by
Segen • May 7th, 2008 at 10:08 pm •
Lincoln was a truly great politician and president–with qualities of decency and morality–kindness, sensitivity, compassion, honesty, and empathy. After recently reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, I recognized that Lincoln’s morality included a duty to animals. I think he believed in animal rights.
Let me share an excerpt of Goodwin’s book:
“The melancholy stamped on Lincoln’s nature derived in large part from an acute sensitivity to the pains and injustices he perceived in the world. He was uncommonly tenderhearted. He once stopped and tracked back half a mile to rescue a pig caught in a mire—not because he loved the pig, recollected a friend, ‘just to take a pain out of his own mind.’ When his schoolmates tortured turtles by placing hot coals on their backs to see the wriggle, he told them ‘it was wrong.’ He refused to hunt animals, which ran counter to frontier mores,” (103-104).
In a political speech, Lincoln later compared tortured turtles wriggling out of their shells to crooked politicians wriggling out of their skin. Lincoln’s diet also gave me a hunch to his possible vegetarian and animal rights viewpoint; he ate bread, jam, usually one egg, and coffee and stayed away from meat. He was thin for a reason! In arson on the White House horse stables, six horses died. President Lincoln was in tears over the horses’ deaths (603). Lincoln also got a kick out of humanizing animals: Lincoln’s son Tad had a pet turkey and Lincoln asked his son whether or not his turkey intended to vote. Tad replied that his turkey was “not of age”. Lincoln dearly loved the quick-witted answer and recounted the story to others for days (664).
I also found quotes online from Lincoln that confirmed my suspicions that Lincoln believed in animal rights:
“I care not for a man’s religion whose dog or cat is not the better for it…I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.”
“I could not have slept to-night if I had left that helpless little creature to perish on the ground. (reply to friends who chided him for delaying them by stopping to return a fledgling to its nest.)”
Lincoln’s animal rights beliefs were probably founded from the same principles he applied to civil rights. Blacks were tortured and treated like animals when enslaved. If it was conceivable that blacks suffer, feel pain, and deserve rights, then it is conceivable that animals suffer, feel pain, and should have rights, as well. In the US, we now recognize blacks not as animals, but as humans, as citizens—with rights in this country. Can this also be extrapolated to animals?
Lincoln was a man ahead of his time in many regards. Was he on to something?
(Other famous vegetarians: Einstein, Aristotle, Darwin, Kant, Thoreau, Tolstoy, Da Vinci, Plato, Socrates, Rosa Parks, Corretta Scott King, Susan B. Anthony, van Gogh, Voltaire, Edison, Emerson, Henry Ford, Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Kafka, Martin Luther, Newton, Pythagorus, Rousseau, Upton Sinclair, Mark Twain, Kellog, and possibly Franklin, Jefferson, and Paine.)
Comment by Anonymous on 7 May 2008 at 10:26 pm:
And MJ tells me to wear Hanes underwear.
Comment by kofi the long live the steak on 8 May 2008 at 7:16 am:
Vegetarians - you know what else all those people have in common? They’re all dead.
Comment by illinikc33 on 8 May 2008 at 7:31 am:
I can’t even begin to imagine the horror this blog would become if Obama decided to become a vegetarian.
Comment by Brian on 8 May 2008 at 8:44 am:
Illinikc,
I know you’re just being smarmy, but your comment got me wondering: does anybody think we could have a viable presidential candidate in this country who is a vegetarian? I’d be fascinated to see what kind of political damage that would inflict on a candidate.
Comment by J. Prescott on 8 May 2008 at 10:53 am:
Vegetarianism doesn’t matter. It would have no effect on a political candidate. I understand that Brian thinks it would be a sign of effete liberalism which hurt on a political campaign. But come on, Prince Fielder is a vegetarian. I don’t think it is that big of a deal now.
Comment by thetodd on 8 May 2008 at 1:15 pm:
What’s life like on the campaign trail? I have this image in my head of a busy candidate constantly traveling from place to place, attending fundraisers, speeches, and other events. I picture meals being served and/or food gifts being given at these events, and I picture some expectation by the hosts that the candidate eat their food.
If my picture is correct, it sounds like it might be difficult for a candidate to be vegetarian because he doesn’t choose much of his food.
Comment by Segen on 8 May 2008 at 1:57 pm:
Dennis Kucinich is a vegetarian.
Also, not all vegetarians are dead. Here is a list of lots of living ones.
