Animal Rights Are Ridiculous
By Alexander Marriott UNLV Rebel Yell: November 14, 2002

It is now becoming a greater possibility that chimpanzees will gain human rights in the United States as a great victory for the Animal rights activists. I say, "Yes! Let the chimps have human rights!"

The first action that should occur after the chimps gain human rights is there immediate release from zoos as that is clearly slavery, and the thirteenth amendment outlaws such activity. But what will the chimps do after they are emancipated?

Most of them will probably wander about, getting hit by cars and then taking the offending drivers to court. Others will defecate in public and subsequently be arrested and thrown in jail. Still others will be found sleeping on the streets and then be arrested for vagrancy. Others might be directed to the welfare office, as they can't provide for themselves. Then they'll have to get a job with no language skills or child-level learning ability. And some will even starve to death or be arrested in their attempts to steal food.

This all sounds ridiculous of course, but it is the serious idea of certain animal rights groups in this country. Of course the goal cannot be to benefit the chimps because if they were allotted human rights they would quickly go extinct. So one must conclude that these animal rights activists either, hate the chimps and wish them to be destroyed, or they hate man and wish his rights to be trivialized and destroyed.

The animals rights activists, the environmentalists, and all the other glorifiers of the primitive have only one goal in mind; the dragging down of man and all of his accomplishments. One of the paramount accomplishments of mankind, perfected by the American Founding Fathers, was the formulation of individual rights. It was the philosophical equivalent to the invention of the wheel or the formulation of writing or even a more modern equivalent, flight or the steam engine. Rights were developed as the perfect and fundamental basis of human relationships, to protect the ultimate minority of civilization, the individual. It was through reason, a distinctly human quality, that human beings developed this concept, not through instinct, feelings, the irrationalism of God or Mother Earth or the Ape Lawgiver. The apes and other lower animals aren't entitled to human rights as they aren't human and they aren't conceptual animals (in other words they can't conceive of rights or individuals or law or any other abstract principle).

Although the idea of protecting animals sounds nice, giving them human rights is certainly not the method by which one with such a goal should adhere. To protect these animals you and other like-minded people should pool your resources and raise money to buy the said animals and build them habitations. Or better yet, buy the land of their natural environment, enclose it and hire people to protect them from potential risks, like poachers. There is no justification however to take money from everyone to do these things for you though, you must do them of your own will and wealth. What do you think zoos are for, if not to protect animals and keep them away from animal testing?

But the animals' rights activists could care less for the animals, least of all for man. The irony is, of course, that capitalism (partial-capitalism anyway) allows such movements to exist in the first place. The starvation of the old Soviet Union created no respect for animals, if anyone had gotten hold of any animals they would have killed and eaten them rather than proclaim them as their brethren and take them to the next May Day parade. The next time that Lenin's Birthday rolls around (Earth Day) remind yourself that a thousand years ago people hated the earth so much they fooled themselves into thinking there was some sort of wonderful world in the sky to which they could escape. Today a certain group of people hates the works and minds of men so much that they want the earth of a thousand years ago to be restored, and they just might do it if you allow them.