There are many things that I consider to be wrong with the world. Every day, sentient beings are subject to disgusting violations of their basic rights through the horrifying practices of oppression and dominance. We live in a society in which men are dominant over women, whites over people of color, heterosexuals over non-heterosexuals, rich over poor, and humans over nonhumans. Struggles against these forms of oppression are interlinked, as the root cause of each is the practice of dominance of one group over another. In this essay, I will present an alternative system based on freedom, equality, and non-hierarchy. I will then specify why any oppression of nonhuman animals is not morally justifiable based on this system of morality, which I think is the best way to run society. Elsewhere, this system would be referred to as anarchism, with tendencies toward anarcha-feminism and anarcho-communism, but for the sake of this essay, I will refer to it as Libertarianism. The basic tenet of any Libertarian philosophy is the concept of freedom. Libertarians argue that human beings should be free from servitude and oppression, that no one should be a master, and no one should be a slave. In his article on Libertarianism, John Hospers argued that people should have freedom to the extent that they cannot hinder the freedom or the rights of others. Hospers presented three rights which all should possess: life, liberty, and property. These rights, however, deserve some clarification here. Hospers, though arguing from a non-oppressive philosophy, still embraced the inherently oppressive system of capitalism. In capitalism, those who control the means of production also control those who produce, thus the bosses are the "masters," while the workers are the "slaves." In this way, capitalism is in conflict with one of the basic rules of Libertarianism. Here, I will argue from an anti-capitalist Libertarian standpoint. To clarify the right to life, this includes the right to not die if death can be avoided. It also includes the right to good health, self-determination, and control over one's body and livelihood. Violations of this right include murder, the denial of healthcare, rape, and oppression in various forms, including having one's decisions made for her or him by someone else. The concept of "right to life" is often corrupted by anti-abortion advocates. However, to force a woman to carry a child to term when she does not wish to do so is a violation of her right to self-determination and control over her own livelihood and body. As a woman is already born and a fetus is not, her right to life trumps that of the fetus. The right to liberty overlaps somewhat with the right to life. It includes freedom from oppression and hierarchy in all forms. It reaffirms the right to not be controlled by others. A worker has the right to not be controlled by a boss, a woman has the right to not be controlled by her husband, and all citizens have the right to not be controlled by a hierarchal government. Many might wonder how society and the workplace could function without hierarchy, but they could function in the same way a non-hierarchal marriage can function, through collective decision-making. The right to property is one that is less obvious in its meaning. Capitalists have often corrupted this view by presenting it as the right to wealth, to be rich while others are poor. In a capitalist system, property is something that is bought if one has enough money. However, no one would suggest that the rights to life and liberty should only be granted to those who have enough money (although, in a capitalist system, this is what often happens). One should not have to buy one's right to not be murdered, and thus the right to property should not be contingent upon one's wealth either. As Hospers says, "depriving you of property is depriving you of the means by which you live." Thus, people do not have the right to buy dozens of useless knick-knacks or have piles of money while others starve, but they do have the right to the means by which to live, whether this be land, tools, a house, a farm, etc. What people want to do with this property is up to them; whether they wish to make use of it privately, or to collectively pool their property with others'. One might wonder, then, who fits into the Libertarian morality. In his article, Hospers affirmed that all "men" deserved these rights. Throughout his writing, he gives no indication that "men" includes anyone but male humans. Obviously, this sexist thinking is unfair and ridiculous. There is no reason to exclude any human being from these rights, for there is no relevant difference between groups of humans that would justify denying some people rights, while giving rights to others. Discrimination on the basis of race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, ability, or any other difference is clearly inappropriate among humans. What, then, of nonhuman animals? There are arguably vast differences between humans and other animals, yet it is not clear whether any of these differences justifies the denial of rights. One area to explore would be whether a nonhuman animal has a mind. Theories on this subject divide into physicalist views, which insist that the mind is in some way realized by the physical body, or dualist philosophies, which suggest that the mind is something nonphysical. Here, dualist philosophies can be discarded because there would be no way to know whether an animal has a mind or not from a dualistic standpoint. As far as physicalist categories go, none have been able to reconcile the problem of consciousness, presented by Thomas Nagel in his article "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" Essentially, Nagel's argument was that; even if one knows the entire nervous system of a bat, one does not know what it is like to be a bat, because there is a phenomenal element in what it is like to be a bat, namely, consciousness. Because of this problem, we cannot truly know the experience of nonhuman animals. Thus, the only thing we have to rely on in determining the moral worth of nonhuman animals is the ways in which they express themselves to us, namely, from a functionalist viewpoint. A functionalist argues that beings have minds if they exhibit the functions of mind-states. For instance, the function of pain is to draw back, protect, and nurture an injured body part. Beings who do this possess the mind-state of pain, and in order to have a mind-state, these beings must have minds. By this definition, virtually all nonhuman animals have minds, for even the lowest order of insects run away when you try to squash them, displaying the mind-state of fear. Thus, because nonhuman animals have minds, they should be included in our system of morality. Based upon the above system, then, nonhuman animals, along with human animals, have the right to life, liberty, and property. These rights, of course, manifest differently in nonhuman animals than they do in human animals, as different species have different needs. The most obvious violation of a being's right to life is to kill it. Thus, in this system, it is not morally justifiable to kill nonhuman animals for food, clothing, or other reasons. It is also immoral to take away a being's self-determination. It is not morally justifiable to perform tests on animals, steal their milk and eggs, enslave them in zoos and circuses, take them as pets from the wild, or create domesticated animals. Concerning keeping already-produced domesticated animals as pets, however, there is an important distinction. Domesticated animals can be divided into two categories, a first that can be kept, and a second that cannot. The first