Brian Travis invaded by bureaucrats

[margomaps]

This logic is faulty; you're comparing apples and oranges. "Gun owners" isn't a set group of people who joined an organization with a mission statement, bylaws, &c.. The SPCA is.

If people here were vilifying "animal lovers" as evil/corrupt/dangerous/&c., you could compare them to "gun owners."

If people are vilifying the SPCA similarly, the comparison might be a specific organized group of gun owners (e.g., the NRA). And if that organization engaged in evil/corrupt/dangerous/&c. behavior, is it safe to say its members support? Yup.

Point taken that "gun owners" isn't quite the same as "SPCA's".

However, your comparison to the NRA isn't really apt either.  Each SPCA is its own independent organization that does not answer to some larger umbrella group (as far as I know).  The actions of a particular SPCA enforcer in Texas (per Stossel's video) have no bearing on the actions of another group of individuals that are a part of an SPCA elsewhere; and certainly an SPCA enforcer in, say, Montana does not bear responsibility for the actions of the enforcer in Texas.

Maybe a better comparison would be firefighters.  There are "fraternities" of firefighters probably in every major town in the country.  They are perhaps linked ideologically on some level, but each local fraternity is not beholden to the others (as far as I know).  Just because we can point to numerous examples of firefighters who have committed arson and then played hero, it does not mean that all firefighters should be condemned -- or even suspected.

This whole idea of collective condemnation based on the actions of individuals is absurd and anathema to individualist thinking.  I'm honestly surprised that I have to run around in circles trying to convince libertarians and anarchists of this.   

[J’raxis 270145]

And why is it that animals do not have rights?

The question is, whence do rights derive? Answer that and you can figure out if animals have rights or not.

No, this is not the question.  If it were, the issue would be a moral one, that animals would clearly have rights, and that we should not transgress against them unduly.  IMO, that might make it OK to do animal slaughter, sacrifice, eating, testing, labor, etc.  In someone else's opinion, that might not make it OK to use the animal for anything at all.

But again, not the point.

The point is, our government is not established to protect the animals or their rights.  It is founded in consent of the people, instituted for their general good, and the only natural rights which shall be surrendered are those surrendered equivalently by all men in order to ensure the protection of other men.  An animal is not a member of our community under Part 1 Article 12, nor does he pay taxes reciprocally for such protections.

Well, there seem to be many different nuanced arguments at play here.

If one believes that the State exists, or ought to exist, to protect the rights of its subjects, then the question is certainly pertinent. If animals have rights, they deserve the same protections that human beings currently get from the State. If not, then not.

If one doesn't believe in the State, but still believes in a principle that says beings deserving of rights deserve protection of those rights, then the question is still pertinent. In a NAP-based society, whether or not animals have rights determines whether or not one can engage in an act of force against someone hurting an animal. If one doesn't believe animals have rights, then committing force against an animal-abuser is an act of aggression. My own position is that animals (more accurately, beings without consciousness, ability to reason, and so on) do not have rights. Force cannot be used to stop people from abusing them. However, to many, animal abuse is repugnant on an emotional level* and could be met with ostracism or similar.

If one accepts the existence of State, but is going to go more by the letter than the spirit of its claimed purposes, then your argument is correct. Animals may or may not have rights, but since they don't pay taxes under Art. 12, they're not deserving of protection. The implications of this are rather dangerous, though: Exclude someone from the community, exempt them from taxes, and now they fall outside the protection of the law? I don't know if this has ever been done in New Hampshire, but declaring someone homo sacer—outside the law—has been used against individuals and entire groups throughout history in order to deprive them of protection of their rights. Your "not members of the community" argument is perilouslty close to this.


* And I think this is the key to a lot of these arguments: When it comes to animal rights debates, rarely do I see people getting bent out of shape over swatting flies, electrocuting mosquitos, gassing cockroaches, or committing wholesale slaughter of bacteria every time they wipe down their countertop or toiletbowl. How about if we just be honest and say we react emotionally to the idea of hurting animals that have anthropoid features, characteristics, and behaviors, eh?

[J’raxis 270145]

This logic is faulty; you're comparing apples and oranges. "Gun owners" isn't a set group of people who joined an organization with a mission statement, bylaws, &c.. The SPCA is.

