Matt Scully on . . . Well, You’ll Find Out. Ethos Before Logos.
Matthew O. Scully is the guy who wrote Sarah Palin’s electrifying speech to the 2008 GOP convention. He also wrote Paul Ryan’s “Let’s get this done!” speech in 2012, which you might not remember as well, but which was quite an excellent speech. I have been fortunate enough to spend some quality time in Matt’s company, and I find him a brilliant, down to earth man, with no shortage of fascinating stories. (Matt used to be a speechwriter for George W. Bush, and has spent his share of time in the Oval Office, so how couldn’t he have great stories to tell?) I have described Matt before in this way, in my post about Ryan’s speech:
Matt is a vegan (for moral reasons), an opponent of hunting, and an environmentalist; a thinking, independent conservative who shows that there is room in the party for people of all different stripes. He is also hell of a speech writer and he really pulled this one off.
All this is by way of background, because when you are about to broach a delicate subject that segments of your audience might disagree with, you want to establish the proponent’s bona fides. The Greeks called it ethos, and suggested that it precede logos, or the logical part of the argument.
Whether Matt studied Greek rhetoric, or simply grasps the principles instinctively, he gets this concept. So he opens his latest piece in this compelling manner:
In 20 or so years of political speechwriting, the only condition I have ever set down in advance of being hired is that I would never, under any circumstances, assist any candidate or officeholder in promoting the cause of abortion. Among employers in that time, the one I admired most was a Democrat: the late Pennsylvania governor Robert P. Casey, a great man and gallant champion of life who viewed abortion on demand as “the ultimate exploitation of the weak by the strong,” who considered his party’s all-in acceptance of abortion a tragic error, and who told me, long before Kermit Gosnell came along, about the filthy characters in it for the money.
In presidential speechwriting, during the first term of George W. Bush, my colleagues and I put special care into the “culture of life” theme, and I’ve sought to do the same in various campaigns going back to Bush-Quayle ’92. The abortion question, rightly a defining concern of modern conservatism, will always center on mercy for the child, who is just as we once were, on our way into the world, waiting to be born and needing to be loved. Let compassion for mother and child alike be the spirit, leaving anger and sanctimony to the other side, and a decisive majority of Americans — in both parties, in every age group, women and men alike — will always be with you. In Sarah Palin’s 2008 convention address, no words at all were needed on the subject: Just the sight of the governor and her infant son Trig, a child with Down syndrome, said it all. If there was any provocation in the text directed at the pro-abortion lobby, it was simply to call the child “a perfectly beautiful baby boy.” And when that is heard as a rebuke, you know your cause has serious problems.
Already, you gotta love the guy, right?
So when Matt talks about animal rights, I assume that y’all are going to listen respectfully. You don’t have to agree. Just listen with an open mind. That’s all he asks, and all I ask.
This cursus honorum of pro-life commitment — and you could throw in a good many columns on the matter in National Review and elsewhere — is offered by way of asking readers, and especially those of shared conviction, to consider another moral concern, cruelty to animals, in the same merciful spirit. I kept thinking of the connection between abortion and extreme cruelty during the trial last April and May of Dr. Gosnell, the specialist in late-term abortions (right there in Governor Casey’s state) who is now in prison, because it was a case of people numbed to horrors that had become routine and normalized, and a case of euphemisms dragged into the light of day. Conservative commentators seized on the hypocrisy of pro-choice liberals, deriding all the cant and rationalization that the Left uses in defense of abortion, and finally shaming the major media — thanks above all to columnist Kirsten Powers, a Democrat — into covering the trial after weeks of silence. I completely agreed, but just wished that those same conservatives might think as clearly and forthrightly about other horrors and other euphemisms.
There’s quite a bit of both, to take just the example closest to home, in the modern animal factories we call farms. One could equally cite other routine forms of abuse inflicted on animals — for spectacles, for bloody recreation, or in the name of science — but this is the abuse that is the most widespread, and the most directly affected and sustained by the choices that you and I make. The factory farms — producing almost every animal product we see sold or advertised, in our country and most others — are places of immense and avoidable suffering. And though the moral stakes are not the same as with abortion, the moral habits are, relying in both cases on the averted gaze and a smothering of empathy.
I happen to agree with Matt wholeheartedly on this issue. It’s one of the reasons I broke with conservative orthodoxy to support California’s Proposition 2 back in 2008. I can’t take my convictions as far as Matt does — I am a meat eater, to cite one stark example — but in a household consisting of 50% vegetarians (the females), there is no shortage of soy products, and I eat them fairly often and enjoy them.
I think eating meat is part of the cycle of nature, but I support humane treatment of animals, and recognize that many of them share human emotions, which many consider the touchstone of humanity. If you don’t believe me, I suggest reading When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals. I read this years ago and found the evidence clear and convincing.
But there I go. My goal in this post is not to convince you of anything. It’s to direct you to Matt’s piece. He is the speechwriter; I’m not. If anyone has the rhetorical knowledge and power to convince you of the moral imperative to treat animals in a humane fashion, it’s Matt. So go read his piece now. It’s rather lengthy, but I promise you: it’s worth your time.
P.S. Matt has a book about all this, if you’re interested. It’s called Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy. Check it out.
Good luck getting big business to change the money making methods of animal slaughter. He would have a better chance of closing the border.
mg (31009b) — 10/8/2013 @ 12:18 amThe problem I have with his approach is that it erases what I see as the fundamental distinction between people and animals. As I see it, the world is divided into people and things. Only people have rights — only people can have rights, because the very concept of rights is meaningless when applied to things. A rock or a tree has no moral status; it has no rights, and there is nothing that its owner may not do to it. And animals are also things, morally identical to rocks.
The world was created for the use and benefit of people, and exists only for that purpose. All things are valuable only to the extent that people value them, to the extent that they are useful to people. And thus the ultimate moral good is to extract the maximum value one can from all things. Sometimes that maximum value is extracted merely by looking at a thing, and experiencing the feelings it evokes; the way to properly exploit such a thing will be to leave it alone. But that’s very different from deliberately not exploiting something, by pretending that it ought not to be exploited, that it has some right of its own to be left alone.