Living Vegetarians
Comment by Anonymous on 8 May 2008 at 2:04 pm:
And the rest are meat-eaters.
Comment by Back in the good ol' days . . . on 8 May 2008 at 2:13 pm:
Do you know what happened to the vegetarian dinosaurs?? They got eaten!
Comment by Back in the good ol' days . . . on 8 May 2008 at 2:13 pm:
Do you know what happened to the vegetarian dinosaurs?? They got eaten!
Comment by Back in the good ol' days . . . on 8 May 2008 at 2:13 pm:
Do you know what happened to the vegetarian dinosaurs?? They got eaten!
Comment by thetodd on 8 May 2008 at 2:39 pm:
Interesting. Kucinich is more than just vegetarian. He avoids a lot of other foods, too:
SFGate says
“He ingests no beef, poultry, fish, dairy or animal products.
Kucinich also eschews processed foods, caffeine, alcohol and tobacco. “
I found a brief interview with his wife where she answers my question:
“Is it difficult to find good vegan food on the campaign trail?
EK: We have what we call a vegan underground network, with people who pop up at events with wonderful home-cooked meals and packed lunches. But it can be difficult in certain states. In those cases we have spaghetti with olive oil and garlic.”
I still wonder if he offended any of his hosts, though. As a fringe candidate, he wouldn’t draw much attention to himself by doing so, but it might be a bigger problem for a mainstream candidate whose every action is publicized.
Comment by Segen on 8 May 2008 at 3:46 pm:
Lincoln did not smoke or drink alcohol, either.
He seemed to do fine with pissing others off..?
Comment by thetodd on 8 May 2008 at 5:53 pm:
True, but some things have changed since the time of Lincoln. On the plus side (for a potential vegetarian candidate), the vegetarian position is more common and accepted, and there may be some people that strongly identify with vegetarianism that will vote for a vegetarian candidate almost solely because he’s vegetarian.
On the minus side, cameras, TV, and the internet have caused increased scrutiny.
If you want to know my actual position, based pretty much solely on my intuition, I think that being openly vegetarian will cost some votes, but the cost will be small, and it can certainly be overcome. I think the effect would be smaller than the Romney Mormon effect or the Hussein Obama effect. Obama (like Lincoln before him?) is doing quite well right now despite whatever votes this issue is costing him.
Comment by Augur on 8 May 2008 at 7:47 pm:
Segen - i dunno. I think Franklin, Jefferson, and Paine loved them some chicken, prolly quail too.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 9 May 2008 at 1:42 am:
Segen,
I question the veracity of your list of vegetarians. Are you getting those names off of the site that you linked to? (http://www.happycow.net/famous_vegetarians.html)
That list does not look credible at all. It essentially takes any comment that is sympathetic to animals in any manner and claims that the person is a vegetarian, including Abraham Lincoln. It takes Lincolns quote as proof, “I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.”
Your post doesn’t have links to prove your claims and I worry that they are exaggerated.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 9 May 2008 at 1:56 am:
“The latest indications we have suggest that Einstein was vegetarian only for the last year or so of his life, though he appears to have supported the idea for many years before practising it himself.”
http://www.ivu.org/history/northam20a/einstein.html
“Thoreau was not a strict vegetarian, though he said he preferred that diet[29] and advocated it as a means of self-improvement.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau
It looks like Kafka’s vegetarianism was motivated by an attempt to cure illness rather than as some moral venture, “Kafka also suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, boils, and other ailments, all usually brought on by excessive stresses and strains. He attempted to counteract all of this by a regimen of naturopathic treatments, such as a vegetarian diet and the consumption of large quantities of unpasteurized milk.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka
For a few others I could not find any support that they were or were not vegetarians. For a couple others I did find support for them being vegetarian (Twain, Emerson). But I did not go through your entire list.
Comment by thetodd on 9 May 2008 at 1:58 am:
While searching around for evidence about the vegetarianism of some of those names, I stumbled upon this amusing Wikipedia article:
Vegetarianism of Adolf Hitler
This was news to me. A common rhetorical device (and sometimes logical fallacy) is to make something look bad by comparing it to Hitler or something Hitler did. I am surprised I never encountered an anti-vegetarian who used this form of argument.
Comment by Segen on 9 May 2008 at 3:36 am:
In regards to the post, Billy, I cited the book “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin and provided page numbers where I could.
Comment by Segen on 9 May 2008 at 3:39 am:
From what I learned about Hitler in my time in Germany–he was not a “vegetarian”, but rather stayed away from red meats.
