PETA is Another Name for Misanthropy

By Rich Kozlovich

I originally published this on Friday, April 21, 2006 and again on September 3, 2009, and for some reason it's been hit a lot recently, along with some other old articles dealing with animal rights issues, such as, Endangered Species Act, and Jim Beer's excellent article, How Bureaucrats, Anarchists and Communists Use Wolves To Establish Tyranny, which I've also republished.  

So, here it is again, and updated.  

A misanthrope is somebody who hates people.  Somebody who hates humanity, or who dislikes and distrusts other people and tends to avoid them.  The next time you see a Hollywood star proudly telling everyone how much they support animal rights and they are proud members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), remember the quotes listed below from an April 15, 2006 article by Fred Geilow.  (Editor's Note: After all these years the link no longer works so I've removed it.  RK) 

Remember, this is who these people really are.

• "Mankind is the biggest blight on the face of the earth." PETA statement
• "I don't believe human beings have the "right to life." That's a supremacist perversion. A rat is a pig, is a dog, is a boy." Ingrid Newkirk, PETA co-founder and national director
• "It would be great if all the fast food outlets' slaughterhouses, laboratories, and the banks that fund them exploded tomorrow. "Bruce Fredrich, PETA spokesman
• "I would rather have medical experiments done on our children, than on animals." PETA statement
• "If we could shut down all sport hunting in a moment, we would... Only 7 percent of Americans are hunters. That means there are more of us than there are of them. It is simply a matter of democracy. The majority rules in a democracy. We are going to use the ballot box, and the democratic process to stop all hunting in the United States... We will take it species by species, until all hunting is stopped in California. Then, we will take it state by state." Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane Society of the U.S.
• "Christianity is our foe. If animal rights is to succeed, we must destroy the Judeo-Christian religious tradition." Peter Singer, known as the "Father of Animal Rights"
• "To those people who say, "My father is alive because of animal experimentation," I say, "Yeah, well, good for you. This dog died so your father could live." Sorry, but I am just not behind that kind of tradeoff." Bill Maher
• "Even if animal tests produced a cure [for AIDS], we'd be against it." Ingrid Newkirk, PETA co-founder and national director
• "Chickens are interesting individuals, who have as much right not to be cooked and eaten as a dog, or a cat, or even a human being." Bruce Fredrich, PETA spokesman
• "Ants are sentient beings, like we are, and have a right to life like we do, and they shouldn't be shown the level of disrespect the producers of ant farms show them." Stephanie Boyles, PETA
• "The life of an ant and the life of my child should be granted equal consideration." Michael W. Fox, vice president, Humane Society of the United States
• "We feel that animals have the same rights as retarded children." Alex Pacheco, former director of PETA, and subsequently the head of an animal-rights fundraising company
• "I think it is speciesist [someone who accepts human domination over animals] to think that the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center was a greater tragedy than what millions of chickens endured that day, and what they endure every day, because they cannot defend themselves against the concerted human appetites arrayed against them." Karen Davis, president of the animal rights group, United Poultry Concerns
• "If a human four-year-old has what it takes for legal personhood, then a chimpanzee should be able to be a legal person, in terms of legal rights." Steven Wise, Harvard University lecturer, and author of Rattling the Cage
• "Surely there will be some nonhuman animals whose lives, by any standards, are more valuable than the lives of some humans." Peter Singer
• "[A]rson, property destruction, burglary, and theft are "acceptable crimes" when used for the animal cause." Alex Pacheco, former director of PETA (This has been used in many areas of the world already, especially labs where animal experimentation has gone on. They have even intimidated individual employees at their homes as well as attacking the facilities. There has even been talk about assassinating researchers.)
• "If someone is killing, on a regular basis, thousands of animals, and if that person can only be stopped in one way by the use of violence, then it is certainly a morally justified solution." Jerry Vlasak, spokesman for PCRM [Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine], a front group for PETA.

After I published this in 2009 I had one comment from a reader then saying:

Unknown September 29, 2009 at 6:55 AM:  I think that a spectrum of rhetoric is sometimes useful to shake people up. Recall a time when children and wives were the property of parents and husbands, without individual rights. It took a lot of fighting and angry rhetoric to shed those long-held ideas.  I think that many of the quotes you cite are hyperbolic rhetorical and unfortunate flourishes, not literal beliefs.

Ignoring the red herring fallacy regarding children and wives, I have some questions.

