THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 9, 1996 TAG: 9607090007
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: 51 lines
According to researcher Jane Goodall, laboratories conducting research with chimpanzees are as morally bereft as the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. Condemning such research, Goodall states: ``You may ask, how can we do this to our closest living relative? Well we did it in Auschwitz, didn't we?'' (MetroNews, June 24). Setting aside her incredible insinuation that Jewish and other victims massacred in the Holocaust were mere relatives of the human race, there remains in the statement an eerie parallel to another ``environmental'' movement that successfully ravaged communities and virtually eliminated an industry for no valid reason.
Harken to September 1992, when David Brower, formerly a Sierra Club official, proclaimed: ``Loggers losing their jobs because of spotted-owl legislation is, in my eyes, no different from people being out of work after the furnaces at Dauchau closed'' (from his speech at the World Congress on Adventure Travel and Ecotourism, Whistler, B.C.). Brower and his allies successfully waged war on the timber communities and industry of the American West. In little more than a decade, they virtually eliminated not just logging but, in some areas, virtually any human entry on the National Forests and other public lands.
There are morals here for those about to be subjected to the wrath of PETA, ALF and their kin. Industries, sport fisherman, hunters, any who infringe on the ``liberty interest'' of animals, are included among potential targets.
Moral one: Any compromise from the status quo is a gain for the animal advocates and a loss for their victims. Corollary: When an activist group gives serious scrutiny to an industry, it will find something wrong somewhere - a violated standard, a misbehaving employee, perhaps simply human error. Response? First, no compromise. Then, if wrong has been done, correct the situation, punish the wrongdoers, fix the system, but do not let publicity and posturing activists impose the animal-rights agenda on you.
Moral two: The philosophical basis for animal rights does not generally arise from classic Western thought. The issue is not whether you love animals, care for your pets or humanely slaughter your cows for market. The issue is whether animals have rights equivalent to human beings. Response? Argue the issues, publicly, with reason and force. Argue to the masses, argue to academia, argue to the government, argue to the press. Do so persistently, honestly, equitably and unrelentingly. Know the philosophy that drives the policy-makers of the animal-rights movement and take that view on, point by point.
Perhaps raising these points implies greater weight to the nascent power of PETA than seems reasonable - but that was precisely the predominant reaction to Earth First and other radical environmentalists 20 years ago . . . and they won.
GARY S. McCALEB
Virginia Beach, June 24, 1996 by CNB