Comment by kofi the it's the crack isn't it? on 9 May 2008 at 8:08 am:
Also…no one has TOUCHED the idea that civil rights can be equated to animal rights. Any takers?
What are you on?
Comment by kofi the it's the crack isn't it? on 9 May 2008 at 8:08 am:
Also…no one has TOUCHED the idea that civil rights can be equated to animal rights. Any takers?
What are you on?
Comment by kofi the it's the crack isn't it? on 9 May 2008 at 8:08 am:
Also…no one has TOUCHED the idea that civil rights can be equated to animal rights. Any takers?
What are you on?
Comment by Augur on 9 May 2008 at 8:46 am:
One think that irritates the hell out of me about vegetarians is they tend to do one of two things:
(1) try to judge you and make themselves appear morally superior by ranting about how cruel everyone else is.
(2) allow their identity to be totally caught up in their vegetarianism (probably at a minimum joining a few facebook groups)
If it’s a personal choice, leave it at that. Stop trying to impose your nonsense on me. Stop with the guilt. Stop with the superiority kick. Stop. Stop. Stop.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 9 May 2008 at 8:59 am:
Segen,
I thought it was clear that I wasn’t questioning the veracity of your information (ambiguous though it is) on Abe Lincoln, but rather your claim that all of the people on that list are vegetarian. Where did you get all of those names from? Is that list in the book about Abe Lincoln (I don’t think so)? Also, as I commented, I already found information that some of the people on your list can only questionably be defined as vegetarians (for instance Einstein was only one for the last year or his life or Thoreau was only so in a limited sense). For many of the names I could not find a single reference about them being vegetarian or not, which I assume means that they were not.
Please address my concerns directly.
Also, my view is the following…Animal rights are only significant insofar as they make the world a better place to live, potentially through better use of increasingly valuable farm land. Arguments about making the earth more habitable or increasing the world food supply are persuasive to me because as of now my primary concern is still human beings. Until we solve most of the world’s major ills I find it intensely foolish and callow to exalt the lives of animals to the point of ignoring the plight of humans, which the sort of attention you pay to animal rights will necessarily do. Humans are dying. Humans do not have even the basic rights that you wish upon animals. Humans are treated more poorly than many of the animals you cry for. Until those ills are solved I find the amount of attention and energy you pay to animal rights (simply for the sake of animal rights and not for the sake of bettering the condition of humans) to be morally selfish, it is an illusion to morally coddle and comfort yourself, rather than a genuine and dispassionate analysis of what the world needs most and how you might be able to help its condition.
Comment by Segen on 9 May 2008 at 10:42 am:
Augur,
My post was not about me being a vegetarian, it was about Abraham Lincoln. Stop, stop, stop what? I did not tell you that you should be a vegetarian–I was just pointing out the fact that President Lincoln cared about animal rights. The reason why I have posted on these issues is because I have knowledge of them. I enjoy that you post about things that interest you and that you are knowledgeable about. Just because you post about Obama does not make me feel the need to join the Obama camp. Relax. I don’t think I’ve forced my vegetarianism on anyone in this post. I’m just furthering discussion on topics I’m sure many of our readers are interested in hearing.
Comment by Hanno on 9 May 2008 at 10:59 am:
“If it’s a personal choice, leave it at that. Stop trying to impose your nonsense on me. Stop with the guilt. Stop with the superiority kick. Stop. Stop. Stop.”
Augur get the sand out of your vajayjay man. You have a guilty conscience or something. There’s nothing wrong with people having an honest dialogue about whether a particular lifestyle choice is healthy, environmentally sustainable, morally correct, etc. I’m not in favor of screeching and howling, but pointing out reasons to not eat meat seems about as valid as pointing out reasons not to smoke.
Comment by Segen on 9 May 2008 at 10:59 am:
Billy,
Vegetarianism has a loose definition. Many people define it differently. Even in today’s world–some people consider eating no red meat vegetarian while others consider eating no animal products vegetarian. I can’t give you an exact definition of what people considered it in the past–just as I cannot do that for today. For me, I have been a vegetarian for a few years now. I first started by cutting out mammal and bird meat, but I still ate seafood, chicken eggs, and cow milk products. I still considered myself a vegetarian then. Then I cut the seafood. Then I cut the eggs and dairy. I still consider myself a vegetarian. I was at different stages of my vegetarianism–probably Einstein was, too. (as you referred to him)
As for the list, I gathered it for a number of websites.
here
here
here
I seriously do not understand why you get so worked up about the human injustices in the world being taken care of first and then and only then dealing with animals. In the US, we’re doing a lot better with human rights–so why not move on to animal rights? Do we have to wait until every person in the world is perfectly set to think about bigger ideas? If that is true, we can never start advancing.
