🚀 go-pugleaf

Though it may be politically expedient to avoid casting all species as
equals, it is nonetheless a moral position that many have arrived at, through
examination of the nature of evolution (cf. S.J. Gould). Moral positions
are often unpopular and politically disruptive. But they are no less 
important for that fact. It was inexpedient to attempt to include people
of african ancestry, a century ago, in the category "human", but it eventually
almost worked. The slave traders resented it, talked about property rights
and lost jobs, but it was the right thing to do and we celebrate the
humanity of the abolitionists here, in the future.

A century hence, people watching holovid specials may well feel the revulsion
at a portrayal of a "reasonable" position on the Endangered Species Act that
we feel watching the slave owners portrayed in Burns' _The Civil War_.

Expediency is never a good reason for anything.

Chris