If people here were vilifying "animal lovers" as evil/corrupt/dangerous/&c., you could compare them to "gun owners."

If people are vilifying the SPCA similarly, the comparison might be a specific organized group of gun owners (e.g., the NRA). And if that organization engaged in evil/corrupt/dangerous/&c. behavior, is it safe to say its members support? Yup.

Point taken that "gun owners" isn't quite the same as "SPCA's".

However, your comparison to the NRA isn't really apt either.  Each SPCA is its own independent organization that does not answer to some larger umbrella group (as far as I know).  The actions of a particular SPCA enforcer in Texas (per Stossel's video) have no bearing on the actions of another group of individuals that are a part of an SPCA elsewhere; and certainly an SPCA enforcer in, say, Montana does not bear responsibility for the actions of the enforcer in Texas.

Indeed, the actions of one SPCA shouldn't reflect on others, if they're truly independent groups all using the same name. I didn't really address that situation in my post. But the actions of one SPCA, or its leaders, should certainly reflect on the members of that particular SPCA.

This whole idea of collective condemnation based on the actions of individuals is absurd and anathema to individualist thinking.  I'm honestly surprised that I have to run around in circles trying to convince libertarians and anarchists of this.   

Because collective condemnation is most certainly justified for an organization that commits evil acts, or has members who commit evil acts under its name, even in a libertarian society. Imposed or imagined collectivism followed by judgement is what's unacceptable. "You're a 'gun owner,' some gun owners committed crimes with their guns, therefore you are evil." Similar judgement of members of some form of voluntary collectivism is not. "You joined the NSDAP, the NSDAP promotes genocide, therefore you're evil."

[bile]

Gardner interviewing Brian. Don't know that there is anything particularly new here as I've yet to get through it.

[margomaps]

Imposed or imagined collectivism followed by judgement is what's unacceptable.

Ok, so we are on the same page then.   

[cyne]

I could program a very simple mechanical device to engage in the stimulus–response mechanism you're describing. As for trainability ("understanding consequences," as you put it), that's pretty simple to program, too. Would such devices now be "self-aware" and deserving of rights?

A dog is not self-aware, and it's only sentient by the extremely broad definition of possessing sensory awareness (it can see, smell, &c.), not the more important definition of possessing consciousness.

How can I be sure that YOU are conscious and self-aware?   For all I know, you're just a machine programmed to behave as if you're sentient.   I do believe that you are sentient, and that animals are sentient.   

But I don't think sentience is the basis for having rights - read the Vicki Hearne essay I posted a link to earlier.  I think she explains it well.   

[dalebert]

I think the basic idea is the ability to respect the rights of others. There's the notion of reciprocity. It's in our rational self-interest to respect the rights of other beings who can then return the favor and allow for a peaceful and mutually beneficial cooperation. If we go down the path of saying animals have rights, we have to start treating a wolf who hunts and eats a rabbit as a murderer. It's not a logically consistent viewpoint.

[J’raxis 270145]

How can I be sure that YOU are conscious and self-aware?   For all I know, you're just a machine programmed to behave as if you're sentient.

Exactly! You don't know I am. I may very well be a machine. All you know is that you yourself are self-aware. (Maybe—but I'm not going to get that deep into this kind of stuff in this thread.)

Now, I can reasonably infer that other human beings are as self-aware as I myself am, based on the fact that they have the same physical construction as myself, they appear to be able to think and reason the same as I can, they communicate in the same way, and so on. The vast majority of animals, on the other hand, share none of these characteristics with me. It should be obvious to everyone that animals have a much reduced ability to think, to reason, to communicate with us, or none at all in the cases of most animals. If it's not obvious, experiments have been done to bear this out, testing animals' ability to use tools, to organize, to plan, to memorize, to count and calculate, to recognize themselves in mirrors (as opposed to thinking they're seeing another animal), &c.. Some animals have rudimentary forms of these abilities, but the vast majority have none at all.

I do believe that you are sentient, and that animals are sentient.   

Based on?

But I don't think sentience is the basis for having rights - read the Vicki Hearne essay I posted a link to earlier.  I think she explains it well.

