Pahtoo at aol.com wrote:
> Ianimal rights."
>
> Do you believe it is OK then to inflict pain and death on animals for
> cosmetic, human purposes, or to raise them in horrid conditions for food?
There is simply no connection between the bizarre concept of "animal rights" and the rather important question inflicting pain on animals. "Rights"
are meaningless except in terms of political struggle, and animals are hardly going to engage in political struggle. That does *not* mean, however, that the question of animal pain is not socially/politically important for humans.
Now the human species does need for survival small amounts of trace elements in animal protein. (Complete vegetarianism may be adopted safely, since a person has achieved a lifetime supply of this element by birth -- unless the mother is a vegetarian.) So some domestication of animals (at least for dairy products) goes without saying. But more: water and other ecologoical concerns make it essential that before too many more generations vast areas of the world (e.g., the great plains) not be kept under cultivation. That means that a rather large part of the protein potentially available for humans (unless we want the desertification of half the planet through grain cultimation) will exist in the form of grasses that cannot be directly ingested by humans, but must be processed through animals.
A healthy working class movement would incorporate demands for the humane treatment of animals, if for no other reason than that habits of brutality are incompatible with solidarity -- but one can only have contempt for those who would impose a vegetarian diet on the human species. The important political question for the left is how the divisive and contemptible activities of extreme "animal rightists" can be kept from disrupting the movement. The racist attacks on the Makah in the name of animal rights is an instance of such contemptible politics.
Carrol