Americans don't put much stock in philosophy — or so I assume. Whenever somebody else makes a sweeping statement like that, I always scowl, thinking: "Really? How do you know? Met 'em all, have you?"
My guess is that most Americans don't consider philosophy — I mean, just look at them. Nor weigh thorny ethical issues. If you asked your average fellow citizen to name a living philosopher, they couldn't. Alex Jones doesn't count.
This isn't to lord myself above anybody — the only living philosopher I could name unprompted is Peter Singer, and that is only because of the kerfuffle he caused decades ago by posing a thought experiment: that if you have a severely deformed baby, it's morally justifiable to kill it, provided you replace it with another, less afflicted child. Many people, among them disability rights advocates and parents of children with special needs, didn't like that.
To me, Singer's argument is easily refuted by shifting the metaphor, slightly, to this: If you have a neighbor you don't like, it's OK to kill him, provided someone else moves next door. While that might work fine from your perspective, the logic falls apart when you consider the viewpoint of the neighbor being killed. Ditto for that first baby.
Singer is, unsurprisingly, an animal rights advocate. The author of the 1975 book, "Animal Liberation," he's been at the forefront of trying to get society to be less cruel to beasts.
This is a long way of saying that when I noticed Singer has a new book out, "Consider the Turkey," I thought it would be a Thanksgiving treat to read the brief, bright yellow volume. A treat for you, that is.
One standard I use to judge nonfiction is: Did I learn anything interesting? I certainly did here. President John F. Kennedy was the first to pardon a turkey, in an offhand quip, though the practice didn't get going until George H.W. Bush.
Turkey presidential lore is quickly dispatched with, and we get down to the specific abuses turkeys suffer in gigantic farms.
That goes against my personal experience — I once visited the Ho-Ka Turkey Farm in DeKalb County, the largest such operation in Illinois, and while I didn't quite want to join the gobblers pecking at seed in the yard, the place did not strike me as a horror that would change anybody's dietary habits.
Singer shares, in great detail, how commercial turkeys are conceived. He carefully — I almost said "lovingly" — goes over the artificial insemination process which, I admit, I had never previously imagined. Without going into detail, as you might be eating your breakfast, let's just say there are people whose job it is to extract semen from turkeys 10 hours a day. Suddenly being a newspaper columnist doesn't seem such a burden.
With the lack of balance endemic to animal rights sorts, Singer goes on to point out that having sex with an animal is a crime, and treats the insemination as rape, which I imagine humans with experience in that area might take exception to.
Then again, Singer assumes that once he explains the truth about turkey production, his argument is won, and ends the book cheerily sharing vegan recipes to replace the bird that you've abandoned thanks to his efforts. His "how can we lose when we're so sincere?" tone is almost sweet.
To me, the joy of philosophy is considering opinions other than your own, and here Singer fails entirely. The central mistaken assumption of animal rights sorts is that if Tom Turkey weren't packed into a shed at Butterball he'd be flapping around unmolested in some ideal sylvan paradise. First, being eaten by a fox isn't fun either. If you've never heard a bunny scream — I have — it's as bad an end as anything Jenny-O serves up.
Second, if it weren't for the assembly line feeding them into the gullets of the American public, these turkeys would never exist in the first place.
Singer doesn't address the philosophical question this raises: "Is a difficult life better than no life at all?" To me, the answer is obviously yes. Then again, I'm glad I wasn't killed at birth by parents hoping for a more ideal baby.
Thanksgiving is next week. I'll be off, performing the ritual burning of the vacation days that I'll lose if I don't take them. At Thanksgiving dinner, I intend to fall back on my late colleague Roger Ebert's lovely philosophy: "'Kindness' covers all my political beliefs."
Well, except regarding turkeys. They still get harsh treatment and a date with the block. Despite having accepted Singer's invitation to "Consider the Turkey," having done so, my opinion remains obdurate. I'll still enjoy a serving. Maybe two.
