The Horrific

Peter Singer is going to talk at Arizona State University about making "correct" food choices, but he couldn't care less about the disabled, sick, or elderly if they constitute a "burden" in his mind:

But this is different, Bérubé wrote.

"In the first, my beliefs about the Middle East have literally nothing to do with blogging. In the second, well, I'm afraid that Singer's position on the ethics of eating animals is intimately related to his position on how to treat people with significant disabilities," he wrote.

In The Ethics of What We Eat, Singer argues that we can't place human rights above the rights of animals. He calls that idea "species-ist," saying that it's a form of prejudice.

Yet, in his earlier writings, as Bérubé notes, Singer seeks to limit which people have rights. If you're born disabled, you don't count.

But chickens do?

You have to spend only a few minutes with a child with Down syndrome to see just how silly that idea is. These are children who tell jokes and laugh at others, who feel love and share it, who "get" a lot more than Singer gives them credit for. When they get to be teenagers, they may well hold a job — and work hard at it. They might fall in love — and be just as awkward about it as any 15-year-old.

Singer argues for the humane treatment of fish, citing an obscure article published in a scientific journal called the Proceedings of the Royal Society, which suggested that rainbow trout can, in fact, feel pain. I'll cede him the point, but you can do all the mental gymnastics in the world and still not convince me that a trout is more sentient than a baby with Down syndrome.

Indeed, Singer's conclusions about disabled people should make us question every argument he makes.

It's a question of judgment. If a person can manage to justify the idea of parents killing children, and children killing parents, is he really the person we should come for answers about food?

The man is certifiable and has more influence than he deserves.