So what, then, is the evil of cruelty to animals? As I see it, that evil doesn’t consist in violating any supposed right an animal has to freedom from pain or distress, or to anything else. Animals have no rights. Rather, the evil is that cruelty is a bad emotion in people, and being cruel to animals develops that emotion. A good person cannot take any pleasure in another being’s suffering; taking such pleasure is a sign of a bad character, and coarsens ones character. And ultimately the problem with this is that one who develops a cruel character towards animals will display that character also towards people, who do have rights. If you enjoy hurting animals, you will eventually hurt people. A child who pulls the wings off flies, will eventually dismember people, looking for the same thrills and feelings of control on a bigger scale.
What follows is that what’s wrong with mistreating animals is not what actually happens to the animal, but the feeling in the person’s heart, the sadistic pleasure in another’s suffering. And that’s where farming is different. A farmer makes animals suffer, not because he takes pleasure in it, but for purely practical reasons. All things being equal he’d be nice to his animals, but if it saves money to do things in a way that’s less pleasant for the animals then he’ll do things that way. Cruelty is the senseless infliction of suffering, doing it for pleasure; doing it for economic efficiency is quite another matter. And the consumer who doesn’t even have to be aware of the animal’s suffering is certainly not pandering to or exercising any sadistic feeling, and thus shouldn’t, in my view, feel any moral compunction.
By the way, one consequence of this view is that I think working at a slaughterhouse is morally superior to hunting. The slaughterer kills animals for a living; it gives him no joy, it’s just a job. The hunter does it for pleasure, and there’s something morally tainted, in my view, in the ability to enjoy killing anything. It’s not that animals shouldn’t be killed to give people pleasure; it’s that a good person should be incapable of feeling pleasure in killing. Killing shouldn’t be fun. It should be distasteful, something one does for a reason, because one wants the result (meat, fur, lack of pests, etc.) not for its own sake. Now if one hunts because it’s the most convenient and cheapest way to obtain meat, that’s one thing; but when a city-dweller goes out of his way to go hunting, and spends significant time, effort, and money on it, more than it would cost to just buy the meat and save the trouble, then clearly he is doing it because it’s fun, and I think that’s a problem in character development.
Milhouse (3d0df0) — 10/8/2013 @ 12:30 amAnother hunter hater, sheesh.
mg (31009b) — 10/8/2013 @ 12:48 amAs a young killer of fish and game, in the spring when the carp would run into the lake, my grandfather would send me down to the creek with a trailer full of bushel baskets, I would spear the carp, fill the baskets, and feed the hogs. For 2-3 weeks a year the hogs loved it. And I enjoyed it. Best tasting pork in southern Mn.
mg (31009b) — 10/8/2013 @ 12:54 amHunters and fisherman are about to be on the endangered list with the progressive movements in this once great country.
When I was growing up, my mother always bought free-range chicken rather than coop-raised. I don’t know if she did it out of any kind of moral concern, I just know that free-range chicken tastes better. I can very clearly tell the difference between a chicken that never used its muscles in its life and a chicken that ran around a farm yard: the latter’s meat has more flavor. So when I shop, I look for free-range chicken if I can.
Now, if Matt Scully manages to persuade enough people to prefer “humane meat” (or whatever term ends up becoming popular) rather than factory-farmed meat, there will be business that start to meet that demand. A small farmer will say, “Well, I can’t compete with the factory farms on price; they’re managing to run their operation at a far lower cost per head of cattle than I can. But if I follow the Humane Meat guidelines, people will be willing to pay a premium for the meat I produce, which means I can make a profit and stay in business.” And thus, an alternative will be created for those who find it to be important — and all by persuasion, not coercion.
It’s like the “organic” label. As long as there are lots of people willing to pay a premium for “organic” produce (I’m not one of them), the supermarkets will continue to stock organic produce. Same thing with the “humane meat” label if anyone gets around to creating one and formulating rules for its use.
Robin Munn (2a0354) — 10/8/2013 @ 2:24 amAlso, Milhouse, I think there’s a flaw in your view of hunting as morally inferior. You say the hunter kills for pleasure, and killing for pleasure leads to cruelty in humans. But hunters don’t find pleasure in the kill (with only rare exceptions), they find pleasure in the chase. It’s the challenge that draws them, not the kill itself; if most hunters found pleasure in the actual kill, then most hunting would be done with machine guns from helicopters.
Robin Munn (2a0354) — 10/8/2013 @ 2:27 amI really must specifically object to this part of his argument:
Even on his own premises, he should see genetically engineering an animal to do better under the conditions of economically efficient farming as a good thing, that mitigates the evils he sees in such farming. If you could engineer an animal that liked the conditions of a factory farm, and thrived under them, then that would be its nature, and it wouldn’t be stressed or miserable, so surely his objections to such farming would disappear. How can he object to that, or to anything that approaches it to some degree? He seems to believe that all animals must share an unalterable “essential nature”, and an animal whose nature is different from that is “perverted”. I don’t see where that belief comes from.
Milhouse (3d0df0) — 10/8/2013 @ 2:38 amIf it were merely the chase, then not killing the animal at the end would be just as satisfying as killing it. There are, of course, “hunters” who hunt with cameras instead of guns, or fishermen who “catch and release”. But it seems to me that to most hunters the point of the chase is the kill that it leads up to; the fun of the anticipation that builds up, and the sense of satisfaction in finally achieving it. A hunter who spent all day hunting but didn’t come home with anything surely feels disappointed, even if he’s coming home to a freezerfull of steak.
In addition, the chase itself, which is such fun for the hunter, is surely distressful to the prey.
Milhouse (3d0df0) — 10/8/2013 @ 2:44 am8 – How in heck would you know if you don’t hunt?
mg (31009b) — 10/8/2013 @ 3:05 amMore talk from the book smart people.
You people should figure out how to stop eagles from flying into wind turbines instead of bashing hunters.
More from Scully:
But all things do exist for people’s pleasure, and should yield to our designs and appetites. It’s just that we shouldn’t desire to deliberately hurt them; we should do it only reluctantly, as a side effect of some other desired outcome (e.g. cheap meat).
I think he’s got this one exactly backwards. “Greed” and “arrogance” are meaningless when applied to things, including animals. People are the purpose of creation, things are the means the Creator has provided for us to attain our needs and desires. That’s not arrogance, it’s reality.
And here, I think, is where Scully’s argument is most vulnerable. Because in his elevation of animals he ends up harming humans. This elitist denigration of cheap meat, as if it were not a moral good in its own right, really bothers me. Maybe you are so well off that you are not very sensitive to the price of food. You may shop at Whole Foods, and the prices are what they are, at the end of the day you can easily pay them, so price is only a secondary or tertiary consideration. You decide what you want before looking at the price. But for many people life isn’t like that. Price is the first thing they look at when grocery shopping, and not at Whole Foods. Cheaper and more efficient farming, leading to cheaper food, makes more and better food available to people who would otherwise have to do without. Cheap meat doesn’t just mean they save a few dollars for something else, it’s the only way they can eat meat at all. And the pleasure they get from doing so is a moral good in its own right, far more important than the comfort of an animal.
