Animal Rights: Separate But Equal, Separate But Equal...

Repetition and Caricature Are Not Arguments

By Gayle Dean

“Animals are more than ever a test of character, we are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us.”

Matthew Scully – former special assistant and speechwriter for President George W. Bush- Dominion:

In a recent Op-Ed, Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute attacked animal-rights advocates and defended Covance Laboratories, a biomedical research company that experiments on primates. I challenged Epstein, saying that even if one doesn't agree with the concept of animal rights, the evidence in this case is overwhelming. The judge denied Covance's request to suppress the shocking video evidence, and when an appellate court viewed it and called their case an “uphill task,” they withdrew their appeal.

But there are “defenders of the indefensible” in every crowd.

Brian O'Connor stepped up to defend Epstein and embarked on his own, now continuing, diatribe against animal rights advocates, portraying them as vicious, anti-human, extremists, while at the same time portraying himself as a humane, animal-welfare moderate.

This is part of a carefully orchestrated, public-relations script fed to the media. Philosopher Tom Regan, Professor Emeritus at N.C. State University, describes the script and the way animal-exploitation industries

... speak with one voice, tell the same story, even use the same words to denigrate their common enemy: animal-rights extremists.

It begins in 1989 with the publication of the American Medical Association’s white paper "Use of Animals in Bio-Medical Research: The Challenge and the Response." Among the AMA’s recommendations: People who believe in animal rights "must be shown to be not only anti-science, but also (a) responsible for violent and illegal acts that endanger life and property, and (b) a threat to the public’s freedom of choice." ARAs [Animal Rights Advocates] must be seen as people who are "radicals," "militants," and "terrorists," who are "opposed to human well-being." By contrast sane, sensible, decent people must be shown to favor animal welfare, understood as humane, responsible use of animals, by humans, for humans.

The animal-user industries (big-pharma, bio-medical research, meat and dairy, fur and entertainment, etc.) follow the script to the letter. While O'Connor doesn't label all animal advocates terrorists, he “stands firm” in “calling all animal rights activists extremists” and says “there is no such thing as a 'moderate' Animal Rights activist.” Undoubtedly, O'Connor believes his own rhetoric, but his rambling tirade has the flavor of a man fighting personal demons.

We see this in O'Connor's reliance on misrepresentation and distortion. One of his favorite tactics appears to be attacking his opponents' weakest arguments, while ignoring strong ones. But as Matthew Scully observes, “fairness requires that we judge a cause by its best advocates instead of making straw men of the worst.”

Fairness does not appear to be something O'Connor is overly concerned about. Like a jackal seeking the most vulnerable prey, O'Connor takes aim at PETA, a group whose in-your-face tactics don't go over well with everyone. By focusing solely on PETA's alleged misbehavior, O'Connor exposes his own unwillingness to deal with the real arguments.

A further indication of this is when he says he is “most gratified” that no one has “disputed his characterization of the central premise of Animal Rights, viz., that...the life of an animal and that of a human are equally valuable.” But in fact O'Connor quoted Ms. Stormont's disagreement and ignored Dr. Robert Bass's disagreement entirely. Unsurprising, since truth-distorters rarely bother getting their facts straight!

O'Connor repeatedly caricatures the animal-rights position as the belief that the lives of humans and animals are equally valuable.

“... you wouldn't eat humans, so you shouldn't eat animals; you don't hunt humans, so you shouldn't hunt animals;... you don't keep humans in zoos, so you shouldn't keep animals in zoos...”

“The issue in question is whether the life of an animal and that of a human are of equal value, which is the central premise of Animal Rights ideology.”

I know of no serious philosopher who holds the position O'Connor describes. Animal-rights philosophers hold a much more nuanced view of moral equality. Most would argue that humans and other animals are morally equal in much the same way that Alzheimers' patients and Nobel Prize winners are morally equal. But there is a big difference between saying that Alzheimers' patients are morally equal to Nobel Prize winners, and that they are equal in every other way. Of course, this distinction is lost on animal-exploiters just looking for catchy sound-bites.

One moral-equality argument is put forth by Tom Regan. He holds that humans and other animals are all “subjects of a life” and that we are all the same in the following ways:

Not only are we all in the world, we are all aware of the world and aware as well, of what happens to us. Moreover, what happens to us – whether to our bodies, to our freedom, or our lives themselves-- matters to us because it makes a difference to the quality and duration of our lives, as experienced by us, whether anyone else cares about this or not. Whatever our differences, these are our fundamental similarities.

Rabbits do not want experimenters stapling their eyes open and dropping oven cleaner into them for weeks at a time, just to bring a tenth brand of oven-cleaner to market. Chimps don't want bolts driven into their skulls, just so researchers can produce study after dubious study, to continue collecting grant-money. And dogs don't want to be cut up for medically and educationally useless training.

Humans have no more right to exploit animals in these ways than to exploit people for the same purposes. O'Connor no doubt disagrees ... but why?

If his theory is that might-makes-right or level-of-intelligence-makes-right, then it would be perfectly moral for the powerful to exploit the weak, or for those with high intelligence to exploit the less intelligent. Is he ready to see the weak and foolish rounded up and sent to the product-testing labs? If his theory is that reason is the key, then it would be moral to use babies and the mentally handicapped for medical research. If it is just that humans are different from animals in some way, then he needs to identify a morally relevant difference. But speciesists like him have not managed to provide us with a morally relevant trait that includes all humans while excluding all the other animals.

Philosophers have serious arguments dealing with these cases, but the animal-exploiters rarely address the real arguments. And why should they, when distortions and misrepresentations work better for their purposes?

Which brings us to the only issue that both Epstein and O'Connor are correct about: motivations are all-important!

Matthew Scully sums up the motivations in

Fear Factories: The American Conservative, May 2005:

Among animal activists, of course, there are some who go too far—there are in the best of causes.... There isn’t much money in championing the cause of animals, so we’re dealing with some pretty altruistic people who on that account alone deserve the benefit of the doubt.

If we’re looking for fitting targets for inquiry and scorn, for people with an angle and a truly pernicious influence, better to start with groups like Smithfield Foods (my candidate for the worst corporation in America in its ruthlessness to people and animals alike), the National Pork Producers Council (a reliable Republican contributor), or the various think tanks in Washington subsidized by animal-use industries for intellectual cover.

When you keep the motivations in mind, it's not hard to understand why exploiters try to defend the indefensible. The bottom line is simply that animal-rights activists threaten the profit margins of big agribusiness, meat and dairy industries, fur producers, medical, big-pharma and animal researchers like O'Connor.

And when we follow the money and the special-interest politics, it is clear who has the hidden agenda and the profit-driven motivation to distort the truth.

And it is not the animal-rights advocates!

Gayle Dean

Gayle Dean constructs crossword puzzles for all the major media. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post Magazine, The New York Times, the L.A. Times, Simon & Schuster books, Tribune Media Press, Universal Press, and Dell Puzzle Magazines.