I tend not to go in for conspiracy theories, so I'm going to assume that the
attacks on animal researchers in California are pretty much what they look like: animal rights terrorists. Now is a good time for animal rights types to resoundingly condemn these criminals with no ifs, ands, or buts. The attacks are not merely utterly immoral, which should by itself have shut them down; they're totally counterproductive. There will never be a group of animal rights extremists large and well-funded enough to actually have any effect on the medical research industry (thankfully). Meanwhile, every attack sends the message that animal welfare types are the kind of people who think it is okay to bomb someone's house in order to . . . shut down medical research. The people who could be persuaded to give up fur, or buy humane meat, or eat less meat, or even go vegetarian or vegan, close their ears. Way to win one for the industrial farmers, guys.
ELF (Earth Liberation Front) and its less infamous ilk do suffer from a serious case of self-indulgent self-righteousness. That ultimately does nothing but embarrass and discredit people who make valid environmental points. The entire movement is a self-defeating cause. It must be from the 60's I'll look it up.
Who's next on McArdle's hit list? Abortion clinic bombers? The FLN? The Joker?
Well said, Megan.
Good post and solid conclusion, Megan.
Who's next on McArdle's hit list? Abortion clinic bombers? The FLN? The Joker?
Posted by rick | August 5, 2008 2:51 PM
Troll be gone.
I guess a vegan can make animal-right jokes without being called on them, just like Jews can make Jewish jokes, etc.
(Same goes for actual criticism.)
rick - apparently you support ELF or you wouldn't be trolling this post.
Why should PETA or more mainstream groups that AFAIK have no link to such groups be responsible for the actions of such groups? Have PETA or more mainstream groups encouraged those other groups in some way or acted as absolute apologists for everyone in their movement regardless of their extremism? What they should do is work to further marginalize those extremists and/or update their materials to stress they're opposed to violence, but that doesn't mean they should explicitly condemn something that I'm going to assume they have no direct or indirect involvement in.
A much stronger argument could be made that absolute apologists for OpenBorders should condemn attacks like this due to their habit of never admitting any downsides of what they support. That was against a person not a building, but for some strange reason it hasn't gotten much attention.
Animal researchers should be beaten with full dimensional hardwood lumber, like their counterparts in the anti-war movement.
Violence does solve everything!
TLB--PETA, by their own admission, has given the ALF money, and the connections between the organizations are pretty well-established.
Crusader wrote:
"rick - apparently you support ELF or you wouldn't be trolling this post."
You're new here, aren't you?
rick - I'm observational enough to note that you deliberately post opposite trollish type "opinions" on every post. You deliberately try to stir the shit.
I disagree that such attacks won't change anything. They already have in the UK, where labs have given up on work with animal models to protect their staff.
TLB - Even minus what B said (i.e., that they really do have grounds for being suspect), they should do it for practical reasons, to make sure that people who don't pay much attention to them don't think something like "Oh, PETA? Those crazies who think dogs are kids? I guess they probably do think it's okay to burn somebody's car because he works with monkeys. Sounds like the kind of thing they'd do."
Even if it were true that PETA had no connections to ALF or other super-extremist (I say super-, because I consider PETA itself extremist and barking mad) animal-rights groups, they'd still have a good practical case for repudiating such behavior.
Megan, you are absolutely correct. Count me as one former vegetarian who now considers it her absolute civic duty to wear fur on any day she can see her breath in the air because PETA (nevermind ELF) pissed her off so much. Verbal assaults and paint are nothing compared to bombing someone's house, but I'll be counter-objecting every cool day in my astrakhan with the white mink collar until it stops, delivering lengthy speeches about the appropriate scope of civil discourse to anyone stupid enough to mouth off to me about it.
"Now is a good time for animal rights types to resoundingly condemn these criminals with no ifs, ands, or buts."
is this not the "Muslim citizens of the West must show sufficient ideological fitness by loudly, immediately and, somehow, spontaneously denouncing all terrorism" argument transposed onto the animal libbies?