Come to think of it, this is a flaw in the moral outlook of a lot of health nuts, nanny-staters, CSPI types, and assorted leftists: in their cost-benefit calculus they don’t put any value on human pleasure.
Milhouse (3d0df0) — 10/8/2013 @ 3:29 amI want to modify something I wrote earlier. Deliberate sadism isn’t the only bad character trait that can develop from mistreatment of animals. Another is callousness to suffering; when one doesn’t actually enjoy the suffering of others, but has learned not to care. Unlike sadism, this is something that can develop among farmers, slaughterhouse workers, etc. If one is surrounded by suffering animals all the time, it can coarsen ones nature, so that one eventually stops feeling the suffering of people too. So that would be a good argument for improving practises at these businesses. But I think it’s a stretch to extend that to the consumer in the supermarket, who doesn’t see any suffering, and thus doesn’t have to harden his heart to it. On the contrary, by making him aware of what (you claim) happens in the production of his food, you risk causing this callousness that wouldn’t have been there if he didn’t have to think about it.
Milhouse (3d0df0) — 10/8/2013 @ 3:41 amHow do people stay alive eating only fruit that has fallen from a tree?
mg (31009b) — 10/8/2013 @ 3:49 amWhy are meat prices high? Because the Neanderthals in d.c. forced us to put corn in our fuel.
Stupid people with college degrees are killing me.
By being rich enough to buy lots of such fruit, and by supplementing it with expensive vitamins, etc. It’s an affectation that only rich people can afford.
Milhouse (3d0df0) — 10/8/2013 @ 3:52 amI have these conversations with my daughter. She also objects to “factory farms”. My answer is, “When the known world’s population was thirty million people you could feed them all from primitive farming in the Nile basin. With six billion people, you need intensive farming.”
I grew up on a farm my daughter and Mr. Scully would approve of. Our pigsty, for our one pig, was bigger than the apartments I came to rent out in Chicago (and the pig kept it cleaner than some of my tenants). My father would drag the pig out in November, slit its throat, and my mother would turn it into bacon, ham, and sausage.
All other animals were likewise “free range”. I had thirty lambs every summer, from age seven to ten that I watched get woolier on a mountainside. In September, my father sheared them and we walked them to market. We were very kind to them. We walked them slowly, so they would gain not lose weight. They were cash on the hoof.
The same thing with our other animals. Do you know where “nest egg” comes from? If you have free range hens, they’ll make their own nests wherever they feel comfortable. You take an egg and mark it (so you know it’s the stale one) and put it where you want the hen to lay. Each will make that place her nest. Then you go every day and harvest the eggs except the nest eggs.
Hunting? The only animals my father killed that we did not eat were the foxes that came for our chickens.
I’ll talk about our horses, goats and rabbits; our wheat, olives, figs, garden truck; plowing and making soap from wood ashes and last year’s leftover lards; some other time.
It was a wonderful life, in many respects, but it’s not sustainable in today’s world — not for the farmer and not for the populaces he feeds. Intensive farming is vital and unavoidable.
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:15 amAnd of course to the radical Earth-worshiper, the obvious conclusion is that there are too damn many people, and rather than make animals and “nature” pay, we should reduce our own population down to where the survivors could once again sustain themselves without these methods.
In other words, “To a gas chamber, go!”
Milhouse (3d0df0) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:20 amAnd although I do find an ethos in the way we treated our animals, and how other farmers treat their animals, I do not consider it an ethical question except in the loosest sense of the term. It is a manner of behavior which balances common-sense practicality necessary for survival with an esthetic sense unique to humans — one of the many things found only in humans and not in any animal.
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:22 amI object to trophy hunting. I do not object to fur or leather clothes, car seats, or even steering wheel covers, from harvested “renewable” animals or the byproduct of butchering for food. I do object to tiger skin rugs, ivory billiard balls, elephant foot umbrella stands, and rhinoceros horn aphrodisiacs. I consider the living animal more worthwhile to have around.
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:29 amAs I make my way through Scully’s essay (and I haven’t finished it yet) I’m struck more and more by the way in which he blurs what I see as the fundamental moral distinction between people and animals. At least as far as I’ve got he has never outright denied that distinction; but he’s definitely minimised it. And the problem with that is that by elevating the status of animals he’s lowering the status of people. He may not agree with PETA’s “a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy”, but that is the logical conclusion. And thus what starts as an argument for being kind to animals ends up with one that equally justifies being cruel to people.
And it occurs to me that the same abstract principle can be seen in a very different debate: that over same-sex marriage. Opponents of same-sex marriage often see it as a threat to traditional mixed-sex marriage, and supporters ridicule that claim, and ask how one couple’s marriage can damage another’s. But it’s really the same thing; by denying the distinction between them, by insisting that they’re just different instances of the same thing, they’re not only elevating same-sex marriage but lowering the importance and status of mixed-sex marriage, and thus the institution of the family on which our entire society is based.
Milhouse (3d0df0) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:30 amBut if the animals were private property rather than a commons, then it would be up to each animal’s owner to decide what is the most worthwhile use to which it can be put.
Milhouse (3d0df0) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:33 amI have no problem with farming tigers, elephants or rhinoceroses. All domesticated animals were wild, once. I would still object to raising them and letting them loose for target practice. They do that with pheasants up around here and with quail out west. I think that’s ugly — just plain, f***ing ugly.
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:39 amIndeed, we can’t and shouldn’t. They are not savages; and nor are we. It’s the pampering of dogs that’s peculiar, and the special laws protecting dogs that ought to be repealed.
Milhouse (3d0df0) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:40 amWe can have laws that protect dogs from cruelty in the same way that we can have laws that require the borders of parking lots to be landscaped. Utility is neither necessary nor sufficient for law.
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:44 amwe need to work more harder for to get the slig farms online
happyfeet (8ce051) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:45 amIn my suburban experience the humane treatment of animals has been the observable norm, direct cruelty or abuse seems so relatively rare as to be almost nonexistent except among drug dealers and dog fighting rings. The abuse I see most often takes the form of neglect. It’s usually self-absorbed young people living in rented apartments with dogs and cats who quickly lose interest and shirk the responsibilities they once so blithely assumed.
