Is There a Vegan In the White House? PETA, Rejoice!
Soon-to-be-President Barack Obama has appointed animal advocate Cass Sunstein to head the relatively obscure, yet powerful Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
The regulatory czar, as the position is generally called, is responsible for every regulatory agency in the country, such as the EPA, and will oversee all administration rules.
Sunstein is best known for his balanced views between government regulations and cost-benefit analysis and for his theory of behavioral economics and he is widely considered to be a great choice for the office. However, a new controversy is arising over his views on animal rights and animal welfare.
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Sunstein, a vegetarian, co-authored the book Animal Right: Current Debates and New Directions, and has advocated for much stricter regulations of almost every industry that uses animals, including entertainment, clothing, science and agriculture. The Center For Consumer Freedom claims that he will even attempt to outlaw meat-eating and hunting.
What some are criticizing the most is Sunstein’s argument that animals should be entitled to legal representation in court- a bold claim that, if enacted, would drastically change the role that animals hold in this country. Sunstein advocates banning hunting unless it is for food and says that animal suffering needs to be a priority of humans.
But before people worry that Sunstein is going to force everyone in our country to go vegan, it should be noted that his views are rooted in pragmatism, and that animal suffering is his primary concern, not necessarily animal liberation:
If we focus on suffering, as I believe that we should, it is not necessarily impermissible to kill animals and use them for food; but it is entirely impermissible to be indifferent to their interests while they are alive. So too for other animals in farms, even or perhaps especially if they are being used for the benefit of human beings.
While I would be more than happy with a leader in Washington who does openly advocate animal liberation, I understand that on a sensitive issue like this, any progress is a big stride. Maybe Proposition 2 was just the beginning of a new wave of animal welfare concerns? I can only hope.
Photo Credit: MVI on Flickr under Creative Commons License
This is huge! I couldnt be happier right now. Obama could do very little at this point to make me not support him through any circumstances! Finally a progressive and pragmatic approach in the white house.
It sounds as if Mr. Sunstein is a welfarist. The Center for Corporate–I’m sorry “Consumer”–Freedom is a lobbying group against the interests of the consumers. It was started by a tobacco lobbyist.
I don’t think asking people to be conscious of what happens to the animals they eat is too much. This hopefully will lead to a reduction in animal products consumed, which is but a step.
First of all, Jim and Yellowjacket: your time will eventually come for compassionate understanding. Until then, we unfortunately have to put up with your ignorance. It is a shame that animals don’t have the entire human population on their side. They depend on us to protect them as they are unable to protect themselves from those who choose violence over peace.
Secondly, anyone with an ounce of understanding knows that anything that comes out of the Center for Consumer “Freedom” is based on outrageous lies designed to protect the evil interests of the monsters who control factory farming and every other form of animal torture and murder. Everyone, by now, knows how to read between the lines when reading their deceptive and juvenile comments. Their motives are so transparent, so nobody trusts them for information.
Hearing about elected officials with any amount of power to make change is encouraging, but only time will tell if these people have the moral and ethical courage to change and remove these serious problems.
Thanks for your comments, all. I’m not used to comments on an animal rights story being so positive. Usually 2/3 of them are like those from Yellowjacket. Glad to see the support for such a controversial move.
-Michael
Peace and love to all. May all beings be happy.
QUOTE: ” The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” Gandhi
” Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” Albert Einstein
I think we should lobby this public servant with information from the 2006 United Nations report that states that animal agriculture is urgent to address because it contributes MORE to global warming THAN ALL TRANSPORTATION. According to their statistics, it causes about 18% of global warming and I think it is higher. The loss of wetlands, prairies, biodiversity, water usage and water pollution, deforestation and cruelty are all staggering. And to top that, we import millions of tons of carcasses from rainforest lands razed to grow cattle for this market - thus destroying old growth that sustains most of the remnants of diversity left on our planet. The oceans are dying from carbon sink and overfishing, overtrashing - human arrogance (the species made in God’s image?) is making havoc on earth - and I do not think we will survive alone on this planet for long.
This is certainly a step in the right direction. We desperately need to work on changing the way we think and feel about the rest of the animal kingdom before we take ourselves out in the process. It’s truly a shame how some people can rely so much on a simple opinion, belief, habit, or out dated tradition and very little on thought, insight, and compassion. All beings suffer. That’s reality! Nevertheless, we’ve become so hardened and conditioned by the horrific way we treat animals (either directly or indirectly) that we don’t even think twice about the savageness of this behavior and the pain and suffering we cause to all those beneath us. For purely selfish reasons (and just because we have the ruthless power to do whatever we want to them) we’ve enslaved the whole animal kingdom so poorly, beneath all compassion for far too long. Any act of cruelty against a helpless creature viewed as “an inconvenient truth” is an unpardonable crime and a step back for humanity. Animals are at our mercy and this “attitude” that they are simply here for our pleasure is an extremely weak and pathetic reflection of who we are and it’s certainly a very narrow way of looking at the world around us.
I’d like to share the following quotes. Perhaps it’s a little too much but sometimes you have no choice.
“None so blind as those who will not see.” - Matthew Henry
“The highest realms of thought are impossible to reach without first attaining an understanding of compassion.” - Socrates (469-399 B.C.)
“The lower animals, like man, MANIFESTLY feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.” - C. Darwin (It has nothing to do with intelligence!)
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself…” - George Bernard Shaw, Writer, Nobel laureate
“How can I teach your children gentleness and mercy to the weak, and reverence for life, which in its nakedness and excess, is still a gleam of God’s omnipotence, when by your laws, your actions and your speech, you contradict the very things I teach?” - Henry W. Longfellow
“Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they’re in the game.” - Paul Rodriguez
“There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.” - Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel laureate
“When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the works of God we call him a sportsman.” - Joseph Wood Krutch
“The world, we are told, was made especially for man-a presumption not supported by all the facts… Why should MAN value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation”? - John Muir, Naturalist and explorer (1838-1914)
“Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.” - Thomas Edison
“Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.” - Milan Kundera
“The basis of all animal rights should be the Golden Rule: we should treat them as we would wish them to treat us, were any other species in our dominant position.” - Christine Stevens
“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.” - Alice Walker
“There will come a day when such men as myself will view the slaughter of innocent creatures as horrible a crime as the murder of his fellow man…a human being is a part of the whole, called by us the ‘Universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures…” - A. Einstein, Nobel Prize
“Because one species is more clever than another, does it give it the right to imprison or torture the less clever species? Does one exceptionally clever individual have a right to exploit the less clever individuals of his own species?…it is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.” - M. Twain
“All beings tremble before violence. All fear death. All love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?” - Buddha
“The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another, even the lowliest creature; to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing justifies…very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit…the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought…” - Albert Schweitzer
“…a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom…” - Thomas Paine, Common Sense
“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.” - Bertrand Russell
“I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other.” - Henry D. Thoreau
“Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by what is above him when he shows no mercy to what is under him?” - Pierre Troubetzkoy
Center for Consumer Freedom is run by a well-known lobbyest named Richard Berman. Check out all of the front-groups he runs at http://bermanexposed.org/
I am very encouraged by this news but can’t understand Obama’s views and proposed FOCO Freedom OF Choice. This proposed legislation allows a Mother the choice of on demand abortion anytime before birth. Now with late term abortion the child is aborted alive then the “medical” staff inserts a needle into the babies skull that contains poison. If the baby survives it is thrown into the medical waste pile to continue to suffer and die.
Don’t get me wrong me and my family are vegan’s and consider ourselves pro life with civil rights for all so when Obama talks civil rights it should be for all beings.