Progressivism
The animal rights movement - like the environmental movement, the feminist movement and dozens of other would-be worthy causes - long ago devolved into a ridiculously radical left-wing group of zealots. Promoting "total animal liberation," PETA's motto is: "Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment." So much for a remake of Mr. Ed. President Ingrid Newkirk has written: "When it comes to feelings like hunger, pain, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." Rat = boy.
While PETA's somewhat convoluted idea that animals have human rights is absurd on its face, their tactics are the focus of most criticism. PETA supports "direct action" - that is, criminality - through "the militarism component" of their movement. "Thinkers may prepare revolutions," according to Newkirk, "but bandits must carry them out." Likening their cause to the civil rights movement, they comfortably condone terrorism and terrorist groups such as the ALF and ELF. It's a shame that once an organization succumbs to liberalism, violence and thuggery are only a few steps away.
The Daily Caller reminds us today that PETA also deserves a healthy dose of criticism for hypocrisy.
Documents published online this month show that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an organization known for its uncompromising animal-rights positions, killed more than 95 percent of the pets in its care in 2011.
How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all
the time there is a plank in your own eye?
Maybe PETA should just stick to scantily clad women protesting fur.
Well thank you Justin for touching on my favorite "liberalism is mental illness" group of people.
I deal with the idiots on a regular basis. I am one of their favorites. Because I live in the Stupid State and I am around the Sport of Rodeo year round, I run into these animal rights whack jobs constantly. They are soooo much fun to mess with because they are truly stupid people.
Some of my favorites:
Two PETA nuts were distributing flyers at one of our rodeos protesting how rodeo treats the livestock . They arrived in a Lexus with leather interior, had leather shoes and leather belts on their bodies. Later we saw both of them eating ham sandwiches that they brought with them. I asked one of the protestors were they got their leather belts and shoes and where the leather for the interior of the Lexus came. With blank looks on their faces one told me that had gotten their shoes from Macy's and the other Nordstroms. All of us rodeo people walked around and when in to complete hysterical laughter. These whack jobs are protesting rodeo's treatment of animals while wearing dead ones around their waist and on their feet and in their car. You just can't fix stupid.
My favorite one, however, was the protestor claiming that in order to make the bulls buck, leather straps are wrapped out the bull's genitals. One doesn't have to have much more than an IQ of Forest Gump to understand that touching or attempting to get near bull's genitals would invoke serious injury or death. So we asked hiim to come into the bull chutes and show us how we wrap leather straps around the bulls balls so that we would know how to do that. Of couse Mr. Whackjob looked at us dumbfounded and walked away.
One more thing - anyone who goes to websites of these animal rights' whack jobs needs to understand that Animal Rights nuts used things like video cameras and cameras to take pictures that they ulitmately edit in order to try and "show" how cruel rodeo is to the livestock.
Animal Rights and Global Warming whack jobs have a lot iin common and it is called lying in order to promote their brain-dead mental illness ideas.
"It is a particularly disgusting habit of the human mind that propels it to dismiss virtue because of some perceived hypocrisy on the part of virtue’s defenders. What is worse is the childish delight some characters seem to take in the public unveiling of such hypocrisy
(...)
I delight in the opportunity to unveil this annoying mental habit of Americans: namely, if the messenger is hypocritical, the message can be disregarded."
Julie Ponzi, Ashbrook editorial, May 2003
https://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/oped/ponzi/03/bennett.html
So, hypocrisy is bad again? This must be the most confusing issue to follow here at NLT. I'm at a total loss as to what the Principled Conservative position might be on it (although I suspect it's largely just "whatever works at the moment for the particular goal of the moment.")
They support aborting humans to save the child from life not worth living, why wouldn't they support euthanizing Fido to save him from a life not living?
So I will help you out on this one Pumpkin:
- 1992 - 2000 - Hillary Clinton along with Bill & Al Gore believed that there was no doubt Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
- In 2005, Hillary Clinton voted for the war in Iraq.
- In 2008, Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton said ""If Congress had been asked [to authorize the war], based on what we know now, we never would have agreed," Which is, of course, reaction to the "Bush Lied about Hussein having Weapons of Mass Destruction and people died" ad nauseum mantra invented by the left and to be elected the first woman President of the United States.
- In 2012 Hillary Clinton's State Department is warning Syria's neighbors of the possibility of Syria's WMDs crossing their borders. Hillary's State Department believes that Syria has an arsenal of WMD's including mustard gas, nerve agents as well as biological weapons. Hillary's State Department believes that Syria obtained these WMD's from Iraq while Saddam Hussein was in power.
Let me repeat that: Hillary's State Department believes that Syria obtained these WMD's from Iraq while Saddam Hussein was in power.
Okay one more time: Hillary's State Department believes that Syria obtained these WMD's from Iraq while Saddam Hussein was in power.
So hyprocisy is bad? This is one of the most confusing issue to follow with Liberalism. I am at a total loss as to what the Principaled Liberal position might be on it. I suspected it is whatever works at the particular goal of the moment .
"PETA supports 'direct action' - that is, criminality - through 'the militarism component' of their movement."
Considering NLT's obvious support for both the Colonial-era and the very recent versions of The Tea Party, you might want to reconsider such simplistic denigrations of direct action.
PETA supports "direct action" - that is, criminality - through "the militarism component" of their movement.
https://www.amazon.com/Direct-Citizen-Action-American-Revolution/dp/0974925349
From angry disruptions of town hall meetings to liberty-loving protestors brandishing guns and trotting out the mantra of refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants, the tactics of direct action are not simply those of the left. Direct action played a significant role in the Founding of the country. I find it hardly unthinkable that the same general methods might be considered for various attempts to improve it (be those progressive or conservative-libertarian visions).
But then, I probably shouldn't expect a sympathetic ear for an "It's kind of complicated" approach to the idea of direct action from someone who "interprets" this:
"When it comes to feelings like hunger, pain, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy."
to mean: "Rat = boy."
I have never supported PETA, and that will very likely continue (the latest revelations certainly help), but that particular statement of Newkirk's hardly strikes me as one of the more questionable or controversial ideas to emanate from the group. Actually, Newkirk's statement strikes me as obviously true (ever had a pet?) as well as supported by many years of scientific research. And many a manly, macho John Wayne cowboy would also nod in agreement to that statement if they'd ever had to depend on a horse (for more than a paycheck on a Hollywood movie set). Animals do respond very similarly to humans (for the most part) when injured or deprived of food and drink.
The willfully obtuse Santorism of "Rat = Boy" somehow twisted from it, however, does strike me as truly absurd on its face. That doesn't mean, unfortunately, that there aren't plenty of people who will respond positively (like a thirsty horse to water - no coercion needed) to such facile grunts.
"I am not a rat, I am not a monkey, evolution is nonsense, vote for me!!" And the audience erupts into ecstatic cheers.
(Somehow, though, your post title did manage to border on humorous!)
" Animals do respond very similarly to humans (for the most part) when injured or deprived of food and drink".
Really? Would love to know how you came to that conclusion. I live on a ranch and I am around both wild and domesticated animals daily. I have never seen an animal respond to the depravation of food and water in the same manner as humans. Maybe biological, but not in attempting to obtain it....
Yes it's true, cow, that animals don't ask for a drink or go into the kitchen and just help themselves (recall Gary Larson's reminders that lack of opposable thumbs/digits is a fundamental problem), or use the drive-thru at Sonic (Big Gummint won't issue them driver's licenses!), but then that's wholly irrelevant to Newkirk's point.
Yeah, "maybe biological." Maybe.
(Can't be bothered to engage further in ludicrous "debate" on this.)