Should we not instead be burning Singer in effigy?
Burning Singer in effigy is a good idea, but the trouble is, PETA is all too often to the ALF about what Sinn Fein was to the Provisional IRA---the legal side of the movement and the terrorists' voice and support system.
I've hated PETA ever since some of them came to Iowa (where I live) to throw a pie into the face of the "Pork Queen." If I'd been that teenage girl's father, those whackoes would have gone to jail via the emergency room and intensive-care ward...and I don't think any in-state jury would have convicted me.
Their self-justification is as nonsensical as it is brazen.
Peter Singer condemns this sort of violence, as does Tom Regan.
I do not endorse this violence either, in part because it is counter-productive, and switches attention from the ethical issues involved in animal research to the violence of (some) animal-rights protesters. If biomedical animal research is justified, on what grounds is it justified? Perhaps it can be justified on utilitarian grounds. But perhaps research using mentally-disabled human orphans (clones, if possible) could also be justified on utilitarian grounds. Unless one is a pacifist, one believes that violence is morally justified if the cause is serious enough. Would violence be justified as a last resort in an attempt to stop the vivisection of mentally-disabled human clones? Surely if we could genetically engineer human clones with sufficiently low intelligence, we would have excellent research models that would arguably present less of an ethical dilemma than current animal research involving primates, dogs, cats, or rats.
Kathryn: Have you also decided to abuse children to protest against anti-abortion wackos? Have you decided to trash the environment to annoy neo-Nazi pro-nature types? Have you decided to spit on any Muslims you meet to show Osama bin Laden what you think of him? I bet setting fire to a couple of kittens would really show those animal-rights extremists what you think of them.
There will never be a group of animal rights extremists large and well-funded enough to actually have any effect on the medical research industry (thankfully).
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jemTbVTZMmaGj1q697Ev6lsasIegD91P7L8G1
"Many scientists are reluctant to discuss the effect these incidents have had on biomedical research. They worry that any sign the attacks are succeeding could just lead to more of the same.
But at least one researcher decided the pressure was too much."
I don't think anybody really knows what the effect of this stuff has been or will be. You don't always need a lot of money or believers to be an effective terrorist.
Megan- I completely agree with you, very well thought-out opinion.
And Kathryn- your comment was one of the strangest posts I have read. You base your moral responsibility on one particular group, with which you have no association otherwise? Each day you relish the idea that, by promoting the cruelty of the fur industry you will somehow influence this organization in any way, and you continue to develop an ethical code with a foundation built from an opposition to this organization. Therefore, your moral code is actually a denouncement of someone else’s code and not your own at all? It is fascinating to me that you condemn their principles, while not forming any of your own by which to live.
This seems to be a perverted version of the brilliantly executed two-year old-child’s-defense, "if you don't do what I want, I will hold my breath until I die!" Yeah... I'm sure PETA is touched they had an impact on you, way to show them!
Suriah & mijnheer: I don't denounce their principles but their methods, and think there is value in reminding people that unacceptable methods produce a backlash against the principles.
It's not merely "PETA sucks, nyah-nyah," a purely negative act. The "moral code" guiding my actions is my belief that maintaining respectful discourse on divisive topics is far more important to a civilized and enlightened society that any potential rights of animals. I believe that firmly enough that I consider it important to actively oppose groups that violate it (or acquiesce in its violation by others making common cause) and demonstrate that their principles will not prevail until their methods of persuasion comport with civilized norms.
I'm not convinced that animals deserve more consideration than my convenience or pleasure, though I think there are reasonable arguments that it may be so. I can't really consider those arguments seriously when a large portion of the people making them either engage in or tacitly approve the methods of extremists. And I admit that there is something of "the friend of my enemy is my enemy" to it. But I think it's human to judge ideas, in part, by the people who advocate them, and reasonable to judge people by the company they keep. Anyhow, I'm not compromising any belief I hold by wearing fur.
