A New Voice for Animal Rights

George Will's column in this week's Newsweek tells of Matthew Scully, a self-avowed conservative and former speechwriter for President Bush who has taken up the cause of animal rights. Like me, Scully does not advocate moral vegtarianism (though I am a vegetarian for related reasons) but does call for a stop to unnecessarily cruel factory-farming techniques.

For Scully, the fact that some animals are legally protected by felony-level penalties while other animals can be mercilessly tortured for the entirety of their lives is a matter of moral relativism, something that many conservatives can't stand. From the column: "Why, Scully asks, is cruelty to a puppy appalling and cruelty to livestock by the billions a matter of social indifference?" He also makes a biblical argument, saying tht the logic behind Judeo-Christian morality is "one of gracious condescension, or the proud learning to be humble, the higher serving the lower, and the strong protecting the weak."