Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
Peter Robinson ·
June 28, 2011 at 9:03pm
In a post the other day, I quoted my friend Matthew Scully’s recent book review in the Weekly Standard, noting that Matthew used the review “to argue for animal rights.” An attentive reader notes that I got that wrong.
In the review as elsewhere—notably in his beautifully written book, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy—Matthew intentionally and persuasively avoids any discussion of “animal rights,” writing not about the putative “rights” of animals but about the entirely real moral obligations of humans.
The distinction is vital. I’d recommend Matthew’s book. But for a briefer treatment, take a look at this essay, “The Case for Compassionate Conservatism—for Animals.”
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May '11
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
Excellent.
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
What mercy must the carnivore show? Kill what you eat and hunt not for sport? A less than cruel killing?
I submit those things are nothing more than mind games the human plays on himself to assuage some misplaced sense of guilt. It matters not to the dead animal why or how he died. Only that he is gone.
If an alien came to earth to kill me, I wouldn't think the better of him were he to assure me he would eat my remains after the slaughter.
Animals have no souls. Sorry Disney but all dogs don't go to heaven. None of them do.
I will not claim the hypocritical position that I have any duty of mercy toward animals while knowing tonight I will cut the skin from a steer's meat and eat him, twitching rare.
Dec '10
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
We translated the rest of the book! The title -- "To Serve Man" -- it's a cookbook!
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
Stuart Creque
We translated the rest of the book! The title -- "To Serve Man" -- it's a cookbook! · Jun 28 at 1:03pm
That's one of my favorite episodes! I think everyone agrees on that.
Dec '10
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
The obligation humans have not to be cruel to animals is not an obligation of justice to the animals. As Tommy points out, if there were such an obligation, it would apply to predatory animals as well as humans, and the Earth would be ordered such that predators always killed their prey humanely, rather than (for example) capturing live animals for their young to practice their hunting skills on.
The obligation humans have not to be cruel to animals is an obligation we have to one another and to God not to be cruel. We have an obligation to display humanity (in the value-laden, better-than-animals sense) in all that we do. If we are wantonly cruel to animals, we are liable to be wantonly cruel to people.
Thus our obligation is to raise or hunt the animals we use humanely. That doesn't mean we should ensure each animal reaches its full potential and becomes a fully-actualized being before we eat it, but only that we ensure each animal we use has an existence free from human-caused injury and disease and has a quick and painless death.
Aug '10
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
I concur with everything Stuart says. Furthermore, I am distinctly offended by this strawman argument offered in the linked essay, "The human mind, especially when there is money to be had, can manufacture grand excuses for the exploitation of other human beings." Please tell me where this sentiment is condoned by any conservative, that I may begin the process of expelling him from the tribe.
We don't think that way and that Mr Scully thinks we do disqualifies him from passing judgment on us regardless of his resume.
Yes, there are worst excesses that we as a society ought to focus our energies upon before we turn our ire upon industrial farming. I would offer the human sexual trafficking trade as one- it is incomparably more evil and much more in our control.
Edited on June 28, 2011 at 11:19pmMay '10
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
It is hard to argue with the principle that we should not degrade ourselves by causing or being totally immune to the suffering of living creatures.
What infliction of pain that is not necessary for the survival of man should not be permitted. We can do that without attempting to remove the reality of death and the primeval instincts of carnivores from real life, and Mr. Scully's humane farming act, if it is not completely off the wall, a la PETA, could certainly be considered.
But every essay of this type that I see still tends at some all-too-predictable point to anthropomorphize the animals and try stir our compassion by invoking puppy mills as a sort of trump card in replacing logic with emotion and giving animals souls in order to win the argument.
There is an acceptable, not necessarily happy, medium that acknowledges man's dominion in the world and the essential cruelty of real nature while not compounding cruelty unnecessarily.
Oct '10
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
This essay is too close for comfort. Ridicule PETA – Yes. Object to Michael Vick’s doggy daycare – Yes. Hold up the “stop” gesture, “I don’t want to know” – Yes.
