Good Governmental & Industrial Reform:
Obviously this is a big one for us Progressives. Restraining from throwing back a few Buffalo wings could help with reforming the way government works in several ways. First it would be a severe blow to the Agra-industrial complex. This industry, as everyone knows, is simply awful in every way. Bad for the workers. Bad for the consumers. Bad for tax payers. The only thing propping up this bloated and dangerous sector is the subsidies our elected officials hand over every “farm” bill that is passed. One of the main responses I hear from people who defend eating meat is that it will destroy the very base of Jeffersonian democracy- the yeomen farmers. Not true. The yeoman is dead, for now, and will not come back if people continue to eat the products of our current mega-factory systems. It is truly ironic that the one thing that is killing the farmer is his own product. Stop eating meat and speak out on the farm subsidies and you will be doing more to reform government than you would be railing against earmarks for pretty much anything else…
Public Health:
Meat is dangerous sh%t, literally. Stuff is filled with awful offal (sorry had to), bacteria, hormones, rot, puss, medicines and god knows what else. Eating a hamburger can kill you and not just if you choke on it. It’s even more dangerous for kids to eat, yet we serve it to them every day at school. Not to mention the long term threats the questionable industrial practices these flesh factories insists on using could have to both biodiversity and the possibility of creating large epidemics and/or super pathogens.
Environmentalism
This one is so obvious that all I will say is that the Red Sox rotation is looking darn good this year… (And on that note if you have read this far I’ll give you a little something in return for your time. If you ask the hot dog/sausage vendors at Fenway for a bun with just the fixings, i.e. peppers, tomatoes, onions, ext, 9 out of 10 times they will give it to you for free! More money for those soon to be $8 beers!)
Anyway… this has been a long winded and fully incomplete post on Progressivism and not eating animals. I could go on or I could go back and edit the heck out of this post. But as Coach Belichick says…it is what it is.
What do other people think? Is not eating animals or consciously refraining from eating as much meat as you once did a good Progressive thing to do or am I full of it?
What can we do is the Commonwealth to enhance understanding about eating meat and what it means to be a modern Progressive?
Is there a connection…?
…and while you did a pretty good job with this post, so often vegetarian preaching comes across as holier than thou. I’d be all for improving conditions on humanitarian grounds, but meat is a key food group. Humans are omnivores by nature and as a homo sapien I like my spot at the top of the food chain. Different people do better with different diets too. If someone chooses to be a vegetarian that’s their prerogative, but I’ve never been comfortable with evangelizing this lifestyle.
You’re prima facia evidence being a vegetarian does not make you any more or any less enlightened:
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p>Or, to summarize, you love animals and hate gay people. Yippee.
I don’t hate gay people any more than someone who says we should reduce divorce and abortion hates divorced people or people that get abortions. Do you accuse Obama and Clinton of hating people that get abortions because they say they should be minimized? We should reduce all of those as much as possible in order to live more holistically and traditionally and naturally and minimally, but we should still also love and support and forgive and tolerate people that don’t or aren’t able to do that.
Here are an example quote from you about gays and gay rights:
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p>I don’t “hate” gays, I just think they control the government, actively recruit kids, and need to be stopped. What an awesome rationalization.
but…
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p>Because that’s precisely what it is. It’s righteous. If someone is encouraging you to change your lifestyle for the greater good, there are two possibilities: either they’re a hypocrite or they’re smug and holier than thou. That’s a common response, and it stinks.
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p>Sortakinda. Humans have evolved to be able to eat meat — but we’ve also evolved to have a much more detailed understanding of the ramifications of our actions, and the act of eating meat in our society involves imposing lots of negatives on society as a whole. We’ve evolved to make choices of conscience, including not eating meat (or eating less, or eating different meats, etc).
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p>That’s just plain lame. Why not eradicate all animals larger than us so that we can like our spot at the top of the animal weight chart? Put a different way, so long as humans remain mortal, we’ll continue to be food for worms — does that put worms at the top of your food chain?
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p>Do you have any evidence that an American adult (neither pregnant nor nursing) must eat meat to “do better”? Any American adult? The protein that meat provides can be replaced with nuts, vitamins, etc. There are at least two billion people alive right now who eat very little or no meat — including 100% of a number of cultures.
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p>By “evangelizing” do you mean you’ve never been comfortable evangelizing or being evangelized to? Given your weak protests to the idea, my hunch is that it’s the latter. I don’t think that the evangelizing is very effective myself. I think it’s far more effective to gently push people to eat less meat, in whatever way is easiest for that person. I wrote about it below.
Sure there are different diets for different people. I know people who have done well on Atkins, very meat-heavy.
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p>As for evangelism, I’m uncomfortable on both ends of that equation.
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p>I don’t think the top of the food chain argument is lame at all, though maybe a little flip the way I put it. Our species has evolved to be the most advanced organism there is with a bit of a gap until the next one down (ie sapiens are the only species left of the genus homo). Somebody needs to be on top and I’m glad it’s us.