These animals end up unwanted, unfed, neglected, and eventually on the street till killed by cars or picked up and dispatched by animal control authorities. Apartment dwellers, especially young and unmarried ones, just shouldn’t have 4 legged pets. That one self imposed restriction alone could represent an overwhelming reduction in overall animal mistreatment.
ropelight (ba3d99) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:53 amspeaking of meat look at what the assclowns at the USDA have reduced themselves to
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CHICKEN_ALERT_SALMONELLA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-07-18-57-51
Pitiful.
I know you’re federal workers but c’mon – you can still have a little dignity.
happyfeet (8ce051) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:53 amI have empathy for people that are reliant on todays way of life.
Get Back
mg (31009b) — 10/8/2013 @ 5:10 amGet Back
Get Back to where you once belonged
I believe that where extreme animal rights people hit a wall is that animals do not — because they are not capable, because they are not endowed with the capacity be it thought, language, or any measure of transcendence — to have this conversation we are having. That is what distinguishes us from animals. And for a conversation stopper, let me throw in that every moral code can be boiled down to a five-word Commandment: Don’t f***ing live like animals.
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2013 @ 5:14 amI only skimmed the article, and I appreciate the stand he has taken in the abortion issue professionally,
but this comment in the article jumped out at me:
There are, in contrast to abortion, no hard cases in factory farming to blur the issue.
That seems to me to be illustrative of the blurring between people and “other” animals. Aborting a fetus can be more justified than “factory farming”?
I am a suburban and “outdoors type” non-farmer, who was grossed out as a child when I saw how cottage cheese was made (even though I loved it, it was years before I ate it again).
I have no problem with the idea that farming methods, even “factory farming”, should be done in a manner that is “not cruel”. I don’t think that means every sheep needs to free range over idyllic hills, but I have little idea as to how to decide how much “elbow room” each animal should have.
In another way, we “factory farm” people by putting them in densely populated cities and warehoused in nursing homes. But even in those situations, the density itself isn’t the problem, as one can enjoy life in an apartment building, a row home, or a nursing home that is reasonably staffed with family that visits.
My son hunts for deer. In addition to whatever enjoyment he gets from being out in the woods and the challenge of “the chase”, he counts on the meat as something to eat, and hunters maintain the health of the deer population in lack of natural predators such as wolves, thereby improving “the quality of life as a deer”.
Even pheasant and quail hunters, as well as duck hunters and others, are often the most interested in maintaining habitat that “preserves nature”.
I think there is much that can be argued apart from Scripture, but I think a thoughtful reading of the Old Testament (I think including Muslims’ shared regard up to the story of Abraham, as I understand it) clearly indicates the huge separation between people and “other” animals, yet also that people are given stewardship over Creation and will be held accountable for just and righteous management. In fact, I think there are instructions about care for animals even in the Proverbs.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 10/8/2013 @ 5:41 amI became a vegetarian then vegan for about 6 years. My oldest daughter never ate meat until she was 2 years old. Why did she eat meat at 2? Because I had another child, less time, less money. Here we are 11 yrs later, a total of 4 kids, all meat eaters.
To buy vegetable protein (which newer studies say isn’t very good for you) is so over the top expensive that there is no way I could feed 6 people for under $200/week. These kids eat A LOT. My 6 year old (who is stick thin) can polish off 3 hamburgers, 2 hotdogs, and 2 servings of salad at one meal.
With the amount of time it takes to make really good tasting, healthy vegan dishes for 6 people, I would never leave the kitchen. I barely left when I was doing it for 2 people.
nk (14) is absolutely right, factory farming is vital. And I’d love to buy more free-range meat, but it too is prohibitively expensive, esp in the cities. I’d rather the money get spent on my kids’ drum and guitar lessons, boy scouts, and other activities.
Sherri (26558e) — 10/8/2013 @ 6:24 amMD, I sometimes wonder whether humans are nothing more than the teetering tip of the food pyramid with no more right to exist than the bacteria which will reintroduce us to the base. It means that I have not been careful with my sugar and fiber intake.
“You are a fluke of the universe, you have no right to be here. Whether you can hear it or not, the universe is laughing behind your back.” Great, funny song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFLvhKv-Lbo Thankfully, when I’m in that mood, I’m also in the mood to grab the universe by her chin hairs and give her a c**tpunt. 😉
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2013 @ 6:30 amIf it were merely the chase, then not killing the animal at the end would be just as satisfying as killing it. There are, of course, ….
There are, of course, lots of people who’ve never hunted, never lived outside the city, once visited a park, but can tell you what hunters think.
Milhouse, you have _no idea_ what you’re talking about.
Which others have told you. and you’ve doubled down on insisting that you know better than they (the people who you’re describing) do.
When you’re telling people “No, your experience wasn’t like that at all?” it’s well past time to stop and say “Perhaps I do not know of which I speak” and listen.
A hunter who spent all day hunting but didn’t come home with anything surely feels disappointed, even if he’s coming home to a freezerfull of steak.
Surely. Because you’ve never felt that way, but you’re sure you would, so every one else does?
Some of your other points are fine, but stop trying to tell people how hunters think and believe.
Because you’re wrong, and the more you say, the more wrong you get.
Unix-Jedi (d14def) — 10/8/2013 @ 6:33 amMilhouse – your description of hunting asked on your lack of experience bears no resemblance to anything I have experienced in decades of hunting.
I like Sherri’s comment. A bunch.
JD (8935bd) — 10/8/2013 @ 6:41 amAt my local supermarket, colored bell peppers (Red, Orange, Yellow) are $3.99/lb and fresh chicken is 99 cents/lb. The choice, if you can call it a choice, is 2 fancy peppers or 4 pounds of chicken for the same money.
ropelight (ba3d99) — 10/8/2013 @ 6:43 amReading the article, I’m less than convinced.
Of course, some of it is basic math, which the political class is always incapable of doing.
It would be, in my opinion, a far better essay if he stopped with the asides and snide commentary.
Easily said by a vegan who more than likely has no idea how many animals died in his food production. Or how it’s only because of the overabundance of food, by those evil mean people, that he’s able to be a sanctimonious vegan. (The two terms aren’t necessarily redundant. I’m sure one day I’ll meet a vegan who isn’t sanctimonious. But it’s not Scully.)
