(NRO) – Much contemporary advocacy is obsessed with deconstructing human exceptionalism.
Animal rights — which is distinct from animal welfare — is an ideology that claims people and animals are equal because both feel pain. The nature-rights movement goes to an even greater extreme, advocating that quasi-personhood and enforceable rights be granted even to nonliving entities such as rivers.
Some even embrace the irrational idea that the earth is a living being and should be so treated to prevent the planet’s supposed looming destruction at our hands. CONTINUE