Thank you Peter for linking to this essay. I’d love to hear Mr. Scully interviewed on Uncommon Knowledge.
Mr. Scully might address this more in the book, but I found the essay’s brief look at economics too superficial. What are the economic consequences of a “Humane Farming Act”? How much would this raise food prices? Would I be acting humanely towards animals yet be consigning the poor to further hunger/malnutrition? Also, I didn’t totally follow Mr. Scully’s point on the megafarm subsidies - besides the fact that subsidies distort markets.
I feel like I’m 75% of the way there, but…
Aug '10
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
ME Lovatt:
I found the essay’s brief look at economics too superficial.
Exactly. There was a disturbing tendency to write off economic concerns as issues of mere convenience or greed.
Scully also writes,
"Factory farming is a predatory enterprise, absorbing profit and externalizing costs, unnaturally propped up by political influence and government subsidies much as factory-farmed animals are unnaturally sustained by hormones and antibiotics."
then later writes that the solution is:
"We need our conservative values voters to get behind a Humane Farming Act... a set of explicit federal cruelty statutes with enforcement funding to back it up."
What? The first step isn't to cut those government subsidies so that this "predatory enterprise" is no longer "unnaturally propped up"?
The next step isn't to get producers to internalize their externalities? (Incidentally, it's possible that X animals raised on a factory farm might still produce fewer -- though more concentrated -- externalities than the same X animals raised on a more traditional farm.)
And what about that "unnatural" political influence he decries? Dissolve that?
No, he'd apparently rather leave that all in place and create a new federal program. I find that a little disturbing.
Edited on June 29, 2011 at 12:13amAug '10
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
Moreover, anti-cruelty statutes in the United States tend to be municipal or statewide, not federal.* What's wrong with that approach? Why make it a federal issue?
Or is any problem capable of arousing enough pity grounds enough for ignoring the 10th Amendment?
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* The one exception is the Animal Welfare Act of 1966, which I suppose might be Scully's precedent.
Edited on June 29, 2011 at 12:26amApr '11
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
Good point, and may I be the first to predict that if we go down this path, California will be the first state to require that only "cruelty-free" meat may be sold in its marketplaces. Then we will watch as those Californians who don't leave to take up residence in other states begin to make "meat runs" to neighboring states, as pressure builds for food stamp benefits to increase so that recipients can have meat at all, etc. etc. ad nauseam.
Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and New York will follow, with each of them wondering what steps they can take next to stop their citizens from importing meat from the evil factory farms of the sinful, unenlightened Midwest. Eventually it will come down to an appeal for federal intervention anyway... as it always does.
Aug '10
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
It's a depressing thought.
Is it not worth fighting for the 10th amendment anymore?
But when so many ills are caused by overcentralization and lack of real self-government, how can we not fight to restore power to its proper sphere?
Aug '10
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
I'm no fan of factory farming -- I buy free range when I can, because I do feel sorry for the critters -- but there are several things about Scully's essay that bother me... maybe I find it too absolutist in its assumptions.
Here's a more unusual example:
"Other companies are at work genetically engineering chickens without feathers... For years, the many shills for our livestock industry... have been tampering with the genes of pigs and other animals to locate and expunge that part of their genetic makeup that makes them stressed in factory farm conditions."
Is what really bugs him the fact that modern genetic engineering, not old-fashioned artificial selection, is how they're accomplishing this? (But old-fashioned artificial selection is a kind of genetic engineering, too -- albeit a less sophisticated kind.)
May '10
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
What's wrong with the philosophy of stewardship?
Incidentally, stewardship was not included among the subjects of my Environmental Ethics course at a Catholic university. We did read Peter Singer.
May '10
Re: Correction: Not Animal Rights. Human Duties
If you read Matthew's Weekly Standard piece on EB White, he goes off into extended discussions about pig Wilbur and spider Charlotte. Both animals are anthropomorphized in exactly the same way.
I would love to ask him if he has ever brutally murdered a spider. How could he do that to Charlotte? A living creature, with hopes, dreams, and ability to create material that our scientists can't improve.