Big Brass Ones

DETH to PETA

First of all, we at Dogs for the Ethical Treatment of Humans (DETH) would like to express our sincere gratitude to Brother Brightstar for turning his diary entry over to us today.

Having said that, however, honesty compels us to take strong issue with Brother Brightstar’s contention that PETA members should be thrown into pits of rabid badgers in order that the badgers be fed. We feel that this would pretty clearly be unethical. It is our position that the average PETA member yields so little meat and so much aggravation that, on balance, the rabid badgers would be better off eating each other. Though that decision is, of course, ultimately up to the badgers, as sentient and ethical beings.

And we at DETH actually share PETA’s belief that other animals have the same rights as human beings. We also believe the obvious (to everyone except PETA, apparently) corollary: Human beings have the same rights as other animals. In fact, it is DETH’s contention that all species, ultimately, have but one right: to look out for them and theirs as best they can. Thus, a mountain lioness who kills a human child and drags it back to feed her hungry cubs is well within her rights and is doing no more than what is right and natural: trying to preserve herself, her posterity, and her blood line. And we would say exactly the same of the human father who preemptively shoots the lioness to prevent her from preying on his child.

And, just as we believe that it is impossible for any individual to act on motives other than his own, so we believe it is impossible for members of one species truly to act on behalf of another. Thus, the difference between PETA and, say, the NRA is not that one acts on behalf of animals, and the other acts on behalf of gun nuts. Both organizations are made up entirely of human beings and act entirely on human motives. It is not a question of whether or not human beings will, to the extent they can, shape the world to suit themselves--they will; it is rather a question of what kind of world they find suits them.

We at DETH would like to think that that world will be one that includes both domestic dogs and cheese burgers. But then, we’re just dogs--what the he!! do we know?