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p>There’s a third option to hypocrite vs. holier than thou and that is live and let live, which is my preference on this issue.
Remember Scott Brown’s call-in to Howie Carr during the campaign, when he said he was busy grilling steaks? It’s just like with the truck, it was to show he’s not some Prius preaching vegetarian, and he’s not gonna criticize your over-consumption or make you change your lifestyle. There are enough knuckleheads who desperately cling to their God-given rights to cheeseburgers and vacations and power boats and everything else, and anyone suggesting that they give something up, be it meat, or sport fishing, or genetic engineering, or casual sex, or exotic vacations, or marijuana, or OnDemand, or 3G networks, well, they must be the Taliban or the Nazis or the Hippies or the Liberals or something evil like that, they’re certainly not Americans, who never give anything up, even if it is killing them.
but on this point I do. Many of us want to help the environment as long as we don’t have to change more than our light bulbs. I wish more attention were paid to the actual costs, in terms of climate change, fuel usage, and human health, of animal products. It’s apparently significant. I read somewhere that giving up meat does as much for the environment as switching to a hybrid car.
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p>I admire vegans. I’m not there yet, might never be. For me it’s been easier to gradually cut down on red meat, which I rarely eat now, than to go cold turkey. (Sorry…) Also it’s hard to feel that sorry for a steamed mussel.
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p>It’s too bad it’s perceived as such a political test when so many veggie options are yummy, economical, and healthy.
I think a HUGE thing that Massachusetts and the nation can do is to ban the use of antibiotics in raising meat. Factory farmed (and many other farms) feed antibiotics to cattle like water because they are also feeding cattle corn rather than grass- they can’t digest the corn as it makes them sick, but it makes them grow faster.
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p>The number of people who have become susceptible to antibiotic resistant infections has increased and children are especially vulnerable.
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p>The American Public Association has already called for an end to use of anti-biotics in our food system- calling it a crisis.
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p>Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times just published last week on this topic. It’s a must-read. This argument is not from a vegan proselytizer but from a journalist with a responsibility to inform the public about this dangerous practice that is affecting all of us, no matter what your politics are or your food preference.
What is it gonna take to stop the meat industry from feeding antibiotics? Do we need to march on Washington or something? We have to get around the conflict of interest by the antibiotic suppliers and researchers and immunologists, who benefit by their products being overused and becoming less effective and requiring new antibiotics to be developed. I think 70% of antibiotics sold are fed to animals that aren’t even sick yet, because they will probably get sick under those conditions otherwise. That’s a lot of money going to Big Pharma and paying lots of researchers salaries. And money to drug research is the most important thing to this administration and progressives here.
For my tastes, it hits on the wrong things with the wrong emotions.
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p>Most around here know me, but for those who don’t:
1. I like to make decisions based on facts, not emotions.
2. I care very deeply about energy and environmental issues.
3. I’m not an animal lover. I’m not even an animal liker (nor licker). I take a Catholic approach to animals, which is that (a) they don’t have souls, (b) they are tools, and (c) causing unnecessary pain or harm to an animal is sinful. This means that cats don’t make it to heaven, it’s OK to use animals for transportation, work, and food, and that kicking a dog or killing an animal in an unnecessarily painful way is to be avoided.
4. The 80/20 rule. If we can reduce 80% of the impact with just 20% of the effort, let’s bang that out and move on. Worrying about the last 20% of the impact is usually not worth the effort.
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p>Where am I going with this? Consider Alice, Billy, Carol, and Doug. They all eat about the same amount of food a day. Alice has gone vegetarian, and Billy hasn’t. Carol and Doug have both committed to cut down on meat by 50%, focusing on eliminating meat from larger animals first.
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p>Which pair (AB or CD) has, in aggregate, cut their negative impact more? They’re both eating the same amount of meat, but CD is eating less of the most dangerous meat, so CD has cut their negative impact more… and don’t have to worry about not being able to find a sandwich or what’s being served at Grandmas or how they’ll avoid eating their most favoritist meat when it smells oh so good. Not only is doing what Carol and Doug are doing far easier than what Alice is doing, but it’s far easier for Carol or Doug to encourage and convince others to do it too, because they’re not asking so much that they get nothing.
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p>It’s hard to cut out meat completely, especially in an American society that eats 50% more meat per capita than we did in 1960 and three times the world average. For folks who go vegetarian (or vegan, or even eat like the Jains) — hats off to you. You’re doing a great job reducing your impact on the environment, climate change, labor, corporate greed, public sickness, and so forth. Really, awesome job!
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p>For the rest of us — let’s not let perfect be the enemy of the good. Instead of all or nothing, eat less meat, and eat from smaller animals. That has a huge impact, and it’s something that everyone can do, regardless of their cultural or social norms.
