Should Animal Rights Be Included in the Progressive Agenda?
Animal rights often conflict with environmentalism and other progressive goals
The progressive slate
Political ideas do not happen in a vacuum, they are interrelated because they are based on a particular worldview and a set of underlying moral values.
Ever since the Enlightenment, progressive politics and the Left have been anchored on the values of humanism, science and rationality. During the 20th Century, these ideas developed into other ideologies like socialism, feminism and environmentalism.
Today, many people define themselves as progressives and fight for a collection of causes which could be called the “progressive slate”.
For example:
- Universal coverage of our basic needs: air, water, food, shelter, safety and health.
- Redistribution of wealth to fight against poverty.
- A fair judicial system and a police that treats everybody equally.
- Freedom from persecution.
- Freedom of expression.
- Fight against exploitation of labor.
- Equality for the genders (feminism).
- Equality for the races (anti-racism).
- Equality of sexual orientations (LGBTQ rights).
- Environmentalism.
- Rationality and science.
- Freedom of and from religion.
- Sexual freedom.
- Reproductive freedom.
- Democracy: full control of the power of the state by the people.
- Access to knowledge and information.
I may be missing some, but most progressives would subscribe to fighting for these causes.
Progressive values
They all belong in the progressive slate because they derive logically from the values of equality, liberty and safety for all.
Causes like environmentalism, rationality and the defense of science are also connected to these basic premises. Thus, access to safe air, water and food is not possible in a damaged environment.
Most importantly, a reliable source of knowledge upon which we can all agree is fundamental to establish a functioning society, so none of the other goals can be achieved without science.
Animal rights vs. animal welfare
What I want to address in this article is whether these goals should be extended beyond the human realm to animals, that is, to include animal rights.
But first, it is necessary to underscore the difference between animal rights and animal welfare.
The animal rights position is that animals have rights similar to people, specifically the right to life and to freedom. It wants to apply to animals the Kantian principle that says that humans should be treated as an end and not as a means to obtain something. From that, it follows that it is unethical not only to kill animals but also to use them in any way, including for food (veganism), for clothing (no wearing fur or leather), as pets, for entertainment (no zoos or aquariums), for labor (no farm animals, police dogs, service dogs, etc.), or for scientific research.
The animal welfare position, on the other hand, is that it is ethical to use animals as long as we don’t cause them unnecessary suffering. While the animal rights position is absolutist (no animal use is allowed), the animal welfare position is flexible and subject to interpretation. When is animal suffering necessary? How much suffering is allowed? What types of animals are capable of suffering? Obviously, a life completely free of suffering is not possible for anyone, human or animal, so a certain amount of suffering has to be allowed.
The fallacies behind animal rights
Many progressives take it for granted that animal rights should be added to the progressive slate.
A common rationale for this is the “expanding circle of compassion”. It argues that historically there is a progression in recognizing the rights of wealthy people first, then the rights of white men, then those of white women, then of all people regardless of race. Therefore, following this natural progression, we should start to grant some rights to animals as well.
There are many fallacies nested in this argument. The first one is a categorical mistake: the poor, women and non-whites had rights to start with, recognizing these rights was not a favor granted to them by an increasingly enlightened society, but the addressing of an enormous historical injustice gained in large part due to the struggle of the oppressed.
In contrast, animals cannot understand the concept of “rights”, much less fight for them.
Another mistake is the extrapolation fallacy. The directionality seen is this argument is illusory, so there is no reason to believe that things will move in the anticipated direction.
All these fallacies are used to avoid addressing the key issues behind animal rights: how animals are different from humans, whether all animal species should be treated the same way (do worms have rights?), whether animals suffer the same way as humans do, and what are the rational underpinnings of the rights for animals.
The conflict between animal rights and environmentalism
Animal rights proponents often cast their movement as part of the larger environmentalist movement. They have been so successful at this that, today, the Green parties of most countries list animal rights as part of their agenda.