When he writes:
He illustrates that he doesn’t understand the calculus of food, and that he demeans the people (cowardly killers) who are willing to do the dirty work needed for him to have his soy and sniff condescendingly in their direction.
So he doesn’t think “highly” of it. They’re “cowards” (Nobody who willingly climbs into one of those anti-physics deathtraps is a coward, in my book.)
With that sneer, he loses any ability to convince or even intellectually honestly participate in the conversation about what should be done to control herds and packs.
In other words, based on his ethics, and feelings, (but not facts or logic) he gets to tell me what to do.
No thanks. That’s as odious from the “right” as it is the “left”, and when it combines as many slurs and ad homs as appeals to emotion – worth reading.
But far more worthy of fisking.
Unix-Jedi (d14def) — 10/8/2013 @ 7:06 amRopelight
Sherri (26558e) — 10/8/2013 @ 7:12 amWhich one of those choices will keep you full longer and provide more calories to build and repair cells thereby keeping you healthy? Easy, economical choice: winner, winner, chicken dinner.
I’d offer to anyone interested in this field one of the best books about hunting and culture I’ve yet found:
http://www.amazon.com/Bloodties-Nature-Culture-Kodansha-Globe/dp/1568360274
Unix-Jedi (d14def) — 10/8/2013 @ 7:15 amWhen I hunted, it was not for the waking up at 3:00 a.m., freezing my heinie off, tramping through wet grass and mud and stumbling over rocks. It was for the gun. Placing the shot. Whether Milhouse guessed that, or whether he knows it from experience, he got that right. Camera and binoculars are not the same. Getting close to the animal is not the same. Anything can make anybody miss the shot altogether or make a bad shot (I don’t how you guys feel on seeing a bird flutter away with only half of one wing but I didn’t like it). But the point is it’s not hunting without the killing, a clean kill for the proud hunter. Anyway, I switched to hunting paper when I was about twenty-five but I don’t have a problem (much) with other hunters.
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2013 @ 7:16 amI guess I can’t take Matt Scully to task because unlike far too many of his fellow animal-rights supporters, his heart at least doesn’t bleed for Fido or Kitty (or Arnold the Pig) while being cavalier about aborted human fetuses. It’s that inverted sentiment or morality (or “morality”) throughout modern society that really gets to me.
Regardless, a higher portion of the big animal-rights crowd (along with environmentalism-gone-berserk crowd too) is of the left, so that — along with the fact that Adolph Hitler was a fan of vegan diets and animal rights — always makes me suspicious of what exactly fuels such people’s sentiment. Moreover, why Sully feels he has to enter the corroded (or often bankrupt) territory of moral equivalency by attaching a “culture of life” with the agenda of the PETA crowd is not reassuring to me. After all, there very well could be glints of “limousine liberalism” embedded in such a reaction or attitude.
Mark (58ea35) — 10/8/2013 @ 7:26 amNever saw that one coming.
JD (5c1832) — 10/8/2013 @ 7:35 amI don’t know what Mark has against limousines. Is it a “gas guzzler” thing? Or the ostentation?
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2013 @ 7:45 amnk (or JD), quips aside, such matters are the reason why one had better be fully prepared when people (including politicians) — on election day, for example — do or say something that seems contradictory, two-faced, nonsensical, squishy or inconsistent. Perhaps that’s one reason why even though I’m of the right, I don’t expect ideological purity in others and I’m forced to be realistic about who or what is the ideal candidate, or what may happen when the polls close and the final tally is announced.
BTW, I guess there’s the flip side to “limousine liberalism” (and one does not have to be wealthy to be guilty of that form of two-faced behavior) among conservatives, but I’m not sure what such a phrase for it should be (K-mart conservatism?).
Mark (58ea35) — 10/8/2013 @ 8:05 amwith gay hitler diet I have more energy and the animals are frolicking merrily
and that’s a good feeling
happyfeet (8ce051) — 10/8/2013 @ 8:14 amYou used the right word when you said “sentiment”, Mark. It’s an amazingly powerful thing.
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2013 @ 8:15 amI tried the vegetarian diet but it did not go well. Vegetarians are faster than cattle.
Not mine but I like it.
The alternative to factory farms is starvation and not just a little bit. Seeing even more kids die from hunger versus the experience of animals in factory farms, I’ll stick with feeding kids.
And don’t forget the enormous costs to the environment of trying to feed billions of people using non factory farms.
Tax pet ownership to reduce the consumption of grain by dogs and cats and reduce the pollution caused by these animals as they are let loose in urban neighborhoods to do their business. Give the grain to vegans so they can eat the same rice or corn every day for every meal for their entire life.
phaedruscj (dc2574) — 10/8/2013 @ 8:27 amWell said, Unix-jedi.
SPQR (768505) — 10/8/2013 @ 8:30 amIf my diet included all the amphetamines gay hitler’s doctors fed him, I’d have more energy and see animals frolicking merrily no matter if they were there or not.
Steve57 (234b9e) — 10/8/2013 @ 8:47 amMy prob with hunting to put food on the table is I’m quite squeamish. My lab partner in Comparative Anatomy did all the work.
I could get thru field dressing the kill hurling a few times, but then I’d want to cook the critter then and there and make somebody fetch a cooler and ice with the ATV.
Pretty sure I’d be one and done with anybody. I’m perfectly happy with cage free organic vacuum packed and frozen solid.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 10/8/2013 @ 8:53 amThey are still annoying the Huntress;
http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/10/amended-complaint-filed-in-9-11-photo-copyright-lawsuit-against-sarah-palin/#comments
narciso (3fec35) — 10/8/2013 @ 9:02 am48. I hope DC is ready to be annoyed. This weekend commerce metro-wide figures to be nil.
There is no way the authorities’ command and control will hold an advantage in this dustup. The war vets lulled them to sleep.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 10/8/2013 @ 9:09 amNo, there aren’t. I can get good pictures under conditions I could never get a good shot. Telephoto lenses do wonders for that.
In fact you can get camera attachments for the spotting scopes used for hunting, and use them as your telephoto lens and get good pictures.
http://www.leupold.com/hunting-shooting/accessories/tools-and-accessories/digital-camera-spotting-scope-adapter/
But just because you can see an animal through a spotting scope, or a telephoto lens, and get a picture of it doesn’t mean you’re remotely in a position to shoot it. In fact, if you’re doing spot and stalk hunting that’s when the hunting starts.
If you hunt and do photography then you know they’re two different things.
Yes, there is that. It means you’ve hunted well.
