Response to Naomi Klein
"...the environmental movement had a series of dazzling victories in the
late ’60s and in the ’70s where the whole legal framework for responding to
pollution and to protecting wildlife came into law. It was just victory
after victory after victory... And then it came to screeching halt when
Reagan was elected. And he essentially waged war on the environmental
movement very openly.
"We started to see some of the language that is common among those deniers –
to equate environmentalism with Communism and so on. As the Cold War
dwindled, environmentalism became the next target, the next Communism."
--Naomi Klein
Yes. Animal liberation, too, has its antagonists. "I'll tell you what the
environmental movement is in this country today, folks," insisted Rush
Limbaugh on an April 22, 1993 television broadcast, "It is the modern home
of the socialist/communist movement in America." According to Limbaugh, the
"real mission" of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) "is
destroying capitalism, not saving animals." (The Way Things Ought to Be, p.
108)
The reality? As a secular moral philosophy, ethical veganism and purchasing
only cruelty-free consumer products are comparable to economic boycotting --
a political tactic used by liberals and conservatives alike.
In The Case for Animal Rights, Dr. Tom Regan observes: "The rights view is
not antagonistic to business, free enterprise, the market mechanism, and the
like. What the rights view is antagonistic to is the view that consumers owe
it to any business to purchase that business's goods or services. The animal
industry is no exception."
According to Dr. Regan: "The rights view's denunciation of standard toxicity
tests on animals is not antibusiness. It does not deny any manufacturer the
liberty to introduce any new product into the marketplace, to compete with
the others already there, and to sink or swim in the waters of free
enterprise.
"All that the rights view denies is that the toxicity of any new product may
be pretested on animals in ways harmful to them. Nonanimal alternatives are
not ruled out by the rights view. On the contrary, their development should
be encouraged, both on the grounds of the public interest and because of the
legitimate legal interests of the manufacturers.
"Nor is the rights view antiscientific," concludes Dr. Regan. "It places the
scientific challenge before pharmacologists and related scientists: find
scientifically valid ways that serve the public interest without violating
individual rights."
Abolitionists are almost always accused of being anti-capitalist by the very
industries they attack: "(The abolition of the slave trade) would be extreme
cruelty to the African savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre, or
intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much happier
state of life," claimed James Boswell, an 18th century pro-slavery writer.
According to Boswell: "...the anti-slavery crusade...the ranting of a
handful of moralistic bigots, (which attempted)...to abolish so very
important and necessary a branch of commercial interest, must have been
crushed at once had not the insignificance of the zealots who vainly took
the lead in it, made the vast body of planters, merchants and others, whose
immense properties were involved in the trade...suppose that there would be
no danger."
Social progress means change. The invention of the automobile and the end of
the Second World War brought about radical change in the work place.
Anti-abolitionists claimed that the end of human slavery would bring with it
the collapse of the economic structure of the Southern United States.
In his book, The Status of Animals in the Christian Religion, author C.W.
Hume noted:
"The major cruelties practiced on animals in civilized countries today arise
out of commercial exploitation, and the fear of losing profits is the chief
obstacle to reform."
****
"Now, the movement at that stage could have responded in one of the two
ways. It could have fought back and defended the values it stood for at that
point... Or it could have adapted itself to this new reality, and changed
itself to fit the rise of corporatist government. And it did the latter.
Very consciously... We now understand it’s about corporate partnerships...
it’s casting corporations as the solution, as the willing participants and
part of this solution...
"The Big Green groups, with very few exceptions, lined up in favor of NAFTA,
despite the fact that their memberships were revolting, and sold the deal
very aggressively to the public. That’s the model that has been globalized
through the World Trade Organization, and that is responsible in many ways
for the levels of soaring emissions. We’ve globalized an utterly untenable
economic model of hyperconsumerism. It’s now successfully spreading across
the world, and it’s killing us...
"It’s not that the green groups were spectators to this – they were partners
in this... I think that’s a huge part of the reason why emissions are where
they are."
--Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein is Canadian. I don't know about Canada, but change happens
slowly in a secular democracy dominated by a two-party system (the United
States). For legislation to be successful, it has to have bipartisan
support. Proponents have to reach across the aisle, cross party lines. The
legislation can't be tied to a single ideology, political party, or
administration.
(Pro-life Democrat Robert Casey felt, for that reason, a pro-life Democratic
presidential candidacy would prove successful: conservatives would vote for
a pro-lifer, and liberals and Democrats would vote for a Democrat convincing
them abortion is a secular human rights issue, rather than a "religious"
issue, or someone else's "religious beliefs" which don't apply to them.)
The other side is quick to demonize the animal rights and environmental
movements as socialist/communist (see Rush Limbaugh's comments above), so
activists have no alternative but to work within the system to bring about
change.