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p>For each person, this is different. Some people give up a kind of meat, like pork or beef. Others make it a point to not make meat the main course — instead of a pork chop with some veggie sides, they mix the pork in with rice or whatever so that the pork is a flavor enhancer, not the bulk of the meal. Still others make it a point to only eat meat in restaurants, or the reverse — to try hard not to order meat at restaurants. Some folks do what I do — not eat meat at all some days of the week, with ‘penance’ allowed. My wife and I gave up meat on weekdays almost two years ago. It’s not a hard and fast rule — we eat turkey on Thanksgiving, but don’t eat meat on one weekend day prior or afterward. We eat lots of carbs, tons of fruit and veg, and plenty of cheese. We don’t go on a flesh binge on the weekend, and so we’ve cut our consumption by 5/7ths. It also means that when we invite our friends over for dinner, we cook up tasty vegetarian Italian or Mexican or Thai or whatever, and our friends (Hindi, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, whatever) don’t have to worry about their dietary restrictions being in conflict with the meal. Hopefully, they enjoy the meal and make more of it for themselves, thereby displacing a little bit of meat in their own consumption in the future. And just as it’s hard to avoid eating meat in a society that eats so much, every time we buy vegetarian food at a restaurant or at the grocer, we send the signal that there’s demand for this stuff, and the choices expand — making it easier for folks in the future to choose their meal with less or no meat in it.
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p>Reduce your negative impact on the atmosphere, the earth, and your own body. Eat less meat.
As somewhat of an aside, my husband just told me that the Catholic view that other animals did not have souls was a significant driver in his development toward atheism. As a child he found it self-evident that either all mammals had souls — or else no mammals had souls.
What is his stance on covering dogs and cats with the Public Option?
but since yours wasn’t a serious question, his probably isn’t a serious answer, either.
… that this is a joke and not a product of reasoning from your intellect.
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p>If you believe animals have souls then it follows that you should believe that you should be able to marry them?
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p>Really?
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p>To that the conclusion must fall from that premise really implies that you yourself must believe the implied premise that having a soul is sufficient reason to permit marrying. If you accept that implied premise then you must think that it’s already ok for dads to marry their daughters.
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p>Like I said, makes no sense.
You know: if two men can get married, why can’t dcsurfer marry his beloved box turtle…?
My comment was just a mocking reaction to StephGM’s husband’s rationalization for his atheism, which seemed very irrational to me, and part of a growing animal-rights trend, not based on ecology or compassion (like my decision to be vegan is), but based on a bitter anti-humanism that equalizes humans and animals and says there is nothing special about humans. It is a materialist view that assumes nothing special or sacred about human life and the creation of human life. “Bitter” is a word I’ve just seen used for the Dem’s health care push, but it also is apt to describe the general anti-natural marriage sentiment, that is driven by a desire to knock human procreation off the pedestal because its too dirty and random and animalistic. It’s a bitterness about being human and imperfect, and it results in attitudes about everything from society to health care and marriage and reproduction.
You’re a vegan because of “compassion” but you wholeheartedly oppose gay rights, especially marriage. Interesting.
that we have to allow animals to do whatever they want. Also, I don’t think gays should be eaten. They’re consistent positions, both based on ecology and sustainability and human dignity.
It’s tough to draw the line, but some of the less impressive animals such as mice compared to the more impressive non-mammals such as penguins or octopi?
but we were trying to somewhat accurately capture the childhood theology of an ex-Catholic atheist — not to describe what would make most sense given all that is known about animal cognition, nurturing behavior, and altruism in non-humans.
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p>I think my own childhood theology — in moments when I entertained the idea that there might be something called soul — was that all living things might contain this spirit-thing in various amounts. Even ants and plants should have a bit of it.
It’s always tough to draw the line. As for what you call “childhood theology” — which sounds like pantheism — it has a lot of appeal to me, personally.
Definition [here]:
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p>And yes, Avatar is fundamentally animistic.
I’m allergic to soy, wheat, gluten, and most grains. I thrive on a high-protein, lower carb diet. Some people do well on a vegetarian diet. Most don’t. Everything I put in my mouth comes from local or sustainable agriculture. I haven’t eaten store-bought meat in years. A lot of vegetarians eat soy, which is one of the world’s most destructive crops to ecosystems and to the soil. Yes, factory farming is horrific (I read and saw ‘Food Inc.’) which is why you should patronize local farmers if you can.
Right, one can be a vegan and still be terrible to the environment and one’s own health. Processed food, which Michael Pollan wouldn’t even call food at all, is way worse than an egg, or a traditionally farmed chicken or cow.
so just undercut it at all times with FUD. I’d expect nothing less from you good sir (or ma’am).
Soy is now an industrial product, and harmful to people and the planet.
But I’d expect a globalist industrialist to defend it.
Your combination of allergies is a total bummer, and a very unusual case.
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p>Most? Got any data for that at all? Of course not. I can point to about two billion people who eat meat either never or extremely rarely.