““As the English historian Marc Gold wrote in 1995, “The term animal rights is nothing more than a useful kind of shorthand for a movement based on the recognition that non-human animals live purposeful emotional lives and are as capable of suffering as humans. … kindness and tolerance for those different and weaker than ourselves are amongst the highest possible human aspirations.” But the connections by no means stop there. The phrase “animal rights” also connected people with “nature,” “the environment,” the local ecological world in and beyond their backyards, and, incredibly, with other humans in a variety of ways. Of great significance for the future, it seemed to me, was a pattern of children pushing their parents to consider “the animals.””