When you argue that “humans come first” you sound really speciest to me. That word is like sexist, or racist, or classist. Replace the word animal with white or black. Why help black starving people in the world while there are white children starving? Stop coddling yourself with this “taking care of black people” stuff when you know it is “morally” right to blahblahblah take care of white people. That is what your argument about animal rights *sounds* like to me. We all realize how terrible thoughts like that are…why can’t you extrapolate this example to the animal context?
Also, if a person cares about animal rights, that does not mean they cannot care about human rights. It’s not like people have a finite amount of caring that can either go to humans or animals. Please….Lincoln believed in Civil Rights AND Animal Rights…as I think he saw them as on in the same.
There are mutual benefits to humanity and care for animals in certain actions. As you mentioned, getting rid of animal farming will open up a lot of land where we can grow food for people. Getting rid of animal farming will cut down on the pollutions that go into ground water–that people drink. Etc. You know the rest of this story.
Comment by Buck B. on 9 May 2008 at 11:16 am:
This was news to me. A common rhetorical device (and sometimes logical fallacy) is to make something look bad by comparing it to Hitler or something Hitler did. I am surprised I never encountered an anti-vegetarian who used this form of argument.
Todd, Jonah Goldberg wrote a whole book about it.
Comment by Buck B. on 9 May 2008 at 11:17 am:
Speciest? Seriously?
Equating human and animal suffering in this way is such a gross misplacement of priorities, it almost makes me want to vote Republican.
Comment by kofi the i'd like to go on record as not believing Licoln saw animal and civil rights as one in the same on 9 May 2008 at 11:21 am:
Buck B, in my mind all liberals are as batshit crazy as Segen. This is why I do vote Republican.
Comment by kofi the i'd like to go on record as not believing Licoln saw animal and civil rights as one in the same on 9 May 2008 at 11:21 am:
Buck B, in my mind all liberals are as batshit crazy as Segen. This is why I do vote Republican.
Comment by kofi the i'd like to go on record as not believing Licoln saw animal and civil rights as one in the same on 9 May 2008 at 11:21 am:
Buck B, in my mind all liberals are as batshit crazy as Segen. This is why I do vote Republican.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 9 May 2008 at 11:27 am:
Segen, you bizarrely equate animals with human beings. If you have a visceral feeling that animals are the same as humans then I cannot persuade you of anything.
I am absolutely 100% speciesist (I believe this is proper, not speciest) and I will always be so and I will always be proud to be so. Some kinds of biases are actually good to have and you putting an “-ist” at the end of a word doesn’t automatically make being that an immoral thing. Any human life is more valuable than any animal life. I do not agree with Peter Singer’s “equal consideration of interests,” as you do, that a disabled person is less valuable than a fully functioning animal.
You wrote, “It’s not like people have a finite amount of caring that can either go to humans or animals,” but this is an improper phrasing of the dilemma. We all have approximately an infinite amount of emotional care (though I would dispute even this) that we can distribute, but simply caring for someone or some animal does not help them. The scarcity exists in how we allocate our resources in trying to help the world. Where do we start? What is the most efficient allocation of resources? Because of diminishing marginal utility, I believe that the world improperly distributes its resources. In this country we have people spending billions of dollar on their damned pets, while about one million people die every year because they aren’t protected from malaria by five dollar nets. That is sick, just as I believe that your allocation of care and concern and energy is inefficiently allocated by way of its blindly zealous concentration on animals.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 9 May 2008 at 11:28 am:
Also, those websites you posted do not appear to be credible sources. In fact, they just list named without any evidence of their own. Furthermore, they look to all be websites with a pro-vegetarian agenda and thus are prone to exaggeration.
Comment by Segen on 9 May 2008 at 11:40 am:
Billy,
Wow. For the record, I do think that disabled people are just as valuable as able-bodied people. My mother is disabled–and I treat her just like everyone else.
You mis-interpreted Singer. He said that if we give mentally dysfunctional people the same concern as we do other humans, that we should give the same concern to “mentally deficient” animals. This is based on the fact that most philosophy requires people to be “rational” beings. If we allow non-rational humans into the system, Singer argues, why not “non-rational” animals.
