Dreamer here again.  Jim, as usual makes some interesting points, which 
could do with some balancing.

Tantillo:
>In his book on the Quabbin Reservoir controversy, Jan Dizard writes:
>"Animal rights is, at root, about the regulation of pleasure--the pleasure
>derived from the hunt, the pleasure derived from eating meat, the pleasure
>derived from cosmetics.  Regulation of pleasure is also the exercise of
>power: the power to determine how people should live and what enjoyments
>they should seek." (128)

Dreamer: Interesting.  The criminalization of rape could be similarly viewed 
as "the regulation of pleasure" -- the pleasure derived from the stalk, and 
the pleasure derived from the nonconsensual sexual act.  Of course, more to 
the point, it's really about the regulation of hurtful conduct, just as 
animal rights is.  To say that animal rights is about the exercise of power 
(as opposed to hunting?!) seems a bit backwards.
>
Jim cites several more examples from Mill of "self-regarding conduct" which 
ought not to be regulated, including:

>
(a) Puritan prohibitions on
>music, dancing, and theatrical play-acting; (b) the moral regulation of
>conspicuous spending in America, accomplished (in Mill's view) by a
>repressive climate of public moral opinion; (c) the temperance movement and
>prohibitions on drinking alcohol; (d) regulations of permissible activities
>on the Sabbath, or "sabbatarian legislation" (blue laws); and (e) the
>quasi-official American policy of persecuting the Mormons.

Dreamer: again, all of these sorts of conduct are self-regarding in a way 
that animal hunting and vivisection are not.  Drinking alcohol on the 
Sabbath, for instance, hurts no being (arguably) other than the drinker.
>

>
Tantillo . . . >As Dizard says in another context: "Anti-hunters and animal 
advocates are,
>for all their pretense to liberalism, are in fact intolerant, more nearly
>kin to Cotton Mather than to Tom Paine.  They come from a long and sorry
>line of moral reformers who have little patience with democracy, let alone
>tolerance of those who see the world differently."

Dreamer:  Certainly they are intolerant.  The question is whether the 
conduct they are intolerant of is deserving of intolerance.  John Brown and 
Mr. Garrison were very intolerant of the enslavement of other human beings.  
It's probably a fortunate thing that they were.  Of course, slavery was 
undoubtedly a source of pleasure and power to Southern slave owners, and 
abolition might accordingly have been condemned as the "regulation of 
pleasure," but such an argument would appear to have only marginal 
relevance.  As for the outspoken Mr. Paine, I rather imagine he would be on 
the side of the AR folks were he with us today.
>
Tantillo:  >So, contrary to Adam Gottschalk's and Roderick Nash's reading of 
animal
>rights being a natural outgrowth of English liberalism and the
>Enlightenment, I think it is more appropriate to view the animal rights
>movement as *anti-liberal*, and extremely so.  Rather than portraying
>animal rights activists as "animal liberators" or as environmental "freedom
>fighters," we would be better off characterizing the more extreme factions
>of the movement as religious fundamentalists--or as Eric Hoffer put it in
>his book on mass movements, as "true believers."
>
Dreamer:  It's a cogent argument, Jim, but until you can deal forthrightly 
with the distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding conduct, I'm 
not sold.

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