the animals Voice

pre sents

the life and times of

tom Regan

Kinship

I am the voice of the voiceless;

Through me the dumb shall speak

Till the deaf world’s ear be made to hear

The wrongs of the wordless weak.

From street, from cage and from kennel,

From stable and zoo, the wail

Of my tortured kin proclaims the sin

Of the mighty against the frail.

Oh, shame on the mothers of mortals

Who have not stopped to teach

Of the sorrow that lies in dear, dumb eyes,

The sorrow that has no speech.

The same force formed the sparrow

That fashioned man the king;

The God of the whole gave a spark of soul

To furred and to feathered thing.

And I am my brother’s keeper

And I shall fight his fight

And speak the word for beast and bird

Till the world shall set things right.

—Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1850-1919

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

3On the Road Againby Laura A. Moretti

4The Power of Networking

by Veda Stram

6The Bird in the Cageby Tom Regan

30A Tom Regan Potpourri

34Regan on Animal Exploitation

38Resources

The Animals Voice PresentsPublisher

The Animals Voice

Laura MorettiEditor & Design Production

1380 East Ave., Suite 124, #252Chico, CA 95926

EMAIL: 4rights@animalsvoice.comWEB: www.animalsvoice.com

The Animals Voice Presents is published with the tax-deductible donations of its supporters.

On the Road AgainFor those of you who remember The

Animals Voice Magazine, we hopeyou’ll appreciate our new publication,The Animals Voice Presents. And forthose of you new to The Animals Voiceand its myriad of projects and publica-tions, we welcome you into our family.

As financial support for The Ani malsVoice Presents grows—and we surehope it does—we’ll broaden its contentscope by including all the things our twomillion visitors appreciate about ourweb site: timely news, a calendar ofevents, action alerts, guest commen-taries, compelling photography, and thelike. In the meantime, allow us to pre-sent our first topic: “The Life and Timesof Tom Regan.”

I first discovered Tom’s work when Iwas just out of high school, in a booktitled Animal Rights and Human Obli -ga tions, one he co-edited with PeterSinger. It was such a rare find that Ichecked it out of the library for weeks ata time just so I could carry it aroundwith me and know there was anotheranimal rights activist somewhere onplanet Earth. The book became my com-panion, a conduit to my sanity. For, yousee, back in 1977, there wasn’t any suchthing as an animal rights activist, tospeak of, let alone an animal rightsmove ment.

And suffice it to say, the town I was living in was a long way from progres-sive thinking, even for three decadesago. So it was quite un believable, I mustadmit, when the Cali for nia State Univer -sity, Chico, faculty invited Tom Reganto visit its campus in the spring of 1987,some ten years after I’d first discoveredthat such a man even existed—thoughbetter late than never, I say.

The year before Tom’s arrival, I’dbegun production on a little and a little-known newsletter I called The AnimalsVoice. Combining my skills in graphicdesign with my passion for animaldefense, I did all I knew to help animals:

educate others about their plight inhuman hands and rely on the humanheart to do the rest.

Tom was kind enough to give me aninterview; The Animals Voice was nobooming publication, and the article waseven small er, a shortpiece on civil disobedi-ence. But I scraped upenough dollars to have afew thousand printed, andsomehow that put us onthe map. Tom then sug-gested that I contact GilMichaels, an activist inLos Angeles who had thefunding to produce thenews letter as a magazine,but I didn’t have thecourage. I was a nobodyfrom a small town innorthern Califor nia, doing all I knew todo, and I couldn’t imagine it being worthy of anyone else’s effort. But Tomhad faith in me even if I didn’t—beforeI knew it, I was in the middle of anaward-winning, international full-coloranimal rights magazine—and it was fullsteam ahead.

We went off press in 1997 due tofunding issues, and went online in 2000.But I can’t get the need to see animalrights in print out of my system, so hereI am, starting over. I also couldn’t thinkof a better way to begin again than tocome full circle: by presenting herewiththe life and times of Tom Regan (in hisown words). If you’re new to animalrights, his story is an invaluable historylesson; if you’re a pioneer, you’ll enjoythe walk down Memory Lane.

And since Tom Regan won’t tell youthis, I will: There wouldn’t be anAnimals Voice without him.

In any of its incarnations.So, here’s to you, Tom.

LAURA A. MORETTI

The very firstAnimals Voice, 4pages, producedon a typewriter.

Cover photosfrom left to right:Tom Regan as aninfant; Regan asa boy playing inthe snow withTippy; his highschool graduationpicture; and Tom,a master spokes -man and lecturer.

COVER PHOTOS: COURTESY CULTURE

AND ANIMALS FOUNDATION

T H E A N I M A L S V O I C E P R E S E N T S

From the helpless horror of onenine-year-old girl watching a dog stran-gled to death only a few yards in frontof her to a web site providing some5,000 visitors a day with the harsh real-ities of how animals are treated—andalso providing visitors with thousandsof resources to help animals—the history of The Animals Voice demon-strates the power of a single voice andthe exponential—inevitably magical—power when voices connect.

When nine-year-old Laura Morettistood petrified and speechless, thatdog’s cries reached her ears and lodgedin her heart, never to disappear.

At twelve, she began writing shortstories and essays about animals.People who “loved animals” read themand just adored them and asked her towrite more. So she did.

At thirteen she tuned into what shehoped would be a TV special extolling

the beauty of seals, but watched in horror as a hunter’s boot stomped on aseal pup until it died, screaming. Andthen she wrote about that.

At fifteen she began mimeograph-ing her essays and, for the next severalyears, mailed and faxed them to thehandful of people on earth who werestarting to talk about animal rights—people who sensed that a movementwas beginning. They listened for similarities in philosophical, artistic,legal and educational domains—shar-

ing everything they could get theirhands on with everybody they thoughtmight have a sense of animal rights.

Tom Regan met Laura in her home-town of Chico, California, when shewas 29. She had been amazed to find hewas coming there to give a lecture andpresent a film on—of all things!—animal rights.

Gil Michaels was a man whose lifehad only recently been altered by hishearing the cries of animals. TomRegan gave Gil Laura’s phone number.Gil called and—having the financialability to do so—made her an offer shecouldn’t refuse: to provide beyond-her-dreams funding for production ofThe Animals Voice, publishing it as ahigh-gloss, full-color, profes sion allyresearched and marketed publication.

The premiere issue was launched inthe spring of 1988 to the profoundappreciation of animal activists aroundthe world. Gil generously financed theThe Animals Voice Magazine until1993. After that, Laura and Jeri Lernerslavishly and devotedly kept the maga-zine alive and in production until it wasno longer financially viable. The lastissue was published in March of 1997.

Realizing the dynamic potential andunbelievable reach of the Internet,Laura taught herself web design with a

It’s a matter of taking the side of the weakagainst the strong—something the best peoplehave always done. –Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1811-1896

I N G O O D C O M P A N Y

“

”

Gil Michaels wasa man whose lifehad only recentlybeen altered byhis hearing the

cries of animals.

The Power of History andNetworking

4

T H E C A S E F O R A N I M A L R I G H T S

small grant from Sudhir Amembal, aformer Board President and AnimalsVoice Magazine supporter. In 2000,they created and launched AnimalsVoice Online: www.animalsvoice.com.

The reason for telling you thisabbreviated history of The AnimalsVoice is to remind you of the impact ofone voice, one lecture, one phone call.

Stated that way, it probably doesn'tinspire excitement or enthusiasm or alife-altering awakening.

And this is the point.Excitement and enthusiasm and

life-altering awakenings may happenwhen we are alone and listening to ourown voice. But we all really know thatmagic happens, that differences getmade, that paradigms shift, when ourvoices are in concertwith the voices ofother human beings.

Whenever youdoubt the ability ofone i nd iv idua l t omake a difference, re -member the powerlessnine-year-old girl whocreated a vehicle thatem pow ers and sup-ports thousands ofpeople every day—day after day, yearafter year.

When you hesitateto go to one moremeeting because you’retired or don’t likesome of the people who may be thereor wonder what difference can it make

anyway, remember Laura going to hearTom Regan’s presentation.

When you meet someone on thestreet or over the phone or via theInternet and hesitate to speak of thisgreat person or this fantastic projectthat matters to you, remember that Tomcalled Gil.

Having taken on the Herculean taskof creating a world free of animal cruelty, discouragement is inevitable.And, a friend once advised me to“never underestimate the inevitabilityof gradualness.” If each of us takesaction, and then we work with eachother, our success will be inevitable.

If you are reading this, then you aresomeone who is and has been a voicefor animals. And too bad for whateveryour opinions may be about you, youare hereby profoundly acknowledgedfor having been heard, for having got-ten through, for having altered peoples’relationships with animals.

And in doing that, you are causing aworld that works for everyone andeverything, with no one and nothingleft out.

Thank you for being the animals’voice.

5

The premiere issue of The Animals

Voice Magazine was launched in

the spring of 1988 to the profound

appreciation of animal rights

activists around the world.

VEDA STRAM

BEGINNINGS: A KID OF THE STREETSI was born and raised in Pitts burgh,

Pennsylvania—“the Burgh” as we whohave lived there call it. Although I havenot had a permanent residence there formore than forty years I still considerPittsburgh my home. The Burgh sets itsroots deep in those who have known it.The City gets in your blood. You can’tgo away from home again.

The house where I spent the first

fifteen years of my life fronted Califor -nia Avenue, a busy thoroughfare on thecity’s North Side: three lanes of traffic,two trolley lines. It could get hectic. Wenever played ball on California Avenue.Beyond the traffic there was a sharpdrop to a leveled space some fifteen feetbelow the street. A dozen train trackssliced their way to the horizon. Youcould not see the trains, either from thestreet or from the second story windowsof our house. But their relentless pres-ence was the most dominant aspect ofdaily life.

This was before diesel engines.Every thing was steam. That means coal-powered. The air was filled with greatplumes of grayish white smoke andphosphorescent cinders that glowed inthe night air. Pass enger and freight trainshurried by, their whistles wailingthroughout the day and all the night.Every where there was the crashingsound of cars being coupled and uncou-pled on the Hump. Great lines of cars,hundreds at a time—freight and oil,flatbeds and cattle—were strung togeth-

er by the skilled workmen. Twenty-fourhours a day, seven days a week, everyday of every month, you heard the soundof heavy metal.

Everyone who lived along thissprawling artery that linked the coal -mines of West Virginia to the steel millsof Pittsburgh belonged to the railroad.This was true even when, as in my fam-ily’s case, no one worked for it. The sootand smoke invaded your eyes and ears,your nose and mouth, the elastic aroundyour underwear and the clothes in yourdresser. When you took a bath, a blackring remained in the tub after youdrained it, a reminder, lest one forget—how could one?—of the clanging worldoutside. My neighborhood was a child’sparadise, a place where a kid could lux-uriate in the steamy dirt of industrialurban living.

That neighborhood is all but gonenow. The house where I was raised hasbeen demolished. In fact the entire smallblock of houses now is an open field,full of weeds and wildflowers. Even therailroad is all but idle. Most of the hous-

by Tom Regan

Portions of thisautobiograhy were

previously pub lishedin 'Between theSpecies,' 1985.

