So I'm back after some heavy mulling, but only for this one final post: I want to say farewell, since I've decided to stop posting on AC. (I will leave the archives up for anyone interested in perusing them, at least for awhile.)
Over the last couple of weeks, I've decided that in the past two years I've said all I've wanted to say, many times over, and the time is right for me to step away.
By now, those of you who are regular readers of AC will, I hope, know how I would react to most AR news that will be coming down the pike: what I most likely would conclude, and more importantly, how I would have reasoned my way to that conclusion.
If a few of you value my approach and are motivated to write the odd letter to your newspaper or local TV station when the name PeTA, the PCRM, ALF, SHAC or HSUS hits the news, that's all to the good, as is pointing to the ties between above ground groups like PeTA and the PCRM on the one hand, and terrorist ALF and SHAC members (and former members) on the other.
For my part, I consider the single most important point to be the difference between Animal Rights and Animal Welfare, a difference which defines the central premise of Animal Rights: that the life of an animal and that of a human are of equal value, that to discriminate against an animal simply because it is not a human is to commit the sin of "speciesism," which is as immoral as racism; and that such equivalency carries with it, for the AR true believer, certain prohibitions as well as obligations.
If I had to boil things down to the single most important post I've written, it would be this summary, which is my best attempt at illustrating the AR premise of human/animal moral equivalency, and, chillingly, where its logic takes you. Please read it carefully, once again.
(Having made their case for animal/human moral equivalency, the AR people advocate that animals be spayed and neutered. In doing so, the logic of their position dictates that they either favor forced sterilization of humans, or they don't really believe in the moral equivalency of humans and non-humans. If the latter, they are admitting that they are unwilling to live by the central premise of their own ideology, the premise that distinguishes AR from AW. They cannot have it both ways.)
In any event, I wish you all well, and I greatly appreciate the strong support you've given me.
Brian