Unfair To Animals

Kevin Williamson comments on the fallacious custom of calling those who commit barbaric acts animals.

Some forgotten early Homo sapiens, the first great moral philosopher of our species, forever lost in the shadows of prehistory, took note of the fact that while wolves kill because they are hungry and bears kill because they are threatened, the human animal kills toward unknowable ends, from motives far more complex than biological necessity. Eventually, that first moral philosopher or one of his intellectual descendants came up with a word for that, for this inexplicable inclination that is not known to any wild animals, no matter how ravenous — but which is present only in men.

If only we could remember that word, and remember what it means.

Dennis Prager knows the word and what it means.