Animal Rights

Okay, so I really hated both essays on animal rights, but I think my hatred for them will make this blog post more interesting than the one I would write about student rights. I feel like all of the people who write about student rights will say the same thing, but we have to admit that we're biased (duh... we're students). So I chose animal rights.

Hearne's piece, in my opinion, was pretty bad. She couldn't objectively discuss animal rights and let her feelings about how much she loved her dog, Drummer, get in the way of her arguments. This made me less sure about her credibility as an authority on the subject. I thought, while I was doing my CRJ about this essay, that maybe she just promoted her views on animal rights so that no organization would tell her how to treat her pets. She claims that she just disagrees with the rights that organizations like the Humane Society and ASPCA try to protect, but maybe all she wants is to be able to be free from what they tell her to do. Who knows, maybe she was snubbed by one such organization in the past or something. I definitely don't know. But I do think that she could be a little bit more objective, rather than subjective, in claiming that rights should protect the pursuit of happiness, not just avoid suffering. I also disagreed with her beliefs about animals in general. I mean, nobody really thinks that animals think the way humans do. And I think that trying to prevent their suffering is a great way to ensure their rights. Pain tends to overrule other feelings - if I were in the middle of running a marathon and got a foot cramp, I would stop because of the foot cramp, even though I would know that finishing the race would feel great and give me a sense of achievement - what Hearne considers "happiness."

I think that Singer also takes his position on animal rights a little bit too far. Comparing a cow to a human infant, for example, seems ridiculous to me. Maybe it's just because of the society I've been raised in, but I still can't wrap my head around how these authors seem to think animals are the same as humans. Just because a mature dog can reason better than an infant does not make it human. And I love animals as much as anyone I've ever met, but it just makes no sense to me how Hearne and Singer can consider them so similar to humans. Treating animals differently than humans is not the same thing as racism, because animals don't see the injustice in the same way that we would. Though, of course, I agree with his indignation at the conditions in which animals on "factory farms" are kept, I still don't think that we should all become vegetarians. I will admit, though, that Singer's argument seems much more valid than Hearne's. He uses specific experimental data, laws, and hard facts to support his ideas. The language he uses manages to be cool and logical while still showing the reader how he feels, much unlike Hearne, who simply poured out her heart through her pen when writing her essay. Even the form that Singer uses - broken up into sections, setting examples apart from the other text - makes him seem like a more reliable source of information than Hearne. And I agree more with the idea that animal rights should protect the animals from suffering than I do with the idea that rights should allow animals to be happy. Because I think that animal owners everywhere know how to make their animals happy. It's the ones that are suffering that we need to fight for.