A Bird in the Cage

T H E A N I M A L S V O I C E P R E S E N T S

6

The human mind is remarkable forits ability to see the world in bits and pieces, like an expansive vistaviewed through the narrow slits of a picket fence.

es that remain have been boarded up,condemned by the city as uninhabitable.

When I drive through the neighbor-hood today, grown silent and all butdeserted, I am a ghost in a ghost town.No one from my youth remains.

Viewing the fading shrouds of what wasonce a vibrant neighborhood, where VJDay and the Fourth of July were cele-brated with patriotic fervor, where Jewsmixed with gentiles, whites with blacks,every nationality with every other, noone would believe that there once werepeople here who loved these streets andnarrow alleyways, the hard cementporches and creaking swings, the wood-en steps winding to the hills above. Butlove it I did. It always saddens me to seethe stilled emptiness “progress” has leftin its wake.

As a kid of the streets, the animals Iknew were mostly the animals of thestreets. Mainly cats and dogs but therewere horses, too. In those days vendorsand junkmen rode four-wheeled wagonsthrough the city, pulled by stoop-shoul-dered, weary creatures who were occa-sionally aroused from their dolorousfatigue by the high pitched clang of atrolley’s bell or the crack of the driver’swhip.

Tippy was another matter. One hun-dred percent mutt, she was an energetic,tri-colored wisp of a dog with a small but

clear tip of white at the very end of hertail. She was eager for affection anddesigned by nature to be free. Give herjust the slightest crack in the gate andpow!—she was gone! Like a shot she wasthrough the gate and around the corner.

I understand now that she lacked thespace she needed to be the dog she was.Still, Tippy did not want for warmhuman companionship. My fondestmemory of her is when, wonder of won-ders, thirty-six inches of snow fell onPittsburgh in a matter of a few days.That kind of development suspends allthe ordinary rules of behavior. Tippyspent long hours free to wander andplay. She knew a good time when shehad one. Some photographs of thosedays remain. It is hard to tell who is happiest—Tippy or me.

EXCURSIONS: THE COUNTRYNot everything was urban in my

youth. Along with my parents and sisterI enjoyed fishing along the upperAllegheny River. We also visited friendswho had farms. Some times I stayed onfor a day, maybe a weekend, occasion -ally a week.

The farm I knew best was small,devoted mainly to vegetables and flow-ers. In the winter, plants were grown ina long, low-slung greenhouse. It wasbewildering to enter that luminousspace, quiet as a church, feel the accu-mulated heat of the sun on a bitterly coldday and smell the sometimes dank,some times sweet odors of the plants.With out a doubt these were the mostmysterious, most awesome moments ofmy youth, occasions when my experi-ence was so full of inchoate meaningthat I could not then, and cannot now,find the words to describe it. It was, Ithink, more a yearning than a fact I felt.

My guess is, many people of mygeneration had a farm like this in theirchildhood. Back then, families took drives in the country on Sundays; farmswere places people visited. Urban kidsof my time and place were bred and

T H E L I F E A N D T I M E S O F T O M R E G A N

7

The house, whereRegan spent thefirst fifteen years of his life,fronted CaliforniaAvenue in Pitts -burgh.

raised on the machine, but we took sustenance in our real and imaginarycommerce with the garden.

Some children understand early onwhat meat is. They realize that a roast ora pork chop or a chicken leg is a piece ofdead animal. A corpse. I was not that

precocious. Like most Americans I grewup unmindful of the food on my plateand the death of the creature it repre-sents. The animals I knew personally,Tippy for one, I considered my friends.But I lacked the imagination then tomake the connection between my fond-ness for these animals and the silentpieces of flesh that came from my moth-er’s skillet or oven. The human mind isremarkable for its ability to see theworld in bits and pieces, each part dis-connected from the rest, like an expan-sive vista viewed through the narrowslits of a picket fence. It was not untilmuch later in my life that the force oflogic and the vicissitudes of experienceoverwhelmed the chronic idleness of myimagination.

TRANSITION: THE BURBSHad my family remained on the

North Side it is virtually certain that Iwould never have gone to college.People in that neighborhood grew up towork, not to study. My parents wereproducts of that pattern. Neither finished

the ninth grade. There was work to bedone. Mouths to be fed. Education was aluxury. My parents were unable to paythe price.

My sister was different: She gradu -ated from high school. But then the pat-tern took hold again. She went directlyfrom the classroom to the workforce. Amuch better student than I was andnatively much smart er, she was certainto have had a distinguished universitycareer had she had the opportunity. AndI? I was destined to follow my sister’slead. The duty of work called. It was nota matter of whether but where to getdown to the task of making a living.

But then a momentous thing hap-pened: We moved. To the suburbs. Myparents decided that they had had it.That grime-filled heaven of my boyhoodhad been their hell for too long. We weregetting out! No ifs, ands, or buts. And I?I was fifteen, with deep roots in thefriendships and places of my youth. Ifever a child was resentful and full ofanger, these powerful emotions found ahome in me. I was determined to beunhappy.

The world did not cooperate with myresolve. In the end, the move was not astraumatic as I was bent on making it. Imade new friends and soon foundmyself a part of a quite different envi-ronment. Many of my friends’ parentshad gone to college. They had profes-sions—in medicine, the law, education.Their taste for culture trickled down totheir children and, through them, to me.I soon found myself reading and talkingabout Camus and Andre Gide, dis-cussing Nietzsche and Norman Mailer,listening to Bartok and Stravinsky. Withmy companions I drove into and aroundthe Burgh to watch foreign and classicfilms. We debated God’s existence andfree will into the morning hours. For thefirst time in my life I began to write.Horrible fiction. Worse poetry. But Itook the demands of the Muse seriously.And my teachers liked it. They told me Iwas a writer-in-the-making.

Music was important. By my junior8

Tom Regan, as aboy, playing inthe snow with

Tippy.

year I was making a little money playingin big dance bands and in small combos.I played any reed instrument but mainlyclarinet and tenor sax. I doubt if I everwould have become a really good musi-cian had I continued playing. I enjoyedthe camaraderie as much as the music.In the civilian world the closeness ofmusicians may be the nearest thing tothose legendary wartime friendshipsformed in foxholes.

After graduating from North Alle -gheny High School I went to college.This I did for a simple reason: it waswhat all my friends were doing. I thenhad only the faintest idea about what acollege was. All I knew firsthand wasthat people “like me” went to onebecause—well, because that’s what col-leges were for. I was encouraged in thisbelief by the testimony of my teachersand other interested persons. I had agood but hardly outstanding academicrecord in high school (top tenth of myclass, as I recall). Every Open House allmy teachers told my parents the samething: “Tommy could do much better ifonly he would apply himself.” “Whocouldn’t?” I wondered at the time. Andstill do.

One person in particular, Rever endLuther Fackler, who was the minister ofthe Lutheran Church I attended, encour-aged me to give college a try. I thought Ifelt a “calling” for the ministry. But Iwas unsettled in my faith. Even before Iwent off to college I was unable to joinin the recitation of the Apostles’ Creed.The words stuck in my throat. ReverendFackler told me not to worry. God wouldfind me—but only if I stopped trying tofind God. This seems as unsound to menow as it did to me then. Any God whowould find me only on the condition thatI was looking the other way is a God notworth finding. That much hubris anyhuman worthy of being created by Godought to have.

I wrote an essay on this issue at thetime, called “The Seeker.” Nei ther per-turbed nor distracted, Rev er end Facklercounseled me not to worry. A true faith

is measured by the depth of its tempta-tions to deny, he said. As I was sorelytempted in the latter regard, off I went tocollege, to find (or, perhaps, to be found

by) the Divine Mind. I chose Rev erendFackler’s college—Thiel Col lege, asmall liberal arts college affiliated withthe Lutheran Church, an hour and a halfdrive north of Pittsburgh. I applied to noother. My friends’ parents were mostsupportive. My mother and father for avariety of reasons were less sure. I wastoo. Folks from the North Side couldsmell trouble a mile away.

ON THE BANKS OF THE SHENANGO:THIEL COLLEGE

At the beginning, college was every-thing my last years in high school hadnot been. I had a hard time makingfriends during my freshman year,despite playing (at 138 pounds) halfbackon the football team. To say I “played”halfback in college may be—well, actu-ally it is an exaggeration. I did letter infootball (and in track and golf) in highschool. College was a different league. Iwas in over my head and should havehad enough sense to quit. It was not untilmy sophomore year that the Age ofWisdom dawned. I never played varsityfootball again. But even to this day I har-bor the belief, as deep and unfalsifiableas any I have ever held, that I have goodhands. You throw a ball near me anddamned if I won’t catch it!

Whatever Red Barber might writeabout my sporting life, my early acade-mic career at Thiel was unspectacular.Something like a 2.5 average on a 4.0system. Before go ing off to college, as Imentioned earlier, my teachers encour-aged me in the belief that I might some-day be a writer. My teachers during myfirst two years at Thiel seemed to be 9

Philosophical argument can lead theheart to water, but perhaps it is onlyexperience that can make it drink.

intent upon demonstrating how repre-hensible my high school teachers hadbeen in fostering this belief in me. Ireceived a more or less steady stream ofDs and Fs for my early compositions.This gave me second thoughts. Perhapsthe Muse I was listening to spoke in dangling participles? I even managed toflunk Spanish. Elementary Spanish atthat. Believe me, I thought long and hardabout quitting more than once.

But then—and this was perhaps themost important event in my early yearsas a prodigal scholar—I stopped wear-ing socks. You need to understand: backthen, no one, I mean absolutely no one,went sockless. Back then baring yourankles in public was the social equiva-lent of walking around in your under-wear. Moreover, as I embarked on mysophomore year, I stopped going toclass. In a course in English Novel, forexample, I showed up twice. Once forthe mid-term. Once for the final. When Ireceived a B+ for the course, who coulddoubt that I was above the commonfray? I was becoming somebody. As myparents scrimped and saved, I spent mytime burnishing my public image by notwearing socks, not going to class, stay-ing up to two or three in the morningwinning pocket money at poker andbridge, playing in dance bands and com-bos, and (on most days) sleeping wellpast noon.

In retrospect, I count my lucky starsin the knowledge that, through out thisperiod of my life, my parents neverknew I was wasting their hard-earnedmoney as I squandered opportunitiesthey could never have imagined.

TO AVOID HISTORY: A PHILOSOPHERIS BORN

A crisis occurred during my junioryear. I was an English major at the timeand to complete the required course ofstudies I was obliged to take a full yearof English history as well as a year ofUnited States and Pennsylvania history.This was like asking me to spend hourslounging on a bed of hot coals. What -ever talents and interests I may have had

at this time, the study of history did notnourish or answer them. Fortunately forme, the forces of serendipity took chargeof my life—not for the first or the lasttime.

Thiel was just about to introduce anew major in philosophy. I had taken afew philosophy courses by then and waspleased to discover that a subject actual-ly existed where people discussed thequestions I increasingly was inclined toask on my own. In addition, my profes-sors in philosophy showed an interest inme that was lacking in most of theircounterparts in English. I would like tobe able to say that I decided to major inphilosophy because of my commitmentto pursue Truth, whatever the cost. Butthe really decisive factor in my decisionto change was far more banal. This newmajor in philosophy did not require anyclasses in history over and above those Ihad already taken.