category includes animals such as cats and dogs, which pose no threat to the world around them, and seem to display the mind-state of happiness. Since these animals are domesticated, and not fit to live in the wild, and since they do not hurt anything and seem to be happy, and in return bring great happiness to humans, there is no harm in keeping them. The second category of animals includes pets such as fish and reptiles that do not seem to display the mind-state of happiness, animals that harm the world around them, such as cows whose flatulence is an air pollutant, and animals such as pigs and chickens that humans would have no reason to keep if we stopped violating their right to life. Animals in this second category should not be murdered, but rather, they should be allowed to continue their lives without reproducing, so they would eventually die out. Again, the right to liberty interlinks with the right to life. To not violate their right to liberty, humans should not enslave animals in zoos, circuses, or farms, or keep wild animals as pets. To do this would be to impose a species hierarchy in which humans are the masters and nonhumans are the slaves. This would be in direct conflict with Libertarian philosophy. Furthermore, all beings possess the right to property. A nonhuman animal's right to property includes the right to living space. A violation of this would be to destroy the habitats of animals living in the wild. This includes cutting down trees, polluting the air and water, and destroying natural habitats for the purpose of building human-made structures. One might ask about the problems of growing populations-if humans and nonhumans continue to reproduce without anything controlling their populations, there will eventually be nowhere to live, thus violating everybody's right to property. This is a valid question. However, without human interference, most nonhuman animal populations will not become overpopulated, as natural predators serve the purpose of controlling these populations. The only exceptions are places in which humans have removed the natural predator. For instance, in Michigan, human hunting keeps the deer population from getting overpopulated, as the deer's natural predator, the wolf, has been removed from this area by human activity. The most natural response to this problem would be to correct the mistake of past generations of humans and reintroduce the wolf to Michigan. While one might argue that the deer's right to life is violated by this act, as the wolves would certainly kill some deer, it is in fact simply a correction of a past human mistake. Had humans done nothing to the wolf population, they would have continued to kill deer to this day, which we would not have been responsible for, as we cannot expect nonhuman animals to live by the moral codes which humans create, we can only control our own behavior. A more pertinent problem is that of human population growth, a phenomenon that will certainly wreak havoc on the world in years to come. As humans do not have a natural predator, and to control population growth by controlling the death rate (i.e., by killing people) would be immoral, human communities should work to control their own birth rates through more effective and available methods of contraception. As a human race, there are many things that we need to do in order to stop violating the rights of nonhuman animals. The first, and most obvious, is to stop killing nonhuman animals. Furthermore, humans should stop using animals in tests, and instead find a better way to test products. There are already alternatives to animal testing, including computer models, and human stem cell research. These ways of testing products are preferable to animal testing. Furthermore, humans should stop destroying the habitats of wild animals, and stop enslaving animals in zoos, circuses, farms, and as pets. Unfortunately, it does not appear that society is moving in this direction. The rights of nonhumans, as well as the rights of humans, continue to be violated on a daily basis. Within this society, however, it is possible for individuals to live morally, by adopting a "vegan" lifestyle. Individuals should, as much as possible within their current economical, bodily, and regional circumstances, abstain from eating animal flesh, eggs, and dairy, abstain from killing animals (including insects) as much as possible, abstain from buying products tested on animals, and abstain from buying products made from animal flesh, such as leather and silk. All individuals can also abstain from taking wild animals as pets, and boycott venues of animal cruelty, such as zoos and circuses. Furthermore, anyone who keeps domesticated nonhuman animals as pets should treat them with the utmost respect, care, and love. There are many, of course, who disagree with the notion that nonhuman animals have rights. In his article, "The Case Against Animal Rights," Carl Cohen presented three main arguments that animals do not have rights. First, Cohen argued that animals are not rational or moral, and therefore have no rights. This argument is flawed for many reasons, the first being that, because of the problem of consciousness, we have no way of knowing if nonhuman animals are rational or moral. One might say that animals often act in an irrational or immoral manner, but so do humans. In fact, it could be argued that humans are more immoral, or at least have a higher capacity for unleashing immorality, than nonhumans. Humans have created more worldwide destruction through wars and pollution than any other species. Yet we would not say that humans do not have rights. Furthermore, rationality is a bad thing to base rights on. Many humans, including small children, mentally challenged people, and people with Alzheimer's disease are considered to be irrational, but they still deserve moral consideration, and still have rights. Cohen later argued that there is no way for identical equality between humans and nonhumans, so nonhumans should not be morally considered to have rights. It is true that there is no way for humans and nonhumans to live identical lives. However, as Peter Singer said in his article, "The Case for Animal Liberation," the point is not to give animals rights that are identical to those of humans, but to equally consider their rights and needs. Furthermore, all beings have a right to life, liberty, and property, and these rights are realized in different ways for different beings. Finally, Cohen's last argument is devoid of any reason or accuracy. Cohen argued that an "absurd" consequence of believing that animals have rights is that humans would have to "not only refrain from all eating of animals but also protest as vehemently against others eating them as against others experimenting on them. No less vigorously must the critic object to the wearing of animal hides in coats and shoes, to employment in any industrial enterprise that uses animals parts, and to any commercial development that will cause death or distress to animals." I completely agree with Cohen's statement, and do not see how such a life could be considered "absurd," as this is how I and many other animal rights advocates choose to live our lives. Clearly, Cohen needs a lesson on what is and isn't absurd. In conclusion, oppressive systems such as capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and species hierarchy are immoral and should be destroyed. In their place, a system of equality, freedom, and non-hierarchy should be implemented in which all sentient beings can live harmoniously. It is important for individuals within this unjust society to live as morally as possible, in order to overthrow the systems that oppress us all.