1. Why would anyone say such things if they didn't really believe them?
2. Since the actions of these individuals reflect their statements, why would we consider them mere hyperbolic rhetoric with unfortunate flourishes?  
   
3. If they don't believe what they're saying here, why should we believe anything they say anywhere about anything?
   
4. When reading this sort of thing do we say to ourselves; are the views expressed here my views?
5. Are the views expressed here shared by most people?
6. Are these views the views of rational people?
7. What do you think their ultimate goals are?
8. Do you think these are the views of misanthropes?
9. Do you think leftism in all of it's manifestations, including environmentalism, is misanthropic?

Let's understand all these groups are scions of socialism, with environmentalism, via their insane global warming initiatives, as the spear point of an effort to impose a socialist system of worldwide governance under the auspices of the most corrupt, incompetent, and socially destructive organization the world has ever known.  The United Nations.  It really is that simple. 

 

Ethical Dilemmas About Killing an Animal for Climate

Ruminations on the rights of cows. 

By John Klar September 14, 2023 Articles, Opinion, Politics

California and other states (and many nations) have enacted laws to regulate “ethical” treatment of animals in agriculture. This trend accompanies modern jurisprudence shielding domestic pets and criminalizing animal cruelty. Advocates for animal welfare legislation, such as PETA, invoke claims of “animal rights” — but these same groups call for boycotts on products made from these animals.

To erase meat, milk, bacon, leather, and honey from human use is to eliminate (rather than ethically regulate) the animal husbandry that gives life to these creatures. This is a strange way to address the “rights” of these animals — raising questions not about the morality of farmers, who mostly strive to take good care of their livestock, but of the moral reasoning of animal rights activists.

Animal Thinking

There is a philosophical question about animal awareness implicit in this debate. How, for instance, do humans know that dolphins are not chatting at some very high level of communication? Border collies easily learn hundreds of words, as do crows. Are animals aware of death and suffering, and does that awareness impact the view of their “rights”?

PETA sidesteps this question with accustomed irony, appealing to end the existence of animals by exploiting not merely claimed but often nonexistent suffering and assertions of cognate awareness. Says PETA: “We believe that every creature with a will to live has a right to live free from pain and suffering.”

It is bizarre that PETA would assign a right “to live free from pain and suffering” to creatures only “with a will to live.” What of the animals PETA wants to put forever out of a job by eliminating the industries of which they are the core, or the dogs and cats PETA so efficiently euthanizes humanely – do they not have “a will to live”? A similar circular argument is heard by abortion proponents who assert that “terminated” babies are spared a life of hardship. But don’t they have as much will to live as a cow in a field, or a sow suckling her shoats in the shade?

Ayn Rand argued that ethical treatment of others – including animals – depended on awareness of life and death and the values that arise from that consciousness. The Atlas Society (named for Rand’s classic Atlas Shrugged) related:

“As Ayn Rand argued, value depends on the existence of a being that faces the alternative of continued existence or the end of existence — and a being that must act to continue in existence. Values, then, are those things that are required for the being’s continued life. Therefore, a value is always a value for some reason (it is required for life) and to some organism (the being acting in the face of the alternative of life or death) … Humans are the only organisms that are capable of volitional rationality and, as such, are the only organisms capable of morality. And while animals certainly face the alternative of life or death and thus pursue value, they do not react to this alternative by choosing what actions to take and what values to pursue to maintain their lives. They do not and cannot pursue moral values.”

Bovine Philosophizing?

This is visible in cows, who spend most of their lives seeking forage, then gacking up cud to masticate while contemplating the view. What are they thinking?

As ruminants, bovines have four stomach chambers. When they are not churning green gunk around in their bellies and chomping mouths (while multi-tasking with manure distribution and methane flatulence/burpation), they are likely taking a snooze. But what are they thinking?

Cows are not contemplating their endless struggle against that dark night we humans see as death. Cows will look past the electric or barbed-wire fence for greener pastures but don’t dream of a pastoral afterlife on the other side of their own mortality. They don’t even look past one meal to the next,or even past chew to chew.

