Thanksgiving arrives every year with a heated debate over how to best cook that plump and juicy turkey. But the idea of a tofu turkey (also known as a “tofurkey”) has gone from a joke a couple years ago to a reality for many. While vegetarianism has been practiced for over a thousand years in some countries, it is a relatively new concept in the West. And so, with the question cropping up more and more often, should we eat meat?
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Abstaining from Meat Indicates You Favor Animal 'Rights'
- From Consumer Freedom
By The Center for Consumer Freedom - Promoting Personal Responsibility
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Failure
You don’t support your own argument. From your comments, I gather you suggest that there is something wrong with animal rights, but then you fail to explain why. All you say is that most people don't see things this way. Really? You're going to base an ethical argument on peer pressure? Your only other argument is that a veal cow doesn't know it's being bestowed rights. First, you need to back up and see that a right is simply the protection of an interest. Are you saying that an animal has no interests? Second, I suggest you learn about moral agents/patients. Many believe that children cannot reason such abstract concepts as rights until around age 12. Perhaps a young child would be delicious in some infant gravy, but we moral agents bestow upon them the right not to be harmed by others, and we uphold those rights whether or not the children recognize it.
The use of sarcasm and bandwagoning is a embarrassing in an adult debate.
- mike
August 16, 2008 8:25AM
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I AM in favor of Animal Rights (AR).
"If you think enslaving a white man is morally equivalent to enslaving a black man, then you shouldn't have slaves". We can see how they want to turn it into a matter of choice. The CCF wants you to think that AR is giving animals the right to vote, drive a car, or sue you. AR is just the right to not be property. Radical? Yes. Like giving women voting rights. It requires changing our behavior. In this case: towards animals, by not using them. Was the abolition of slavery radical? You bet it was. And it changed the world forever. Humans exceptional? We actually expect humans to step up to the plate. Reason? We have reason, we can choose to not use animals. A calf can't understand a right? A mentally impaired human can't either. So what? They suffer just as we do. "Choosing" to believe that something is not wrong, does not make it right. What if we choose to believe that raping babies is not wrong? Would that make it right? Or a "matter of choice"? I don't think so.
- mgalli
August 17, 2008 2:40PM
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Circular reasoning
CCF is engaging in circular reasoning: We characterize - arbitrarily - certain characteristics that only humans (allegedly) possess (e.g., reason, human language) as “important” or morally substantive. As humans are the group doing the defining, and the characteristics are meant to be species specific, by definition, nonhumans are excluded from the moral community in the final calculus. The rules of the game are such that the outcome is pre-determined. It’s a simple reiteration of undefended beliefs masquerading as a rational defense of those undefended beliefs.
And finally, this isn’t a discourse about how humans and nonhumans are “perfect equals” as CCF baselessly argues. The argument against eating animals follows from our strongly held premise against unnecessary suffering. As Singer writes, “In suffering, we are all equal.” Therefore, why is nonhuman suffering discounted as morally unimportant when the logic of our own premise demands its inclusion?
- Alex M
August 26, 2008 2:19PM
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Poor philosophical understanding
No one denies that humans have certain exceptional qualities. (So do members of every species, for that matter.) In particular, most of us (though not all), can reason about morality. Unfortunately, the author of the above argument displays very poor reasoning about animal liberation. Just as all humans are morally equal, despite different intellectual abilities, so all sentient beings can be entitled to equal respect and equal consideration of their interests, even though they may have very different intellectual abilities.
The basic idea at the root of animal liberation is not rocket science. It is "If you don't have to harm someone else, then you shouldn't." Non-human animals, just as human animals, have lives that matter to them -- things they want and things they want to avoid. To impose unnecessary suffering and death on those who wish to live and flourish cannot be morally justified. It is the consistent application of the Golden Rule that underpins the commitment to animal liberation. The crackpot dogma of human exceptionalism is prejudice and fear masquerading as "consumer freedom".
- Beast Man
August 30, 2008 12:50AM
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There are lots of reasons to go vegetarian!
There are plenty of reasons to go vegetarian or vegan:
1) for your health
2) for the environment
3) for animals
4) for religious reasons
5) for economical reasons
Abstaining from meat does not necessarily indicate that you favor animal rights.
- ElaineVigneault
September 1, 2008 6:46PM
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turkeys aren't your cousin. they still suffer.
This argument is logically wrongheaded. Turkeys aren't equivalent to my cousin, but they are semi-conscious animals that feel things like pain, anxiety, and fear.
You DO NOT have to think animals are EQUAL TO HUMANS to TREAT THEM WELL.
- advance
June 12, 2009 4:01PM
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