The debate over creating an alternative challenging the status quo Vs
working within the system to bring about and demand change has been going on
since the Vietnam era.
The hippies dropped out of "straight society" and with the exception of The
Farm, a pro-life vegan community of hippies in Tennessee, founded in the
early '70s, have been largely forgotten.
On the other hand, many of the trappings of the hippies and the
counterculture (long hair on males, marijuana, spiritualism or an interest
in East Indian philosophy, free love or casual sex, etc.) were quickly
absorbed into the mainstream.
Music writer Nicholas Schaffner concluded along these lines with an
optimistic note in his 1977 book, The Beatles Forever: that Jimmy Carter has
long hair, can quote the lyrics to Beatles and Bob Dylan songs, that his
kids have smoked pot, as have the kids of the president before him, that
John Lennon and Yoko Ono (almost deported by the Nixon administration years
earlier!) were present at the Carter inauguration ceremonies, as were James
Taylor and Carly Simon, that there are generals in the Pentagon practicing
Transcendental Meditation, etc.
And in a rare display of populism, the President and First Lady, Jimmy and
Rosalyn Carter got out of the presidential motorcade and walked along part
of the parade route.
There's the liberal bumper sticker: "Well-behaved women rarely make
history."
The San Francisco Vegetarian Society (SFVS) refers to nonvegetarian
restaurants which are veg-friendly as "mixed" restaurants.
In 1990, my friend Atma Khalsa (an American Sikh follower of Yogi Bhajan)
and I were the only vegetarians at Emerald Systems Corporation in San Diego.
On one occasion, for lunch, rather than go to a vegetarian restaurant, we
went to a nonvegetarian restaurant, a Japanese restaurant, and Atma, without
even looking at the menu, said to the waitress, "We're vegetarian!" And she
demanded to know, "What can you offer us?"
In his 1975 book, Animal Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer
writes that the “tyranny of human over nonhuman animals” is “causing an
amount of pain and suffering that can only be compared with that which
resulted from the centuries of tyranny by white humans over black humans.”
Singer favorably compares animal liberation with women’s liberation, black
liberation, gay liberation, and movements on behalf of Native Americans and
Hispanics. He optimistically observes:
“...the environmental movement...has led people to think about our relations
with other animals in a way that seemed impossible only a decade ago.
“To date, environmentalists have been more concerned with wildlife and
endangered species than with animals in general, but it is not too big a
jump from the thought that it is wrong to treat whales as giant vessels
filled with oil and blubber to the thought that it is wrong to treat
(animals) as machines for converting grains to flesh.”
Similarly, it is not too big a jump from the thought that it is wrong to
purchase products which exploit workers (child labor, sweatshops,
restaurants which fail to treat employees fairly, etc.) i.e., the fair trade
movement, to the thought that it is wrong to purchase products which
contribute to or involve the suffering and death of animals.
In a letter dated March 26, 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton wrote
to Don A. Jones of Marietta, GA:
"Thank you for writing to express your concern for the rights of animals. I
have always loved and respected animals and abhorred any cruelty toward
them. Please be assured that a Clinton Administration would be extremely
sensitive to these issues and concerns."
If Bill Clinton's reasons for recently transitioning to a plant-based diet
were solely health-related, he would not have written to Ingrid Newkirk,
Executive Director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
describing his pleasant experiences due to the change in lifestyle.
Now that Bill Clinton is free from political pressure from the other side
(e.g., going "sport" hunting after the Brady bill was signed into law, to
"prove" to the NRA he supported the rights of hunters to own firearms),
perhaps he can now support animal rights causes through the Clinton
Foundation.
Another Bill (Gates) is funding "Beyond Eggs," a vegan egg alternative
through his own philanthropic foundation.
These men should be encouraged by animal activists!
It was through a series of email exchanges that Lauren Ornelas (Viva!),
herself politically left-liberal, convinced John Mackey, the CEO of Whole
Foods to go vegan.
Mackey commented in Veg-News (a slick, trendy vegan periodical out of San
Francisco) that corporations like Whole Foods can put vegan products on the
marketplace to sink or swim in the waters of free enterprise, but the public
has to actually want these products if they're to succeed. That's
capitalism.
(Mackey, a libertarian, later incurred the wrath of the American Left when
he wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal expressing his opposition
to health care reform!).
Ingrid Newkirk similarly said in an opinion piece in the now-defunct
Animals' Agenda in the late '90s that the veggie burgers, soy "ice creams,"
etc. we now see in supermarket chains didn't appear there magically... they
came about through consumer demand!
Far from being wild-eyed leftists, animal activists are working within the
system and the political process to bring about social change.
Go on to: Risky Business
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