Comment by Segen on 9 May 2008 at 11:49 am:
I don’t think these people are “guilty” of not being vegetarians until proven that they are….Ok. So the websites are lists. Go research it then. It took me 900 pages on a book about Lincoln to figure out that he was a vegetarian.
Take the list of people for what it is–a list and if you’re still skeptical–look into it.
Seriously…this Lincoln book probed me to do that. In time, if you want, I can go person by person if that will make you feel better about the list.
BTW, why does everyone assume people are carnivores that have to change into vegetarians? I think meat-eating is more of a cultural thing than a natural one. (As discussed on previous posts).
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 9 May 2008 at 12:00 pm:
Segen,
I don’t think you’ve proven to anyone but yourself that Lincoln was a vegetarian.
Comment by illinikc33 on 9 May 2008 at 2:04 pm:
Equating animal rights to human rights? Human suffering to animal suffering? I don’t even know what to do with that absolutely ridiculous attempt at an analogy.
As for not pushing your agenda . . . the whole point of the post was to push the vegetarian agenda by pointing out that one of the greatest leaders in American history *may* have believed in animal rights and *may* have been a vegetarian, so we should too because he did it and gee he was a real great guy.
Get off the soapbox, you’ve been on it for enough posts to get your point across.
Comment by thetodd on 9 May 2008 at 7:35 pm:
I have a somewhat unusual and uncertain viewpoint on speciesism.
I have utilitarian leanings, and, as a consequence of possessing a human brain and body, to me, utility comes down to feelings. Positive feelings are positive utility.
So, if we have a cat and a human, and both are about to die alone (so their happiness has no impact on their future decisions or those of anyone else), and both feel happiness with equal intensity, I would have no preference about whether the cat or the human receives some happiness in his last moments.
The problem is that, in almost every real-life scenario, one’s happiness DOES impact ones future decisions and the decisions of others. If cats are happy, that’s nice, but there is a limit to how happy cats can be. They are not self-aware and intelligent enough to be able to develop knowledge and tools needed to become even happier without undergoing millions of years of evolution.
Humans, on the other hand, have the capability to steadily increase the utility levels they experience. The higher their initial utility levels are, the more likely and quickly they are to progress.
So, on one hand, I want to place higher value on present human utility, because it has a bigger impact on expected future utility. On the other hand, I don’t think it is in our best interests to ignore animal utility.
As we develop more and more knowledge and technology, we may even change what it means to be human. To the post-humans we might create or turn in to, the experience of ordinary humans might look like the experience of ants looks like to us. And I think we’d agree that we don’t want ordinary humans to be treated as we treat ants.
Comment by Segen on 10 May 2008 at 8:05 am:
Todd–
Singer distinguishes between what you are talking about. He says that animals that are not self-aware do not have as much pain as animals that are, and if there is a firing-line, they’re first up to bat.
Problem is, humans are not the only animals that are self-aware. That’s where the argument gets sticky if you are not a speciest.
Comment by thetodd on 10 May 2008 at 1:15 pm:
Sorry about the unclear wording there.
I meant it to be read as “They are not [self-aware and intelligent] enough” and not “They are not [self-aware] and [intelligent enough]“.
Or “They are not self-aware enough and intelligent enough”.
Or just forget I said “self-aware” at all. The point I am trying to make is that without any further biological evolution, humans are the only ones with the power to circumvent natural limits on happiness. In a global sense, we already have. Without the technology we’ve already developed, there couldn’t be more than 6 billion of us out there. Our net global happiness is surely larger than it would be in a world with far fewer people.
Does Singer (or anyone else) talk about that? I would be interested to see a rebuttal.
Without this unique human ability, I would find it difficult to come up with a better reason to be a speciesist than “I’m human and helping out my fellow humans helps me,” which is an understandable position given the fact that we all have survival drives and self-interest built in to ourselves, but it’s not very philosophically defensible.
Comment by Buck B. on 10 May 2008 at 11:13 pm:
Andrew Sullivan excerpted this definition of vegetarianism from a Slate article debunking “vegetarian myths”:
Imagine a completely normal person…Now remove from this person’s diet anything that once had eyes, and, wham!, you have yourself a vegetarian. Normal person, no previously ocular food, end of story. Some people call themselves vegetarians and still eat chicken or fish, but unless we’re talking about the kind of salmon that comes freshly plucked from the vine, this makes you an omnivore. A select few herbivores go one step further and avoid all animal products—milk, eggs, honey, leather—and they call themselves vegan, which rhymes with “tree men.” These people are intense.
