Help The Christian Science Monitor Understand Rights
Susan Clay of Houston alerted me to the fact that the editorial board of The Christian Science Monitor appears to be very confused about animal rights in its "Do Apes Have Human Rights?" Perhaps some clarity in a letter to the editor (there’s a handy "Letter to the Editor" button at the top of the article) might help them.
Let’s deconstruct:
- As you know, the whole situation is based on the humanlike behavior great apes demonstrate, which is a problem, not for great apes, but for everyone else who hasn’t been deemed humanlike enough.
- I haven’t seen this before, and it could be an even bigger problem:
"Apes would not have many other rights, such as the right to vote or to a free press. It is in such impossibilities that the very concept of animal rights falters. Rights are inherent to humans and guide the rules and laws that govern society. To parcel only a few rights to other species is to say other species are different. But humans and their rights are a whole idea."
So we either give them the right to vote or they don’t get their right to life? Is that what that says?
- Something else I didn’t expect (because I must be really naive) but I’ve seen it frequently, is:
"To grant only a few rights to only a few animals is to go down a slippery slope of moral relativism. If some animals are treated in law like humans, that gives ammunition to some humans who see some types of humans as animals. History shows – in the Holocaust and in African slavery – how that ends. Because rights are unique and absolute to humans – who have the potential to grasp their meaning – they are a protection to humans."
Giving the right to life to great apes can lead to humans treating humans as badly as we treat animals? Is that what that says? I don’t get the logic.
- At least the editorial board thinks this issue "may help ignite a useful debate on the origins and uses of rights," and questions whether rights "are independent of human thinking."
- Finally, the board has an important point in its recognition that there’s no movement toward banning bullfighting or the running of the bulls. But unfortunately it thinks that’s reason to say "There’s a lesson in that: Let human rights remain in the human realm while mankind works on improving its treatment of animals."
Help clarify animal rights for the editorial board of The Christian Science Monitor . . . please.
This is one of those rather odd articles which appear to understand animal rights without actually getting it at all. When they say the animal rights idea 'falters', they are merely pointing out that it is a limited idea compared to the notion of human rights. Animal rights is a modest idea but that does not mean it is not a rights-based idea. This also explains why we demand animal rights for nonhuman animals – we do ~not~ demand human rights for nonhuman animals, as is often claimed, usually by animal rights opponents. I believe it helps to think that some of our basic rights are OUR animal rights. Our animal rights are our basic (negative) rights – on those we build our (positive) human rights, like rights to vote, the latter being relevant only to human animals because there are morally-relevant differences between human and nonhuman animals.
To engage in a little more "infighting", I believe that if we can wrestle animal rights away from the corrosive grasp of animal welfarists, we could develop, explore and evolve the idea of the rights of nonhuman animals, improve our claims-making, and ripen up the public to animal rights ideals.
I think one place where we falter is calling such rights as the right to vote "rights" when they are actually privileges. All human and nonhuman animals have the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but depending on your government (or your gender or your legal status, whatever), not everyone has the privilege to vote, drive a car, etc. Starting our constitution with the "Bill of Rights" helped us "form a more perfect union," but should such privileges be termed "rights?"