One might be tempted to believe that conservatives don't
like animals. A lot sure don't like animal advocates. At the tamest
level, they label us "screwballs" and "extremists" or just, derisively,
"animal righters." But more seriously, some such critics -- let's call
them "animals wrongers" -- brand us terrorists.
The Wall Street Journal howls that we "terrorize
civilians."
Dick Boland in The Washington Times barks that
"Animal-rights groups are the closest thing to terrorists we have in
this country." (Apparently he hasn't read about the al Qaeda training
camp graduates recently arrested in Buffalo, N.Y. and Portland, Ore.)
Wesley J. Smith adds to the cacophony in National Review Online (NRO)
with the ominous pronouncement that animal advocates "have crossed to
the dark side � animal rights terrorism."
Granted, some radical animal activists have committed
serious acts of vandalism and other crimes. But the wrongers' wrath
isn't directed solely at them. Mr. Smith, for instance, condemns groups
like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and even the moderate
Humane Society of the United States.
Why do the wrongers feel so threatened by even
mainstream animal welfare activism, whose lineage in this country goes
back to the Puritans? (One would expect some conservative sympathy for a
cause with so much history.) Mr. Smith provides a possible answer in an
earlier NRO piece where he objects to "personhood theory" � according to
which rights come not from simply being human but rather from
"possessing relevant cognitive capacities."
In plain English, that means that no conceivable set of
facts could ever convince Mr. Smith that animals have rights. It
wouldn't matter if animals could read philosophy, compose sonnets and
play a game of chess. For Mr. Smith, human life alone has value, not
because of any characteristics humans possess but "simply and merely
because it is human."
Try such a declaration in a purely human context:
"Caucasian/male/gentile life has value simply and merely because it is
caucasian/male/gentile." Such claims have of course been made at various
times and places, explicitly or implicitly, but few would mistake them
for moral positions.
What such a baldly self-serving, only-my-group-has-value
argument reveals, though, is that equating animal rights with
"terrorism" is not a reaction to the vandalism of any radicals. For the
animal wrongers, anyone who trumpets the value of nonhuman lives, even
peacefully, is a threat. The mere recognition that animals have a place
in the circle of moral concern, alongside human beings, leads to, as Mr.
Smith puts it, "dehumanization" � the ultimate form of terror.
No wonder the animal wrongers see "terrorists"
everywhere. There are plenty of people concerned about animals, even
among conservatives. For example: Sen. Jon Kyl and Rep. Elton Gallegly,
who just three years ago championed legislation to outlaw snuff films
with animal victims. And former Republican senatorial staffer
Christopher J. Heyde, who wrote critically in the Washington Times
recently about animals in labs. "I am appalled," he wrote, "that these
atrocities occurred in U.S. laboratories, which happened in part because
the overwhelming majority of animals used in research have been denied
legal protection." And Matthew Scully, a former speechwriter for
President Bush and author of a new book on animal rights, who argued in
a recent piece for the New York Times, the intrinsic worth of elephants
and against the ivory trade. And Victorino Matus, who wrote
sympathetically in the conservative Daily Standard about the neglected
and abused animals in the Kabul Zoo. And former New York Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani, who appeared at a black-tie dinner at New York's Waldorf
Astoria to raise money for veterinary care at the nonprofit Animal
Medical Center � and to honor NYPD and other search-and-rescue dogs.
Even conservative author and dog-lover Ann Coulter was
quoted in the New York Post as saying that "Dogs are people too."
Do such expressions of concern and caring for animals
make you worry that animals will soon get the vote, or that shared
restrooms for them and us can't be far behind? Of course not. But they
apparently do worry the animal wrongers, who fear the slippery slope
that we've all stepped onto long, long ago.
But they're worse than just silly reactionaries. By
equating vandalism and other property crimes with terrorism, the
wrongers trivialize the real thing and insult its victims. Which, come
to think of it, sort of makes them terrorists.
At least as much so as the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals.
Steven Zak, a longtime animal advocate, has written
about animal rights for many publications including the Atlantic Monthly
and the New York Times.
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Urge Harley-Davidson To Spare The Deer
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