A superficial view, indeed, tells us that if one cares about nature one should care about the animals that live in it, right? However, more careful consideration would tell us that caring about the health of ecosystems and keeping species from going extinct (environmentalism) is very different from caring about the well-being of individual animals (animal rights).
This difference keeps popping up in the numerous conflicts between environmentalists and animal rightists:
- When invasive feral pigs and other introduced species like sheep, goats and donkeys threatened the California Channel Islands, driving to extinction species like the island fox, animal rights organizations like the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) opposed the killing of these animals, offering to use contraception instead. To these days, they continue to spin fake news related to this issue.
- The California condor was saved from extinction by capturing all free-ranging individuals and raising them in captivity in the Los Angeles Zoo. Animal rightists are against all zoos and captive breeding. Here is what People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has to say about this. Fortunately, HSUS has come around to support this, after some trepidation.
- Another issue dear to environmentalists is the introduction of wolves into ecosystems in the United States where they were driven to extinction. The presence of top predators like wolves has been shown to be essential for the health of these ecosystems and the species on which they prey. Animal rightists oppose predator reintroduction programs. Here is what PETA has to say about it. HSUS has mixed feelings about it because some of the wolves were hunted afterward.
Every time that a problem comes up in which animals have to be killed to protect the environment, environmentalists and animal rightists take opposite positions.
The conflict between animal rights and science
But this is not the only issue in which animal rights come against other items in the progressive agenda.
Animal rights are one of the biggest threats against science because of their militant opposition to the use of animals in research.
Biomedical research is the largest part of science these days, and it is done largely using animals like mice, rats, fish and fruit flies, but also some dogs, cats, pigs and monkeys.
Without progress in biomedical research, the future health needs of millions of people cannot be met.
The conflict between animal rights and humanism
Modern progressive politics grew out of the humanist philosophy of the Enlightenment. Opposing the religious views of the time, humanism claimed that the happiness of people and the full realization of the potential of humanity should be the foundation of all values.
Animal rights represent a reversal of this humanist ideal by stating that humans are morally equivalent to animals. Indeed, there is a profound misanthropy at the core of the animal rights ideology. Humans are presented as irredeemably bad, the “cancer of the Earth”, while animals are pure and blameless. In fact, many animal rightists will unabashedly confess that they love animals more than humans.
Therefore, far from being an extension of human rights, animal rights represent an existential threat to their realization. They are an anti-humanist movement with dangerous religious undertones in their dogmatism, their anti-rationalism and their sentimentality.
The conflict between animal rights and social movements
Animal rightists make no commitment to progressive values and have been condemned for making anti-Semitic (offensive images of the Holocaust), racist (comparing eating meat with slavery) and misogynist (drinking milk is rape) statements.
Sociologically, defenders of animal rights are middle- and upper-class whites who have lived a sheltered life. They have little sympathies for working-class or ethnic movements, which have refused to let the animal rights crowd steal their voice.
Animals don’t talk, so it’s easy to speak in their name. This provides a way for privileged individuals to get a dose of victimism and outrage porn that they cannot claim otherwise.
All this goes to show that there are no ties between animal rights ideology and progressivism.
Animal rights and conservative politics
We shouldn’t be surprised when they ally themselves with conservatives, as in the case of the right-wing anti-science organization White Coat Waste. Unfortunately, several elected Democrats have supported anti-science initiatives proposed by White Coat Waste.
Animal rights organizations have vast resources and have become tremendously influential in politics. This is why is so important that we start to dissociate true progressive causes from the animal rights chimeras.
Conclusions
The animal rights ideology doesn’t fit with progressive values and actually opposes many of them.
They have nothing to do with environmental causes like fighting climate change, protecting ecosystems and saving species from extinction.
Animal rights activists have committed numerous acts of violence, especially against scientists. They spout pseudoscience and represent one of the most serious modern threats to biomedical research.
When we are still so far away from creating a truly egalitarian and free society, when millions of human beings continue to suffer horrible pain and deprivation, it should be unethical to divert our energy, money and resources to chase the chimera of animal rights.