I only skimmed it, so maybe I missed something, but Hearne's entire argument about rights—both human and animal—seems to be based on a rather disturbing form of collectivism:—

Possession of a being by another has come into more and more disrepute, so that the common
understanding of one person possessing another is slavery. But the important detail about the kind of
possessive pronoun that I have in mind is reciprocity: If I have a friend, she has a friend. If I have a
daughter, she has a mother. The possessive does not bind one of us while freeing the other; it cannot do
that. Moreover, should the mother reject the daughter, the word that applies is "disown." The form of
disowning that most often appears in the news is domestic violence. Parents abuse children; husbands
batter wives.

Some cases of reciprocal possessives have built-in limitations, such as "my patient / my doctor" or "my
student / my teacher" or "my agent / my client." Other possessive relations are extremely limited but still
remarkably binding: "my neighbor" and "my country" and "my president."

The responsibilities and the ties signaled by reciprocal possession typically are hard to dissolve. It can be
as difficult to give up an enemy as to give up a friend, and often the one becomes the other, as though
the logic of the possessive pronoun outlasts the forms it chanced to take at a given moment, as though
we were stuck with one another. In these bindings, nearly inextricable, are found the origin of our rights.
They imply a possessiveness but also recognize an acknowledgment by each side of the other's existence.

Right. So a human alone has no rights? Only if he's "possessed" (reciprocally, of course) by others does he have rights? She then goes on to extol the virtues of democratic government and voting, ending with:—

I obey the government, and, in theory, it obeys me, by counting my
ballot, reading the Miranda warning to me, agreeing to be bound by the Constitution. My friend obeys
me as I obey her; the government "obeys" me to some extent, and, to a different extent, I obey it.

Yikes. Sorry, this person doesn't understand the first thing about "rights."

[erisian]

I have enough experience to recognize that your statement -- while undoubtedly true for some individuals -- is an absurdly broad and mean-spirited generalization.  Furthermore, even if your generalization is true for Steve Sprowls, your conspiracy scenario requires the active cooperation of the vet...and that's the part I'm not going to buy into without corroborating evidence.

You're right. I do have a bad and cynical attitude. That probably is the result of having lived in Bartlett for many years back when it was the dominion of one Robert Snow, now a convicted felon for extortion and embezzlement, or possibly my conversations with friends of the late Liko Kenney. Or maybe it was the Carl Drega incident...

It didn't really require the vet's "active participation", don't you see? A little social engineering by the cop or more likely Sprowl, would get the vet to take a good look around when he went out there. Then if there were horses in a paddock with no shelter in it, he would have witnessed a violation of the law. With Sprowl's words in his head, he would have assumed that the horses never had any shelter, and he would then have had no choice but to report the violation. And yes, that kind of intrigue is the way this type of thing frequently works in small towns.

[Lloyd Danforth]

Damn!  I love that avatar!

[John Edward Mercier]

I think the basic idea is the ability to respect the rights of others. There's the notion of reciprocity. It's in our rational self-interest to respect the rights of other beings who can then return the favor and allow for a peaceful and mutually beneficial cooperation. If we go down the path of saying animals have rights, we have to start treating a wolf who hunts and eats a rabbit as a murderer. It's not a logically consistent viewpoint.

Why a human is only a murderer, if they kill another human... and his not considered a murderer should it be in defense of themselves. And even that is a measure of western society.

[coffeeseven]

Gardner interviewing Brian. Don't know that there is anything particularly new here as I've yet to get through it.

There is.

[dalebert]

Why a human is only a murderer, if they kill another human... and his not considered a murderer should it be in defense of themselves. And even that is a measure of western society.

Something in the grammar of this is making it hard to decipher exactly what your point is.

[John Edward Mercier]

Why a human is only a murderer, if they kill another human... and his not considered a murderer should it be in defense of themselves. And even that is a measure of western society.

Something in the grammar of this is making it hard to decipher exactly what your point is.

Sorry. Typing quickly at night.
Why? A human is only considered a murderer, if they kill another human... not another species. And is not condsidered a murder if defending themselves. And even this is only a western society more... it would not include cannibalistic cultures where a human could be killed for the purpose of sustenance.

Wolves are endowed by their creator (be it nature or otherwise) with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[Velma]

Gardner interviewing Brian. Don't know that there is anything particularly new here as I've yet to get through it.

I think everyone should take the time to listen to it.  It cleared up a many questions I had.