You really have to hand it to David Barton. When he wants to double down on the crazy, he does it all the way. He spent today's edition of Wallbuilders Live slamming the animal rights movement.
Barton and co-host David Green kicked off the discussion by saying that one of the religious right's other longtime whipping boys, Disney, is responsible for the "false" idea that animals actually have feelings.
Barton: I love Disney, I’ve got all of the collections of Disney, but Disney’s the first one to make animals seem human, and that’s what animation does. Bambi seems human, "Lady and the Tramp," a nice romantic dinner for dogs over at an Italian restaurant—I don’t think so—"Beauty and the Beast." And I love these stories but what they do is they elevate animals to mankind’s status.
Green: They’re making you think that they feel and the think.
Barton: And they don’t.
If you can stand it, you can listen in Windows Media or MP3 format.
For those who don't know, the animal rights and environmental movements have long been targets of the religious right's ire for "elevating the creation to the same level as the creator." However, reality-based Christians like yours truly take a different tack. God gave us dominion over the earth--but with that power comes the responsibility to take care of it. Unfortunately, the likes of Barton are too dense to figure that out.
Barton's guest today, former Abramoff BFF Rabbi Daniel Lapin, got in on the fun by blaming the animal rights movement in part for our supposed moral malaise.
Over the last fifty years, little by little America has obliterated the role of the Judeo-Christian biblical worldview as a fundamental guide to morality and ethics. What happens is the uncertainty stimulates philosophical experimentation. Animal rights is particularly attractive because frankly there is something very appealing about establishing the doctrine that you and I are nothing more than sophisticated baboons. Because what it does is it strips away the uncomfortable conscience that bothers us at odd moments, it completely exculpates any concerns we have about morality because once we are nothing but sophisticated baboons then our entire moral system becomes extremely simple. So for instance the fact that baboons practice homosexuality obviously legitimatizes it for human beings too because we’re nothing other than baboons with a little less hair.
Um, yeah, okay. So just because we accept that animals actually have feelings, as well as the overwhelming evidence supporting evolution, we've opened the door for gay rights. The mind reels.