Two Legs Good, Four Legs Equal
By Jason Miller
8-15-7

"The moral duty of man consists of imitating the moral goodness
and benificence of God manifested in the creation towards all his
creatures. Everything of persecution and revenge between man and
man, and everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty."

*Thomas Paine from The Age of Reason

Despite the trappings of a civilized culture and the incredibly
persistent myth of our moral exceptionalism, we in the United States
are collectively a group of mean-spirited, depraved barbarians.
Sparing our psyches the pangs of conscience by ferociously
devouring the corporate media's seemingly endless supply of
rationalizations, euphemisms, historical revisions, distractions, denials,
distortions, and affirmations of our pathological self-absorption, we
each carry a degree of responsibility in the infliction of immeasurable
unnecessary pain and suffering upon the rest of the Earth's sentient
beings.

Deeply integrated into a cultural and economic system in which
compassion is considered to be a weakness and in which greed,
exploitation, profits, property, winning, bellicosity and selfishness
are sacrosanct, we cannot escape the reality that each of us
participates in the American version of Hannah Arendt's "banality
of evil" to some extent. Unless we isolate ourselves in a mountain
cabin or expatriate, as US citizens we are each damned to be one
of the 300 million "Little Eichmanns" who enable our cynical
plutocratic masters to dominate the world both economically and
militarily.

Struggling to make itself heard above the cacophonous din of
sound bites, advertising jingles, clichés, tropes, memes, mythos,
and various other manifestations of the false consciousness that
afflicts so many of us, the voice of conscience occasionally grabs
our attention and violently reminds us how badly we are ****ing
the rest of the world.

And when it does, the question we each need to ask ourselves is,
"How much like "Eich" do I want to be?"

While there are myriad ways we can each minimize our culpability
in the egregious crimes of savage capitalism and its most banal
representation, consumerism, the struggle to end speciesism is at
the vanguard of our much needed moral evolution. Yet is often
minimized and ridiculed by sociopolitical thinkers of nearly all stripes.

Seeking to provoke a re-examination of our ghastly practices
toward animals, Patrice Greanville, a force in the animal liberation
movement for many years, has defined speciesism as akin to
German fascism. While the comparison is doubtless inflammatory,
it is well grounded in fact, since both speciesism and Nazism share
a core ideology of entitlement to total dominion over anyone outside
the ""master race" :

"[as] the oldest, crudest and most pervasive form of fascism or
tyranny around speciesism must be understood as an unrecognized
fascism not so much as the organization of a mass party of thugs to
beat back labor, or an outright rightwing military dictatorship, but
as a form of institutionalized supremacism whereby a particular
nationality, group, class, race (or species), unilaterally proclaims its
'superiority' over others, and proceeds to confer upon itself the
right to exploit, murder, and tyrannize at will with absolute impunity."

Infectious and insidious as racism or sexism, speciesism permeates
nearly every facet of our existence-and it's class blind: both poor
and rich practice it with alacrity. Raising 4-5 billion non-human
animals each year in the concentration camp-like conditions of
factory farms, we torture and slaughter fellow sentient beings
merely to satiate our carnivorous desires(1) or to justify any project,
no matter how inane. As Peter Singer documented so well in his
seminal work, Animal Liberation, we annually perform an array of
horrendously brutal experiments on millions of non-human animals,
including acids and solvents on restrained rabbits' eyes (given their
great sensitivity). Singer's book clearly demonstrates that much of
the "research" conducted by torturing animals involves redundant
university studies that yield conclusions one could have intuited,
frivolous government or military projects, and unnecessary
consumer product tests designed to validate "new" brand claims.

Gandhi noted that "the greatness of a nation and its moral progress
can be measured by the way its animals are treated," and he was right.

If the United States has a prayer of attaining even a fraction of the
"greatness" and "moral progress" it already attributes to itself, we
must engage in a fearless moral inventory and prepare ourselves to
make sweeping and dramatic social, economic, and political changes.

Treating non-human animals as objects for our convenience (hence
subjecting them to horrendous suffering and abuse) is certainly one
of our most shameful misdeeds. It is also one for which each of us
can readily begin making amends. One simple step we can take is
to refuse to consume meat or products from the fast food industry,
a hideous manifestation of capitalism that catalyzed and necessitates
factory farming.

[As a point of disclosure, this writer is a former carnivore. While in
reality he was omnivorous, his diet revolved mostly around meat
and he lived to eat it. There is rarely a day that passes that he does
not crave a steak, a cheeseburger, or some other form of non-human
animal flesh. However, as he explained in "Another Bacon Burger
Anyone?" he remains committed to vegetarianism based on his
rejection of speciesism, the detrimental effect factory farming has on
the environment, and the fact that meat production is a huge
contributor to world hunger because it consumes vast resources
better utilized elsewhere. While veganism is probably not on his
immediate horizon, he does minimize his egg consumption and
makes a conscious effort to eschew the use of animal products
derived from or tested upon animals.]

Rising to the moral challenge

Every human being has a moral stake in the struggle against
speciesism, whether they define themselves as Left, Right, centrist,
liberal, or Libertarian. Drawing perilously close to the event horizon
of the spiritual black hole spawned by the excesses of the declining
American Empire, our capacity to evoke change as individuals in
the face of an opulent ruling class steeped in historically
unprecedented wealth and power is limited, but we are not impotent
in the battle for our souls.

Consider the position of Matthew Scully, who authored Dominion:
the Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy
and who was a speechwriter for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney,
Dan Quayle, and Bob Dole (not exactly the credentials of a "bleeding
heart liberal"):

"Conservatives like to think of animal protection as a trendy leftist
cause, which makes it easier to brush off. And I hope that more
of us will open our hearts to animals. I also believe that in factory
farming and other cruelties conservatives will find some familiar
problems - moral relativism, self-centered materialism, license
passing itself off as freedom, and the culture of death."