Not necessarily. A hunter doesn’t always shoot everything he sees. Hunters will pass on shots for a variety of reasons. Sometimes you’re hunting a particular animal. You’re not always out to get “something.”
Still it’s always fun to get close to animals without them ever knowing you’re there. That sticks out in your memory, too, like the time I turned myself into part of a tree and a doe and a fawn had to step over the “roots” which were my legs.
Which as an aside is why the “chase” isn’t always stressful. What stress did I cause that doe and fawn? I would have caused her stress if I tried snapping pictures under those conditions. She wouldn’t know I didn’t mean to kill her. Cameras make noise. So, obviously, do rifles but had she been a buck he never would have heard the shot.
In any case it’s not an unnatural stress since humans aren’t the only thing chasing them for dinner.
Further aside it’s a lot better to come home to a freezer full of venison and wild boar sausage then steak.
Steve57 (234b9e) — 10/8/2013 @ 9:14 amBy being rich enough to buy lots of such fruit, and by supplementing it with expensive vitamins, etc. It’s an affectation that only rich people can afford.
First World problem that speaks to the larger problem that in a vast portion of the work, this is a luxury that cannot be afforded as finding food for the next meal is always an immediate problem to be solved. Whether it’s eating dogs or cars or rats, spending time considering the ethics and morality of killing them to feed one’s family does not enter the equation.
Dana (1abef9) — 10/8/2013 @ 9:15 am*world*
Dana (1abef9) — 10/8/2013 @ 9:18 amWhat is annoying is that those Whole Food shoppers who but their expensive free-range chickens etc, look down at hunters as if they don’t understand that on both situations, the animal has been killed at some point in time. It’s always good to know how one’s food gets to the table and I think there is certainly a willful ignorance with some as it keep them from acknowledging the contradiction between their emotional reaction toward those who hint Their food and the reality of what they eat.
Dana (1abef9) — 10/8/2013 @ 9:29 am#vegan
JD (5c1832) — 10/8/2013 @ 9:39 am#freerangechicken
#1stworldproblems
The same stress applies with “camera” hunting. Because I don’t literally “chase” the animal. But for instance in African national parks the people who guide photographic safaris literally do chase them with Land Rovers so they can get all the paying tourists close enough for the pics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB9JpI_JlAw
You we do you think that cow elephant did that to the safari guide’s car? Probably for the same reason movie stars try to punch out the paparazzi.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD6wdrVFc0g
Traffic jams in some African national parks aren’t any more rare than they are in Yellowstone. you can’t hunt in the parks but even outside the parks the tourist/photographic safari areas are a lot more heavily used then the hunting areas. Which stresses the animals. “Leaving the cheetahs to go hungry” isn’t all that rare in the parks or photographic areas, since the Land Rovers will crowd around any cheetah they see. Which screws things up for the cheetah if it’s trying to hunt.
Steve57 (234b9e) — 10/8/2013 @ 9:40 amStewardship! Yes, #28! “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox“…
Thank you, MD I was wondering who besides me would mention this. I could go on for days on this topic but won’t.
I also like #18 and #21. I find #27 quite pithy!
felipe (70ff7e) — 10/8/2013 @ 9:48 amIf God created man and also created animal and told man to feast on it (along with all those sacrifices in the beginning), who am I to question?
Bring me the meat.
© Sponge (8110ec) — 10/8/2013 @ 9:51 amI agree up to a point with Matt, and with Millhouse too. Cruelty is never good. Intentional cruelty is a violation of innate morality.
Temple Grandin said once that we raise animals for food and so we should respect them and treat them right. She designed pens that gave cattle more comfort and less panic.
I think we should remember that animals eat humans as well. More would do so, unblinkingly, if they could overpower us.
We kill them and eat them, and that’s okay. It’s part of the natural order. We say grace before meals as a way of acknowledging that we are only humble inhabitants on this earth and not its master.
Patricia (be0117) — 10/8/2013 @ 9:57 am56. I would’ve as well. Education ain’t what it used to be. The King James version, translating primarily the Vulgate into English dates to 1611, or Shakespeare’s time.
Moreover, the original languages, Hebrew and Greek are thoroughly reconstituted and orgininal meanings of some words relying entirely on context.
Start with the context imagined by a provincial American ignoramus and what does one end in creating, mythology, fabulist pop-psychology, what else?
“Nothing is new under the Sun”.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 10/8/2013 @ 10:05 amWell said, Patricia. There is a respect shown toward the animal. Not to go all Dances With Wolves or anything, but indigenous people held to this, too, at one time. Every part of the animal was utilized and there was realization that this was a gift not to be squandered.
Dana (1abef9) — 10/8/2013 @ 10:08 amEven a state as messed up as Kali recognizes that.
http://www.water.ca.gov/suisun/
They recognize the members of the private duck clubs, and we’re not talking inconsiderable acreage, are trying to preserve and improve the habitat and that is right in line with their management goals. They incorporate that in their planning, and if I recall correctly they provide incentives and protections for those clubs because otherwise the developers would love to have the land.
Steve57 (234b9e) — 10/8/2013 @ 10:12 amAs I recall , in the Evagelical community a distinction made between protecting animals vs the unbornis that the unborn are with a soul and animals are without. Perhaps it’s ultimately a more convenient way to ease ones conscience, although scriptural oh, God did not ever impress the need for animals to make decisions regarding the eternal state of their souls.
Dana (1abef9) — 10/8/2013 @ 10:16 aminveterate obamaslut Marissa Mayer’s Yahoo Finance propaganda monkeys are touting the USDA’s bogus salmonella outbreak as evidence that WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE btw…
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/u-economy-poised-liftoff-sonders-says-pray-pols-153315664.html
Pathetic thy name is America.
Someone really needs to kick this stupid country in the balls and shove it in front of a bus.
Like yesterday.
happyfeet (c60db2) — 10/8/2013 @ 10:38 amAmphetamines get a bad rap Mr. Steve because they’re often used irresponsibly by Americans, who are a dull-witted and slovenly people with little of the requisite discipline or intelligence one needs to make effective use of such resources.
happyfeet (c60db2) — 10/8/2013 @ 10:43 amDana, just to be on the safe side, on the soul thing, don’t eat goat in Nigeria. http://imgur.com/976of3o
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2013 @ 10:48 amTrue, Mr. Feets, we can’t be trusted to use amphetamines responsibly like gay hitler.
