Grumpy Vegan

For, as St. Francis of Assisi has told us, all the creatures of God’s hand are brethren. “My sisters the birds,” he was wont to say, “My brothers the kine in the meadows.” The essential of true justice is the sense of solidarity. All creatures, from highest to lowest, stand hand in hand before God. Nor shall we ever begin to spiritualise our lives and thoughts, to lighten and lift ourselves higher, until we recognise this solidarity, until we learn to look upon the creatures of God’s hand, not as mere subjects for hunting and butchery, for dissecting and experimentation, but as living souls with whom, as well as with the sons of men, God’s covenant is made.

Anna Kingsford, The Essence of True Justice, excerpted from Anna Kingsford and Edward Matiland: Addresses and Essays on Vegetarianism, 1912.

What’s wrong — fundamentally wrong — with the way animals are treated isn’t the details that vary from case to case. It’s the whole system. The forlornness of the veal calf is pathetic, heart wrenching; the pulsing pain of the chimp with electrodes planted deep in her brain is repulsive; the slow, tortuous death of the racoon caught in the leg-hold trap is agonizing. But what is wrong isn’t the pain, isn’t the suffering, isn’t the deprivation. These compound what’s wrong. Sometimes – often – they make it much, much worse. But they are not the fundamental wrong.

The fundamental wrong is the system that allows us to view animals as our resources, here for us — to be eaten, or surgically manipulated, or exploited for sport or money.

Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, in In Defense of Animals edited by Peter Singer.

“My country right or wrong” is like saying, “My mother drunk or sober.”

G.K. Chesterton, 1874 – 1936, English writer.

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive.

William F. Buckley, Jr., born 1925, an American author and conservative commentator.

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.

John Galsworthy, 1867 – 1933, English novelist.