printWhen liberals fought tooth and nail to dehydrate and starve Terry Schiavo for her imperfections, I wrote that “What distinguishes civilized beings from animals, primitive societies, and liberals is that they don’t see nature as an exemplar of all that is fine and good.”
Watch this hateful little video doing the rounds on the Internet. Its narrator—Ernest Cline—has a tinny robotic voice, which you just know is attached to a smug mug with trendy eyewear. He goes through a litany of human achievements and their alleged, attendant evils, and concludes contemptuously: “We’re all just monkeys.”
Note how irrational the liberal philosophy is: This primate (Ernest Cline) can’t tell you logically why he thinks the specimens that designed the microchip and painted the Mona Lisa are no better than monkeys—creatures that have never created anything, live in trees, throw coconuts, and hoot to communicate. There is no rational basis upon which to equate man and monkey. Since the position is irrational, it is also manifestly false. Feelings—not reason—inform this hackneyed and deeply silly narrative (disguised as sophisticated, like all liberal dogma).
Ergo, the reason Cline feels (for he can’t be thinking) that man is merely a glorified ape is because he hates people and civilization and idolizes animals and primitive life.
Refresher readings on human rights and animals are here:
a href=”http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35022″ target=”_blank”>No Rights for Animals
You may wish to inform Mr. Cline of my book, Putting Humans First, Why We Are Nature’s Favorite (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), in which the full case is made against the reductionist view that we are all just the same kind of thing!
Imagine my surprise at this. Mr. Cline appears to be an acolyte one of leftism’s greatest “Ethics” Imams, the Ayatollah Prof. Peter Singer of Princeton.
Of course, the distinguished Imam Singer has already issued a fatwa promoting the moral desirability of, ahem, “animal husbandry” (so to speak). Naturally, it’s already well under way in that most hip and up-to-date bastion of Anarcho-Tyranny, the EUSSR, as can be seen here.
That will put them in good stead with another Imam’s distiguished pronouncements upon the same subject, which I quote here for our readers:
“A man can have sex with animals such as sheep, cows, camels and so on. However he should kill the animal after he has his orgasm. He should not sell the meat to the people in his own village, however selling the meat to the next door village should be fine.”
“If one commits the act of sodomy with a cow, a ewe, or a camel,” Khomeini added, “their urine and their excrement become impure, and even their milk may no longer be consumed. The animal must then be killed and as quickly as possible and burned.”- Ayatollah Khomeini [unless citation is provided, readers ought to view this particular alleged quote with skepticism.–ILANA]
I don’t know how many of our readers visit Lawrence Auster’s site regularly, but there’s a wonderfully concise description there of modern liberalism (which is something altogether different from the classical liberalism advocted by our host Ilana, mind you) by a reader named Shrewsbury. To wit:
“Liberalism is a species of nihilism, the denial of meaning in anything outside the self. This explains why the liberal becomes so furious at any religious or patriotic claims upon him, or even any data or event (or rather, at being presented with any data or event) which makes it difficult for him to maintain his (anti-) philosophy. The cases you give are interesting examples of how the liberal simply sectors off vast areas of reality in order to maintain his cozy psychological stability, to make of his mind a kind of intellectual greenhouse.
Worse yet, from the same necessities of nihilism, the liberal instinctively sides with all destructive forces, whether they be atheism, sexual license, or revolutionary movements. But not mere dictators, who tend to retain at least the trappings of patriotism and traditional authority. The political force must have that destructive zing or it don’t mean a thing. The liberal is however instinctively attracted even to totalitarian regimes, whether Communist or Mahometan, which would mean the death of liberalism. So long as the political force promises the destruction of elements in his own society which he finds constricting precisely because they have profound meanings, he will find himself almost subconsciously but powerfully drawn to it. He can never do otherwise than almost tropistically side with the enemies of the West.”
– Shrewsbury, at VFR, 9/14/06
My sincere apologies, Ilana, for bringing such disgusting stuff to your gracious site. Forgive me. My only defense is that It is nevertheless sometimes beneficial to see the truth about our enemies, horrific though it may be.