So, no, I wouldn't do something I otherwise considered immoral (nevermind illegal) to protest the offensive or illegal methods of a "protest" group. But I very well might actively demonstrate that I think the methods taint and undermine the underlying cause, even if I think the underlying cause is worthy of consideration. So, would I demand police security for a Planned Parenthood under attack (or just send money)? Absolutely. Support a foreign policy that some non-terrorists might deem meddlesome because it fights terrorism designed to end American meddling? Quite possibly.
I might be tempted to leave my recyclables on the doorstep of a neighbor who campaigned for outrageously onerous trash separation regs, but that is harmful, illegal, and generally the kind of crappy personally intimidating behavior I abhor, so I wouldn't. I might call the city every collection day complaining of his failure to comply so his trash would be audited regularly (the surest route to the repeal of a bad law is its vigorous enforcement), but probably wouldn't even do that because he worked for his position through exactly the type of civil discourse I expect - if anti-recyclers lost the argument at city hall, or didn't care enough to show up, let that be a lesson to them. But I'd absolutely be willing to put my money where my mouth is and invest in some company attacked by those neo-Nazi nature types (much better term than "violent greens," which always makes me start humming tunes from a certain band), particularly if its stock was undervalued after the attack, if I only had the money. (And, to be honest, if the neighborhood recycling Nazi said "well, what do they expect" about an ELF attack, he might in fact find his recycling somehow gets a bit mixed up on garbage day.)
Yes, I'm aware that no one knows why I'm wearing a fur collar unless they ask, making the main benefit the satisfaction of my private annoyance. But that does have some value, for me at least, and anyone else will know that one person, at least, isn't buying the anti-fur argument for whatever reason.
Or maybe it's just the Scottish in me, lashing out wildly against anyone trying to bully me.
You should visit Greenisthenewred.com to learn why you shouldn't use the word "terrorist" to describe whoever did this. And there's no such thing as "humane meat."
Yeah, well, what these goofs don't seem to realize is that if they manage to shut down all uses of animals in research here in the US...the research will go elsewhere. To places like China. Yeah, they'll REALLY worry about animal rights there. Heck, we can't even get them to worry about Tibetan HUMAN rights.
PETA going to try to convince the Chinese of anything? Right.....they'll just laugh at you.
Result: new medical developments done in China, not the US, China has a leg up on us in this area. Which they will then undoubtedly turn around and sell to us (and don't believe that afflicted holier-than-thou PETA types won't eagerly go for it--isn't one of the heads of PETA a diabetic getting insulin....which as far as I remember, isn't churned out of a non-animal source yet.)
Amazing how people start "bending the rules" when it's their own life in danger. But everyone else has to toe the line, oh yes.
Kathryn: In response to your statement: "I'm not convinced that animals deserve more consideration than my convenience or pleasure, though I think there are reasonable arguments that it may be so." YOU (a human) ARE AN ANIMAL, also. Just one of the many species. Your statement reminds me of another by a young woman who said: "I am totally indifferent to what happens to animals." There is no other animal on earth as arrogant and evil and selfish and VIOLENT and CRUEL as the human animal.
As I am against violence to animals, I am against violence to the human animal. That said, there is absolutely no way to control every human animal and stop all their violent acts - heck, most are sanctioned by society and the law.
There is nothing uglier than animal agriculture.
(and filthier and more polluting and destructive to the earth and to the human animal's health)
The human animal's physiology is one of an herbivore. Canines are omnivores, and Felines are carnivores. ETc. etc. etc. etc.etc.etc.etc.
I find it very amusing and entertaining to see other humans--who want to see animals bred into this world to be tortured and killed for their pleasure (which is most humans)--get so angry at the concept of NOT wanting to torture and kill at least 55 BILLION land animals for food in this world - and the billions more sea animals - and the millions more for experimentation and "entertainment."
WHO ARE THE REAL TERRORISTS??
The human animal species is a very sad species indeed.
Good for you, Kathryn. Punish the animals because you have a gripe with PETA. How very mature!