Animal Writings

Extreme opponents of animal rights often position themselves as guardians of human dignity and human life, citing examples of mouse experiments curing cancer (dubious and more likely impeding cures), or saving a child before a dog in a fire (a one-in-a-million shot).

Yet nearly all animal rights campaigns are about improving animal welfare and ending hideous practices that save no lives, and are done only to increase profit, or out of meanness or habit:

• Foxes in fur farms crammed in cages that are so uncomfortable and inhibiting that the imprisoned animals go crazy, often resorting to self-mutilation to fend off the madness of constant confinement;


• Downed dairy cows, lame and weak from the rigors of constant pregnancy and artificially boosted milk production, left to suffer without painkillers, food, or water, until they die;


• Layer hens, their beaks seared off so they can't clean their feathers, forced to live in tiny cages and wire grating, unable to flap their wings, contending with feces and urine that drip from the cages above them, often having to walk on and sleep next to dead and dying cagemates;


• Hideously cruel and unnecessary "learned helplessness" experiments that see how much pain and suffering an animal will take before giving up;


• Zoo elephants developing painful, life-threatening foot disease from standing on hard concrete for months on end;


• Chimpanzees kidnapped from their mothers and subjected to dominance training so they can "entertain" us;


• And a thousand more.

The most vocal animal rights opponents unabashedly support and often promote all these activities. Their self-appraisal as a champion of saving human lives is irrelevant and a distraction. More likely they are angry with animal rights groups because these groups remind them of the extent of the suffering they cause, and just how unnecessary it all is. Rather than admit their complicity in cruelty and try to divest themselves of it, participants and beneficiaries of cruelty find it easier to go after the whistleblowers, or to justify their actions in terms of perfectly-tailored hypothetical or highly unusual scenarios. Their arguments frequently are convoluted, sometimes embarrassingly desperate. That's because there just is no way to defend preventable—often severe—cruelty. If they instead stopped contributing to it, their inner conflicts about taking part in it would go away, and so would their reasons for being so angry with animal rights groups.