How Many is to Many?

As citizens of a democratic society when we travel outside the country (perhaps even inside the country) and we are not treated “fairly” we feel our rights have been violated. We are told we have all these rights concerning every issue on the board from free speech to health to lawyer and so on. Our lives have become dependent on rights and the way we think things should be because we have rights. That once we encounter problems where people have not been given the same “rights” we have, that we automatically feel we are entitled to something much more then the rights before us. The entire proliferation of rights has gone far beyond what rights humans should have but who actually has these rights.

Within his opening statements Wellman talks about vegetarians and environmentalists; who argue that it is inhumane when humans raise animals for the mere fact of slaughtering them and fulfilling our own selfish appetite and that trees and forests have legal rights. When it comes to these two issues perhaps a better solution would be that we as occupants of the earth have a duty and responsibility to each other and ourselves to take care of the earth and treat animals in a humane way. But to argue that animals and TREES have legal and even moral rights is in question. We may have a moral obligation not raise animals in inhumane ways but do the animals actually possess these rights as humans do? And if they do, does the environment such as trees and flowers possess rights? Where does this stop?

One question to think about is, have the vegetarians and environmentalists ever met? The vegetarians argue that they will not eat meat because of the way society raises animals, but what about the environmentalists who are trying to protect the environment. Aren’t the vegetarians destroying plants for the mere fact of fulfilling their selfish appetite? What about gardens are they not like the plants where animals are being raised for slaughter? The vegetables do not even have a chance.