As if Western societies in Europe didn’t have enough to be concerned about, — with falling birth rates, ever increasing immigration from Muslim countries and the inevitable resulting Islamization from such as well as the continual decline in Judeo-Christian beliefs — along come the Swiss bringing to the world the concept of “plant rights”. [h/t: See Dubya] The Weekly Standard article, The Silent Scream of the Asparagus by Wesley J. Smith — senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture — gives us a preview look at just how stupid and insane our European brethern have become as their culture spirals into ever increasing moral irrelevance.

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the “dignity” of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called “plant rights” is being seriously debated.

{…}

A “clear majority” of the panel adopted what it called a “biocentric” moral view, meaning that “living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.” Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim “absolute ownership” over plants and, moreover, that “individual plants have an inherent worth.” This means that “we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily.”

{…}

What is clear, however, is that Switzerland’s enshrining of “plant dignity” is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.

Once you loose sight of or reject the religious concept of “primacy” of the human species, the inherent worth of the human being as God’s greatest creation, what is left to allow the thought that Mankind has the right to use the planet, its land, its animals and its plants, for Mankind’s own benefit? Nothin’, Nyet, NADA! Lose God, and you lose everything. This is what is so scary about the secularists’ movement — they are so in love with Gaia, Mother Earth, or so loathsome of themselves, that they view eradication of humanity a good thing.

Eschewing humans as the pinnacle of “creation” (to borrow the term used in the Swiss constitution) has caused environmentalism to mutate from conservationism–a concern to properly steward resources and protect pristine environs and endangered species–into a willingness to thwart human flourishing to “save the planet.” Indeed, the most radical “deep ecologists” have grown so virulently misanthropic that Paul Watson, the head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, called humans “the AIDS of the earth,” requiring “radical invasive therapy” in order to reduce the population of the earth to under a billion.

Paul Watson, meet “90% of Humans Must Die” Erik R. Pianka. You guys could really “party on, dudes”! I know I wouldn’t want to be on the guest list . . . But, back to this Swiss thing — giving “rights” to plants. There’s a funny sequence in the movie Notting Hill where the main character is being set up on a series of dates, with one being a vegetarian, one a pescetarian, only eats fish, and one a fruitarian, only eats products that actually fall off plants, like fruits and berries. “Yes”, she says to him as he passes her a platter, “Those carrots have been murdered!” Get the picture?

Smith wraps it up with this:

One Swiss scientist quoted in the editorial worried that “plant dignity” provides “another tool for opponents to argue against any form of plant biotechnology” despite the hope it offers to improve crop yields and plant nutrition.

What folly. We live in a time of cornucopian abundance and plenty, yet countless human beings are malnourished, even starving. In the face of this cruel paradox, worry about the purported rights of plants is the true immorality.

Without God, there is no “morality”! We’re gettin’ in big trouble here folks . . .

Technorati Tags: Wesley J. Smith, Paul Watson, Erik R. Pianka, plant dignity

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 at 12:07 pm and is filed under A Future For Mankind?, Europe at the Crossroads, Fever Swamp Madness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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