Yes, they’re at it again. According to the New York Law Journal:
“A group seeking release of chimpanzees in captivity in New York through habeas corpus petitions has renewed its request to free a chimp held at a farm in Fulton County, near Albany.
“This time, the Nonhuman Rights Project said the materials supporting the petition it filed in Manhattan Supreme Court for the release of “Tommy” contain new statements from experts, including an affidavit from anthropologist Jane Goodall, supporting its arguments that chimpanzees possess enough human qualities to make their extended confinement cruel and unusual punishment.
“The group’s previous attempts to have Tommy released failed when an Appellate Division, Third Department, panel ruled that since chimps cannot bear the legal responsibilities and duties of humans, they are not entitled to habeas corpus or other legal protections accorded to people. The state Court of Appeals declined to hear the case [emphasis added].”
Socrates gave up his life for the ideal of pure wisdom. Galileo was threatened with torture for his commitment to scientific truth. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his campaign to end apartheid.
And now, attorney Steven Wise is seeking to be the next torchbearer for virtue and justice by seeking legal personhood for two chimpanzees currently deprived of their primatial integrity by incarceration in the anatomy department of New York’s Stony Brook University. Mr. Wise has even found a judge willing to hear his case.
This is a natural outgrowth of our collective obsession with rights and entitlement which has, proportionally, shrouded our notion of personal responsibility. A healthy culture recognizes that it has a moral obligation to show compassion to all living creatures. But as the very concept of morality flickers and fades from social consciousness, only the assertion of rights prevents the rapid disintegration of society.
And as we lose our sense of responsibility, the distinction between man and animals grows harder to define until, ultimately, it all but disappears. In California, the “rights” of a little fish trump the welfare of humans: crops wither in arid fields during the worst drought on record as the state dumps trillions of gallons of fresh water into the ocean.
It’s worth noting that in 1933, two years before the Nuremberg Laws stripped German Jews of both civil and human rights, the Nazi government passed some of history’s most progressive laws for the protection of animals, legislation considered emblematic of the highest moral values of a people.
Elevating animals to the level of human beings inevitably results in human beings acting worse than animals.
Hat tip: Syd Chase
Yonason Goldson 