I have some neighbors who throw coconuts and hoot to communicate. They don’t climb trees because they’re too lazy.
Seriously, this animal-hugging mania is just another example of people being raised and educated in a system which prides itself on how far out of the realm of normalcy it can get and leaves all at the mercy of over-educated kooks. Just because someone is a Phd doesn’t mean he/she can’t be a spaced out weirdo. After all, Phds get their degrees from other Phds. People have no life and believe just about anything said by the slick tounged professors at the leftist haven university of their choice. Having been raised with a lack of common sense and logic, they believe anything.
The position of the animal rights/nature worshippers is contradictory. They claim humans are nothing more than animals and are just a part of nature. I asked a friend who held this view why she objected so much to the ongoing “urban sprawl” in our city. I said, “if humans are just animals, and just as beavers builds dams, humans build highways to travel on and buildings and houses to live in and work in, then what is the difference? If humans are just a part of nature, what we do is just as natural as what a beaver does.” She went off on a tirade that ended with her position that humans indeed know that they are damaging the environment and natural habitats, which the beaver does not when he plugs up a river and kills a bunch of fish in the process of building his dam. Humans are culpable, beavers are not was her position. I then said, “then humans can reason and understand the implications of their actions, which animals cannot do. So, humans are not the same as animals, and are actually superior, correct?” This led to another emotional tirade filled with non sequiturs…
[Excellent example of reason vs. emotion, and hence truth vs. tall-tales]
I do realize the differences between my three cats and me, and I do not believe they are my equals. Were I in a situation where I had to choose between my survival and theirs, I’d choose myself in a heartbeat, though with regret that I could not save them as well. Still, when all is said and done, I LIKE my cats better than I do many humans.
I often catch myself saying that “I love animals,” but the truth is, I only love nice animals. Why should I strive to preserve an animal that, if given the chance, would rip me to shreds? Or devour me whole? Or eat a child?
Now, this Steve Irwin thing–he seemed like a nice enough fella but why the hoop-de-doo with crocodiles? They are a big problem in Africa, bringing excruciating death to innocent bathers and fisherman. These monsters are not cute, lovable, or “neato.” They are evil, pure and simple, and should be eradicated off the planet earth.
Crocodiles should only occupy two places: on my feet or hanging in my closet YEAH I said that.
As an aside to Mr. Huggins, there is a little proverb I’ve read that contains you point:
There are some things that are so objectively stupid that only one with a PhD could possibly believe them to be true.
Thanks, Ilana, for making me research the Khomeini quotes further. I ran across them over at “Jihad Watch.”
Here’s the attribution:
Both quotes are from either Vol. 4 or the 4th ed. of Khomeini’s opus, “Tahrirolvasyleh”, also transcribed as “Tarir-ol-Masael”, pub. Darol Elm, Qom, Iran, 1990.
I agree with the distinction between “nice” and “not-nice” animals… I guess what is really meant here is the difference between tame (domesticated) animals and wild animals, especially wild animals who would view humans as food. I certainly would not attempt to cuddle with a non-domesticated cat!
I would add alligators to the list of animals who should either be on my feet or in the closet.
To Pam Maltzman:
You are no doubt aware you are no equal to your cats. As Mark Twain pointed out, cats have not forgotten that they were worshipped as Gods in ancient Egypt. I have an all black one here who is the spitting image of the Egyptian Cat-God. He is well aware of this. We’ve little choice but to treat him accordingly. 🙂
To Carolus: Yes, I am aware that cats were worshipped in ancient Egypt, and that they, as a species, have not forgotten this.
My significant other commented once, after he first moved in with me, that I seemed to treat the (then two) cats more as roommates than as pets.
I am also aware that cats seem to be able to read the price tags on cans of food. 😉
If you think about their regular behavior, liberals (understood as “lefties”) *are* frequently indistinguishable from monkeys.