Vegetarianism, one potential cure for the disease of speciesism, has a
long and rich history. A number of individuals noted for their impressive
moral, intellectual, social, literary, or political accomplishments were
vegetarians, including Edison, Einstein, Gandhi, Kafka, Pythagoras,
da Vinci, Tesla, Plato, Tolstoy, Thoreau, Jane Goodall, Cesar Chavez,
Isaac Bashevis Singer, and George Bernard Shaw.

Almost undoubtedly these conscientious individuals who respected
non-human animals enough to stop eating them confronted some
of the same specious, often snide, arguments against vegetarianism
that defenders of speciesism still use today.

Consider a brief deconstruction of a few of them:

"A vegetarian diet is protein-deficient and vegetarians become weak,
frail, and sickly."

There is abundant medical and anecdotal evidence to demonstrate
that a plant-based diet provides ample proteins for a human being
to sustain health to the same extent as those eating meat. There are
also some indications that we were almost exclusively vegetarian at
one point in the evolutionary process (2).

"Animals do not have the same capabilities as humans, so they are
not entitled to the same rights."

That is a true statement. The first part, that is. It would be patently
absurd to argue that a pig has the right to bear arms. The point is that
few serious-minded people pursuing animal liberation think in terms
of animal rights, per se. However, the moral equality sought by animal
defenders for animals is not based on a ludicrous equality of
"intelligence" between non-human and human species, since if
intelligence (or lack thereof) were the criterion to confer protection
from abuse, torture and death, then we would be logically justified to
kill, eat and use mentally handicapped or brain-dead people in such
manner, and we clearly are not about to do so. As has been repeated
for a couple of decades now, the basic point is not whether they can
reason like us, but whether they can feel pain as we do, and they clearly,
obviously, and loudly do, as anyone can readily attest by spending just
a few minutes in a slaughterhouse or similar hells. Animals are ends in
themselves, and not mere means to our designs.

In Animal Liberation Singer defined the above principles in this manner:

"The argument for extending the principle of equality beyond our own
species is simple, so simple that it amounts to no more than a clear
understanding of the nature of the principle of equal consideration of
interests. We have seen that this principle implies that our concern for
others ought not to depend on what they are like, or what abilities they
possess (although precisely what this concern requires us to do may
vary according to the characteristics of those affected by what we do).
It is on this basis that we are able to say that the fact that some people
are not members of our race does not entitle us to exploit them, and
similarly the fact that some people are less intelligent than others does
not mean that their interests may be disregarded. But the principle also
implies that the fact that beings are not members of our species does
not entitle us to exploit them, and similarly the fact that other animals
are less intelligent than we are does not mean that their interests may
be disregarded."

"To live is to destroy and kill."

There is an element of truth to this statement. For instance, we
inadvertently kill insects and microbes with great frequency.
However, as self-conscious, relatively intelligent beings, we bear
the responsibility and have the power to minimize the destruction,
suffering, and death we cause. One certain way to achieve this
end is to end one's support of the industrialized murder of the
meat industry.

"Vegetarians have no regard for the "suffering" of plants."

One of the principal reasons most animal liberationists oppose
meat consumption is the suffering it imposes upon non-human
animals. Arguing that vegetarians are hypocritical because they eat
plants is fallacious for two reasons (which are probably obvious
even to those who disingenuously make this ridiculous assertion).

Lacking a central nervous system and even a rudimentary
consciousness necessary to experience pain, it would be
impossible for plants to "suffer" in the sense that human and
non-human animals do.

Admittedly, we do violate the sanctity of life in an absolute sense
when we consume a plant, which is why there is some validity to
the assertion that "to live is to destroy and kill." Yet again, as self-
aware beings capable of making moral decisions, it is incumbent
upon us to minimize the suffering and death which we cause simply
by being. Choosing to eat plants rather than animals is one of the
most viable means we have of doing so.

Abstention from eating flesh aside, many ardent speciesists argue
that the entire notion of animal liberation is puerile and trivial
because the world is filled with problems that are "more important"
than relieving the misery of non-human animals. But remember
that many of these same individuals thrive in a system of savage
capitalism which provides them with an "inalienable right" to prosper
through exploitation. Terrified of losing their profits, they work
vigorously to prevent our society from adopting a more enlightened
moral position with respect to animals.

Certainly the United States is not alone in committing shocking
atrocities against non-human animals as a matter of routine, but
we are the epicenter of the most advanced and malignant stages
of predatory capitalism. With the complicity of all of us Little
Eichmans (even those who consciously keep their participation
to a bare minimum), the moneyed class comprising our de facto
government is literally committing crimes on par with those for
which we hanged the architects of Nazism at Nuremburg.

Despite the environment of bitter dissent and rage directed at the
status quo in the United States, taking extreme action against an
increasingly rickety yet still incredibly powerful system would be
premature, self-defeating, and perhaps suicidal at this point.

Yet regardless of the considerable number of constraints the
ruling elites have upon us, we are still the stewards of our own
souls and possess the means to rise above the abject moral
poverty of our nation. What better place to start than in the
defense of the most vulnerable amongst us?

Here's to the liberation of animals and of our spirits..

SOURCES

1. http://www.cultureandanimals.org/ani...#overabundance

2. http://www.diet-and-health.net/Diet/veg_diet.html

Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed
himself intellectually and spiritually. He is Cyrano's Journal Online's
associate editor (http://www.bestcyrano.org/) and publishes
Thomas Paine's Corner within Cyrano's at
http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/.