Posted on 07/01/2002 5:27:40 AM PDT by kattracks
The animal right movement is clearly having an affect on our culture. I was at the beach this weekend and while reading the bottle of sunscreen I came across the statement that it was "cruelty free" meaning, no animal testing. It implies that any animal testing is cruel.
It just struck me that clearly the company is being coerced into putting this nonsense on their product labeling. After a few years people will believe that any animal testing is by definition cruel.
As a Bible believing Christian, I will plead guilty to Dr. Singer's charge that I practice "speciesism". Of course, sinful man disobeying the commands of God, as in the case of Dr. Singer, is nothing new.
BTW: Princeton? What a sad commentary on the current state of this University that was founded by Bible believing Christians.
In other words, Singer is the classic example of an intellectual.
For most people, I'm not sure that choice has anything to do with it. It's a matter of body chemestry. We are omnivorous. Those canine teeth in our mouths aren't decorations. God made us to eat both meat and vegetables.
I love all animals. However, loving animals will not force me to make some goofy quasi-moral choice to bow out of the food chain. MEAT. It's what's for dinner.
"Animals generally are not making moral choices. Animals are not the same as humans. They can't reflect on what they are doing and think about the alternatives. Humans can. So there is no reason for taking what they do as a sort of moral lesson for us to take. We're the ones who have to have the responsibility for making those choices," he said.
And this was said after he decreed that humans are not superior to animals and bashed the Word of God.
Christians--especially conservative Christians--have long been considered "enemies of mankind" by pagans and atheists, dating from the first time that the Roman Emperor Nero used those words to condemn believers.
Do you champion "animal rights" and assert that a man is not inherently more valuable than a paramecium? Then you despise conservative Christians.
Do you champion "gay rights" and assert that traditional marriage and child-rearing are anti-woman and destructive to the social well-being of children? Then you despise conservative Christians.
Do you champion the ridding of public schools of all references to God and applaud the indoctrination of captive children into humanism by the pro-gay NEA on the public dime? Then you despise conservative Christians.
Do you champion the socialization and decriminalization of dope, pornography, and all sexual perversity as "harmless victimless behaviors"? Then you despise conservative Christians.
Do you champion materialism, Darwinism, and supreme selfishness and look to the short-sighted theories of potboiler writer Ayn Rand for your ethical guideposts? Then you despise conservative Christians.
Peter Singer embodies most of these anti-Christian sentiments. The only genuine difference between him and atheist libertarians is that he is an unabashed socialist who believes that society can overcome conservative Christian superstition by implementing a suffocating nanny sate. Atheist libertarians believe you can overcome Christian superstition and eliminate government at the same time; that there is such thing as a free lunch.
Singer has made similarly controversial plunges into social policy. In a recent New York Times Magazine essay, he argued that the affluent in developed countries are killing people by not giving away to the poor all of their wealth in excess of their needs. How did he come to this conclusion? "If…allowing someone to die is not intrinsically different from killing someone, it would seem that we are all murderers," he explains in Practical Ethics. He calculates that the average American household needs $30,000 per year; to avoid murder, anything over that should be given away to the poor. "So a household making $100,000 could cut a yearly check for $70,000," he wrote in the Times.
Rigorous adherence to a single principle has a way of hoisting one by one's own petard. Singer's mother suffers from severe Alzheimer's disease, and so she no longer qualifies as a person by his own standards, yet he spends considerable sums on her care. This apparent contradiction of his principles has not gone unnoticed by the media. When I asked him about it during our interview at his Manhattan apartment in late July, he sighed and explained that he is not the only person who is involved in making decisions about his mother (he has a sister). He did say that if he were solely responsible, his mother might not be alive today.
Singer's proclamation about income has also come back to haunt him. To all appearances, he lives on far more than $30,000 a year. Aside from the Manhattan apartment-he asked me not to give the address or describe it as a condition of granting an interview-he and his wife Renata, to whom he has been married for some three decades, have a house in Princeton. The average salary of a full professor at Princeton runs around $100,000 per year; Singer also draws income from a trust fund that his father set up and from the sales of his books. He says he gives away 20 percent of his income to famine relief organizations, but he is certainly living on a sum far beyond $30,000. When asked about this, he forthrightly admitted that he was not living up to his own standards. He insisted that he was doing far more than most and hinted that he would increase his giving when everybody else started contributing similar amounts of their incomes. *****End excerpt****
Typical Limo Liberal. Making all manner of grand Pronouncements in the Way things should be, to be applied to everyone NOT NAMED HIM.
Hey...isn't it his moral duty to stop breathing? With every inhalation, he steals valuable oxygen from the poor animals. With every exhalation, he adds greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.
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