Tuesday, March 11, 2003

First a word on the interview itself. Departing from his habitual politeness, Prager was very combative. He frequently interrupted his guest's answers and did not hesitate to condemn his guest's views morally. Nevertheless, I thought that he was rather too polite. I don't think he should have invited this person at all. What is served by bringing him on and shouting at him? It is one thing to take on the "argument" about the comparable moral worth of humans and animals and expose its fallacies. It is quite another to implicitly treat the absurd claim asserted by the PETA compaign as worthy of discussion among civilized human beings by having a representative of the view in question present his side of things. Prager clearly was partly motivated by the desire to expose the campaign's originator as someone who cannot possibly believe what he is saying. I don't think that's a worthy goal. It is far more important that the ideas behind the campaign are completely invalidated than that the specific people pushing it are exposed as hypocrites. Giving PETA representatives an extra platform from which to speak does not aid the cause of the opposition to such nonsense. Frankly, the less exposure PETA gets the better.

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