That much settled, the decision waseasy. I was to be Thiel College’s first-ever philosophy major. It was a decisionmade in the stars. During my senior yearI was virtually a straight A student, bare-ly graduating, however, because of a Dfor the second semester of ElementarySpanish. I doubt if I could do any bettertoday. Many are called but few are chosen to Elementary Spanish.

By the time of my graduation from

Thiel I had abandoned any desire I mayonce have had to prepare myself for theministry. I didn’t know where I washeaded. My summer employment as acounselor at a YMCA camp was fulfill-ing. Another summer’s apprenticeship ina local butcher shop was not. This wasnot because I found butchering ethicallyintolerable. I had no moral qualms what-10

It is no exaggeration to say that, dur-ing the past thirty years, philoso-phers have written vastly more on the topic of ethics and animals thanour predecessors had written in the previous three thousand.

ever about preparing the ground meat,making city-chicken, stocking the cold-cut section, fixing the minute steaks, orskewering the chickens for the rotis-serie. My hands were deep into the

corpses of animals, but I was stone deafto their cries. I didn’t like my appren-ticeship because the work was toobloody hard, not because it was toobloody. My days in the butcher’s tradewere numbered. But not for anythinglike the right reasons.

As my graduation from Thielapproached I interviewed for a variety ofjobs: selling insurance for Sears; servingas a Youth Counselor for a suburbanbranch of the YMCA; pursuing a careerin marketing for H.J. Heinz. These inter-views were glorious fiascoes. It did nottake me long to learn that I was a roundpeg trying to fit into square holes. Iknew quite well what I did not want todo. The problem was to find the roundhole that answered my needs and interests.

If the idea of college was mysteriousto me while I was in high school, theidea of graduate school was even moreincomprehensible to me while I was incollege. “What was a graduate school?”I wondered. “And what did a person dothere?” I had only the foggiest idea. Asmy job prospects dwindled (I was elim-inated from consideration for theYMCA job because I didn’t have the“right” ideas about where blacksbelonged in the particular branch: Theybelonged outside I was told), I had to dosomething.

And so it was that during the sum-mer of 1960 I applied for admission tothe Graduate School of Arts andSciences at the University of Virginia, tocontinue my study of philosophy. Two

months before the first class—at least this is my recollec-tion—I received a letter in -form ing me that I had beenaccepted “conditionally.” Thismeant I was admitted but thatmy status would be reevaluatedon the basis of my work duringthe first semester. There was,after all, enough evidence ofmediocrity on my college tran-script to rattle anyone’s con -fidence. Thank heavens mymajor professor at Thiel was a

graduate of Virginia. Had it not been forthe influence and guidance of BobBryan at this time I may well have endedup selling collision insurance forAllstate. And this is not the least of mymany debts to him.

STILL UNSETTLED: THE UNIVERSITYYEARS

My graduate career at Virginia beganinauspiciously enough. I was blue collarin my background. The students I metall seemed to be Blue Blood in theirs.Virginia had no female students at thetime and we Gentlemen (as we thenwere called) wore coats and ties to class.I had one suit and two ties. I was the kidwithout socks who spilled soup on hispants to the delight of the country clubset. Or so it seemed.

I remember well a young man in myPlato seminar, a graduate of St. John’sCollege in Annapolis, where the educa-tion consists of reading and discussingthe Great Books, many of which I hadnever heard of, let alone read. We werewalking together after a seminar inwhich we discussed Plato’s Theatetus. Icouldn’t make much sense of the dia-logue and was rash enough to say so.Others seemed not to find the materialdifficult. Stopping abruptly, my com -patriot looked me squarely in the eye.Taking his pipe from his mouth (the

Tom Regan, thirdfrom left in frontrow, has enjoyedgolf from then tillnow.

11

smoking of a pipe, I discovered, was anessential mark of an educated Gentle -men, one I tried to acquire, albeit unsuc-cessfully) and speaking with an affectedBritish accent, he said, “Regan, youstrike me as a man to whom it will notbe difficult to say goodbye come the endof your first and, dare I say, your onlysemester.” Then he placed his pipe backin his mouth and walked away, leavingme transfixed on the spot where I stood.

I was shattered. Here I was, a kid offPittsburgh’s streets, trying to make anhonest go of it at Mr. Jefferson’s Univer -sity. And here was this J. Press son-of-privilege putting me in my place, tellingme that I didn’t belong. And who was Ito deny that he was right? Didn’t I thinkhis very thoughts myself?

Socially and intellectually, this wasthe lowest point of my life. It took memonths to begin to regain any sem-blance of self-confidence. But in time Idid, and though I am not a particularlyvengeful or spiteful person I must con-fess that I took more than a little plea-sure when, at the end of my first semes-ter, I was invited to continue my studiesin philosophy while my solemn col-league from St. John’s was not. Ithought of it then, and I think of it now,as a small but real victory for the work-ing class.

My record at Virginia was better thanmy record at Thiel. A few Bs during thatfirst year; the rest As. I have the deepestaffection for the teachers who taught meduring the years I was there, and I havenothing but the most profound respectfor the ideals The University embodies.I count myself very lucky indeed forhaving had the opportunity to passthrough its corridors.

But lest it seem that I slight my debtsto Thiel I must cite a sentiment one willfind inscribed on that College’s sundial.Roughly translated from the Latin itreads: “Perhaps in the future thesethings will appear beautiful.” The sun -dial’s message rings true. Time doessoften the harsh edges of past places andevents. And that is not the only truthThiel College gave me.

MORAL INDIFFERENCE: ANIMALS COMEAND GO

In the Spartan, no-nonsense regimenof Thiel, and the more refined ambianceof Virginia, animals were all but absent.

The University had some legendarydogs—legendary largely for their pro-claimed accomplishments as drinkers.(Back then students at UVA took pridein their well-deserved reputation as thebiggest drinkers around.) Perhaps thestory is apocryphal but one dog (Jockwas his name, I think) was reputedalways to have lifted his leg on the oppo-nent’s goal post at half time during foot-ball games. And (so the story went)some two thousand people attendedJock’s funeral, the dog having beenkilled (suitably enough, it was thought)while chasing a beer truck through thestreets of Charlottesville.

All this was part of the oral traditionof The University at this time. No one Iknew thought for a moment that therewas anything morally dubious aboutgetting a dog drunk or finding it reallyfunny that old Jock would get himselfkilled by a truck filled with Budweiser.That I also found the story amusing issymptomatic of those deeper, unarticu-12

Regan, right,jamming with

friends at Thiel.

lated beliefs I then had about how theymay be treated.

The same insensitivity I showedtoward Jock’s fate I exhibited in the faceof another’s emotional anguish. At thebeginning of my studies at Virginia I hada room in a spotless older home. In theroom next to me lived a med student, atough looking, broad-chested Polish Jewfrom New Jersey, very streetwise, very

determined to get ahead with his career.Even so, he did not like what he wasrequired to do to a dog in his class insurgery. He described to me how hebroke the poor animal’s leg and then setit, only to break and set it again.Throughout her long, painful ordeal theloyal animal greeted his arrival with awag of her tail and even licked the veryhands that had injured her.

In the end, he was required to “euth-anize” the dog. It did not sit well withhim. He thought it cruel and unneces-

sary. He wanted to speak out, to object,but he lacked the courage. He wonderedwhat sort of human being he was orwould become. He even questioned

whether he should make a career ofmedicine. In all this I believe he was assincere as any person can be. It hurt himto hurt another, even a dog.

For my part I was too much involvedin understanding Plato’s Theatetus andwithstanding the insults of my peers tofind time to empathize with this medicalstudent, let alone a dog. I wish I couldsay that my ethical sensitivities regard-ing animals have always been highlydeveloped. The sad truth is, they havenot. The story about this dog botheredme no more and no less than the storyabout Jock. Animals were not on mymoral map.

LOVE AND COMPANIONSHIPAmong the truly major blessings in

my life was my marriage to my wifeNancy on June 17, 1961. We remainindissolubly wedded, committed to ourmutual growth. We are different peoplenow than we were when we first metback in my sockless days at Thiel, andperhaps it is as much a matter of luck asit is of our love for one another that wehave managed to develop in ways thathave brought us closer together ratherthan driving us farther apart. Sometimeswe even seem to look alike, impossiblethough this is—she of Lithuanian andAustrian blood, her face showing thestrong beauty of her Eastern Europeanancestry; I of sturdy Irish stock, ruddy ofcomplexion, stump-nosed. How veryfortunate we are to have settled perma-nently into one another. There is somuch more one can do with one’s lifeafter the questions of a soul mate andlifetime companion have been answered.

Early on in our marriage we pur-chased a miniature poodle. We calledhim “Gleco,” after the name of a compa-ny we drove past every day. Nancy wasan instructor in Special Education in thepublic schools. I was taking my gradu-ate seminars. We lived in two rooms onthe second floor of an older farmhouseabout thirteen miles from The Uni -versity.

The landlady was a strong-willed butfriendly Southern woman. She permit-

With his futurewife, Nancy, at acollege dance.

13

When God gives humans dominion,we are given the task of being as loving toward creation as God was in creating it in the first place.

ted her handyman to graze a few cowson her pasture. Once, after a calf hadbeen taken from his mother (I did notknow what had happened at the time), Iapproached her because of the mournfulcries of the mother. All through onenight and into the next day the poor animal moaned and groaned. Surely, Isaid, the animal must be dying or at leastbe very sick. Shouldn’t we do somethingto help?

Always the gentlewoman, our land-lady permitted my city ignorance to pass

without making much over it. Mothersworry about their children, sheexplained. The cow was calling for herlost child. It was that simple. There wasno need to do anything. She could forgether loss in time. As usual this sturdytwig of a woman was right. The follow-ing day the mother grazed contentedly.The next time I heard these same cries Iunderstood what they meant, only thistime I thought them rather a nuisance. Iremember shouting out the window atthe grieving mother, telling her to shutup. I had important work to do and shewas bothering me.

Like so many newly married coupleswho acquire a companion animal, wetreated Gleco as our substitute child. Wetook him everywhere we could, frettedover his every sign of unhappiness, feltguilt-ridden because we had to leavehim alone during most days. For his partGleco became a loyal but in some waysan always independent companion.There was something of the cat in him—a trace of aloofness beneath the surfacesheen of his ordinary congeniality. He

never cared overly much about pleasingus, though he loved us just the same. Hissubsequent death helped change my lifeforever.

THE WAR: FIDDLING WITH MY PROFESSION

My education at Virginia was moreor less typical of the time. “Analytic philosophy” was the dominant approachto the discipline in places like UVA thathad a strong British presence. The rulingpreoccupation in moral philosophy,which is where my interests natur allyled me, concerned questions about theproper analysis of concepts.

My spirit bent to what my teachersrequired. I wrote my Master’s Thesis onthe concept of beauty and my Ph.D.Dissertation on the concept of goodness.As a true professional my concerns werestrictly analytic; I inquired into themeaning of the words “good” and“beauty.” Not a single judgment aboutthe goodness or beauty of anything fellfrom my pen. At this time and in thatplace it was not the business of aphilosopher to take a moral or aestheticstand on anything. To do so was beneaththe intellectual dignity of the profession.I practiced what I heard preached.

