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Perhaps while still in the
womb I had resolved to labor in opposition to what I have
characterized as mankind's war on animals. That purpose will be
here served, I believe, by asking the right questions.
Question:
What do we mean when
we use the words "Animal liberation"?
A: The Random House
Unabridged Dictionary Of The English Language definition is: 1.
Liberate "is to set free from bondage, release". Liberation is
the noun form of the word.
Question: Can the goal of
liberation as defined, be achieved without repudiation of the
entrenched fact that domesticated animals are considered to be
human property?
A. The answer I believe, is
only if something can be and not be. Animals as human property
and "animal liberation" are irreconcilable concepts. The state
of bondage frequently if not inevitably entails oppression, and
exploitation. The Random House Unabridged Dictionary first
definition of oppression is " The exercise of authority or power
in a burdensome, cruel or unjust manner." It is just such an
exercise that has proven to be a corollary of ownership, whether
of human or non human animals.
Question:
How then can
liberation as defined be other then an aspiration in an animals
as human property context?
A. Liberation from human
tyranny for domesticated or wild animals, can't be other than an
aspiration under present savage conditions. Such an unacceptable
state of affairs demands, and initiates action in the pursuit
of justice. Thus amelioration of various deplorable conditions
is an ongoing , but slow process .
Question:
By what means if any, can we weed out the
brutal unjust, entrenched concept of animals as human property.
A. The means will entail:
1.The sufficient power animated by a variation of Locke's
principle of justice : i.e., every sentient creature has a
property in itself; this nobody has a right to in the human
context of inviolable property rights. 2. A de jure system of
justice upholding such 'rights'.
Question:
What is the
necessary and ample condition of achievement?
A. The necessary and ample
condition is essentially the same factor that has previously
eliminated other damnable conditions: moral power. Namely
the non violent moral power of popular support
resulting in the statutory repudiation of the accursed animal as
property classification.
Question:
By what means can
such support be engendered?
A. 1. Animal advocate
cognizance of the necessary and ample factor; non
violent moral power. 2. Incessant non
violent strategy, and tactics on a scale apropos of the
need.
3.
Question:
What sort of action
will constitute such strategy and tactics?
A. In general terms, the
dissemination of germane truths in various ways on a global
scale, calculated to reach billons of people. Truths including
examples of the human imposed violence, and death suffered by
billions of animals every year. And the negative implications of
such mayhem for its human origin. Change would be contingent
upon comprehension, and acceptance, which would require time.
The eventual acceptance on
a scale that would constitute adequate popular support would be
the means to a moral, and statutory change of unprecedented
dimensions. A change in which brutal exploitation of animals
would no longer be the norm. Then, and only then would the human
imposed violence, and cruelty suffered by animals undergo
gradual elimination. Then, and only then, the butchery of the
slaughterhouse, hunter, researcher, trapper, factory farm, puppy
mill, whaler or any other of the many vicious abominations
suffered by animals would eventually become serious felonies
subject to fitting punishment. And we would then have another
affirmation of what it means to be just, and civilized human
animals.
This precept entails a
process during which the horrid plight of most animals would be
constantly mitigated by a non violent evolutionary, as opposed
to revolutionary phenomenon.
Change of the
moral and legal status of the animal kingdom requires
that people act individually, and en masse on their own
initiative. Prudent action is power.
J.B. Suconik
Copyright© 2003
byJ.B.Suconik
April 12, 2003
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