Animal Rights and US Political Parties
The fact is that of the three or four third parties that are ever in play in US politics, only one, the Green Party (not to be confused with The Greens Green Party USA), specifically mentions treatment of animals in its platform ("Key Values").
It’s difficult for me to disagree with the Green Party’s intentions.
But once again, like yesterday and the day before, there’s more involved than whether a party takes a stand on animals or not.
There are Democrats and Republicans who support legislation that bans cruel treatment of animals, yet neither party has "the ethics of our relationship with animals" as part of its platform. Do the parties need to mention animals?
The two questions I ask are:
- If you think the government should make sure people don’t harm themselves and are treated equally, what if the government decides that a vegan diet harms you and makes it illegal?
- The government is composed of people elected by people, right? How many people do you know right now whom you would trust to elect a government that will make decisions you agree with regarding the food you eat, the supplements you take, and the kind of medical treatment you prefer?
Furthermore, Participatory Democracy (as opposed to our Representative Democracy) is a great ideal. Ideal. But I just don’t see the majority of Americans taking the (unpaid) time and energy to make it happen. We have to work within the reality of human behavior (or at least our evidence of it).
I figure we’ve got less than a year to determine where we stand as individuals, and then a year to make something happen in this country that represents a significant shift in our direction. We either accept a lesser of two evils, or we bolster or redefine an existing party and dive in.
John Mackey, Founder of Whole Foods Market, whom I have mentioned several times, is an example of someone who is attempting to redefine an existing party–the Libertarian Party–which is all but irrelevant in 2006. He and Michael Strong have started FLOW, which uses a model of Integral Business that incorporates Ken Wilbur’s work.
The premise is that we have accepted a narrow definition of the public corporation: that it exists to produce profits. But why not expand that definition, as Whole Foods has, to say that the corporation has a duty to all of its stakeholders: its employees, its customers, its shareholders, the community it resides in, the environment (which includes animals), and the vendors that supply it.
Check it out. If you’re a capitalism-basher, you might change your tune after checking out the facts.
