I Don't Think Nationalism Is Alone Holding

Beginning To Reason Is Like Stepping Onto An Escalator That Leads Upward And Out Of Sight. Once We Take The First Step, The Distance To Be Traveled Is Independent Of Our Will And We Cannot Know In Advance Where We Shall End.

No Consideration At All Is Given To The Interests Of The "pests" - The Very Word "pest" Seems To Exclude Any Concern For The Animals Themselves. But The Classification "pest" Is Our Own, And A Rabbit That Is A Pest Is As Capable Of Suffering, And As Deserving Of Consideration, As A White Rabbit Who Is A Beloved Companion Animal.

Typically, Defenders Of Experiments On Animals Do Not Deny That Animals Suffer. They Cannot Deny The Animals' Suffering, Because They Need To Stress The Similarities Between Humans And Other Animals In Order To Claim That Their Experiments May Have Some Relevance For Human Purposes. The Experimenter Who Forces Rats To Choose Between Starvation And Electric Shock To See If They Develop Ulcers (which They Do) Does So Because The Rat Has A Nervous System Very Similar To A Human Being's, And Presumably Feels An Electric Shock In A Similar Way.

The Principles Of Ethics Come From Our Own Nature As Social, Reasoning Beings.

Even People Who Are Aware That The Traditional Family Farm Has Been Taken Over By Big Business Interests, And That Some Questionable Experiments Go On In Laboratories, Cling To A Vague Belief That Conditions Cannot Be Too Bad, Or Else The Government Or The Animal Welfare Societies Would Have Done Something About It.