The Oregon Secretary of State recently announced that a referendum to ban the killing of animals failed to gain enough signatures to get on the November ballot. Many, including livestock farmers, sport and commercial fishers, hunters and meat-eaters, breathed a sigh of relief.
It is easy to understand mocking such a goal and then dismissing it. However, mindlessly disregarding the proposal would be a mistake. Ever since the French Revolution, radicals have employed a similar process to make great gains.
Incrementalism
The process is easy to understand. The first step is to propose radical goals that most will oppose. Once introduced, the radicals endure—perhaps even encourage—the ridicule among the general public, knowing that mockery is preferable to being ignored. The radicals raise a standard that is distant yet fascinating to the moderates.
Over time, the proponents work quietly to convince sympathetic leftists and especially moderates of the proposal’s hidden wisdom. After an appropriate time—maybe months, years or even decades—they introduce a proposal similar to the initially rejected idea. If it fails on the second attempt, they repeat the process.
One example of this process concerns socialized medicine. In the United States, this idea was first proposed in the days after World War II and soundly rejected. Then, the subject returned on a smaller scale in Medicare and Medicaid, which were enacted in the mid-sixties. Thirty years later, the Clinton Administration proposed and nearly passed “Hillarycare.” Its failure left a sense of “dodging a bullet.” Only a decade and a half later, the Obama Administration promoted its Affordable Care Act, which narrowly passed. Now, the demand for “Medicare for all” rings throughout the political process.
Political scientists call this process incrementalism.
An Extension of the Radical Creed
Egalitarianism is a radical philosophy that calls for the absence of hierarchy in human relationships. In practice, it is impossible to treat everyone entirely equal because this runs contrary to God’s creation and human nature. People naturally differ in talents and attributes.
Nonetheless, the idea has the ring of justice and fairness to some. In their minds, equal treatment preserves everyone’s rights and ensures that each person’s basic needs are met, even when it is done at the expense of others, as in communism.
Even so, many radicals want to go further, arguing for fundamental equality among all animals, including humans. They see no difference between the life of a squirrel, chipmunk or cat and that of human beings. In this way, the animal rights movement was born.
The idea that animals had equal rights began with the 1975 publication of Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals by Australian radical Peter Singer. He built upon the ideas of English pseudo-Enlightenment figure Jeremy Bentham, who posited that “the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the measure of right and wrong.” Animals, Mr. Singer claimed, experienced pain. Therefore, to willingly inflict pain upon them was to deny them their right to live at peace with nature. He coined the term “speciesism” to describe this bias.
In March 1980, the organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was founded. Anticipating the ridicule they would meet in the general public, they chose their first target well. Their early propaganda efforts focused on animal research. The idea that animals were being harmed to test cosmetics and other products repulsed many who could not imagine treating their dogs and cats in such barbaric ways. Over the next decade, they enacted a ream of legislation and regulations.
Meanwhile, they gathered a group of enthusiastic supporters. Those members disdained the consumption of meat and other animal products, such as eggs and milk. They applied the name “vegan” to their dietary practices. While the broader public ridiculed them, promoting their ideas widened their base of support, especially at America’s universities.
From Permission to Prohibition
The vegans are increasingly inclined to impose their values on everyone else. That is the thinking behind the Oregon petition, titled the People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions (PEACE) Act, also known as Initiative Petition 28 (IP28).
Aside from the childish acronym, the title’s basis is that Oregon already bans animal abuse, which it defines as “the intentional, knowing, and reckless injury of an animal.” However, “slaughter, hunting, fishing, and experimentation” are exempted from that prohibition. The food zealots’ strategy is to forbid them.
Justification
In the best traditions of political persuasion, the “Yes on IP28” campaign uses comfortable words. “[T]here are ample resources to feed all Oregonians if IP28 were to pass. We are already producing far more food than needed to feed everyone. Oregon is a top-ranking producer of many field and seed crops, fruits, nuts, and vegetables, and IP28 could end up increasing our net agricultural production…. IP28 does not ban any specific industry…as long as it also protects the animals’ needs to be free from suffering.”
Ironically, the measure does not prohibit the sale of meat, fur, leather and other products produced in other states. The reason, they explain, is that they want to focus the legislation on prohibiting the killing of animals, which they see as an attainable goal. On these other points, they are willing to trust the future. They blithely assert that their success in Oregon will inspire other states to ban the killing of animals nationwide.
The proposed law would also have created a “Humane Transition Fund.” The funds allocated by the legislature would have been used to provide “grants to assist in the individual and societal transition away from engaging in activities that would become prohibited by the implementation of this Act.” These would include food assistance, replacing lost income to individuals, job retraining, supporting the “animals who could no longer be killed,” as well as “conservation and rewilding efforts.”
The Politics of the PEACE Act
For a bill that is so objectionable to so many, IP28 came amazingly close to a statewide vote. According to Oregon law, 117,173 valid signatures are needed to place it on the ballot. Supporters turned in 142,784. However, state officials determined that only 104,262 were actual signatures of individual Oregon voters. Presumably, a bit more than 13,000 additional valid signatures would have done the trick.
Had IP28 gotten on the ballot, it would have gone before one of the most liberal populations in the country, Oregon being one of the most leftist states in the Union. It was the first state to “decriminalize” possession of marijuana in 1973. The same population legalized medical marijuana in 1988 and recreational use in 2015. Also noteworthy was the limp response from state officials to the Portland riots during the summer of 2020.
Additionally, this was not the first serious attempt to put this idea on the ballot. IP28 followed a less successful effort in 2022. The door may be open for another attempt in 2030 or 2034. The left will, most likely, take that opportunity.
Photo Credit: © nazarovsergey– stock.adobe.com