The past two centuries of U.S. history saw two seemingly cast in stone injustices abolished, setting the stage for the most magnanimous of human advancements—the recognition of rights for non-human animals.
Each of these advancements was met with staunch opposition, ridicule and fears that they would end a way of life as we know it. While that may have been true for some of the most egregious exploiters, most Americans learned to adapt to new forms of fairness.
Plantation owners, steeped in self-pity, bemoaned the potential loss of free labor that would be wrought by acknowledging rights for all humans. Only after their cessation from the Union and a bloody civil war were they forced to accept the concept of human equality.
Two of my great aunts were embroiled in the suffragette movement. Thanks to theirs and other women’s efforts, “superior” males finally resigned themselves to the concept of voting rights for women. The same arguments crop up when such efforts are made for each group of “others.”
The idea of non-human animals being entitled to even the most basic rights is still a long way off from universal acceptance. But, IF the human race continues to survive this century, and if positive advancement continues to trump status quo and beats out the urge to backslide, notions of human superiority over other species will go the way of the dodo.
Exposing the Big Game 
Well said. Everything we humans do is about “us” every institution, concept, ideology, religion–every facet of our “culture” screams “humans first” and the continued taming and domestication of Nature. Unless, somehow, Homo sapiens could very quickly redo our thought processes about how we perceive ourselves, and non-human life, I do not see much hope. John A.Livingston wrote painstakingly about this in his book “The Myth of Wildlife Conservation & The Arrogance of the Human Species.” Another profound writing of his “Rogue Primate” ( luckily have a copy of it) is now out of print–this really hits at the core of our very- Homo sapiens problems. All of the symptoms of our planet’s illness, are the cause of how we humans look at this world on which we live, and how we view Nature: our goal is to domesticate everything. The Earth if a commodity.
That’s the problem: someone writes painstakingly about the truth and it goes out of print before people even notice it.
I love the title, “Rouge Primate.” If it were a rouge bear, it would be shot…
Sorry for the typo in the last sentence: it should read, “The Earth is a commodity.”