Steve57 (234b9e) — 10/8/2013 @ 10:56 amit’s so sad
happyfeet (c60db2) — 10/8/2013 @ 11:18 amThis is an interesting thread.
May America always be so blessed with wealth that we can actually afford to pick nits about what we prefer to eat. It wasn’t always this way, but these days food is so abundant that the poor are fat and the rich have evolved multiple times on what is truly the highest status diet. I don’t mean to ignore the moral question.
Anyone who doesn’t know that animals feel a range of emotion has never had a really good dog. Cruelty to animals is something normal people do not wish to engage in.
Dustin (303dca) — 10/8/2013 @ 11:20 am62. As a whole, I rather doubt the ‘Evangelical community’ believes the soul is eternal. At least us Anabaptists believe as the ancient Semites that the life of the soul passes with its body.
See ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ and commentaries on the concept of ‘Sheol’.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 10/8/2013 @ 11:22 amGary, to the contrary, the mainstream evangelical community is foremostly focused on the condition of the soul – both in this life and the next. Certainly the heart of the Gospels/NT are as well.
Dana (1d2551) — 10/8/2013 @ 11:29 am68. “Cruelty to animals is something normal people do not wish to engage in.”
I think you’ve, once again, hit the nub here. Mr. Scully looks about him and for some inexplicable reason ascribes to the common and vulgar, ‘the norm’.
I wonder if Mr. Scully hasn’t led a rather cloistered life.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 10/8/2013 @ 11:33 amI should add that it’s been a very long time since I was involved in and with the Evans. but am assuming basic principles and views haven’t changed much. I do not remember much about the Anabaptists… charismatics who split from or were formed into Mennonites??
Dana (1d2551) — 10/8/2013 @ 11:34 amnothing that feels pain
Colonel Haiku (1a103d) — 10/8/2013 @ 11:39 amShould needlessly suffer it
except Harry Reid
That was good, linking to
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/359761/print
The print version on some websites is the only really good way to see it – or to get it all on one page at least.
Factory farms slipped up on us gradually, that’s why nobody has considered the ethics or merits of that.
I could have some comments about the contents of the article and side issues in the comments.
Very briefly, the food doesn’t taste as good and isn’t as nutritious as regular also in many cases – and the same thing goes for some changes they made in the rasiing of plants.
Any regulation should be very simple, maybe tending more to eliminating the incentives that created that rather than aboloishing it. And there shouldn’t be too high standards for “organic” or whatever.
sammy.finkelman (d22d64) — 10/8/2013 @ 11:40 amI just re-read Mr. Skully’ essay. Regarding the issue of cruelty to animals (and I didn’t see it addressed) surely there isan enormous distinction between a Micheal Vick cruelty toward animals and what he sees as the cruelty toward animals in providing us sustenance?
Dana (1d2551) — 10/8/2013 @ 11:49 amThe problem with that screed, and it really doesn’t deserve any better descriptor, is the lengths to which it goes to equivocate for the purposes of denunciation.
Note how he focuses almost exclusively on factory farming. By doing so he can establish a position that any eating of meat is inextricably linked with the worst excesses of factory farming, and that no other option for producing meat needs to even be considered.
From there he strains reason further by bringing in dog slaughter in Thailand, appealing not just to a Western love of dogs by suggesting the only reason they are not treated as viciously as factory animals is mere cultural happenstance, but conflating that a particular culture’s concept of torturing the meat while alive for flavor is actually a universal trait, and that factory farmed meat is likely being tortured as well purely for our culinary indulgence.
That of course plays into his appeal to authority, bringing C.S. Lewis to suggest that our taste for meat is nothing less than raw gluttony, and not simply evil but actively sinful. I’m sure of course the related passages in The Screwtape Letters where Lewis discusses people who want just a bit of something else and they are so sorry to inconvenience others are being even more gluttonous and more suggestive of vegans completely escaped him.
And of course he equates it all with abortion just to make sure his preferred audience is fully on board with his equivocations, ignoring of course that the meat industry naturally deals almost exclusively with animals that have not been aborted.
It is not so much that he is unconvincing, but that the vehemence of his denunciations fueled by such strained conflations is actively anti-convincing. His is the kind of vegan screed that makes me want to chomp into a rare and dripping burger right in front of him then give a hearty beef belch in his face.
He is the Holy Vegan and I am the Satanic Carnivore?
How . . . quaint. And utterly obnoxious.
Indeed since he cited C.S. Lewis, I would cite George Orwell for him:
“But the point is that to him, as an ordinary
man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank. Any Socialist, he probably felt, could be counted on to have something eccentric about him. And some such notion seems to exist even among Socialists themselves. For instance, I have here a prospectus from another summer school which states its terms per week and then asks me to say ‘whether my diet is ordinary or vegetarian’. They take it for granted, you see, that it is necessary to ask this question. This kind of thing is by itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people. And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person but of touch with common humanity.”
– The Road to Wigan Pier, chapter 11
Of course it would be “unfair” to suggest he is morally identical to a conventional Marxist solely because of his severe advocacy of veganism based on his opposition to factory farming even though he is more than comfortable suggesting anyone who eats a factory farmed burger after reading his screed is morally identical to Kermit Gosnell.
Sam (9bf4c3) — 10/8/2013 @ 12:32 pm70. ?!?
Be that as it may, the reason I brake for turtles of any size isn’t to keep Gaia whole, to arrest the disappearance of a species, to be kinder than my fellow travelers, but that the critters have a soul like me and could use an intervention.
When St. Paul uses the word psyche or St. John the word gnosis to invest their thinking with the whole gamut of Hellenistic thought running from Plato into the second century AD isn’t just mistaken but uninformed.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 10/8/2013 @ 1:02 pm72. Anabaptists arose with Zwingli, a younger contemporary of Luther.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 10/8/2013 @ 1:04 pm76. Lucidity. Please comment more often.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 10/8/2013 @ 1:09 pm77, I don’t understand the question mark and / or exclamation mark???
I have no qualm with protecting animals (turtle or any other kind) because simply put, they are God’s creation and I respect the stewardship He has charged us with.
