Nathan Winograd believes that PETA’s founder, Ingrid Newkirk, is mentally ill. That to him is the only credible explanation for her monstrous compulsion to kill healthy shelter animals. In contrast, I have argued that she is fully rational: Her viciousness has its own internal logic; moreover, it is counterproductive to psychologize evil.
Nathan Winograd
Big-hearted people tend to have warm and truly fuzzy thoughts about the Humane Society of the United States.
This is, after all, the organization that operates shelters nationwide and saves hundreds of thousands of animals. This is the selfless organization that stands up for the voiceless and abused. Although there are countless alternatives, this is the charity you should be sending your money to if you care about pets.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals employs only one argument in defense of its right to kill adoptable shelter pets. This is an abuse called “hoarding.” It is in fact an especially vile form of cruelty — animals are warehoused in filthy, overcrowded cages, where they then die, slowly and in misery.
This, we are told, is the reason that PETA’s founder, Ingrid Newkirk, is busy trying to prevent No Kill legislation from being passed in the group’s home town of Norfolk, Virginia.
Animals will never have the right to euthanize PETA’s founder, Ingrid Newkirk. This, arguably, is the intellectual flaw at the core of her special interpretation of animal rights. For PETA, it is a political movement primarily focused on the right to determine when and how an animal should die. The decision is never reciprocal, however: Newkirk has the right to kill — and PETA has killed tens of thousands of pets — but her own life is protected by law.
When the No Kill shelter in Shelby County, Kentucky, recently announced that they had run out of space — and were hence going to have to start killing healthy dogs and cats — officials received a nice basket of gourmet cookies, with a note signed by PETA: “Thank you for doing the right thing for animals.”
Surely I’m joking here.
Nathan Winograd is the leader of the No Kill movement, a genuine revolution in animal welfare. Three million healthy and adoptable pets will be killed next year in America’s shelters. Not, however, if Winograd and his growing army have any say. I caught up with him a few weeks after the No Kill Advocacy Centre‘s annual conference in Washington D.C.