After my graduation, when Iembarked on my teaching career, myclasses in moral philosophy initiallymimicked those I had had as a graduatestudent. But I was never wholly satisfiedwith this way of doing moral philoso-phy. What had originally attracted me tothe subject were my deep worries overwhat things are just and unjust, right andwrong, good and bad. Perhaps I wouldhave managed to leave these interestspermanently behind me had it not beenfor a development over which neither Inor any other ordinary person had muchcontrol. Before any of us quite realizedit, America was at war in Vietnam. Andthat fact changed a great deal, includingthe direction of my intellectual develop-ment.

The dilemma I faced at the time wasquite simple. Every evening on the newsI sat and watched people being killed.14

To my way of thinking, everythingdepends on what love for Creationcomes to. If (as I believe) it makes nosense to kill those you love, or tomake them suffer, or to deprive themof their full measure of freedom, thenthe Bible is nothing if not pro-animal rights, whatever others mightsay to the contrary.

Americans and Vietna mese. Young menthe age of most of my students. Womenand children. And here I was, an educat-ed moral philosopher, worrying aboutthe meaning of the word “right” andwhether there is such a thing as the naturalistic fallacy. I could see myselffiddling with my profession whileVietnam burned.

Something had to give. And since itwas beyond my power to stop the war(though Nancy and I worked politicallyto help end it), I decided to approachthings from the philosophical side.Ought we to be there? Was the war a justwar? Is violence ever justified? Asstrange as it may sound, the immediateancestor of my views about animalrights was my first crude attempt tocome to terms morally with the war inVietnam.

If I had to be more precise and try tofix a particular time when the ride-of-ideas began, I would say it was duringthe summer of 1972. It was then that Iwas the beneficiary of a Summer Grantfrom the Nation al Endowment for theHumanities. My plan was to think aboutpacifism—the view that it is alwayswrong, no matter what the circum-stances, to use violence,whether in self-defenseor aggressively. The con-clusion I reached then,and the one I still hold, isthat occasions can arisein which the use of vio-lence is justified. I wasnot then, and am not now,a pacifist.

Now, no one who setsout to think about vio-lence and pacifism can dothe work that needs to bedone and not read Gan -dhi. And read him I did:hundreds and hundreds,even thousands of pagesof his simple prose. This in itself wasremarkable. I have never been an ener-getic reader. I envy people (Nancy is oneof them) who are. Especially during thenext twenty years or so, when I wrote

more and more, I read less and less.Except, as I say, in the case of Gandhi. Iread him with enormous energy anddedication.

It was during this particular period,during the summer of 1972, that Gandhibegan to raise my consciousness aboutthe place of animals in the moral schemeof things. His views on vegetarianismwere both simple and of a piece with hismore general views about right conduct.The practice of ahimsa (frequentlytranslated “nonviolence”) does not stopat the borders of our species. Morally weare called upon to minimize our casualrole in the use of violence in the world atlarge, even when animals are victims.

Once I had digested it I could nolonger look at the world in quite thesame way. The meat on my plate nowhad an accusatory voice. It wasGandhi’s. And it would not take my history of indifference as an answer.

As a piece of reasoning, Gandhi’sargument seemed unassailable. Givehim his premises and you couldn’t avoidhis conclusion. The problem was, I wasnot prepared to give him his premises,one of which included his commitmentto pacifism. And so I set myself the task

of thinking about the moral status ofvegetarianism in ways that did not relyon Gandhian pacifism. My first pub-lished essay relating to animal rights,“The Moral Basis of Vegetar ianism,” is 15

At work editing‘We Are AllNoah.’

the tangible result of the line of reason-ing I began to investigate in the summerof 1972 and which I completed in thefall of 1973.

THE DEATH OF A FRIEND: THE IMAGINATION AWAKENS

Another event helped change my lifeirrevocably, and this one had nothing todo with philosophy. This was an affair ofthe heart, not the head. And it also tookplace in that momentous summer of

1972. Nancy and I, and our two chil-dren, Karen and Bryan, who then wereone and five respectively, had taken avacation. Earlier on the day we returnedhome, Gleco was killed—hit by a carwhile darting across a road.

Faced with this incalculable loss,Nancy and I lapsed into a period ofintense, shared grief. For days we criedat the mere mention or memory ofGleco. Earlier that summer, while think-ing about Gandhi and pacifism, I hadencountered the rude question of theethics of meat eating. Once severedfrom any essen tial connection with paci-fism, the rational arguments seemed tobe there. My head had begun to grasp amoral truth that required a change inbehavior. Reason demanded that Ibecome a vegetarian. But it was thesense of irrevocable loss that added thepower of feeling to the requirements oflogic.

What Gleco’s death forced upon mewas the realization that my emotionalattachment to a particular dog was acontingent feature of the world. Of myworld. Except for a set of circumstancesover which I had no control, I wouldhave loved some other dog (Jock, per-haps, or the poor creature at the mercyof the med student). And given someother conditions, over which again I hadno control, I would never have evenknown Gleco at all. I understood, in aflash it seemed, that my powerful feel-ings for this particular dog, for Gleco,had to include other dogs. Indeed, everyother dog. Any stopping point short ofevery dog was, and had to be, rationallyand emotionally arbitrary.

And not just dogs. Wherever in theworld there is life that feels, a beingwhose welfare can be affected by whatwe do (or fail to do), there love and com-passion, justice and protection must finda home. From this point forward, myheart and head were one. Philosophicalargument can lead the heart to water, butperhaps it is only experience that canmake it drink. Nancy understood this, aswell if not better than I did. Throughoutour journey, she was beside or ahead ofme every step of the way. We awoke oneday to the realization that we hadbecome vegetarians. The intellectualchallenge before me was to make oursense of the world less vague and thegrounds for accepting it rationally morecompelling. That in general was the taskI set myself and at which I have workedmore or less continuously during the restof my life.

COMES THE REVOLUTION: CHANGES INTHE WORLD OF IDEAS

In 1972 an unknown philosophersubmitted an unsolicited review of a pre-viously unnoticed book to The New YorkReview of Books. The book wasAnimals, Men and Morals: An Enquiryinto the Maltreatment of Non-Humans, acollection of essays edited by Roslindand Stanley Godlovitch, and JohnHarris. To the reviewer’s surprise, his16

Gleco, the dogwho helpedchange Tom

Regan’s life.

review was accepted and, in April 1973,published.

Reader response was overwhelming.The Australian-born, Oxford-educatedphilosopher opened the eyes of manyreaders to some of the terrible thingsbeing done to animals. The editors ofNew York Review of Books understoodthat this was something special, so spe-cial that they took the unprecedentedstep of offering to publish a book on thetopics covered by the reviewer if he wasinterested in writing one. He was. Acontract was tendered and the book writ-ten. The philosopher’s name: Peter Sing- er. The title of his book: Animal Liber -ation. The rest, as they say, is history.

As it happened, I had an opportunityto teach at Oxford during the summer of1973. I had read Singer’s review andwrote to him, explaining that we sharedmany of the same interests. While I wasin Oxford, we met several times. Weagreed that an anthology of mainlyphilosophical writings on our duties toanimals would be both timely and use-ful. By the fall of 1975, we had a manu-script. We even had a title: AnimalRights and Human Obligations. Ournext challenge was to find a publisher.

So off I went to the annual meetingof the Eastern Division of the AmericanPhilosophical Associa tion. One of themajor textbook publishers had a recep-tion to which I was invited. After intro-ducing myself to the philosophy editor, Ihanded him a copy of the prospectusSinger and I had put together. The edi-tor’s response was one of startledincredulity. He looked at me as if I wasin immediate need of the most profoundpsychiatric help.

“You want to publish a book on...” hebegan. Unable to complete the sentence,he tried again. “You want to publish abook...on...” This time he found it im pos -s ible to stifle his laughter. Guffaw.Guffaw. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but this istoo much. I mean, ‘animal rights’!”More guffawing. If there had been a holein the floor, I would have crawled into it,I was so embarrassed. And angry, too.

But here’s the rest of the story. Theeditor took the prospectus home, lookedit over, and sent it out for review. A fewmonths later, Singer and I had a contractin hand. Over the years, that little bookhas sold tens of thousands of copies andhas been read by tens of thousands ofstudents. As for the philosophy editor:after making a name for himself assomeone who was ahead of the times, hewent on to have a distinguished career inthe world of book publishing.

Animal Rights and Human Obliga -tions was just one among many booksthat found a niche in the college marketfrom the 1970s onward. It is no exag-geration to say that, during the past thirty years, philosophers have writtenvastly more on the topic of ethics andanimals than our predecessors had written in the previous three thousand.

This has made a profound difference

in the classroom. Whereas there was nota single philosophy course in which theidea of animal rights was discussedwhen I began writing “The Moral Basisof Vegetarianism,” today there are per-haps as many as a hundred thousand students a year discussing this idea. Justin philosophy. Comparable changes areunder way in other disciplines, includ inganthropology, art history, film studies,law, literature, religion, and sociology.Clearly, in the world of ideas, in univer- 17

Any time some people (the ‘Ins’)want to exploit other ‘inferior’ people(the ‘Outs’), the Ins will always havetwo powerful forces on their side:One will be organized religion; theother, the ‘best’ science of the day.Both will say (in their authoritativevoices): The Ins really are better thanthe Outs. Our sacred books say so. Sodo our esteemed scientists. So, what’sto complain? The Outs are exactlywhere they belong. Under the boot of the Ins.

sity classrooms throughout the world,“animal rights” is no longer a laughingmatter.

OTHER WORKIn addition to anthologies in which I

served in an editorial capacity, I keptmyself busy throughout the 1970s writ-ing a number of essays for a mainly pro-fessional audience, some of which werecollected in All That Dwell Therein:Essays on Ani mal Rights and Environ -mental Ethics (1982). Whatever theirphilosophical shortcomings may be,these essays chart the history of mystruggle to articulate a rights-basedunder standing of the moral ties that bindus to other animals. Each is a sketch atbest. But each seems to me now to havebeen an essential step along the way tothe view I was looking for.

That view is set forth in The Case forAnimal Rights (1983). This work repre-sents the fruit of more than a decade ofhard thinking about the rights of ani-mals. It comes as close as I’ll ever cometo getting at the deeper truths on which,in my view, the Animal Rights Move -ment stands or falls. It is a work of seri-ous, methodical scholarship, written inthe language of philosophy: “directduties,” “acquired rights,” “utilitarian-ism,” and so on.

I made every attempt to make thehard ideas I discuss as accessible as pos-sible. But no amount of effort can makehard ideas easy. On this score I havebeen heartened by the number of people,including the book’s toughest reviewers,who have praised The Case for its exem-plary clarity. Moreover, I am especiallygrateful now that a second edition, witha new preface, has just been released.Not many books have this kind of shelflife.

LIBERATION: OUT FROM UNDER THENEED TO SAY MORE

The process of writing The Case wasremarkable. I worked as many as eigh-teen hours a day for almost a full year,during which time I again was the for -

tunate recipient of a Fellowship from theNational Endowment for the Humani -ties. I am a compulsive rewriter. I doubtif there is a single sentence in The Casethat wasn’t recast at least once. Maybeeven twice. Physically, the work wasexhausting. Psychologic ally, it wasinvig or ating. I never was tempted toabandon the project. Once underway Inever veered off course. I was neverdepressed or displeased about how thebook was going. Each day was too short,not too long. I was absolutely filledwith, and by, the process of writing.

