In Defense of A Rat, is a Pig, etc., Part 1

After Matthew Scully's screed against A Rat is a Pig, etc., discussed here, National Review gave me the opportunity to write an extended reply. Let me deal with his continuing mendacity first, and then I will write a second post excerpting some of my more general comments.

In his review, Scully claimed falsely that I supported an experiment that broke chimps' arms. Here's is my comment to that point, and then his response (no link):

ANIMAL RIGHTS began as an issue, became a movement, and has morphed into an ideology. Usually, animal rights is allied with the Left; but not always. Thus, when I decided to write a book criticizing the animal-rights movement, I expected to be attacked as being somehow indifferent to the suffering of animals and, moreover, that Matthew Scully—the animal-rights movement’s favorite conservative—would lead the charge. What I didn’t expect was for Scully to illustrate my supposed heartlessness with a false anecdote, the by-product of his own furious imagination. And to that, I strenuously object. In criticizing my explanation of the need for using animals in scientific research, Scully accused me of offering “soothing descriptions of violent experiments (chimps are ‘seated quietly, not struggling’ as their limbs are about to be broken.)” False. I never wrote about a chimp experiment that involved breaking limbs. Indeed, I have never heard of such an experiment. Scully can rail all he wants against my book. But he has no right to resort to cheap demagoguery to score an easy emotional point.

Scully doesn't back off:

The experiment Smith has “never heard of” is described on pages 74 and 75 of his own book, and his words are just as I quoted them in my review. The chimpanzees were strapped down (“held motionless,” as he puts it), and as experimenters prepared to slice their limbs and sever their nerves, Smith insists that they were still “seated quietly, not struggling.” The violence of the scene, until the primates were finally killed and discarded, is quickly passed over, with Smith’s usual assurances that humanity was served and the details are no concern of ours.

This is jaw dropping: The experiment he is referencing did not involve chimps. The now notorious "Silver Spring Monkey Case--infamous because of what an animal rights activist did to an ethical researcher, not because of his experiments--involved monkeys--a different animal entirely. Second, I wrote about the particular experiment because Alex Pacheco, PETA's co founder, attempted to destroy the life of the celebrated researcher, Dr. Edward Taub, by creating a materially false image of what was happening in the lab and the quality of the animals' care, while Taub was on vacation. (Described fully at NRO in February 2004.) Third, the experiment did not involve "breaking limbs" but a surgical procedure performed under proper anesthesia. Fourth, Taub was engaged in NIH-approved research that led to a tremendous breakthrough in the rehabilitation of stroke patients--Constrained Induced Movement Therapy--now benefiting tens of thousands of stroke patients around the world, and most recently, children with cerebral palsy.

That Scully can't identify the right animal--twice--refused to accurately describe what was done, and utterly ignored the tremendous human benefit that resulted from the research is both disturbing and telling.

Animals Not to Have Constitutional Right to Lawyers in Switzerland

As I have noted on more than one occasion, animal rights activists want animals to be granted "standing" to bring lawsuits. This radical change would serve two convergent purposes: It would allow liberationists to bring case after case against animal industries--since they would be the real litigants--as it powerfully promoted animal "personhood," obliterating human exceptionalism by creating a moral human/animal legal equivalence.

Today, in good news on the animal lawyers front, Switzerland rejected granting animals the constitutional right to legal representation when animal abuse is charged. From the story:

The result was emphatic: Swiss voters don't think abused animals need to have their own lawyers. It's a proposal that would never even come near a referendum in other countries, but the measure's defeat Sunday disappointed animal rights advocates, who say Switzerland's elaborate animal welfare laws aren't being enforced. Opponents of the proposal, including key farmers' groups and the government, had argued that existing laws are sufficient and appointing special lawyers to act on behalf of animals would be unnecessarily expensive for taxpayers. "The Swiss people have clearly said our animal protection laws are so good we don't need animal lawyers," Jakob Buechler, a lawmaker for the centrist Christian People's Party, told Swiss television SF1. Official results showed that 70.5 percent of voters cast their ballot against the proposal to extend nationwide a system that has been in place in Zurich since 1992. Some 29.5 percent of voters backed the proposal, with turnout at just over 45 percent.

It's alarming that nearly 30% voted for the notion. Animals shouldn't have lawyers or be granted constitutional rights under any circumstances. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal did a report on Switzerland's only animal lawyer recently, and it tells a warning tale. From the story:

Last month, Antoine Goetschel went to court here in defense of an unusual client: a 22-pound pike that had fought a fisherman for 10 minutes before surrendering. Mr. Goetschel is the official animal lawyer for the Swiss canton of Zurich, a sort of public defender who represents the interests of pets, farm animals and wildlife. He wound up with the pike as a client when animal-welfare groups filed a complaint alleging animal cruelty in the fish's epic battle with an amateur angler...

