used as leather products, that her feet be made into umbrella stands, etc..

This woman, and the cult that follows her, are clearly deranged.

[IronJack]

By the way, a good site dealing with the lunacy of PETA is www.animalrights.net. Well worth visiting if you'd like to see the movement debunked.

[Papabear47]

It would very appropriate for a P.E.T.A. member or advocate to take the place of a cow,pig or chicken at a slaughter house and be processed as food,after all that person is of no more value in there own eyes or those of fellow extremists than the creature they are replacing,that of course will never happen as most liberal/moderates never walk the walk,true rational thought is alien to them,emotion rules their existence as they seem incapable or unwilling to understand the realities of life/nature....Loosing my appetite.
Humans are omnivores by nature and while it is true that we can adapt to a vegetarian life style it is not always the most healthful unless one is able to partake of supplements to their diet,and some of these supplements are animal based protein derivatives which defeats the P.E.T.A. philosophy....Need my Geritol.
Did you mean extremism instead of extremity.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[Terriergal]

Exactly. PETA donates to domestic terrorist organizations. Activist Cash is a watchdog group for nonprofit organizations:

www.activistcash.com and they have a nice little bit on PETA in their archives.

They are nuts. sheer lunacy.

Eat more animals!

Cyrano just got me the Ryan Dobson book _Be Intlolerant : Because some things are just stupid

PETA certainly qualifies.

[Terriergal]

I think some of their extremity stems from the fact that we aren't humane to animals at all. Just look at the "mad cow" problem we have now. It is a problem because we feed cows to others cows. It's an affront to the simple diginity we should show anything.

Oh sure, we should also strive to understand and sympathize with Mohammed Atta's mindset too.

[Terriergal]

She instructs that the "meat" of her body be used as a barbecue, that her skin be removed and used as leather products, that her feet be made into umbrella stands, etc..

I'm sure that guy in Germany would oblige.

[34512a]

Did you just equate terrorists with cows?

[Scenic Sounds]

In other words, according to PETA, when you enjoy a lamb chop or eat a hamburger, you are acting no differently than the cannibal who butchered a man and ate his flesh.

I think it's probably just a matter of personal preference. I've never tried human meat, yet.