{"id":15999,"date":"2019-10-29T00:18:16","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T07:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/politicalhat.com\/?p=15999"},"modified":"2019-10-29T00:18:16","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T07:18:16","slug":"elephants-are-people-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/2019\/10\/29\/elephants-are-people-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Elephants Are People Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

     The impetus of some to grant legal rights to \u201cnature\u201d and even to specific non-human species, while clearly insane<\/a>, it to actually use these \u201crights\u201d to achieve dominion over others<\/a> by suing on behalf of some critter.<\/p>\n

     The thing is, while animal welfare laws could apply, the people pushing this still insist on (pseudo-)human rights for non-humans<\/a>, even though such critters have no duties or obligations that the rest of us have.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cLawyers representing an elephant have argued in a New York City court that their trunked client be considered a person, in a fresh attempt to upend human dominance over this designation.<\/p>\n

\u201cHappy the elephant is, contrary to her sunny name, being detained by the Bronx Zoo \u2018illegally\u2019, due to her personhood, and must be released, according to the pachyderm\u2019s self-appointed legal team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe case\u2019s instigator, an animal rights group, hopes it will cause a legal breakthrough that will elevate the status of elephants, which the group calls \u2018extraordinarily complex creatures\u2019 similar to humans that should have the fundamental right to liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

     This does not elevate animals, but diminishes human beings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe distinction between animal rights and animal welfare is crucial. Animal rights is an ideology that humans and animals are equal. Thus PETA once argued that owning a leather couch is the moral equivalent of purchasing a lamp made from human skin from Auschwitz. Animal-rights believers believe that there should be no human ownership of animals for any reason.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn contrast, animal welfare sees the proper care of animals as a human duty in keeping with our exceptionalism. This approach accepts the propriety of making instrumental use of animals, but requires us to do so for proper reasons and in a humane manner, based on the particular characteristics of the animals in question.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

     Your humble author, nonetheless, will extend human rights to elephants when they can demonstrate that they are capable of the same level of civilization that many humans have achieved.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

     I, for one, welcome his royal highness King Barbar.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

     The impetus of some to grant legal rights to \u201cnature\u201d and even to specific non-human species, while clearly insane, it to actually use these \u201crights\u201d to achieve dominion over others by suing on behalf of some critter.      The thing is, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-15999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-progressives","tag-green"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15999"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16014,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15999\/revisions\/16014"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}