"ARE WE NOT MEN?" ... maybe not, maybe to the Gramscian Left we are BEASTS?

The deliberate beautification and gentrification, if you will, of human-equine sex by the post-modernist intelligentsia at the Sundance Festival (see our previous post) is not an isolated phenomenon. We have identified this artistic activity as part of an overall Gramscian attack on the fundamental values and cultural institutions of the West. The Gramscian left's overall program calls for the destruction of the family, private property, and organized religion. The ultimate goal is our dehumanization.

The proximate goal of the bestiality buffs is to blur the distinction between the human and the animal, and thereby to reduce human beings to the status of animals.

And that's not the only way that our civilization's traditional view of a separation between the human and animal realms is being dissolved. Let me show you how.

Although there initiatives were widely reported as a comedic faits divers, leftist legislators in Spain were deadly serious when in June 2006 they introduced a bill to accord human rights to the great apes.

Spain could soon become the first country in the world to give chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and other great apes some of the fundamental rights granted to human beings under a law being proposed by members of the ruling Socialist coalition.

The law would eliminate the concept of "ownership" for great apes, instead placing them under the "moral guardianship" of the state, much as is the case for children in care, the severely handicapped and those in comas, said the MP behind the project, Francisco Garrido.

Please note that the apes will share the present legal status of children, the severely handicapped, and those in comas. The identity and character of those categories of individuals will be important in this discussion.

Despite the enthusiasm of the socialist ruling coalition, not everybody in Spain is on board:

The Roman Catholic Church has expressed concerns about his resolution. The Archbishop of Pamplona and Tudela, Fernando Sebastian, has said that only a "ridiculous or distorted society" could propose such a law. "We don't give rights to some people - such as unborn children, human embryos, and we are going to give them to apes," the archbishop said.

Amnesty International's Spanish branch has also expressed concerns, saying that humans have yet to see their rights fully guaranteed. A senior member of the Spanish opposition Partido Popular, Arturo Esteban, called the proposal an "act of moral poverty".

Advocates of conferring "personhood" on the great apes claim that such a measure will not diminish human rights:

Amnesty International correctly observed that the rights of many humans in the world are yet to be respected. The group also correctly understood that advocates are actually asking for basic rights for nonhuman apes, acknowledged by the United Nations — not just improvements in the conditions in which humans hold and use other great apes.

What Amnesty International misses is that respecting the 'personhood' of great apes does not diminish human rights. There is no reason why the basic rights of life, liberty, and freedom from torture should only be applicable to humans. Moreover, such a change would help humanity to preserve the environment instead of destroying it, and it would open more general discussions of animal rights in Spain.

The Catholic Church is on record opposing the measure. Fernando Sebastian denounced the concept when, in the archbishop's view, abortions violate the human rights of embryos. The archbishop also reportedly said, "Too much progress becomes ridiculous."

The ape rights initiative has received backing from academics in dozen of universities. GRASP submitted a letter of support for the measure.

However, according the human rights associated with a concept like "liberty" to an animal, even one of the great apes, inevitably trivializes and diminishes the status of that right for human beings.

And it is of course a direct contradiction of the basic concept of human freedom and responsibility enshrined in the Jewish Bible, which is also accepted by Christianity. The "personhood" activists want to grant human liberties to animals, but do you think they would accept the equally absurd idea of putting an animal on trial for its instinctual actions? Would you try a hungry wolf for the killing of a defenseless fawn before a jury of ruminants or carnivores?

By elevating an animal to human status, and human stature, the post-modern relativists want to degrade the status of the human being. If human beings are only animals, then there is really no moral problem with the State's altruistic and beneficent servants (notice the claim that "academics in dozens of universities" support granting human rights to apes) incarcerating or even killing any humans they deem unable to enjoy a proper "quality of life." A foetus, a defenseless adult in a coma, or a severely handicapped person can be discarded without compunction.

Eugenic breeding and eugenic culling of human specimens would thus be no worse than any other form of animal husbandry.

The Spanish government took another step towards abolishing human personhood by directly attacking the biological and familiar basis of human reproduction; henceforth, Spanish birth certificates will not list the baby's Mother and Father, but only its "Progenitor A" and "Progenitor B:"

The new changes replacing Mother and Father come courtesy of a ministerial order.

"Juan Fernando López Aguilar, Spanish Minister of Justice, excused the ministerial order by claiming since the government modified "the status of civil marriages, to allow the union of same-sex couples, it was necessary for a new format for the Family Book (Libro de Familia) and one that uses terms such as "Parent A" and "Parent B" instead of "Father" and "Mother".