The majority of Mr. Goetschel's cases relate to abuse of household pets. He secured a 1,050-franc fine for a woman who abandoned two kittens in the street soon after buying them. In one 2008 case, he represented some fish that had been placed in a pool during a game show during which contestants tried to catch them by hand, allegedly violating Swiss law requiring that animals be treated with dignity. "If you treat fish like objects in a computer game, their dignity is hurt," Mr. Goetschel argued. A court, however, ruled that Zurich was the wrong jurisdiction for the case, and the defendants were subsequently cleared.

But opponents have seized on another fish tale—Mr. Goetschel's defense of the big pike— to argue that a mandatory public defender could make for absurd results. The case revolved around the idea that the pike suffered excessively because of how long it took for the angler to reel it in. Mr. Goetschel lost the case last month, but is considering an appeal. Any further court action would come too late for the pike, which has been eaten.

It would be much worse here than representing dead fish. "Animal standing" would give liberationists the right to sue directly. And with that power, they would wreak havoc on all animal industries, as I pointed out in this article at NRO.

Nice Review of A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy

About a month ago, I did an extended interview with Colleen Carroll Campbell for EWTN about my book. It will air in a few months. But what a nice surprise today that she devoted her column to a review. And she gets it. From her column:

Wesley J. Smith is a speciesist. And he thinks you should be, too. An attorney and author of a new expose on the animal-rights movement, Smith promotes what was once an uncontroversial idea: the belief that “human beings stand at the pinnacle of the moral hierarchy of life.” He thinks humans have a duty to treat animals humanely. He also thinks we have a right to use animals to promote human flourishing and alleviate human suffering. In short, Smith loves animals but values humans more.

According to animal-rights activists, that makes him guilty of “speciesism:” a form of discrimination as arbitrary and pernicious as racism, and one that some believe must be eradicated by any means necessary. After all, “animals are people and people are animals,” as self-described “eco-anarcha-feminist animal” Pattrice Jones puts it. Or, to quote People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals president Ingrid Newkirk, “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They are all mammals.”

She points out one of my major themes:

Even more troubling, animal-rights activists have succeeded in confusing the public about the difference between animal rights and animal welfare. The latter is a noble cause supported by the vast majority of Americans who want to protect animals from cruelty, even though they do not consider animals their moral equals — a caveat that runs counter to animal-rights ideology. Despite this distinction, “animal rights” has “become the catchall term for virtually any effort to protect animals,” Smith says, and the resulting confusion has allowed the animal-rights movement to gain legitimacy it does not deserve.

And she hits on a crucial distinction between humans and animals:

Animals do not have rights or the moral responsibilities that accompany rights. That’s why we prosecuted Michael Vick, not his pit bulls, for dog-fighting. That’s why executives at Sea World, not its orcas, are facing public scrutiny for a whale trainer’s death last week. And that’s why we ponder our moral obligations to animals — who are, after all, the ultimate speciesists — even though animals do not do the same for us. We do so because we are human, endowed with exceptional dignity that deserves singular defense.

It sure is pleasing that after years of hard work to receive a good review by someone who understands exactly what I am saying. Thanks Colleen. Your support is very appreciated.

When Animals Sue

I have a piece in today's NRO that tees off on Switzerland's upcoming vote to give animals a legal right to a lawyer in abuse cases. But as I point out in A Rat is a Pig,etc., granting animals standing may be the most desired goal of the animal rights movement. From my column:

But animals suing? For most people, the very idea is a surreal fantasy out of a Far Side cartoon. But from the viewpoint of animal-rights ideologues, nothing could be more logical. The dogma of animal liberation demands the obliteration of all animal industries and, eventually, the eradication by attrition of all domesticated animals...

What could further the eradication goal more dramatically than allowing domesticated animals to sue their owners in court? The real litigants, of course, would be animal-rights activists — committed true believers who would use the raw power of litigation to force animal industries to their knees. Imagine the chaos: hundreds of animal lawyers, filing thousands of lawsuits, leading to hundreds of thousands of depositions, forcing industries to spend tens of millions of dollars on lawyers and legal costs defending their husbandry. No animal industry would be safe, and many would not survive.

Beyond the chaos that animal standing would cause, lies an ideological purpose:

Animal standing also has a philosophical purpose. The ultimate goal of animal rights is not merely the improved treatment of animals; that effort is properly called animal welfare. Animal-rights dogma holds that there is no moral One way to achieve societal acquiescence in this view would be to transform at least some animals into legal “persons.” As animal-rights-crusading law professor Stephen Wise wrote in Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights, convincing the courts to grant “practical personhood” to chimps and other higher mammals would open the courtroom door to animals, a move he described as “the first and most crucial step toward unlocking the cage” to all animals generally distinction to be made between animals and humans, and therefore what is done to an animal should be viewed as if it were done to a human.

I point out the friends in high places this cause enjoys--Cass Sunstein, Laurence Tribe, etc.--meaning it could happen. I conclude:

Of all the ubiquitous advocacy thrusts by animal-rights advocates, successfully obtaining legal standing for animals could prove the most significant. First, it would accomplish a major animal-rights goal of profoundly undermining the status of animals as property. Second, it would create utter chaos in animal industries, which would also badly damage the general economy, much of which depends on the use of animals and animal byproducts. Most significantly, on an existential level, the perceived exceptional nature of human life would suffer a body blow through the erasure of one of the clear definitional lines that distinguish people from animals — the belief in human exceptionalism.

