BY JOHN NASH

For the benefit of Volk Starmer, the Israel disarmer, and his red (nose) government with the long rubber shoes – what is the difference between human rights and animal rights? That’s easy. Outside the Labour Party, human rights are very, very important, and animal rights do not exist.

It’s difficult to explain to politicians using crayons and alphabet blocks, but here goes. Evolution stands on two legs: (a) survive long enough to (b) breed successfully. The idea of surviving long enough is a matter of competition in nature. Nature is filled with predators and pathogens. It’s dangerous out there. There are no rules – you either survive, or you don’t. Things die as easily in nature as truth does on Starmer’s lips.

Animals, therefore, have many strategies (nests, dens, burrows, caves, etc.) to shelter from the competition “outside” in order to nurture their kind and breed in safety “inside.” Long ago, we were the same. But then we developed the amazing ability to store and communicate information. This allowed us to accumulate knowledge with every generation, with each generation building on the previous one.

That allowed our simple human “cave” to grow and evolve – into our huge and wonderful notional “cave” today, which we call human civilisation. Human civilisation is still the human cave. We shelter inside it to nurture our kind and reproduce. It has been very successful – there are 8 billion of us.

Our human cave once had the basic instinctive mammalian den rule long ago: “Sharing and fair exchange without violence.” That simple rule evolved with the growth of our cave, and now it has become our huge edifice of human morals, ethics, and rights. But they are still the rules inside the human cave of civilisation. Every human is required to observe these rules, and in exchange, they inherit human rights automatically, simply by being born in our cave.

We use our morals, ethics, and rights as a standard to decide what is right and wrong, cruel or kind, etc. These are measurements inside our cave. Outside, in nature, there are still no rules – the other animals reset back to instinct with each generation. They remain (outside of their dens, nests, etc.) totally uncivilised. Without rules, they can have no morals, ethics, or rights. Animals do not have any rights. They also have no sense of right or wrong, cruelty, or kindness – these are human constructs, inside our cave. There is now an immense gulf between us and other animals.

That is why it is neither wrong nor cruel when a lion kills an antelope or a cat tortures a mouse – it is simply nature (evolutionary competition) at work. There are no rules “outside” in nature. There are no human rights “outside” in nature either – try swimming across a river full of crocodiles and you will find out. Human rights only exist inside our human cave.

There are no food resources inside our cave – we have to go out and get them. That means going out to compete in nature and killing animals or taking their land, etc. When we go outside to compete, we become human predators in nature – and predators are perfectly normal in nature. To kill things outside in nature, we have to be uncivilised when “outside.” It is normal outside. Then we return to the cave and become civilised again indoors to share out the resources. Hunting is perfectly normal human behaviour and has been for as long as we have been human.

It’s not difficult, and it has nothing to do with animal sentience or the right to life or any other old tosh that animal rights theorists make up – we have always used animals for food and clothing for as long as we have been human. That’s why they are our resource – “things,” not “persons” – and why they are considered to be things (not persons) in every legal jurisdiction in the world.

Animal welfare is a different matter. It is not a right that animals possess. It is a consideration – something we can give to animals as a gift, and it varies with circumstance. But it is our gift to them – it is about us, not them. We treat animals differently whether they are companions, pets, working animals, assistance animals, beasts of burden, pests, or food. We treat them differently according to our culture (or cave flavour). We can be kinder when we have other things to eat and less kind if we are starving. There are no animal rights in a starving refugee camp or in a hunter-gatherer’s life – they can’t afford it.

Thus, animal rights are a silly human ideology that grows only in rich, well-fed, safe urban societies. They exist only in human imagination, not in the reality of nature. As a really dishonest ideology, animal rights should not be taught in schools, nor should they go unchallenged in Parliament, since MPs are required to be factual and tell the truth…

At least until green Starmer turns UK farmers’ ploughshares into hammers and their pruning hooks into sickles, as his stormtroopers pull down the statue of Justice at the Old Bailey and toss her into the Thames.

John Nash grew up in West Cornwall and was a £10 pom to Johannesburg in the early 1960’s. He started well in construction project management, mainly high-rise buildings but it wasn’t really Africa, so he went bush, prospecting and trading around the murkier bits of the bottom half of the continent. Now retired back in Cornwall among all the other evil old pirates. His interests are still sustainable resources, wildlife management and the utilitarian needs of rural Africa. John is the co-author of Dear Townies with the Editor.