There is furthermore no reason that the socialist governments of the world should stop there. The Canadian Supreme Court recently decided that a child can legally have three parents, and ordered the State to register both women in a same-sex relationship as his mothers, with the "family friend" who provided the sperm to be listed as his father. In the dystopian world of polyamorous "families" and "alternative" living-arrangements, why should a birth certificate only show "Progenitor A," "Progenitor B," and not "C," "D," and "E?"

Strictly speaking of course, what the Spanish government and the Canadian Supreme Court have enacted is nonsense, and makes as much sense as King Hardicanute ordering the incoming tide to recede, or a law commanding the Sun to rise in the West. Only in a science fiction fantasy does any human child come into the world with anything other than one mother and one father. Elementary biology shows us that a fertilized human embryo consists of the ovum provided by the mother and the DNA from the sperm, provided by the father.

I am not speaking now of the critical role played in child development by an active, involved father, and the drastic social consequences faced by children in our inner cities who are growing up in a fatherless world. Although that is also part of the brave new world the socialists are wishing on us.

Again in this instance, I am reminded of H.G. Wells's fevered vision of the Island of Doctor Moreau, where half-animal, half-human victims of the Doctor's self-important and unethical experimentation struggled for their identity:

“Say the words,” said the Ape-man, repeating, and the figures in the doorway echoed this, with a threat in the tone of their voices.

I realised that I had to repeat this idiotic formula; and then began the insanest ceremony. The voice in the dark began intoning a mad litany, line by line, and I and the rest to repeat it. As they did so, they swayed from side to side in the oddest way, and beat their hands upon their knees; and I followed their example. I could have imagined I was already dead and in another world. That dark hut, these grotesque dim figures, just flecked here and there by a glimmer of light, and all of them swaying in unison and chanting,

“Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

“Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

“Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

“Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

“Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”

And so from the prohibition of these acts of folly, on to the prohibition of what I thought then were the maddest, most impossible, and most indecent things one could well imagine. A kind of rhythmic fervour fell on all of us; we gabbled and swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing Law. Superficially the contagion of these brutes was upon me, but deep down within me the laughter and disgust struggled together. We ran through a long list of prohibitions, and then the chant swung round to a new formula.

“His is the House of Pain.

“His is the Hand that makes.

“His is the Hand that wounds.

“His is the Hand that heals.”

And so on for another long series, mostly quite incomprehensible gibberish to me about Him, whoever he might be. I could have fancied it was a dream, but never before have I heard chanting in a dream.

“His is the lightning flash,” we sang. “His is the deep, salt sea.”

A horrible fancy came into my head that Moreau, after animalising these men, had infected their dwarfed brains with a kind of deification of himself. However, I was too keenly aware of white teeth and strong claws about me to stop my chanting on that account.

“His are the stars in the sky.”

At last that song ended. I saw the Ape-man's face shining with perspiration; and my eyes being now accustomed to the darkness, I saw more distinctly the figure in the corner from which the voice came. It was the size of a man, but it seemed covered with a dull grey hair almost like a Skye-terrier. What was it? What were they all?

There is a difference between a human being and an animal. To be sure, the human being is built upon the chassis of an animal body. But although the animal is endowed with a "living spirit" (Genesis 1:24), the human being also has soul that derives from the breath of God (Genesis 2:7). To deny the difference is to make a mockery of both the human being and of the animal -- it is to transform the animal from that which he is, into a childish cartoon figure; and it is to degrade the human being, and all of his potential, into the passive victim of the bureaucratic intelligentsia.

I am also reminded of the recurrent and defiant refrain in Bertolt Brecht's song "Wie Man Sich Bettet" -- "Ein Mensch ist kein Tier!" A human being is not an animal:

Meine Herren, meine mutter praegte
Auf mich einst, ein schlimmes Wort.
Ich wurde enden im Schauhaus
Oder an einem noch schlimmern Ort.
Ja, so ein wort, das ist leicht gesagt.
Aber ich sage euch: Daraus wird nichts!
Das koennt ihr nicht machen mit mir!
Ein Mensch ist kein Tier!

Your Honors, my mother pronounced
An awful curse on me - that
I'd end up in the morgue
Or an even worser place.
Yes, a word like that, it's easily said.
But I say to you: Nothing will come of it!
You can't do that with me!
A human being is not an animal!

The freedom and potential of the human being is what is being called into question by the multi-faceted Gramscian attacks on human dignity and on marriage & the family. That is what is at stake in the left's culture war today. If we do not win that war, we will cease to be human beings. Let us remember then, "Are we not men?"