Sorry for the light blogging – work is v. busy.

So, in the absence of original content, here’s a quote from an essay by Stephen R.L. Clark called “The Rights of Wild Things,” found in the collection Animals and Their Moral Standing:

Stoic theory offers us the ideal of the World State in which men have rights just as men, that is as citizens or subjects of the World State (though it is far from clear that Stoics would really have included literally all human beings as equals). But this ideal is far from actual, and it may sometimes be wise to remember the rights we have as, say, Britons, rather than our human rights. Nations which think themselves potential founders of the World State may reasonably be subject to suspicion, for the thought encourages them to interfere in the doings of other communities whenever their moral opinions are sufficiently outraged. It may be that a World State is too high a price to pay for the universal realisation of human rights. (p. 28)