The goal of the “animal rights” movement is to sacrifice and subjugate man to animals.
Over the last decade members of the “animal rights” movement have committed thousands of acts of terrorism against people and property involved in life-saving animal research. At one major animal-testing company, Huntingdon Life Sciences, so-called protestors have for several years attempted to shut down the company by threatening employees and associates, damaging their homes, firebombing their cars, even beating them severely.
Animal rights terrorists are often cast as “extremists” who take “too far” the allegedly benevolent cause of animal rights. But as a recent story in the Los Angeles Times demonstrates, the terrorists’ inhuman tactics are an embodiment of the movement’s inhuman cause.
The Times profiled Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a surgeon who, according to the story, argues “that killing scientists to stop animal research would be ‘morally justifiable.’” He advocates taking “five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives” in the hopes of saving “a million, 2 million, 10 million nonhuman lives.” Vlasak runs the Animal Liberation Press Office, through which he suggests targets for terrorists to hit, and welcomes and publicizes terrorists’ “communiqués.” What justifies advocating murder and being a terrorist ringleader? In the words of the story, “his belief that animal life is as valuable as human life.”
While most animal rights activists do not openly advocate killing animal testers, they do share the view that animal life is sacred.
According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the basic principle of animal rights is: "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment" — they "deserve consideration of their own best interests, regardless of whether they are useful to humans." This is in exact contradiction to the requirements of human survival and progress, which demand that we kill animals when they endanger us, eat them when we need food, run tests on them to fight disease.
Consider the issue of animal testing, which is universally opposed by animal rights activists, and the object of much animal rights terrorism. There is no question that animal research is absolutely necessary for the development of life-saving drugs, medical procedures, and biotech treatments. According to Nobel Laureate Joseph Murray, M.D.: "Animal experimentation has been essential to the development of all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacements, and all vaccinations." Explains former American Medical Association president Daniel Johnson, M.D.: "Animal research — followed by human clinical study — is absolutely necessary to find the causes and cures for so many deadly threats, from AIDS to cancer."
Millions of humans would suffer and die unnecessarily if animal testing were prohibited. Animal rights activists know this, but are unmoved. Chris DeRose, founder of the group Last Chance for Animals, writes: "If the death of one rat cured all diseases, it wouldn't make any difference to me."
The death and destruction that would result from any serious attempt to respect animal rights would be catastrophic — for humans — a prospect the movement's most consistent members embrace. "We need a drastic decrease in human population if we ever hope to create a just and equitable world for animals," proclaims Freeman Wicklund of Compassionate Action for Animals.
To ascribe rights to animals is to contradict the purpose and justification of rights — to protect the interests of humans. Rights are moral principles necessary for men to survive as human beings — to coexist peacefully, to produce and trade, to provide for their own lives, and to pursue their own happiness, all by the guidance of their rational minds. To attribute rights to non-rational, amoral creatures who can neither grasp nor live by them is to turn rights from a tool of human preservation to a tool of human extermination.
It should be no surprise that many in the animal rights movement use violence to pursue their man-destroying goals. While these terrorists should be condemned and imprisoned, that is not enough. We must wage a principled, intellectual war against the very notion of animal rights; we must condemn it as logically false and morally repugnant.
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Read more articles by Alex Epstein
Funny (?): Is it true P.E.T.A. is suing Santa Claus to keep him from using the reindeer next Christmas (or should that be X-Mas?).
Not So Funny: My guess is that these animal "rights" activists are on the other hand saying that stem cell research on Human embryos is just fine.
Comment by Mike Brown | September 13, 2006
IMHO the conversion or overturning of the opinions of the AR zealot is not likely through intellectual debate, reason or rationale interlocutory. The reason for this, their position is based in emotion and not reasoned analysis conducted in a realistic context.
There is value in engaging them for other reasons: 1. to guarantee that there is an answer in the public discourse juxtaposed as an offset to their inane blather, 2. To ensure that the influence of their caterwauling on those easily influenced and vulnerable members of society is minimal (i.e., members of the US Congress and their local and state counterparts who make legislation), 3. To protect animals from the tragic consequences that fall out when the folly of their policy influences wildlife management or results in the abandonment of sound wildlife management practices.
Do we really want the lady who has 75 cats (some alive and some dead and decaying) in her one bedroom cottage and who goes about her everyday life in the midst of cat feces laden squalor to dictate public policy regarding the treatment of animals?
I know that the animal rights activist are at the outer limits of leftwing extremism, but they represent living proof that liberalism is a clinically diagnosable mental disorder.
Comment by Ken Harmon | September 14, 2006
Excellent article, These protesters would be the first ones in line if they were ill for the very medicines created from the animal research done. Their movement from the surface seems noble, as Western Civilization has fostered the idea that the treatment of animals is a direct reflection of the civility of a society in whole, however in these protesters eyes, the research of animals conducted no matter how little pain is inflicted on the animals themselves is considered far to cruel to allow to persist. Despite the countless millions of men, women and children that would survive disease, and illness that could of been prevented if not for animal research. Their naievty could almost be considered, dangerous perhaps? Because these enlightened folks are imposing road blocks to progress in medicine, and intern an incremental ride to a modern dark-ages of science all in the name of animal rights.
Brandon
Comment by Brandon | September 14, 2006
Ken, if those who didn't write and edit the DSM (the psychiatric diagnostic manual) weren't liberals themselves, you can bet there WOULD be such a disorder listed there!
Comment by TJ | September 16, 2006
I’m sure liberalism is not in and has little chance of entering the DSM. However, it has sufficient characteristics and irrational, even psychotic, patterns of behavior to be classified as a clinically diagnosable mental disorder. An old friend once described a liberal in more simple but succinct terms; “He’d rather climb a tree and tell a lie, then stand on the ground and speak the truth.”
The philosophy and values of the animal rights movement is an extreme sect that could only find a home in liberalism. There is something compulsive and delusional about the person who chooses to value the life of an animal equal to or more highly than another human. Attributing anthropomorphic qualities to beasts, even cockroaches, is the stuff of bazaar fantasy, except in the mind of the typical PETA supporter. The one thing it cannot be is truth.
None of this is to say that the life forms that populate our planet are not important. I treasure them. I feel a spiritual responsibility towards stewardship of them. But not at the expense of a single human life not given in personal, self willed, sacrifice. God has placed humans as his first priority. Who am I to argue with Him.
Comment by Ken Harmon | September 26, 2006