Article about Singer in Salon magazine
http://www.salonmagazine.com/books/it/1999/07/02/philosopher/print.html
also:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/archives/academia/smith10-22-98.htm
"ANIMAL RIGHTS EXTREMISM AT PRINCETON
Peter Singer Gets A Chair
by Wesely J. Smith
MOST PEOPLE KNOW THAT IT IS WRONG TO KILL BABIES. Most people understand
that pigs are animals, not persons. Most people view the intentional killing
of "medically incompetent" people as murder.
Not Peter Singer. The Australian philosopher, a founder of the animal-rights
movement, claims that infants have no moral right to live and views
infanticide as an ethical act. He believes that medically defenseless people
should be killed if it will enhance the happiness of family and society. He
seeks to elevate the moral status of animals to that now enjoyed by humans
and equates animal farming and ranching with the evils of human slavery.
Strangest of all, Singer is by no means a fringe thinker. Over the last 20
years, his vigorous advocacy of utilitarianism have made him a darling among
the bioethics set and with academic philosophers who share his antipathy to
the traditional mores and values of Western Civilization. Singer is invited
to speak at seminars, symposia, and philosophy association conventions,
throughout the world. His 1979 book, Practical Ethics, which unabashedly
advocates infanticide, euthanasia, and decries "discrimination" based on
species (a bizarre notion Singer labels "speciesism"), has become a standard
text in many college philosophy departments. Singer is now so mainstream
that he even wrote the essay on ethics for the Encyclopedia Britannica.
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