The anti-humanists are on the march! Today, I want to discuss subversive advocacy campaigns to expand rights from the human realm to animals, and indeed, the rest of the natural world. One of the most important examples is currently pending in New York. “Happy,” an elephant, has sued for a writ of habeas corpus to be liberated from the Bronx Zoo and placed in an elephant sanctuary as a matter of “elephant rights.” If Happy “wins” she—and hence, all pachyderms—would be declared non-human “persons” entitled to rights akin to those possessed by legally incompetent humans. In other words, elephants wouldn’t have the right to vote. But they would have the rights not to be owned or treated in an instrumental way, just as we currently protect children, the developmentally disabled, and those with dementia. In a sane world, the case would have already been thrown out of court and the …