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Personally, I am somewhat sympathetic to this position. I don't think it follows from the fact that animals are sentient that animals can reason. Certainly they don't have conceptual thought and language, not even remotely the way humans do. And if they did posses full rights, it wouldn't follow that you shouldn't just kill them, but you couldn't compel them at all. I want to clear out some land and build a farm, well I can't because some muskrat of some sort has made it his home. Silliness follows from this. But I am somewhat sympathetic, like I said, to some sort of basic animal rights, to be differentiated from human rights. It is clear that they are sentient beings, and have some sort of basic level of awareness and free will, they have emotions and personality, research shows even that some of the more intelligent ones can abstract and even form some first level concepts. I think this leads to a certain very basic level of protection, that you can be compelled by the law not to cause unnecessary suffering and cruelty to animals. They can still be killed and eaten, can still be used for our ends and purposes, but that has to be done within certain cruelty laws. Idon't think most objectivists believe this, unfortunately, they believe it to be monstrous and immoral, of course, just that the law cannot address it. Interestingly enough, it seems that Ayn Rand was also very sympathetic to the idea of animal rights, she just thought ultimately it couldn't be proven, according to Barbara Branden in an interview in Liberty Magazine. Source: http://mises.org/journals/liberty/Liberty_Magazine_January_1990.pdf

I love Nietzsche. I suppose it comes from a familiar unbridled rebellion that runs in my family. I was raised by teenaged alcoholic drug addicts.... I love my family. A thousand generations of prostitutes daughters got to this point in time just as surely as a thousand generations of preachers sons. Any time you are faced with the stanch pride of an idiot arrogantly defending his right to his beliefs, remember his DNA is 3.8 Billions years as old as you are. Remember also, your children's DNA is 14 to 75 years older than yours. The same rebellion that drove us across the ocean in rat infested wooden ships, the same rebellion that drove us across the prairies... makes us gaze at Mars in strange anticipation. Forever running from the controllers. Nietzsche explores the intricacies of rebellion with such a playful rhythm. Irrationality as a necessity of evolutionary adaptation. Imagination can get you through years of imprisonment and a few dark ages. "Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music" - Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil begins: "What if the truth is a woman? What then?" By the time I get to the end of it, I think maybe a woman wrote this book, used his name, and she is the reason Nietzsche went crazy and spent his last ten years in isolation. If you go through the whole book and replace truth with false, false with truth, man with woman, woman with man, woman with truth, man with false.... And pay extra special attention to the very intricate broad abstractions he punctuates with a "WHAT?" throughout. Its just breathtaking how many ways I can imagine him meaning everything and its opposite. It is an Olympian sized exercise in exploring any given topic from as many angles and positions as possible, you find the truth in there, and she is not such a weakling as to need rescuing. I forgive his shortcomings thinking you can only do so much, on your own, during the times in which you live.

I would not start with a contemporary socialist-influenced concept of “right” which means “the entitlement to have a thing”. I would also set aside the question of whether rights can be “proven”. Instead, I would start with the simple problem of moral evaluation: do you accept that there is a difference between “right” versus “wrong”? There is a good chance that your interlocutor does not believe in “right” vs. “wrong”, or “good” versus “evil”, so any discussion that presumes such a distinction when the other party rejects the distinction can go nowhere useful. You really have to start with the foundation, not the middle (where you pray that you’re standing on a solid foundation). Since you seem to be working towards a logical exposition of “rights”, I would suggest first getting a firm grasp of the concept “value”, because without it, all ethical discussions are pointless. Notice in The Virtue of Selfishness that Rand does not start with the concept of rights, she builds up to it. (So see also OPAR and Tara Smith Viable Values). Point #2 of 2046's answer, elaborated by Smith, should help get you past the "morgue-avoidance" thery of "living".

"How do I live in a country…" …This translates (to me) to mean, how do you manage your frustration with things you think are never going to get better? Universal Health Care is a scam. The people pushing it know its never going to work. The more they push it the worse it gets. Which intern insights delusional people to scream louder for it. The terror of death is what keeps it going. Everyone wants to live forever and they will give their last dime, their home, any legacy they have for their families future, and get themselves in hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt. Just to stay alive as a guinea pig for another couple years. This is what they want the government nanny state to pay for. Cry SAFETY!! The ultimate tool of stagnation. No one is safer than the man is a straight jacket in a padded cell. Death is so horrifying for most mystics that they will buy any snake oil that promises eternal life. The safest sounding prescriptions from the oldest biggest churches. All hail big FDarma. It is difficult for a person who doesn’t want “power over another person” to understand, communicate with, or come to an agreement with a person who does want power and does want control over others. They want so much control and power, that they perceive your refusing their power or control as another power/control tactic. “Attention whore control freak” is a label that pops into my head more and more as I contemplate the problems in the world that my mind can’t seem to turn away form. Every mystic who stands in front on the pulpit is desperate to keep their audience attention. Their focus is not on quality, but on quantity. They get people to listen by playing to their weakness and telling them what they want to hear. Every decision in an irrational person’s life seems to be rooted in fear. They are so saturated with fear that telling them they do not have to live a life of fear causes them panic and terror. As though you are taking away their only protection, their only lifeline. The alternative you offer them seems impossible for their atrophied mind to grasp, the amount of mental effort to get themselves to a better place is alien. They can not see the context of the better place, they only see the loss of their traditions, and their feelings of belonging. Are you offering them anything better really? Does your approach reflect how ‘good’ your own system is? It seems so much easier to be a forgiven sheep, than it is to stand up as a man. Calling them evil is making yourself a target. JudaeoChristian values have survived for 5000 years, as countless others have fallen or been absorbed. The Bible is full of the ample examples of physical and psychological warfare they have engaged in. Have you ever read the Bible? Do you even know who your enemy is? They are masters of war, and your cries of despair fuel their fire. Darwin states that it isn’t the strongest or the smartest that survive, but the most adaptable to change. The Judaeo/Christian movement has certainly adapted. How long will your own personal movement last? Are there paths that will help mystics adapt to greater and greater rationality?

In the objectivist view, conflict over the use of goods is solved by adherence to strict private property rights. The function of government is to organize a body of law based on that principle. 1. Pollution is the export of harmful particles onto someone else's physical body or property. Just as if I came and dumped my garbage on your lawn, if I am exporting harmful air onto your property I can be made to stop via a legal injunction, and sued for the damages. Indeed, historically this was the legal tradition, the problems involving pollution have been caused by the governments failure to live up to this role and to allow certain producers to export pollution in the name of the "public good." 2 and 3. Again, in a free society people will always have conflicting values. Differing opinions regarding the use of scarce resources is part of human nature. I want to do this on some property, you want to do that, who decides? Private property rights involves a kind of meta-ethical space in which people can seek their interests without coming into physical confrontation. In a market economy, individual choices and tastes prevail. Not all members of society will approve of the choices of others. But, by and large, the mass of the consumer choices will determine the way in which resources are used. Ifa library or retail store started allowing dress (or non-dress) far out of line with cultural value systems of the mainstream, consumers will be quick to express dissatisfaction with these management decisions. Same in education services. Some prefer Catholic schools, creationism, others a liberal arts education, or progressive education. Who decides what the schools should do? There is not one monopoly decision. Parents, as consumers, decide with their money, and the owners pay the price of their decision in terms of profit or loss. That is the beauty of the market system, when there is not one single monopoly decision. Let a million different flowers bloom, as the Maoists say.