Dialectic
 To end the War On Animals!

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: 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 National,and 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 (not emphasised as a primary, or secondary reason for radical change.) 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 by J.B. Suconik 
April 12, 2003