PETA Workers Get Theirs
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Two PETA employees have been arrested in North Carolina for, among other things, cruelty to animals.
The two were arrested after authorities allege[d] they dumped dead dogs and cats in a dumpster at a shopping center on Memorial Drive in Ahoskie.
Andrew Benjamin Cook, 24, of Virginia Beach, and Adria Joy Hinkle, 27, of Norfolk, were arrested at the shopping center. Police say they found 18 dead animals in the dumpster and 13 dead animals in the couple's van, which according to authorities, is registered to PETA. Both suspects were charged with 31 counts of animal cruelty and eight counts of illegal disposal of animals.
While I hold in very low regard those who indulge in gratuitous cruelty to animals, I utterly despise people who spend their lives working to trivialize the concept of "rights," upon which our freedom depends.
I oppose animal cruelty laws because animals have no rights. They enjoy legal protections only as extensions to an owner's interest in them as his property. But hey, if you're going to arrest someone for breaking a law that shouldn't be on the books in the first place, who better than a supporter of such a law?
Poetic justice strikes again.
-- CAV
2 comments:
In response to your very ignorant remark that you oppose animal cruelty rights is very upsetting. Animal cruelty laws need to be in place to protect those who cannot speak for themselves. Just like children are not able to speak for themselves...they rely on adults for guidance and help so why shouldn't animals have the same right? They need to be protected too!
I don't normally respond to flames, but this one raises a point worth further elaboration. (And reminds me of an excellent article I recommend to my readers.)
The commenter brings up the case of children as a means of casting doubt upon my contention that animals have no rights
First of all, the fact that children "are not able to speak for themselves" is not why Peter Singer (with whose book Animal Liberation, I am more familiar than I care to be, having read it cover-to-cover) holds that they -- and animals -- have "rights." Singer contends, without making much of a case for it, that the basis for what he calls "rights" is the "ability to feel pain."
But the ability to feel pain is not the basis for rights. Rationality is. To quote Edwin Locke's excellent article, "Paul McCartney Joins PETA's Attack on Human Rights."
"The real basis of rights is man's possession of a rational faculty. The capacity to reason includes the choice to deliberately focus one's mind and to integrate perceptual data into conceptual knowledge. To survive man must think and must be free to act on the basis of his thinking. The concept of rights protects man's freedom of action in society. It allows him to use to his own rational judgment so as to further his life and well being."
The entire article is well worth a full read. As for the rights of the not-fully rational or the nonrational, such as children and the comatose, these are derived from the fact that in all these cases, we are speaking of potentially rational or once-rational human beings.
Gus
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