There is another point I should men-tion. When I started The Case I did nothold the “radical” conclusions I reach inthe final chapter. At the beginning I wasagainst causing animals “unnecessary”

suffering in scientific research, forexample, but I was not against makingthem suffer if this was “necessary.”What was perhaps the most remarkablepart of working on The Case was how Iwas led by the force of reasons I hadnever before considered to embracepositions I had never before accepted,including the abolitionist one. Thepower of ideas, not my own will, was incontrol, it seemed to me. I genuinely feltas if a part of Truth was being revealedto me. I do not want to claim that any-thing like this really happened. Here Iam only describing how I experiencedthings. And how I experienced them,18

Nancy and TomRegan with twocanine members

of the family.

especially toward the end of the compo-sition of the book, was qualitativelyunlike anything else I have ever exper -ienced. It was intoxicating. It was asclose to anything like a sustained religious or spiritual revelation as I haveever experienced.

Of course, when you have a bookpublished, you can’t help hoping for favorable reviews, written by reallyimportant people, published in highlyprestigious places. Fortun ately, The Caseenjoyed a number of such responses. Onein particular, written by the late RobertNozick, had an interesting afterlife.

As it happened, Nozick and I bothattended the same philosophy confer-ence in December 1983. At this timeNozick was among the three or fourmost influential moral philosophers inthe world, so it was with some trepid -ation that, spotting him, I introducedmyself.

He could not have been nicer. Hewas warm, and effusive in his praise.“There’s just one thing I want to know,”he said. Drawing me closer, he asked,“Now what are you going to do?”

Without having fully realized it, thisquestion had been gnawing away at meever since I finished The Case. I mean,what was I going to do now that I hademptied myself of everything that wentinto the book?

“Well,” I said, looking for an answer,“I guess I’ll...I guess I’ll. You know, Iguess I don’t know.”

“You will,” Nozick replied. “Youwill.” And with that we shook hands and

parted company. I have never met any-one who knew me so well so quickly.

What was I going to do? One thing Iknew: I did not want to try to writeanother “big book” on animal rights anytime soon. After mulling things over,three fresh possibilities presented them-selves.

First, if I was going to continue to tryto make a contribution to the Movement,as a philosopher, I would need to findnew ways of doing so. Second, if I want-ed to try to make a contribution in someother way, I needed to look for new out-lets. Third, if there was something else Icould explore, some new creative chal-lenge that had nothing to do with animalrights, I would have to discover whatthis was.

So (to repeat Nozick’s question):what was I going to do? The answer Ireached—the one I have tried to live thepast 20 years and more—was, “All ofthe above.”

TOM REGAN, THE HISTORIAN?One creative challenge required a

near total immersion into late 19th andearly 20th century English history. Itwas during these years that the famousBloomsbury Group began to take shapeand flourish. Members included VirginiaWolfe and her sister, Vanessa, as well asJohn Maynard Keynes and LyntonStrachey. The Group was as re nownedfor its unconventional behavior as for itsbrilliance.

Oddly, the Bloomsburies identifiedthe philosopher George Edward Mooreas their chief inspiration. I knewMoore’s philosophy reasonably well,having written both my Master’s Thesisand part of my Ph.D. Dissertation on histheories. His laborious style of writingshaped my philosophical voice as awriter more than anything else. Despitethis influence, Moore the man alwaysstruck me as more conventional thanbrilliant. It seemed wildly improbable tome that the Moore I knew could havehad the influence the Bloomsburiesattributed to him. 19

I can never think of my past withoutbeing overwhelmed by how much ofwhat has happened to me (and thisincludes the very best things) was due to factors quite beyond my control. Itry to remember this when I meet peo-ple whose ideas and values differ sig-nificantly from my own. “There but fora series of contingencies go I,” I think.

With the luxury of a year’s leave as afellow at the National Human itiesCenter, I set out to find the answer to theriddle before me. My answer is given inBloomsbury’s Prophet: G.E. Moore andthe Development of His MoralPhilosophy (1983), followed by Moore:The Early Essays (1988), and G.E.Moore: The Elements of Ethics (1992).Without my having to say so,these new books said that TomRegan was exploring a newline of work, in (of all things)the history of ideas. It wouldnot be the last time I wouldembrace a field of study mydisgruntled younger self hadrejected.

ROUSING THE SLEEPINGGIANT

Some animal rights advo-cates are openly hostiletowards religion in general,Christianity in particular. It isnot hard to understand why.Given standard readings of theBible, animals were put on earth to satisfy human wants and needs. This iswhy hogs fulfill their God-given destinyby ending up as pieces of bolognabetween two slices of bread.

However, this is just one possiblereading of scripture, and an implausibleone at that. When God gives humansdominion, we are given the task of beingas loving towards Creation as God wasin creating it in the first place. That’show I read the opening chapters ofGenesis. I don’t know how anyone canread the words found there and comeaway with a different understanding.

To my way of thinking, therefore,everything depends on what love forCreation comes to. If (as I believe) itmakes no sense to kill those you love, orto make them suffer, or to deprive themof their full measure of freedom, thenthe Bible is nothing if not pro-animalrights, whatever others might say to thecontrary.

Fortunately, some animal rights

advocates agreed, Ethel Thurston andthe late Colin Smith among them. Onbehalf of the International Associationagainst Painful Experi ments on Ani -mals, Ethel and Colin invited me toorganize and chair a major 1984 confer-ence on religion and animals. In 1986, Iwas privileged to publish the proceed-ings under the title Animal Sacrifices:

Religious Perspectives on the Use ofAnimals in Science.

The year after the London confer-ence, with the support of Claire and BillAllan, among others, I was able to writeand direct a half-hour film, We Are AllNoah. When the film won a SilverMedal at the 1985 Inter national FilmFestival of New York, everyone involvedin its production thought we finally hada teaching aid that would rouse thesleeping giant of organized religion. Itdid not take long for us to realize that weshould have thought again.

Dietrich von Haugwitz has been adear friend for the better part of threedecades. Working with other membersof the North Carolina Network forAnimals, Dietrich found a place whereNoah could be shown. Hundreds of invitations were sent to clergy in the areaeven as the event was publicized in otherways. A lovely spread of meat-free finger food was prepared. And (as hasalways been true of anything he does)20

Tom Regan withhis parents.

Dietrich had composed a first-rate intro-duction to the film.

So there we all were, waiting for thefirst arrivals. And there we sat, waiting.And waiting. And waiting. Will it sur-prise anyone when I say, “No onecame”? It surprised all of us, no onemore so than a crestfallen Dietrich. Onething was certain: it would take a lotmore hard work, involving many morepeople, to rouse the sleeping giant.Happily, the last twenty years have wit-nessed many positive changes, much ofthem spurred on by the fine work ofwriters like Keith Akers, DanielDombroski, J.R. Hyland, Roberta Kal -echofsky, Gary Kowalski, AndrewLinzey and Richard Schwartz.

TALK, TALK, TALKPublication of The Case opened new

doors. Invitations to present lectures oncampuses, give speeches at rallies, andread papers before professional meet-ings increased. I have never kept anexact record of when and where I havespoken; all I know is that, whether forgood or ill, I’ve done a lot of talking.

My stump speech was “AnimalRights, Human Wrongs,” in which Isketched the central philosophical issuesdefining the animal rights debate. Theresponse that greeted my scholarlyruminations sometimes was surprising.Here are two examples.

The philosophers at one universityinvited me to their campus. In themonths leading up to my lecture, localand national animal rights groups hadtargeted the work of campus researcherswho were doing ghastly experiments onnonhuman primates. You could feel thetension in the air.

When I arrived at the room where Iwas scheduled to speak, the overflowcrowd blocked my way. New arrange-ments were quickly made: I wouldspeak to a standing room-only audiencein a large auditorium. Before entering, Iwas taken aside and introduced to thehead of campus security. He would besitting in the middle of the front row. If

things got out of hand, he would wink atme and mouth the words, “Head for thenearest exit!”

So there he was, in the front row,looking at me with a wide-eyed inten -sity. I’m sure everyone has had the experience of doing one thing even aswe are thinking about another. That’show things were for me. I was coveringfamiliar philosophical ground: moralstanding, indirect duties and so on,while, in the back of my mind, I wasthinking, “Just wait till I get to Kant’scategorical imperative: that’s when allhell will break loose!” Needless to say,when I got to Kant, all hell did not breakloose.

On another occasion, all hell brokeloose before I arrived. Faculty who didresearch on animals were enraged that Iwould be invited to their campus.Letters of protest were circulated inwhich I was described as a dangerouszealot and a rabble-rousing demagogue.The resear chers likened me to HermannGor ing and to monomaniacal mentalpatients who think they are Jesus Christor Napoleon; one spokesperson evenwent so far as to call me the Jim Jones ofthe animal rights movement.

As for my public lectures, theresearchers accused me of advocatingviolence, spreading lies, of asserting thatI have the right to impose by violentmeans my notion of ethics on others;and of inflaming my audiences to com-mit unlawful acts. And there was the“suggestion” that the invitation shouldbe revoked because I was a prime sus-pect in the recent murder of a researcher,shot dead in his driveway.

Not a word of what they said is true;all of it is pure fiction. It just goes to 21

Perhaps . . . there is in everyone anatural longing to help free animalsfrom the hands of their oppressors—a longing only waiting for the rightopportunity to assert itself.

show the lengths to which “experts”who don’t like the idea of animal rightssometimes will go in their attempt todiscredit those who would dare to dis-agree with them.

“THERE’S A HOLE IN THE MOVEMENT”The Animal Rights Movement is so

varied in its membership and programsthat it will never have one leader. No, themovement goes forward because of theefforts of many hands, on many oars.Much of this work involves recruitment:attracting new people. Another part requires educating ourselves about ourdeep cultural roots—in philosophy andpoetry, art and sculpture, music anddance.

Moreover, we must continue to addto this body of cultural resour ces, notjust rest content with those we alreadyhave. Back some 20 years ago, whenNancy and I looked around, we discov-ered that no one was helping make thishappen. Right at its center, there was ahole in the movement.

The need to fill this hole was whatmotivated the creation of The Cultureand Animals Foundation (CAF). Nowentering its twentieth year, CAF is a tax-exempt, nonprofit, all-volunteer organi-zation that raises and distributes moneyto fund three programs: research, creativity and performance.

Over the years, CAF has funded hun-dreds of “cultural activists” (as we call

them) and hosted an annual InternationalCompassionate Living Festival, workingcollaboratively in 2004 with the Institutefor Animals and Society. Thousands ofpeople have attended, always returninghome with passions stirred and minds onfire. Watching CAF’s birth and growth,

with the assistance of current boardmembers Marion Bolz, Rondi Elliot, andJean Hollo well, has been a source ofgreat pleasure and satisfaction for Nancyand me.

“PUT UP OR SHUT UP!”There comes a time in everyone’s

life when the sincerity of our commit-ment is on the line. For me, that timecame in the summer of 1985. That’swhen I decided it was time to get arrested.

