I was wondering where the conversation went from the vegetarianism thread. How's this for a ground rule: make the vegetarianism thread about the
morality of animal welfare, and make this one about
animal rights. Ethics and political philosophy are two different things, though distinguishing the two can always be difficult.
Look, I get it, we don't think there's a right to vigilantism. I support that too. But do you think the optics would've been any better if it were "French police seize puppy from homeless man," and the police speculated the same way these activists do?
To turn the problem on its head more, what if there were a news event that says "police take away Down's Syndrome child accused to be abused by parent?" Most of us wouldn't stand for that. And the question of animal rights is then
whether the animal has a claim on us the way a child or a disabled child does.By the way,
What concerns? I, like most decent people, oppose animal cruelty and generally support the actions of groups that take care of animals.
the logical conjunction between those two statements is not obvious. There's an argument to be made that zoos, for example, abrogate some of the animals' freedoms. It only surfaces as an issue when news arrives of an orca going crazy and biting a trainer's head off.
