Dismissing people whose ideas are on society's fringes comes naturally for most of us. Whether it's immigration, foreign policy, education or the environment.
Take the animal "rights" movement, for instance. Not to be confused with the animal "welfare" movement, a mainstream pursuit concerned with managing the puppy and kitten populations. Animal-rights activism is more about protest, pressure and raising hell than actual animal care. It's about taking civil rights that we enjoy and giving them to chickens.
Because animal-rights protesters are generally loud, obnoxious, uncompromising or naked (sometimes all four at once), we tend to toss "animal rights" on the mental junk heap next to UFO sightings and 9/11 conspiracies. But since Arizona seems to be the animal-rights Ground Zero this year, it's worth considering what the movement stands for.
Animal "rights" sees the institution of pet ownership, including seeing-eye dogs and police K-9 units, as a form of slavery. Extending rights to rhinos would mean zoos simply couldn't keep them anymore. Likewise for circus elephants, marine-park dolphins and every living thing sold at pet stores.
Embracing the animal-rights philosophy requires shifting vegetarianism from a choice to an obligation. In the long term, words like beef, pork, veal, cheese, omelet and even "wishbone" would exist only in a Scrabble dictionary. Activists may start out agitating merely for larger cages, but their real goal is the end of all animal agriculture. Including those small "family" farms.
Animal-rights activists want to scrap our system of medical research, too. The need for testing new medicines and surgical techniques on animals remains obvious to most Americans. We would generally be glad to sacrifice lab rats (and, yes, even the occasional ape) to save our mothers, brothers, children or neighbors. But animal-rights dogma holds that it's simply unnecessary.
Honest activists will admit to all of this. It may sound crazy to ordinary ears, but that's OK. This "rights" movement, unlike the human-oriented struggles that came first, isn't hoping for thoughtful debate to validate its cause. Its leaders are depending on your complacency.
Average Arizonans are in favor of animal welfare but can't stomach "rights" for rats. So groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) provide something obnoxious to distract us. PETA's basic purpose these days is to make other animal-rights groups appear moderate by comparison.
This includes the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which erects calm roadblocks to medical research. And the Humane Society of the United States, which doesn't operate any pet shelters but has managed to pour $800,000 into an Arizona ballot campaign this year alone. (Passage of Proposition 204 would restrict use of gestation crates.)
All animal-rights groups, both the unbearable and the mild-mannered, want the same thing. More rights for animals. Fewer for you. They're counting on you to dislike PETA but feel morally obligated to agree with someone - anyone - in the animal-protection movement.
None of this, of course, suggests that kindness to animals - actual flesh-and-blood creatures - is a bad thing. And, yes, recognize that extending human "rights" to animals is a truly crazy notion.
Don't be lulled into assuming that a vocal and wealthy minority won't try to turn the nutty into the normal.
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