Plants have rights?

This is just silly.

In her blog/column today, Minneapolis Star/Tribune writer Katherine Kersten writes about the Swiss deciding that people's treatment of plants can be immoral. She got her information from this article in the Weekly Standard. So now, I point you to both.

Here is the most important point of the article:

What is clear, however, is that Switzerland's enshrining of "plant dignity" is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.

I suspect that, even in Switzerland, this is "left of center" - a fringe opinion which has been given more weight than it should because of the vague, open-ended nature of their constitutional change. Nevertheless, when the precious time and energy of tax-funded minds is being spent on what amounts to protecting weeds and blades of grass, priorities need some serious sorting.