Dana (1d2551) — 10/8/2013 @ 1:55 pm80. I didn’t follow your reponse to my comment.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 10/8/2013 @ 2:18 pmi like animals personally but when you put them into groups they start acting like herd beasts or pack animals and they lose a lot of the charm they had one-on-one
They should work on that
happyfeet (c60db2) — 10/8/2013 @ 2:19 pmHappy, sometimes certain peoples behave the same way. Racists!
felipe (6100bc) — 10/8/2013 @ 2:50 pmWhat Prof. Jacobson has been reading this afternoon:
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/23078-A-brief-history-of-the-Evangelical-Christian-movement.html
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 10/8/2013 @ 2:56 pmSince ya’ll brought religion into this, we’re all in this mess because Eve picked the apple instead of cooking the snake. F***ing vegan hippie, we could have dodged the bullet right then and there, if not for that.
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2013 @ 3:42 pm85. The Naked Chimp.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 10/8/2013 @ 3:52 pmMaybe if you up the dosage of your gay hitler diet they’ll start merrily frolicking again and regain their charm.
Steve57 (234b9e) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:07 pm81, crossed wires. Or something.
Dana (1d2551) — 10/8/2013 @ 4:35 pmgay hitler diet
That phrase does make me chuckle, if only because the stereotypes it evokes run counter to what a lot of people on the left tend to promote or like to believe about Hitler. Namely, that he was a super bigoted bloodthirsty tyrant who couldn’t possibly be associated with the wonderful traits normally coddled by folks on the left: gay, vegan and pro-animal-rights (and Der Fuhrer was reportedly all three of those things—not to mention that the word “socialism” was happily interwoven into his party’s name).
Mark (58ea35) — 10/8/2013 @ 8:02 pmI’ve never heard that he was vegan. In fact he wasn’t even all that rigorously vegetarian.
Milhouse (3d0df0) — 10/8/2013 @ 8:12 pmAccording to his last surviving food tester he never ate meat and she doesn’t remember seeing any fish.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/9859294/Hitlers-food-taster-speaks-of-Fuhrers-vegetarian-diet.html
But apparently that was for the 2 and a half years Margot Woelk was his food tester during the war. Apparently he wasn’t much of a vegetarian before the war.
I imagine during the war he became pretty fastidious about declining meat, since people had been trying to kill him.
Anyway when I talk about teh gay hitler diet I’m talking about all the amphetamines because he was a speed freak.
Steve57 (234b9e) — 10/8/2013 @ 9:14 pmI’ve heard very good things about this book! (Dominion)
I basically only buy fish, free range chicken and organic meat and eggs (beef)+ dairy
I hate having to give my money to the chicken farms which are horribly mistreating the birds, and other animals, so I don’t.
And this means basically the same choices when going out to eat.
Aside from the suffering these farms inflict on the animals, I’m against all the poison (antibiotics etc) they inject or give them – and which goes right into you.
A nice unexpected surprise to see Dominion being mentioned here in a nice way.
If more people bought free range and organic meat and poultry, the price would come down.
Aside from it being the moral thing to do.
Alessandra (205de0) — 10/9/2013 @ 7:15 am“And I’d love to buy more free-range meat, but it too is prohibitively expensive, esp in the cities. I’d rather the money get spent on my kids’ drum and guitar lessons, boy scouts, and other activities.”
So cruelty to animals is now justified because of how the middle classes must fill their senseless and petty useless time on the planet?
How ridiculous. If you know anything about nutrition, you can feed your family a lot of protein, including many types of animals, and not feed an industry that mistreats animals any which way.
And what kind of a boy scout group would teach a child that’s it’s OK to torture an animal for greed?
Alessandra (205de0) — 10/9/2013 @ 7:26 am92. Same here, i.e., morality doesn’t enter into it apart from human sanctimony.
People love feeling better than the next person. As we’ve become a spiritually dead, emotionally infantilized culture, preciosity substitutes for conviction.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 10/9/2013 @ 8:01 am88. I feel like a fish without a bicycle.
gary gulrud (dd7d4e) — 10/9/2013 @ 8:02 amAnd what kind of a boy scout group would teach a child that’s it’s OK to torture an animal for greed?
I’ll need to talk to my daughter about that vivisection patch, I think.
nk (dbc370) — 10/9/2013 @ 9:08 amFirst of all, I was kind of stunned at how long the piece was. 13 pages on NRO is basically unheard of. I was not that interested in his argument anyway, as I enjoy the delicious taste of meat, and I am not in any way a bleeding heart. I’m not even that pro-life, to be honest.
I don’t support intentional cruelty, or wasteful killing of animals. It’s a sign of an evil bastard, especially when done to friendly animals.
OmegaPaladin (f4a293) — 10/9/2013 @ 6:38 pm“If more people bought free range and organic meat and poultry, the price would come down.”
It can only come down so much because these practices are more expensive, plus transportation into cities, storage, etc.
“So cruelty to animals is now justified because of how the middle classes must fill their senseless and petty useless time on the planet?”
When I was vegan, I was probably this sanctimonious. My dad certainly tells me I was.
You must not have kids since you don’t seem to have any understanding of all the things (like music, art, drama, etc) are no longer in the schools and must need to be done, and paid for, outside of school.
“I basically only buy fish, free range chicken and organic meat and eggs (beef)+ dairy”
Good for you. Why don’t you share the wealth and send some of that money my way and then I’ll buy that stuff too?
Sherri (26558e) — 10/11/2013 @ 6:08 amLike I said, I lived that life. My parents a lot more than me.
“Organic” farming is not as organic as people may think. Most don’t even know what it means, or what they’re getting when they buy “free range” and “organic”. It’s mostly the lettuce nibblers getting their camel’s nose under the tent with people who are not ready to buy their whole hype just yet.
But even in its faux form, “organic” farming is something that can be indulged in only by hippies and trust fund babies. It’s a subsistence occupation. It’s not for people who want to send one child to law school, another to business school, and the third to medical school.
nk (dbc370) — 10/11/2013 @ 6:17 amI ead that in Eastern (post-Communist) Europe, basically Poland, there are a lot of low technology farms, but it is not at all easy for them to get certified by the European Union as “organic”
There are all kinds of requirements. They would like it to be easier so that their food could be marketed that way. But there’s still a lot.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/world/europe/04poland.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Sammy Finkelman (bec8ba) — 10/11/2013 @ 7:47 am1. Comment by mg (31009b) — 10/8/2013 @ 12:18 am
Good luck getting big business to change the money making methods of animal slaughter. He would have a better chance of closing the border.
I would think Matt Scully wouild be against border control.
This is the consequence of “border control”: (in Europe)
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/10/lampedusas-migrant-tragedy-and-ours.html
Not very consistent with right to life. The tighter it is made the more people die.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 10/11/2013 @ 2:08 pm