Animals, However Wonderful They May Be, Are Not People

04 Aug, 2003 by John Hawkins

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Ya know, I love animals — and not just with a side of mashed potatoes. Take my dog, Patton. He’s just the greatest dog and I don’t think twice about spending money left and right on him, taking him on long walks, playing with him when I don’t feel like it sometimes, etc. Heck, I almost think of him like a kid.

Even when I was little, I felt that way about dogs. One time when I was about 6, my dog took a nip at some kid’s little sister. Well, big sister, who was about 12 or 13 and twice my size easily, started walking over with a stick to lay into my dog. Uh-uh, I wasn’t having it. I got between her and the dog because if anyone was going to take a beating, it was going to be me and not my dog (luckily, she decided it wasn’t worth it to pound me to get to my dog, so she left).

All that being said, Patton is a dog, not a human being. So if for some reason I had some psycho with a knife who said, “I either kill the dog or this woman — you choose!” Well obviously, I’d just shoot him — OK, so that’s not a good example. All right, let’s say Al Gore & Patton were both drowning in the ocean and I could only save one of them? Well, I would make sure I dried Patton off really fast so he didn’t get a cold — yes, I would, and then I’d tell him he’s a, “really good dog!” Sigh..that one didn’t work out either, but I think you get the general idea. A human being is not the equivalent of a dog. A dog’s life, a cat’s life, a cow’s life, an ant’s life is not as valuable as that of a human being.

I feel compelled to point that out after reading about PETA making a cruel comparison between turkeys & Jews at Auschwitz and some nut who runs a mall and refuses to let stores sell animal products or even kill ants. Unfortunately, these people are not alone in their bizarre beliefs.

Way back in the day when I doing print stories for tiny local Charlotte area publications, I interviewed a couple of animal rights whackos. They had chained themselves to fur racks in Belks, put glue in the locks of McDonald’s, & went to the rodeo and chanted “Cowboys are Cowards” outside. You want to know what they believed? Animals should have the same rights as people, you shouldn’t be able to use products made of animals, scientific testing of animals should be banned, you shouldn’t be able to own pets, etc, etc. Now of course, they were huge hypocrites (one of them had 8 dogs and even had a leather couch which she said she got before she got into animal rights), but setting that aside, these people don’t get it and probably never will.

Animals, wonderful though they may be, are inferior to human beings. That doesn’t mean we should be cruel to them, mistreat them, or willfully wipe them out on a whim, but they’re not as important as human beings and if we can benefit from their deaths or carcasses, so be it. Maybe that’s a little too blunt for some people, but it’s the real world and it’s how it should be. Just remember, if we weren’t on top of the food chain, the gators, wolves, & lions of the world wouldn’t hesitate to eat us alive. That’s what nature is like and we’re just another part of it, red in tooth and claw.