THERE IS A CONCERTED advocacy campaign underway across several disciplines aimed at knocking human beings off our pedestal of moral exceptionalism and redefining us as merely another animal in the forest. Toward this end, elements of the natural world are being personalized by public intellectuals, even as they seek to strip personhood from some people. The point of this ideological drive is to degrade our perceived self-worth so much that we will readily sacrifice human prosperity and welfare “to save the planet” or “for the animals,” while undercutting the power of theistic religion in general, and Judeo-Christian moral teaching in particular, to influence public policies.
Case in point: the Great Ape Project (GAP), which seeks a United Nations declaration that human beings, apes, chimps, bonobos, and orangutans are all members of a so-called “community of equals,” and hence are all entitled to Declaration of Independence-type “rights” to life, liberty, and freedom from torture. Since its introduction in 1993, the GAP’s radical agenda has gained support from some of the world’s most notable public intellectuals and is on the verge of becoming the law of Spain. (See: TEXT, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, July 21, 2008.)