In May of this same year members ofthe Animal Liberation Front “liberated”more than 70 hours of videotape ofresearch being done at a head injury lab-oratory at the University of Pennsyl -vania. The tape revealed numerous violations of federal guidelines and pre-sented the researchers as uncaring,sometimes even sadistic. Funded by theNational Institutes of Health (NIH), theresearch had been going on for yearsand was headed nowhere.

The stolen tapes somehow ended upin the hands of Ingrid Newkirk and AlexPacheco, founders of People for theEthical Treatment of Animals. Unne ces -sary Fuss, a 26-minute video, sum -marized what was happening. The caseagainst the lab was incontestable. Sowhat did the funding agency do? Likespitting in the eyes of Animal RightsAdvo cates everywhere, NIH increasedthe funding. It was time to act.

On the evening of July 14, a hundredand one animal rights activists gatheredat a motel not far from the NIH. Each ofus had a “buddy” (mine was BobbieWright, a wonderful activist from Ari -zona). Plans were sketched. Every oneof us knew what we were supposed todo. And when.

To this day I still remember walkinginto Building 31-B on the NIH campus,meeting Bobbie in the cafeteria, takingan elevator to the top floor, then (at theappointed time) descending stairs andentering the funding office. Mind you:Bobbie and I were not the only folkswho entered at that time. All hundred22

I still remember walking into Build -ing 31-B on the National Institutes ofHealth campus. All 101 activistsshowed up there, like a hurricanemaking landfall.

and one activists showed up there, like ahurricane making landfall.

Once crushed inside, we all satdown, some in chairs, most on the floor.Then we started to chant, at the top of

our lungs, “What do we want? Animalrights! When do we want them? Now!”Our entrance was so unanticipated, ourpresence so undeniable, and our volumeso loud, that the staff in that office werein total shock. If a boulder had fallenthrough the roof, it would have mademore sense to them than our being there.As we chanted ever more enthusiastic -ally, we all thought the same thing. Wefigured the police would be there anyminute.

But the police were nowhere to befound as, first one, and then another staffperson left. Then other people in otheroffices were seen leaving until, to oursurprise, the entire eighth floor had beenvacated. Without having set out to do so,the intrepid animal rights activists werein charge of thousands of square feet offederal government property.

Our occupation lasted four days during which time some of the originalparticipants had to leave, the air con -ditioning was turned down to arctic tem-peratures (some NIH officials got theidea they could freeze us out), and themedia and members of Congress actually began to pay attention to whywe were there.

When, on the morning of July 19,1985, the remaining civil disobedientsmarched out of Building 31-B, the fund-ing for the lab having been withdrawn,we all felt that animal rights was a forceto be reckoned with. None among uscould doubt that we had seized theoffensive, that there would be no stop-ping us now. Five years later, this samefeeling of robust confidence wouldreassert itself again, only multipliedmore than a thousand-fold.

“ONWARD ANIMAL RIGHTSSOLDIERS!”

Gwyneth Snyder, Diana Base hart,and a handful of other Califor nia animalrights activists deserve credit for formu-lating the idea. Scores of others deservecredit for helping implement it. Every -one agreed: the time had come to flexour muscles. We were going to march onWashington!

As plans evolved, I was asked to co-chair the March with Peter Gerard. Thisdoes not mean that we shared the workequally. Peter did far more than I didwhen it came to the details: advertisingthe event, getting the necessary permits,crafting a program, and so on. My mainjobs were to help raise funds and tomotivate animal rights activists to par-ticipate. The latter was much easier thanthe former.

When the day of the march dawned, allthe Regans wandered down to the assem-bly area. We did not know what to expect.We were just hoping we would not beamong the few on hand. We were not.

Huge banners waved in the wind foreach of the states. Huddled around eachbanner were flags identifying all thegroups from the several states, some-times, in the case of Alaska, for exam-ple, a handful, sometimes, for Cali forniaand New York, a truckful.

This was one noisy family reunion!Music could be heard at every turn.Some folks were singing, others werechanting. Vendors were selling every-thing that had anything to do with animalrights, from soy dogs to belt buckles. 23

101 animal rights activistsconverged in thefunding office ofthe NationalInstitutes ofHealth to protestits financialsupport for thehead injuryexperiments atthe University ofPennsyl vania.

Off we started. We knew there werea lot of people but still couldn’t get asense of the numbers until...until therewere still marchers turning on to Penn -sylvania Avenue, all the way back atthe White House, as the people at thehead of the march were beginning tosit down in front of our nation’sCapitol!

Estimates ranged from 30,000 to100,000 marchers. No one will everknow the exact number. Believe me, Iwas not the only one with tears in myeyes on that day. Such a mass of humancompassion the world had never seenbefore. Or, sadly, has not seen since. In

1996, when a second march was organized, fewer than 3,000 people participated.

CHANGING TIMESSomething happened to the animal

rights movement in the six yearsbetween the two marches. I don’t thinkanyone fully understands why. I know Idon’t.

Everyone who marched in 1990could feel a kinship with everyone else.We were united. We spoke and acted asone. I mean, we all felt that our move-ment, the Animal Rights Movement,was going to take off!

Things did not turn out that way.Instead of growing more unified, morefocused, more powerful, the years afterthe first march witnessed increasingmovement fragmentation often accom-panied by bickering and back-biting.And whereas, in the years leading up tothe first march, new people were enter-ing the movement in unprecedentednumbers, by the time of the secondmarch un precedented numbers of triedand true activists, people who had madea major commitment to animal rights,were leaving.

Don’t get me wrong. Importantthings continued to be done, both bygrassroots activists and by the bignational organizations. But things werenot the same. That fragile feeling ofunity was broken. Veterans of the strug-gle couldn’t help noticing that some ofthe wind had gone out of our sails.

I was not immune to these changes.Although I continued to write papersand give lectures, I did less rather thanmore. Instead I turned to my old neme-sis, history, to take my understanding ofanimal rights to a deeper level.

Animal rights activists are fond ofsaying that our movement is like other“radical” movements. But is it? Howcould I give an informed answer withoutbeing informed? And how could I beinformed if I failed to explore the his toryof our movement as well as the others?Once the question was asked this24

Tom Regan andPeter Gerard

inspire tens ofthousands of

activists at the1990 March forthe Animals in

Washington, D.C.

clearly, there clearly was no escapingthe answer.

I spent the better part of five yearsreading everything I could about themost important struggles for human jus-tice. The Native American Struggle. TheAfrican-American Struggle. TheWomen’s Strug gle. The Gay/Lesbian

Strug gle. I took what I was learning tothe classroom, exposing both under-graduate and graduate students to mate-rial they knew no better than I did.Student’s lives were changed by whatthey discovered. Mine was too.

Here are two important things Ilearned. Any time some people (the“Ins”) want to exploit other ‘inferior’people (the “Outs”), the Ins will alwayshave two powerful forces on their side:One will be organized religion (the“church”); the other, the ‘best’ scienceof the day. Both will say (in their author-itative voices): The Ins really are betterthan the Outs. Our sacred books say so.So do our esteemed scientists. So,what’s to complain? The Outs are exactly where they belong. Under theboot of the Ins.

So (we ask): Is the struggle for animal rights really like other strugglesfor social justice? Unquestion ably. Allwe have to do is identify our commonenemies. I have history to thank forteaching me that.

FINDING A NEW VOICEThe past four years have been

uncommonly productive and rewarding.A collection of my essays, DefendingAnimal Rights, appeared in 2000, fol-lowed by my contribution to The AnimalRights Debate (2001), another contribu-

tion to Animal Experiment ation: Goodor Bad? (2002), and Animal Rights,Human Wrongs: An Introduc tion toMoral Philosophy (2003). Even as thiswork was published, as far back as1997, I worked on two other books, onea general introduction to moral theory(still maturing somewhere in my brain)

and another, for the general reader(which took too many wrong turns andhas been abandoned). It was not untilAugust of 2002 that something dramatichappened, don’t ask me why. But hap-pen it did.

It was my habit at this time to go tomy office in the library and spend five orsix hours working on the two books Ijust mentioned. (I had retired from theNorth Carolina State faculty in January2001 and had time on my hands.)Sometime in August, another bookasserted itself. I mean this quite literally.

The new book took charge of my life, inways analogous to what happened whenI wrote The Case for Animal Rights.Only this time, the writing was not easy.This time, the process of writing wassheer agony. I have never worked sohard on anything in my life. I under-stood why, but that didn’t help.

The “why” was simple. I was trainedto write the way those I studied wrote.George Edward Moore, for one, thanwhom no more plodding writer can be 25

A slice of the‘March for theAnimals,’ 1990.

I was not the only one with tears inmy eyes on that day. Such a mass ofhuman compassion the world hadnever seen before.

conceived. This (the Moorean) voicewas how I put words on the page when-ever I sat down to do any “serious” writ-ing. The demons behind the new bookwould not hear of it. Moore’s ponder-ous, analytic style was to be silenced. Anew voice was to be heard. The onlyproblem was, the old Tom Regan wasstanding in the way.

So each day I went to my office.Each day the old voice fought to beheard. And each day this new voicerefused to cooperate. The contest lastednine months, the length of an averagepregnancy, before Empty Cages: Facingthe Challenge of Animal Rights was fin-ished. Reading its chatty, conversationaltone, you would think it had to be amuch easier book to write than The Casefor Animal Rights. In fact, just the oppo-site is true; the latter wrote itself; the former was like getting blood from aturnip.

Paradoxically, however, when I lookback on the process of writing, EmptyCages today seems like another giftgiven to me, only this time from someother source. I am so grateful that I wasable to bring it to fruition. Easy to read,if not to write, I harbor the hope that itwill reach a much larger audience thanThe Case and that, in combination withthe work of others, it will help revitalizethe animal rights movement, returning itto that magical time between the 1985occupation of the NIH and the gloriousday when tens of thousands of animalrights activists marched down Pennsyl -vania Avenue.

FOOTPRINTSExcept for two years at the begin-

ning of my professional life, my homehas been North Carolina State Univer -sity. The University has been good tome, in many ways. Al though I was anout spoken proponent of animal rights ona campus where students take degrees inanimal agriculture and where hundredsof faculty use animals in their research,I was never punished or threatened forspeaking my mind.

Just the opposite. The University hashonored my work, presenting me withevery award for teaching and researchfor which I was eligible, culminating inreceipt of the William Alexander QuarlesMedal, the highest honor the Universitycan bestow on one of its faculty.

As rewarding as these awards havebeen, I have the North Carolina StateUniversity Library to thank for mygreatest honor. This is the Tom ReganAnimal Rights Archive, inaugurated in2001, when, in response to the Library’sinvitation, I donated my papers, cover-ing the whole of my personal and pro-fessional life. Since its founding, theArchive has grown dramatically, thanksto major additions from The AnimalRights Network, among others. Eventoday the Archive is the premiere repos-itory of animal rights material in theworld. On a personal note, the Archive isa lifeline to the future. The Tom ReganAnimal Rights Archive will be at NorthCarolina State University as long asthere is a North Carolina State Univer -sity. For generations to come, theArchive, like a footprint, will attest tomy having passed this way.

The same is true, in another way,now that our children have married andhave children of their own. There’ssome thing of my genes, and Nancy’stoo, in Brooke, Hannah, Anna Drew andour grandchildren yet to be born. They,too, attest to our having passed this way.Such joy they and their parents bring toour lives; so many blessings; too manyto count.