This is the future for which animal liberationists devoutly yearn. Considering our crazy cultural history of the last 50 years, and given the energetic commitment of animal-rights activists, their abundant resources, and the intellectual support they have received already from some of society’s most influential thinkers, it would be complacent folly to blithely assume, “It can’t happen here.”

Animal rights advocates are intensely committed to making this happen. Those of us who think animals should not be deemed akin to people have to be just as committed to making sure it doesn't ever happen.

Humane Watch Really Likes A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy

Humane Watch has raved about my new book. Not surprising, you might say, since a blog dedicated to being a watchdog over the stealth animal rights organization, the Humane Society of the United States, is hardly likely to turn thumbs down. But still: If I had gotten it wrong, the writers of the blog would know. So, since I like good reviews much better than bad, here's a sampling from "Rats, Pigs and Dogs: Oh Boy!":

A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy is a winner. (I hope he doesn't have to pay Ingrid Newkirk a royalty for that book title.) It's meticulously footnoted, full of thoughtfully told stories, and uncompromising in defense of the premise that the "boy" in its title is exceptional—that is, unlike those other three species in the ways that matter most. This book also makes a compelling case—the best I have read anywhere— for the idea that "animal rights" is a system of ideological belief as rigid (and vulnerable to unreasoning abuse) as any religion.

Since this blog is principally concerned with the Humane Society of the United States, I'll share (with his permission) some of what Wesley writes about that organization; but know that A Rat Is a Pig is a near-encyclopedic examination of the 95 percent or so of the animal rights movement industry that Americans encounter on a regular basis. It's a must-own volume for farmers, ranchers, dairymen, chefs, sportsmen, pet breeders, reptile hobbyists, biomedical researchers, college students, and well-meaning donors to all kinds of animal charities.

Wow. Thank you very much.

Hey! If Matthew Scully--the animal rights movement's favorite conservative--can hysterically shred me (What next? Ingrid Newkirk reviewing my book in the New York Times?), Humane Watch can laud me. Which reminds me: I will soon have a, shall we say, robust response to Scully's diatribe published for your consideration. Stay tuned.

Killer Whale Tragedy Illustrates Human Exceptionalism

When an orca drowned one of his trainers at Orlando's Sea World, nobody discussed "punishing" or otherwise holding him morally accountable. Indeed, the very notion is nonsensical, as a consequence of which, the question about "what to do" has properly revolved around how to best promote animal welfare and protect human safety. From the story:

Brancheau's death has reignited calls for Tillikum and other captive killer whales to be released or put in ocean pens where they could communicate in normal whale fashion, something that's impossible in a concrete tank. However, SeaWorld officials say Tillikum could not manage in the wild and even advocates for whale freedom believe it would be difficult to return him to Iceland. "We don't know who his family is and it would be far too expensive to retire him to Iceland," said Michael Harris, president of Seattle-based Orca Conservancy.

However, it could be possible to retire him to a sea pen at Neah Bay, Wash., and then partner with academic institutions to create long-term study opportunities, Harris said. "He would still be a huge safety concern for his caretakers," he said. "Then again, perhaps he'd become far less dangerous if introduced to the natural seawater and ocean walks."

Imagine if a human had done the same thing: Arrests, trials, perhaps life in prison or the death penalty would be the outcome for the murderer. But animals are not moral agents, and therefore, they cannot commit murder.

That is a distinction between us and animals that makes a real difference. Regardless of the grandeur of any animal--and killer whales, actually dolphins, are both awesome and intelligent--human exceptionalism can't be denied. Our moral agency distinguishes us from all other known life forms in the history of the universe. That matters from an ethical standpoint, both justifying uniquely human rights and imposing distinct duties that only can be required of human beings.

Matt Scully's Mendacity About A Rat is a Pig, etc.

I knew Matthew Scully, the animal rights movement's favorite conservative, would attack A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy. When he did, I expected him to respect readers sufficiently to disclose that I criticized (and praised) his book Dominion. He didn't. I didn't expect that he would mount his attack in the National Review. He did. Oh well, that's public advocacy.

In due time, I will be responding at length to Scully's harsh criticisms (about which I alluded the other day), so I won't belabor the matter now. But there is a nasty canard in Scully's review that is so unhinged and provocative that I can't let it lie on the table until my full reply is prepared. From his review, "The Cause of Humanity" (no link):

Smith keeps going on about [human 'moral distinctiveness'], and the euphemisms only get worse in his treatment of animal experimentation. He offers soothing descriptions of violent experiments (chimps are 'seated quietly, not struggling' as their limbs are about to be broken).

That is wholly and outrageously false. I never wrote about a chimp experiment that involved breaking their limbs. Indeed, I have never heard of such an experiment. Scully can rail all he wants against my book. But he has no right to fictionalize what I wrote to score cheap emotional points. It lacks integrity.