Animal Souls

C.S. Lewis pondered the idea of animal spirituality in his tome The Problem of Pain, suggesting domesticated animals might accompany humans to heaven. G.K. Chesterton dodged the issue – in accustomed fashion – by hitting it straight and bluntly head-on:

“Mr. G.K. Chesterton after stating frankly that the subject is one of the many questions on which he is content to be an agnostic, says: – ‘About one thing I am quite clear, that it is perfectly right that the two ideas of the immortal man and the immortal mongoose should be treated as quite distinct. The second is simply a speculation about the mystery of nature that lies around us; the first is a practical question affecting the common conscience of a man and the consequences of his own action.’”

Some Closing Ruminations on Ruminants

A cud-grinding heifer may see her image in a window and reflect on her rumination – perhaps ruminating upon her reflection. We will never know, but we know she is alive. She is also tended by a human steward without whom she would quickly perish with assured pain and suffering. Unaware, the heifer is not a slave to the human, nor is the human slaving away to maintain water, food, healthcare, clean bedding, and sanitation for her bovine charges a slave to her cows. It is a symbiosis, ancient and bountiful.

PETA and its army of anarchic animal activists speculate about the mystery of the rights and consciousness of dolphins, cows, and coyotes. But a rational being would ask how killing creatures – man or beast – in the name of being humane is humane. Only humans are asking this question, which much concerns “the common conscience of a man and the consequences of his own action.”

 

Read More From John Klar

 

Maine DOT denies request from PETA to put up memorial for lobsters killed in crash

by WGME August 30th 2018

 

The Maine Department of Transportation has denied a request from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to build a 5-foot tombstone memorial where lobsters may have died after a crash on Route 1 in Brunswick last week.  Brunswick Police say a Cozy Harbor Seafood truck, carrying nearly 70 crates of lobster, rolled over and crushed several of them.............. “Countless sensitive crustaceans experienced an agonizing death when this truck rolled over and their bodies came crashing down onto the highway" PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said. "PETA hopes to pay tribute to these individuals who didn't want to die with a memorial urging people to help prevent future suffering by keeping lobsters and all other animals off their plates." .......To Read More....

My Take - Sensitive crustaceans?  They left out tasty sensitive crustaceans! And how did the DOT respond? They denied their request because, "Route 1 in Brunswick is a “controlled-access highway,” which means they prohibit signs, and in this case a tombstone, because of safety concerns."

How about just telling PETA "no" because they're nuts?

Dear EWG, This is Why Real Scientists Think Poorly of You

By Alex Berezow — May 25, 2017

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) uses an authoritative sounding name to peddle scientific half-truths and outright fabrications. Along with Greenpeace and PETA, it is beloved by activists but detested by scientists.

Several years ago, George Mason University surveyed 937 members of the Society of Toxicology, an association of professional toxicologists. Nearly 4 out of 5 (79%) of those responding said that EWG -- as well as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) -- overstate the health risks of chemicals.

Despite this vote of no confidence in EWG by the scientific community, the organization manages to scare enough people to operate a $12.5-million budget. Telling people that unseen dangers lurk in their food and inside their homes is a lucrative business.........  Read More

PETA Continues Reign Of Terror, Saves Less Than 1% of Animals Taken In

By Andrew West March 8, 2017

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are at it again, asking us to do as they say, and definitely not as they do.   It’s no secret that the ultra liberal PETA has been insanely hypocritical for nearly their entire existence.  Now, public reports for their 2016 fiscal year show that an alarming trend by the “charitable” organization has yet to be rectified.

“The animal rights activist group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), euthanized 1,411 cats and dogs last year, while only 57 were adopted.

My Take - The author uses the words "ultra liberal" and "hypocritical" to describe this organization.  Is that repetition for emphasis? 

Dr. Joe pounds PETA: Chicken and small penises?

Posted on September 20, 2013 by admin

The always-brilliant Dr. Joe Schwarcz, the director of McGill’s Office for Science & Society and a chemist, has once again done what he does best: hunting down junk science (not much of a challenge) and excoriating it.

This time he takes aim at the animal rights zealots at PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), a radical animal rights group that is sometimes sardonically referred to as People Eating Tasty Animals.

PETA doesn’t want you to eat chicken (or anything else that was either an animal product, or even came from an animal, such as milk and eggs, for that matter), but the tactics used in their latest volley are simply laughable. As well as pitiful. They really have hit the junk science jackpot this time.

There is a family of chemicals called phthalates, which are used to soften plastics (the most important use being IV tubing). They are also used in a wide variety of other plastic products, so it is not surprising that all of us have minuscule amounts of these chemicals in our bodies……PETA takes junk science to a new level…… ToRead More…..