Talk of footprints might create theimpression that I think my work is done.Nothing could be further from the truth.Today, on the eve of my 66th birthday, I26

Today, on the eve of my 66th birth-day, I am just as committed, if notmore so, to liberating animals fromthe clutches of human tyranny than I was more than thirty years ago.

am just as committed, if not more so, toliberating animals from the clutches ofhuman tyranny than I was more thanthirty years ago, when I first began tothink about the issues. Aristotle is reput-ed to have said (I’ve never been able tofind where he says this), “There are noboy philosophers.” I think this meansthat we have to experience the world andsmooth off the rough corners of our personal identity before we can do ourbest work. My principal influence, thephilosopher Immanuel Kant, is a case inpoint; he did not do his most creativethinking until he was in his sixties. I liketo think the same is true in my case: thebetter, the more creative, the more pro-ductive days are ahead.

So (in response to Robert Nozick’squestion, asked some twenty years ago):“Now what will you do?”

My answer has been, and willremain: “All of the above.”

NATURE REBELS: UNDERSTANDINGWEAKNESS

Probably everyone who reflects onthe life he or she has lived up to a givenpoint in time is struck by how chancy itall seems. Consider my case. Supposemy family had never moved fromPittsburgh’s North Side: Would I havegone to college? Very unlikely. Buteven if I had, would I have gone toThiel College? More unlikely still. Andthat means that in all probability Iwould not have met either Nancy orBob Bryan.

How very unlikely then, that Iwould have gone to the University ofVirginia to study philosophy. Or growninto the person who wrote The Case forAnimal Rights. I can never think of mypast without being overwhelmed by howmuch of what has happened to me (andthis includes the very best things) wasdue to factors quite beyond my control.I try to remember this when I meet peo-ple whose ideas and values differ signif-icantly from my own. “There but for aseries of contingencies go I,” I think.

This helps me in my battle against

self-righteousness. And in my efforts tobe patient with people who are justentering the Movement as well as thosewho are currently outside it. How littleof what we are and what we will becomeis within our power to control.

And so it is that I look back uncer-tainly at that self I once was. I see theboy playing on Pittsburgh’s streets,unmindful of the aged, mistreated marepulling an overloaded wagon of junkand old iron, the whip whistling angrilyover her weary head. I watch the teen -ager running his hands over a butcheredside of beef without giving it a secondthought. I observe the aspirant VirginiaGentleman listening indifferently toanother’s anguish concerning a solitarydog used in practice surgery, his ownmind preoccupied with loftier worriesabout Plato’s theory of Forms. And inevery case I wonder, not superficiallybut down to the very depths of my being,if there is not the slightest hint, the mostminiscule portent, of what my futurewas to be. Is it all a matter of luck? Ofchance? Was there nothing in me thatdirected my growth from within?

There is, perhaps, one hint of mydestiny all but hidden in the blur of myboyhood memories. I was born withwhat has come to be called a “lazy” or

“weak” eye. Other names for my con -dition are “cock-eyed” or “cross-eyed.”Corrective surgery, which is now routinefor young children, was not in vogueback then. What was recommendedwere exercises, and these were donewith the aid of a mechanical device atthe ophthalmologist’s office.

The device was constructed as 27

A troposcope, anophthalmologydevice used toaid ‘weak eye.’

follows: If you looked through the rightlens, you saw a bird. And if you lookedthrough the left lens, you saw a cage.People with normal eyes who lookedthrough both lenses at the same timesaw the bird imposed on the cage, whichgave the appearance that the bird was inthe cage. I saw things differently. In my

case, because of my weak left eye, thebird always appeared to the right andslightly below the cage. Sometimes,when I concentrated as hard as I could,the bird seemed to move closer to thecage. But try as I might I never could seethe bird in the cage.

Today, thinking back on what at thetime appeared to be a serious failure onmy part, I glimpse the one deeply mys-terious suggestion of where I was head-ed with my life, the one possible portentof what I would—and must—become.Try as I might my nature would not per-mit me to see the bird in the cage.Something in me rebelled against seeingthings this way. Others saw the bird ascaptive. I could only see the bird as free.And that, in its way, is a propheticmetaphor of what I have become.

My fate, one might say, is to helpothers see animals in a different way—as creatures who do not belong in cages.Or in leghold traps. Or in skillets.Perhaps, indeed, there is in everyone anatural longing to help free animalsfrom the hands of their oppressors—alonging only waiting for the right oppor-tunity to assert itself. I like to think inthese terms when I meet people who arenot yet active in the Animal RightsMovement. Like Socrates I see my rolein these encounters as being that of themidwife, there to help the birth of anidea already alive, just waiting to bedelivered.

I have some sense that this was truein my case; the early evidence is there inmy natural inability to see the bird in thecage. And yet how long it took for theidea contained in that “failure” to beborn!

When viewed in this way, and not -withstanding the painful evidence tothe contrary—the many instances ofmy own indifference to animal suffer-ing, some of which I have been obligedto confess on this occasion—whenviewed in this way I think I sense thatall has not been chance or accident inmy life. When viewed in this way I seethat the child I was is the father of theman I have become. I have found myproper destiny. My reason for being. Orperhaps this has been given to me.Maybe Reverend Fackler was rightafter all. χ

28

My nature would not permit me tosee the bird in the cage. Something inme rebelled against seeing things thisway. Others saw the bird as captive. I could only see the bird as free.

Tom Regan isEmeri tus Professorof Philosophy,North CarolinaState University,Raleigh, NorthCarolina (USA).During his morethan thirty yearson the faculty, hereceived numerousawards forexcellence inundergraduate andgraduate teaching;was namedUniversity AlumniDistinguishedProfessor;published hundredsof professionalpapers and morethan twenty books;won majorinternationalawards for filmwriting anddirection; andpresented hundredsof lectures aroundthe world. In2000, he receivedthe WilliamQuarles Holl idayMedal, the highesthonor NC StateUniversity canbestow on one of its faculty.Among his books,two (The Case forAnimal Rights andBlooms bury’s Pro -phet: G. E. Mooreand the Develop -ment of his MoralPhiloso phy) werenominated for thePulit zer Prize andthe National BookAward.

“The true objective for which animal advocates

should work is empty cages, not larger cages.”

Critics

In lieu of fair criticismof my philosophical casefor animal rights, somepeople in high places—including some loftytowers of academe—have attacked me ratherthan addressing myideas. For example, theyhave slandered my char-acter by accusing me ofinciting others to riotand by implicating mein a variety of crimes,including murder.

The way one philosophershows respect for anoth-er philosopher is by chal-lenging the other’s ideas,by trying to show (fair-ly, of course) that theseideas are false, or unsup-ported, or worse. To doanything else would be...well, philosophical badmanners.

Change

Ethical progress is nevereasy. We would be betterat it, if it were.

None of us is so accul-turated that we sleep-walk through our morallives.

You don’t change unjustinstitutions by tidyingthem up.

The verdicts of historyteach that entrenchedsocial practices not onlycan change, they havechanged. But neverwithout a struggle.

People should not bedeterred from movingforward on their journeybecause someone elsedoesn’t understandwhere they are on theirs.

A human being is not arobot, not a geneticallyhard-wired stimulus-response machine, not abody lacking a mind andwill.

Everything we knowabout human growth—about the flourishing ofthe human spirit and theactualization of thosecapacities that make ahuman life truly worthliving—points to theneed for each of us to takecharge of our life, to nur-ture our rational autono-my, and to cultivate ourcapacity to care, not onlyfor ourselves and othersbut for what is true andjust and good.

So long as we rest con-tent with what we havebeen taught about rightand wrong, we give sadtestimony to the factthat our life really doesnot matter much to us.

Rights

Rights involve justice,not generosity; what oneis due, not what onewants.

The money someonemakes by vio latinganother’s rights is nevermoral reason enough fordoing so.

To attempt to determinewhich humans haverights on the basis ofrace is like trying tosweeten tea by addingsalt. What race we aretells us nothing aboutwhat rights we have.

What happens to usafter we die does nothelp us understand whywe have the rights we dowhile we are alive.

Asking who has animmortal soul is as logi-cally irrelevant to askingwho has rights as askingwho has blond hair ormissing teeth.

Morally considered, agenius who can playChopin etudes with onehand tied behind herback does not have a‘higher’ rank than a seriously mentally im -paired child who willnever know what a pianois or who Chopin was.

P O T P O U R R I

by TomRegan

30

The interests of thosewho profit from animalexploitation should playno role whatsoever indeciding whether to abol -ish the institution thatfurthers those interests.

The rights of animalsshould never be violatedso that some people canhave a good time orbecause others make acomfortable living fromdoing so.

The Animal RightsMovement

The struggle for animalrights is not for the faintof heart. The pace ofsocial change requiresthe endurance of themarathoner, not thelightning speed of thesprinter.

My belief in the ultimatetriumph of justice foranimals is no less todaythan it was [twentyyears ago, when I wroteThe Case for AnimalRights]; if anything, it isstronger. Let’s just saymy idealism has beentempered by a strongdose of realism.

The struggle for animalrights...calls for a deep-er, more fundamentalchange in the way wethink about membershipin the moral community.It demands not anexpansion but a disman-tling of the for-humans-only conception...

Philosophy

The ethos of avengingangels is past. Ours isan age when benevolentassassins are asked tobury false ideologies. Ifphilosophers have afuture, it is this.Moral philosophy is no

substitute for politicalaction. Still, it can makea contribution. Its currency is ideas, andthough it is those whoact—those who writeletters, circulate peti-tions, demonstrate,lobby, disrupt a foxhunt, refuse to dissectan animal or use one in‘practice surgery,’ or areactive in other ways—though these are theones who make a markon a day-to-day basis—history shows that ideasdo make a difference.

Animal RightsAdvocates

Every Animal RightsAdvocate has somethingto contribute to the ani-mal rights movement.And not just any oldsomething. What eachperson contributes issomething special, something needed.

Eternal vigilance isrequired no less from us, to protect the basicrights of nonhuman animals, than it isrequired of everyone, ifwe are to protect thebasic rights of humanbeings.

Animal Rights Advo -cates have no reason tobe self-righteous, as ifthe world were dividedinto the Pure (thatwould be us) and theImpure (that would bethe rest of humanity).Morally, we are allshades of gray.

The truth we must recognize, the truth wemust emphasize, is thatjust as blacks do notexist for whites, orwomen for men, so animals do not exist forus. They are not part ofthe generous accommo-dations supplied by abenevolent deity or anever-so-thoughtfulnature. They have a life,and a value, of theirown. A morality thatfails to incorporate thistruth is empty. A legalsystem that excludes itis blind.

31

You don’t motivate people to become more com -

passionate toward animals by showing a lack

of compassion toward humans in hard times.

P O T P O U R R I

“

”

EMPTY CAGES

Facing the challengeof animal rights...One man’s journey from butcher toanimal rights advocate

“The single best introduction toanimal rights ever written...”

Jeffrey Masson

“Every so often a book is writtenthat is destined to change the way

people think. Tom Regan haswritten just such a book...”

Jane Goodall

ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!www.tomregan.info

Law

Might does not makeright; might does makelaw.

The old adage, ‘Youcan’t legislate morality,’may be true. But we arein deep legal and moraltrouble if we can’t legis-late justice.

