Dreamer here.  Damn, damn, damn.  I wrote a long response to this post on 
Mill and attempted to send it, but the internet appears to have eaten it and 
left me not a trace.  I'll try to piece it back together.

> >Steve said:
> >
John
> >Stuart Mill, the nineteenth century's preeminenet philosopher of
> >liberalism, wrote in 1848 that the law making in a crime for parents to
> >abuse their children should be extended to 'apply not less strongly to 
>the
> >case of those unfortunate slaves and victims...the lower animals.'"
>
Tantillo replied: >Glad you brought up Mill--I've been thinking a lot about 
Mill lately and
>rereading some of his work.  With all due respect, I think that your email
>(and the thinking of many other animal rights folks) simply misunderstands
>political liberalism.  Mill considers it a great evil to encroach on the
>freedoms of others, even when those others are engaging in conduct you may
>disapprove of.   The whole notion of "toleration" in liberalism is aimed at
>keeping what Mill calls the "moral police" out of people's business and at
>protecting individual freedoms.

Dreamer (who holds "On Liberty" in the very highest regard)says: Mill holds 
to the "Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins" school of 
thought.  It is an evil to abridge people's freedom to think, speak, and act 
as they like in ways which do no objective harm to others.  But Mill 
recognizes that beings may appropriately be limited when they objectively 
harm other beings.
>

>>Tantillo again: Here is where Mill comes in.  In "On Liberty," Mill writes
>that it is a great evil to encroach on other people's freedoms, and
>*especially* so in cases where the would-be encroacher feels a sense of
>personal revulsion toward another's behavior and considers this revulsion
>to be an injury.  Mill writes:
>"There are many who consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which
>they have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings; as
>a religious bigot, when charged with disregarding the religious feelings of
>others, has been known to retort that they disregard his feelings, by
>persisting in their abominable worship or creed."
>I don't think it's too much of a stretch to insert "AR extremist" (or
>"environmental extremist," for that matter) where Mill writes, "religious 
> >bigot."

Dreamer: The analogy is inappropriate.  AR activists do not object to 
hunting or vivisection on their own behalf on the grounds that their own 
revulsion is an injury.  This distinction is not difficult to grasp.  I feel 
revulsion for murder, and I oppose murder, but I do not justify my 
opposition on the basis of my own injury.  I justify it on the basis of the 
injury to another being.
>
Tantillo: Mill continues (I've reversed the order of this sentence and the 
previous one):
>
>"But the opinion of a similar majority, imposed as a law on the minority,
>on questions of self-regarding conduct, is quite as likely to be wrong as
>right; for in these cases public opinion means, at the best, some people's
>opinion of what is good or bad for other people; while very often it does
>not even mean that; the public, with the most perfect indifference, passing
>over the pleasure or convenience of those whose conduct they censure, and
>considering only their own preference."

Dreamer:  the key words in this passage are "self-regarding conduct."  This 
is what Mill seeks to protect.  In the opinion of AR activists, hunting and 
vivisection are not self-regarding conduct.  This is my opinion also, and I 
imagine it would be Mr. Mill's.
>
Tantillo: >What example does Mill choose to illustrate where the moral 
police would go
>too far?  The example of meat-eating:  more specifically, he describes the
>Muslim objection to the eating of pork.

Dreamer:  Mill objects to the Muslim prohibitions as being based solely on 
religious preference.  If the prohibitions had been expressly intended to 
protect the interests of the animals, Mill's view might have been different, 
as is suggested by Steve's quote.

Tantillo: . . .  And consider the animal activists' moral sincerity; for as
>Mill notes, "They also sincerely think that it is forbidden and abhorred by
>the Deity"--or at least, that it is forbidden and contrary to Natural Law,
>judging from Adam's reference above to "animal rights (as in "natural
>rights" extended to animals)."

Dreamer:  This reasoning is off:  Mill says personal revulsion is not 
adequate grounds for prohibiting conduct; therefore any conduct which 
prompts personal revulsion ought not to be prohibited?  I don't think so.


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