Many years ago I saw Donald Trump interviewed by Larry King on the subject of charity and charitable organizations. "The Donald" expressed his suspicions that nobody is completely altruistic and, therefore, was leery of the true motives of charitable organizations. Knowing a thing or two about some large charitable organizations, I agreed with his perspective.



For example, the members of the American Heart Association could solve the major issue of heart disease easily, if they simply told people to adopt a vegan diet. But how would the increased consumption of carrots pay for the doctors' Mercedes?

Interestingly, Larry King often expresses his eternal gratitude for the cardiologist that performed his bypass surgery, and holds this surgeon in great esteem. But what is so magnificent about a man who sits back and let's people fall into a ditch, only so that he can play the role of hero by then selling the victim a "lifeline?" The true hero is the poor "weirdo" who tells people how to avoid the ditch. Yeah, we do live in a funny world.

Being the "Vegan Sage," I recently attended (and sponsored) the Animal Rights 2007 conference, where I got to meet roughly 800 poor weirdos who, sadly, Donald Trump has yet to meet. Consider the fact that, by and large, women fight for women's rights, blacks fight for black rights and gays fights for gay rights, and, therefore, civil rights is a never-ending struggle because it has little to do with civility and lots to do with personal agendas.

Enter the animal rights "weirdos." These are people who look out for the rights and welfare of animals, not because they, themselves, fear being hunted for whale blubber or for fear of being kept in a laboratory cage, but because they know it's wrong to do it to animals simply because the animals don't speak English. It has become apparent to me that people who fight for the rights of animals may very well be the only altruistic people on the planet.

At this conference I stood at an exhibitor's table, where we handed out free sample bars of a new soap called Veganu, and another unique feature emerged from these weirdos. If you've ever been in an environment where there are free samples, people often take as much as they can possibly get their hands on or stuff into their pockets (or mouths). It's not necessarily a bad thing and, in fact, it's kinda expected. Even we were well-stocked for it. But almost universally, these poor weirdos, when offered a free bar, would politely decline if they had already got one previously. I fell in love with 800 weird people that day.

"Animal rights" is a dirty term indicating that there really is no civility, rights or humanity in the first place. Clearly, the practical reality (and uniqueness) of animal rights has not to do with personal agendas and self-aggrandizement, but the real essence of humanity and pure altruism. The meaning of animal rights is the proper application of our dominionship ? to care for our underlings, not violate them. But in a crazy world, it is the sane man who looks like the weirdo.

Only when animal rights becomes known and accepted as "Humanities 101," and only when we acknowledge and embrace our very reason for being, i.e., caretakers of our underlings, will we achieve the "rights" we all really want.

Animal rights weirdos may be the only sane people on Planet Earth. Everything else, as Donald Trump suggested, is just a self-serving exercise.