ARTICLE: DOGS SHARE OUR EMOTIONS Which is pretty obvious really. They’re more li

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/dogs-are-people-too.html?pagewanted=allGREAT ARTICLE: DOGS SHARE OUR EMOTIONS

Which is pretty obvious really. They’re more like us than most primates.

Now, the author makes the assertion that personhood, and rights are properties of sentience. And I am not sure that I agree with that. Rights are a property of cooperation, not emotional or intellectual presence.

We show compassion to other creatures. We show compassion to children. But we do not give children ‘rights’. They can’t make use of them. Nor can they understand them. Likewise, any human that would demonstrate a lack of compassion to a child, a dog, or a goat for that matter, is a threat to the rest of us either materially or normatively. Our ‘do not unto others’, rule (the silver rule) cannot be broken with any sentient creature, because it cannot be a choice. This is a normative, moral, requirement. Not a legal one. So it is not that animals have rights. It is that humans have duties of care. We regulate humans, because we can. And we punish humans because we can.

We cannot go around throwing the term ‘right’ around as comfortably as liberals tend to. A right is a contractual property of voluntary exchange. An obligation is a property of a contract of voluntary exchange. A duty is an obligation that is part of the human contract for acceptance into any society. It is a tax. A fee. An insurance policy. Your personal commitment that you are safe to have and hold for the rest of us, and capable of having ‘rights’ by voluntary exchange.

If you cannot hold your duties of care, then you are a threat not only to children and animals, but to the rest of us as well.