Which Animals Have Rights? PETA's Foolishness Hints at the Answer

There have been some absurd expressions of outrage in the history of politics, but I don't think there's ever been one as ridiculous as PETA's most recent protestations about President Obama's "executive insect execution." During a taped interview, President Obama killed a fly that was buzzing around annoying him, prompting some innocuous chuckles and, of course, obsequious compliments from lefty bloggers and media figures (“It’s like he’s got one of those fly Terminator targeting systems in his eyes,” Jon Stewart opined.) PETA was not amused. Their spokesman noted, "We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals." The PETA blog added, "In a nutshell, our position is this: He isn't the Buddha, he's a human being, and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act."

This type of situation should make us pause and consider what rights actually are. When we talk about humans, the Declaration of Independence hints at what rights are and where they come from: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." The statement that all men are created equal obviously does not mean that all humans are equal in all respects. I believe that the meaning here is that all entities that can be considered human share certain requirements for rational interaction. We can't constructively engage with each other if each person is not guaranteed physical safety from other potential traders, so our lives are protected. It is right that human beings have that protection because otherwise we could not benefit from society. Similarly, we need liberty -- the ability to make up or own minds and not have someone dictate our actions -- in order to get something out of society. The right to the pursuit of happiness reinforces the notion of liberty. We must be able to choose our own rational ends to achieve our happiness.

Insofar as they are derived from our interactions with what we need for interactions with others, rights are inherently social, but they are not social constructs. Rights are inherent to our nature as human beings. If humans could only eat other humans, for example, it would be illogical for us to have a right to life when we interact with others. The most important interaction we could have with others would be taking lives, so it would not be right each person's life to be protected. This thought experiment brings us to the fly that suffered "executive execution." Under what terms can we rationally interact with a fly? The question is absurd on its face. We have no value to gain from the fly and the fly can only gain value from us by taking our food or water. Since there is no basis for constructive interaction, flies and humans don't have rights in relation to each other. Therefore, when President Obama killed the fly, there really isn't a rational way to consider the matter from an animal rights point of view under this conception of rights.

Of course, that analysis does not matter to PETA, which seems to hold a simplistic conception of rights. To PETA, rights simply exist because of some arbitrary dictum that all animals have rights. This might seem like a happy little scenario, but granting rights by thoughtless decree has ramifications for humans. If the most basic insects, sea cucumbers, and sponges have rights, why not cells and viruses? Why not computers, the simplest of which has far more intellectual heft than a sponge? I suspect PETA might argue that rights scale with an organism's ability to feel pain or pleasure, but that is also a fairly arbitrary standard and disastrous for humans at the end of the day. What if there were an animal that experienced intricate, deep pain because of any level of human happiness? Can one animal or species of animal restrain our happiness by some sort of moral blackmail? There is no reason for humans to sacrifice their rational happiness to protect some eternal animal victim.

What about pets and other forms of life higher than insects? It certainly does make sense to accord them rights because they can have mutually beneficial interactions with humans, as any dog owner can confirm. From that perspective, animal cruelty laws make sense in some situations. These animals could have some constructive engagement in society, but they are denied that by sadists. That denial of rights is rightly punishable just like any other trespass.

President Obama, don't lose any sleep over your "executive insect execution." You might lose some sleep over your handling of the economy and your moves away from respecting individual property rights, but there's nothing wrong with killing a fly, PETA's protestations notwithstanding.

This post can also be viewed at the New Madisonian, where I'll be posting exclusively starting in six days.