the ignoble vegetarians

What on Earth is wrong with Vegetarians?

First and foremost, meat is delicious! Now that that’s out of the way, let’s consider a few other things.  In my far too frequent encounters of self-styled herbivores, I’m always met with some kind of disdain that as they opine that my delight in the carnal culinary somehow makes me inferior. I often try to bait them with some simplistic, but true, retort that they too participate in the destruction of precious life every time they enjoy a carrot, potato, broccoli, parsnip, or just about any other non-fruit vegetable.

The worldly vegetarian, however, is often prepared for this rebuttal and she takes the bait by trying to reduce my argument to the ridiculous since plants don’t have feeling and don’t feel pain.

But even if I agreed that plants do feel any pain (or the equivalent) I remain unconvinced that the registry of pain onto a nervous system should be the measure of the sanctity of life. Why should it be? The answer is simple… EGOISM. Regardless of how much they claim to care about all life, the measure of preciousness is conveniently, yet completely arbitrarily, mapped onto their own sense of self. Pain is the measure, because humans feel pain. Photosynthesis could just have easily been added to the measure, but that would make eating really hard!

Vegetarians see in the condemned mammal what they fail to see in an exterminated colony of insects which, incidentally, also feel pain. No one has yet to object to me killing a cockroach. But when the animal is all warm and furry and shares a common form with the human. This is not a universal respect for life. It’s hypocrisy! So before you start judging me and praying for my demise, O Ye Vegetarians, consider a fresh and less lemmingly inspired look at your position and the intrinsic hypocrisy therein.  Hitler was a vegetarian too.

As I eat my dinner tonight, I will realize that the cow and the broccoli rabe both sacrificed so that I might be sustained. Having not created a single living thing… ever… this human will pay homage to all of the dead creatures on his plate and respect the fact that all life, with the exception of those noble photosynthesizers, is sustained by death.