As for intimacy with “fauna,” perhaps we should be careful with anthropological realities.
It is frequently forgotten that “Muslims” are neither a race, nor a nation, nor an ethnicity. Nor do they all reside in the same street. I hope Americans do not assume that a Bosnian, a Kurd, a Yemeni, a Pakistani, an Indonesian, a Hui [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_China], or a Somali are all one and the same people with the same set of beliefs, traditions, practices, etc. It’s a vast geography on which countless beliefs, relics from ancient times, are mixed in multiple ways with Islam.
Being a Muslim (or the practitioner of any belief system, for that matter) does not involve loading a computer program in the brain which then renders everybody associated with that set of beliefs a robot, blindly following any and every inanity uttered by anybody who pretends to be anybody in its community.
I know nobody in my surrounding who’ll consider the abominable vulgarity quoted as anything remotely Islamic.
These days, if anybody known to be nominally Muslim so much as relieves himself in a street corner at night after a drunken evening in the pub, we end up with “news” in the blogosphere that “Muslims are urinating on streets.”
Granted, the Muslim geography has countless ills which it fails to account for. Nevertheless, it is distressing to see people who consider Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” as blatantly “anti-Semitic” to then go on and use the same logic with Muslims: that if anyone from that group so much as acts in a despicable way at one time in one context, then the whole group can be considered replicas of that worst example.
A Turkish saying: Friends will look at your pretty face, foes will notice your dirty feet.
Another one: Friends speak bitter.
Perhaps it’s time that a balance is struck between the two extremes.
To say that man is just a monkey is to deny the differences in quality.
To say that man is not a monkey is to deny our genetic heritage.
Our politics is monkey politics (mostly). The alpha male struggle is an exemplar.
Our science and technology is all man.
Tribalism is strongly encoded in Islam. Tribalism accords no validity to the rights of man. Which is why Islam and the west are at war.
Tribalism is, in its political nature, pretty much in accord with the devine rights of kings. Surley the culture of “the devine rights of kings” is not one libertarians can support.
How about revealed law vs natural law?
We ought not hate the ills of our own society so much that we cannot recognize that there is worse, much worse, out there.
BTW such hatred is a common failing of utopians.
[Tribalism and Islam are complementary systems rather than mutually exclusive causal agents, which is why I removed your first pronouncement–it conradicted the rest of your post]
Only an intellectual could believe something so stupid. [It’s the exact opposite; believers are anti-intellectual; anti-reason.]
Ilana,
Sex with animals? The Komhenni prescription is standard Islamic jurisprudence:
Man Marries Goat.
Making him marry the goat is an example of Islamics legislating from the bench. LOL.
Ilana,
I prefer to leave my stupidities on view. It keeps me humble. As if. Still I find them Amusing.
I can’t remember if I left you a link to my article on Tribalism so there it is. I discuss the Judeo Christian origins of civilization (I left out the Greeks) and I cover why tribalism, which is embedded in Islam, is against civilization.
If we focus on the tribalist (uncivilized) aspect we can leave religion out of it.
Cline’s view is merely a clumsy expression of the materialist position, in which all behavior and characteristics are simply biological adaptations. In this view, characteristics that have been considered as uniquely human (reason, language, etc.) are adaptations, useful for survival, and so limited can make no claim to epistemological superiority over other species (or over atoms or energy, for that matter). Therefore human knowledge itself is an adaptation and bears no relation to any such thing as “objective truth,” or any truth aside from function. Knowledge is therefore reduced to the biological, and the criteria of the biological.
More sophisticated thinkers than Cline have presented variations on this position (a current apostle is MIT philosopher Daniel Dennett). Kolakowski identified this position as either typical of or inevitable for positivists.
Naturalism is one of the primary competitors for our allegiance in the intellectual wars of modernitiy. It is pervasive, and its assumptions and implications are mimicked both in the media and in government bureaucracies.
Why would someone who “idolizes nature and primitive life” use the Apollo moon landings as an example of the potential of mankind?