Comment by JayBandit on 12 May 2008 at 12:25 pm:
I didn’t know that Urbanagora was doing book reports now…how 2nd grade of us!
Vegetarians are pussies, and you can quote me on that.
There is a big difference between a man not wanting to have wanton torture performed against some turtles, and that same man wanting to enjoy a nice turtle soup for dinner. Or there is a difference between a man backtracking to save some swine, and then that same pair meeting eachother again when the man is consuming the delcious pork chops off the pig with a nice side of applesauce.
God, I’m hungry now. I think I’ll eat some meatballs because that requires 3 animals to produce (Lamb, Pork, Veal)….mmmmmmm.
Comment by Cody on 31 May 2008 at 3:04 pm:
Let me comment on a few things.
First, let me ask, why are vegetarians always attacked and people say things like, “It’s a personal choice,” but they rarely (if ever) apply this same judgment to other philosophies, particularly religion? Everyone has some type of position or belief that they share with others. So to tell someone not to share theirs, is well, hypocritical.
That said, I do understand certain people with certain tactics and motivations can be quite abrasive and annoying. I do not have a problem with slapping the shit out of them. I am a vegan that hates PETA. I do not find it amusing that a bunch of unintelligent, spoiled bastards get together and make me look like a dumbass.
Secondly, Kucinich was the only decent candidate the Democrats had. Mike Gravel’s positions were nice, but he lost the political power he once held and got too easily worked up. Kucinich is the only Democrat who ran for President this time around (besides Gravel, who I’ve already accounted for) who voted AGAINST the war. Obama can say he didn’t support it, but it very well could be that he didn’t vote against only because he wasn’t in the Senate at that time. Obama HAS voted several (and I do mean several!) times to fund the war over and over again, essentially reauthorizing it, as did Clinton and Edwards.
Kucinich was the ONLY candidate advocating a true universal healthcare system modeled after ones that work well in other countries: a single-payer system. Not mandatory health insurance or lowered premiums or any other “universal healthcare” BS.
Thirdly, Kucinich gave real answers at the debates. Sure, he was made fun of because of a UFO or because his wife is a young hottie… But really, what does that matter? Maybe the aliens are what helped him be so honest. Kucinich openly and honestly answered each question with a real answer. He didn’t say “Well that’s certainly something we’ll work on!” (ahem, Hillary) or “Change! WE NEED CHANGE!” (ahem, Obama). And he certainly didn’t pretend to be the working class man while living in a 20,000+ square foot mansion. Kucinich, on the other hand, lives in the same small house he purchased in the 70’s. Who got a standing ovation from 10,000 union members at Soldier Field? It wasn’t Clinton, Obama, or Edwards…
And finally, Kucinich was the only one advocating impeachment. Yeah, many laughed… But every day it seems like a better idea, doesn’t it? McClellan may be wanting the limelight, but I bet what he says has some truth to it. And Wexler didn’t have to try real hard to convince him to testify, did he? Kucinich knew this long ago. Kucinich risked his political career to do something controversial. Not because he thought it’d get him more votes or more money, but because he thought it was the right thing to do. And I haven’t seen many other politicians who will do that.
Kucinich may never be President, but he is a true fighter for our country. Notice how he doesn’t line his pockets with corporate money or betray his constituents. And also notice how he’s handily re-elected in his district every year. Before you bash him or call him an idiot, I suggest you do some research.
Comment by Anonymous on 17 June 2008 at 7:00 pm:
I, too, am shocked at the anger displayed by some posters in response to vegetarianism. It’s clear to me that nearly everyone who has replied is intelligent and committed to helping make the world a little better. I don’t think anyone here is the enemy and I am confused about why we are arguing.
Billy Joe Mills - I do not disagree with your statement that a human life is worth more than an animal’s. Nor do I disagree that self-awareness seems to be an exclusively human trait. However, self-awareness has little to do with the ability to physically suffer and feel pain. Animals do have nerves. Many modern slaughter practices go beyond just killing and are merciless torture.
Your argument that this doesn’t matter in the face of human atrocies simply does not hold up. Would you condemn people who work to end rape, simply because rape isn’t as “bad” as murder? Should people stop focusing on this less serious cause?
Being a vegetarian takes no effort on my part. It is natural to me and it simply feels right. I couldn’t eat meat nor do I want to. However, this doesn’t in any way diminish my capacity to care for humans. I care passionately about the plight of fellow people, regardless of whether or not I choose to eat the flesh of animals.