A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy..
I've been listening to a lot of talk radio and reading/watching the news lately. I'm planning my own grassroots movement. Haha. The other day, I heard about this book called "A Rat Is a Pig Is a Dog Is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement"
I don't know much about the book but I guess it looks into the ideas of our extreme animal rights friends. The book explores the ideas and the people who take animal rights so far that they teter on the edge of terrorism with their protests. The book supposedly examines the idea that if we value animal rights equally or hold their lives higher than our own, it will ultimately hurt humanity.
The book was released March 2 so I'm heading to the bookstore this weekend. I'll post more as I read the book. I wonder have you VegHeads ever dealt with these issues and/or pressures either from yourself or an outside source? I know my ex was big into equal animal rights. Sometimes she would consider animal rights higher than her own.
What say you?
I'm not nearly as devoted to animal rights as most vegans, but most people don't seem to care at all. I'll be honest, I hadn't heard of this book until just now, but people are always at least a little afraid of those that are different than them. Depending on what talk radio you listen to (Rush perhaps), they would have you believe that education among other things is going to be the downfall of our society. I for one and happy I went to college (aren't most people?). Currently animals are so far from equal that it doesn't even really seem effective to debate on whether or not they should be. Animals are thought of as property, and not much more by most people. We look at things like factory farms as being the ultimate in evil, but the reason they exist (besides greed) is that people are basically okay with animals being treated like property. Go on craigslist some time and look at the pets section. In any given part of the country right now there are people with ads saying how wonderful their pet is, but that they 'just can't take care of them', or they want to move, etc. The kicker is that they say they are desperate to find a good home, but that they need $25/50/100 to 'ensure a good home'. That's not ensuring a good home, that's selling your pet.
Sorry for the rant.
Your second point: Though it's not played up on the media as much, domestic terrorism is still seen as a bigger threat than foreign. The biggest segment of domestic terrorism is eco-terrorism. So it isn't a big jump in most people's minds that animal rights people must be terrorists. This is probably mostly due to the fact that there aren't enough of us around to sway the minds of the average joe.
This point: Like I said, I'm not that vocal about animal rights (except for paragraph 1), but my girlfriend is, and she gets crap all the time from all directions. Will it 'ultimately hurt humanity'? Probably not at all, but then we aren't exactly an endangered species either.