Morality in General

Fundamental moralwrongs are not alterableby future results. Orpast intentions.

Great people are notabove making great mistakes.

To act in ways that arerespectful of individualrights is to act in waysthat are respectful of theindividual whose rightsthey are.

A prudent moralityenjoins us to act onwhat is true, not onwhat might be.

Prejudices die hard.

We do not need to knoweverything before we canknow something.

Whether our preferencesare evil is not somethingto be decided by deter-mining how strenuouslywe deny that they are.

The appeal to tradi-tion—an appeal onefinds, for example, insupport of fox huntingin Britain—has no moreforce in the case of hunt-ing than it does in thecase of any other cus-tomary abuse of animals—or humans.

That we are in the habitof doing something, orthat we find it conve-nient to do it, goes noway toward justifyingwhat we do.

Violence

The violence done byAnimal Rights Advo -cates ... is nothing com-pared to the violencedone by the major ani-mal user industries, araindrop compared to an ocean.

It is the propagandamachines of the majoranimal user industriesthat have made violenceand animal rights syn-onymous.

33

What we should do in practice depends

on understanding what we ought to do in

principle.

P O T P O U R R I

“

”

The world grows

weary of militancy

and meanness.

ON THE HOG INDUSTRY

Turning pigs into commodities, the deliberate reduction of them into mere things, characterizes themindset of the industry. ‘The breeding sow should be thought of, and treated as, a valuable piece ofmachinery,’ advises a corporate manager of Wall’s Meat Company, ‘whose function is to pump outbaby pigs like a sausage machine.’ Say whatyou will, the hog industry is mighty good atthis. (Empty Cages, p. 96).

ON “RANCHED” MINK

[According to Fur Commission USA, minkraised on fur ‘ranches’] are treated ‘humanely,’meaning with compassion, kindness, andmercy. In fact, they are ‘the best cared-for live-stock’ in the world, a statement that, tragically,just might be true. Compared with veal calves,hogs, and chickens raised in confinement,those lucky mink who spend their wakinghours pacing back and forth, jumping up the sides of cages, and rotating their heads, are leading acountry club existence. May God forgive us. (Empty Cages, p. 110).

ON CAT AND DOG FUR

Beginning in 1987, Americans were outraged when the Humane Society of the United States exposedthe international trade in cat and dog fur, especially when they learned that garments in Americanstores were trimmed or lined with fur from these animals . . . Cats and dogs should not have their furstolen from them, Americans protested. It’s their fur; it belongs to them, not to us. Animal RightsAdvocates could not agree more. To kill cats and dogs for their fur is both uncivilized and unethical.Animal Rights Advocates could not agree more. It’s just that we think the same is true when the furis stolen from any animal. (Empty Cages, p. 118)

ON THE CANADIAN SEAL HUNT

Despite official assurances to thecontrary, many seals are skinnedwhile still alive. It would be a reliefto learn that this happens rarely,though of course it should not happen at all. The bad news is, ithappens a lot. An independent scientific study, conducted in 2001by a team of veterinarians, conclud-ed that 42 percent of the seals wereskinned alive. That works out toapproximately 130,000. (EmptyCages, p. 115)

34

ON ANIMAL RIGHTS ADVOCATES

With rare exceptions, Animal Rights Advocates are for love of family and country, for human rightsand justice, for human freedom and equality, for compassion and mercy, for peace and tolerance, forspecial concern for those with special needs (children, the enfeebled, the elderly, among others), fora clean, sustainable environment, for the rights of our children’s children’s children—our future generations. In a word, the vast majority are Norman Rockwell Americans, straight off his famousThanksgiving cover for the old Saturday Evening Post, only with this noteworthy difference. We’llpass on the turkey, thank you. We don’t eat our friends. (Empty Cages, p. 19)

ON CALF ROPING

In rodeos, calves can reach speeds up to thirty miles an hour before they are lassoed (‘clotheslined’);often they are jerked over backward and slammed to the ground ... The faster they are running at thetime, the harder they are pulled backward. And the harder they are pulled backward, the more theirnecks are wrenched and the greater the force with which they hit the ground. Some calves do not do

encores. It’s one performance and out ... Sohere we have today’s brave cowboy, bendingover and tying up a frightened, dazed, disori-ented baby (the animals are all of four or fivemonths old), with neck and back injuries,bruises, broken bones, and internal hemor-rhages. Are those who are working to abolishrodeo in general, calf roping in particular, justoverwrought, emotionally unbalanced calfhuggers? (Empty Cages, p. 152)

ON DOLPHINS TRAINED TO PERFORM INMARINE PARKS

Free dolphins swim up to forty miles a day and can dive to depths of more than a quarter mile. Intheir natural environment, they live in extended social groups (pods) and find their way around in anever-changing, challenging environment via echolocation. (They ‘see’ by hearing). Once in captivi-ty, these animals are confined in concrete tanks (sometimes measuring as little as twenty-four feetlong by twenty-four feet wide by six feet deep) or in small sea-cages. There are no pods here. Nothingchanges in any significant way in this desolate world. No natural challenges are faced. Nothing naturally interesting is found because there is nothing naturally interesting to be found. To speak can-didly, it is worse than disingenuous; it is shameful that anyone would stand before us and say, ‘Wereally and truly care about the welfare of our dolphins,’ animals who have nothing to locate, no familyto be with, no place to dive, no miles to swim. (Empty Cages. P. 137)

ON SPORT HUNTING

When all the rhetorical dust settles, the real rush for the sport hunter comes from the kill. Any doubtabout this, just look through any of the hunting magazines at the local newsstand. The hunters pictured in those pages, displaying their dead wares, smiling from ear to ear, could not be happier. Ifwe asked them to pose with beanbag chairs, it just wouldn’t be the same. (Empty Cages, p. 149)

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ON ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION

On a daily basis, animals are drowned, suffocated and starved to death; they have their limbs severedand their organs crushed; they are burned, exposed to radiation, and used in experimental surgeries;they are shocked, raised in isolation, exposed to weapons of mass destruction, and rendered blind orparalyzed; they are the given heart attacks, ulcers, paralysis, and seizures; they are forced to inhaletobacco smoke, drink alcohol, and ingest various drugs, such as heroine and cocaine. And they sayAnimal Rights Advocates are violent? The violence done by Animal Rights Advocates (almost all ofit taking the form of property destruction) is nothing compared to the violence done by the world’svivisectors, a raindrop compared to an ocean. Just because a profession is legal, perhaps even (as inthe case of vivisection) prestigious does not mean it is nonviolent. On a day-to-day basis, the great-est amount of violence in the world occurs because of what humans do to other animals. That the violence is legally protected only serves to make matters worse. (Empty Cages, p. 189)

ON LIONS AND TIGERS TRAINED TO PERFORM IN CIRCUSES

An opportunity to expand animal consciousness presents itself if we look behind the eyes of wild animals trained to perform in circuses. In the wild, the home range for African lions and Indian maletigers varies from 8 to 156 square miles; for Siberian male tigers, up to 400 square miles. For the sakeof comparison, consider that San Francisco and Boston occupy 47 and 48 square miles, respective-ly; Chicago, 227; New York City, including all five boroughs, 309 square miles. No sensible personcan believe that circuses provide lions and tigers with a caged environment of ‘sufficient space,’ onethat offers the animals ‘adequate freedom of movement.’ (Empty Cages, p. 127)

ON GREYHOUND RACING

Day-to-day life for racing greyhounds is characterized by chronic deprivation. Dogs are confined insmall crates, some measuring three feet by three feet. On days when they are not racing, the animalscan be crated for up to twenty-two hours, sometimes stacked in tiers. Except when eating, they aremuzzled . . . As for why they are muzzled, the explanation is an expression of the industry’s com-mitment to humane treatment. After all, if their muzzles were removed, the dogs could injure theirmouth, teeth, or gums when they gnaw on their wire cage. In other words, the industry’s remedy forone kind of deprivation (keeping the dogs caged) is to impose another kind of deprivation (keepingthem muzzled), the better to treat them more humanely. (Empty Cages, p. 156)

ON ‘HUMANE’ SLAUGHTER

Symbolic of the ‘humane’ treatment animals receive at slaughterhouses is the plight of so-calleddowners. These are animals who are so sick or so badly injured that they cannot stand up or walk.Depending on conditions at the plant, downers can lay on the ground for a day or more, withoutwater, food, or veterinary care. Whether dead or alive, eventually they are pulled inside the slaugh-terhouse by chains or hoisted by a forklift. A Zogby poll found that 79 percent of the adults inter-viewed opposed the slaughter of downers. Not the dairy industry, which lobbied vigorously todelete legislation before the Congress in 2001 that aspired to ban the sale of downers. Why wouldthe dairy industry oppose such minimal legislation? Because most downed animals are dairy cowswho can be slaughtered for their meat after they no longer can produce milk. (Empty Cages, pp. 100-101)

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Books

Tom Regan’s books may be purchasedonline through Amazon, or at Barnes &Noble, and other book sellers. As someare out of print, try used bookstores, too.

Animal Defense Bookshttp://animalsvoiceresources.com/resources/books/

Lantern Bookswww.lanternbooks.com

A few books by Tom Regan• Empty Cages: Facing theChallenge of Animal Rights

• The Animal Rights Debate• Defending Animal Rights• All That Dwell Therein• Animal Rights, Human Wrongs:An Introduction to MoralPhilosophy

• Thee Generation: Reflections on the Coming Revolution

• The Case for Animal Rights• The Struggle for Animal Rights• Animal Rights and HumanObligations

• Love the Animals: Meditationsand Prayers

• Animal Sacrifices: ReligiousPerspec tives on the Use ofAnimals in Science

• Earthbound: Introductory Essayson Environmental Ethics

• Matters of Life and Death• Animals and Christianity: A Book of Readings

• And Justice for All: New Intro -duc tory Essays in Ethics andPublic Policy

Web Sites Regarding Tom Regan

Tom Regan Official Sitewww.tomregan.info

The Culture and AnimalsFoundationwww.cultureandanimals.org

The Tom Regan Animal RightsArchivewww.lib.ncsu.edu/arights/

10 Reasons For Animal Rights andTheir Explanations, and 10 ReasonsAgainst Animal Rights and TheirRepliesby Tom Reganhttp://tomregan.info/animal-rights-101/

Additional Animal Rights Web Sites

The Animals Voicewww.animalsvoice.com

Henry Salthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Stephens_Salt

The Institute for Animals andSocietywww.animalsandsociety.org

World Animal Netwww.worldanimalnet.org

Resources

The award-winning Animals Voice is the premiere online resource for helping

animals. Along with our two dozen satellite sites and this publication, we are the

leading independent networking source of timely and broad-scale information

about animal defense—and an incalculable volume of resources for animals and

their defenders. We feature the latest animal rights news, recent media coverage,

multi media, calendar, victories, thought-provoking and inspirational editorial,

graphic and compelling photography, and in-depth investigative reports.

There isn’t anything else like us online. Pay us a visit.

Stand up and be counted.

www.animalsvoice.com

“The fate of animals is in our hands.God grant we are equal to the task.”

TOM REGAN

Animals Voice Presents is a project of The Animals Voice.www.animalsvoice.com