Agenda for a New America
Part One
The Politics of Vegetarianism
By Vasu Murti
Chapter 2 - Equality

The principle of the equality of human beings is not a description of
an alleged actual equality among humans; it is a prescription of how
we should treat humans. Thomas Jefferson saw this point. He wrote in a
letter to the author of a book the notable intellectual achievements
of Negroes in order to refute the then common view that they had
limited intellectual capacities:

"...whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their
rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in
understanding, he was not therefore lord of the property or person of
others."

Similarly when in the 1850s the call for women's rights was raised in
the United States a remarkable black feminist named Sojourner Truth
made the same point in more robust terms at a feminist convention.

" ...they talk about this thing in the head; what do they call it?
('Intellect,' whispered someone nearby.) That's it. What's that got
to do with women's rights or Negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but
a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me
have my little half-measure full?"

If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one
human to use another for his own ends, how can it entitle humans to
exploit nonhumans for the same purpose? In a forward-looking passage
written at a time when black slaves had been freed by the French but
in the British dominions were still being treated in the way we now
treat animals, Jeremy Bentham wrote:

"The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire
those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by
the hand of tyranny.

"The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is
no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the
caprice of a tormentor.

"It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the
villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons
equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same
fate.

"What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the
faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a
full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well
as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even
a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The
question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they
suffer?"

The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is a prerequisite for having
interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can
speak of interests in a meaningful way. It would be nonsense to say
that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the
road by a schoolboy. A stone does not have interests because it cannot
suffer. A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being
kicked along the road, because it will suffer if it is.

cribbed from http://www.all-creatures.org/article...i-polveg2.html

> If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one
> human to use another for his own ends, how can it entitle humans to
> exploit nonhumans for the same purpose?

Because they're not humans. The family of man has no obligation to those
outside the family.

Cool it, Sefton. You're acting McNuggety again!

> Because they're not humans. The family of man has no obligation to those
> outside the family.