Letters to the Editor
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Sounds a lot like my obnoxious anti-racist friend
My personal experience with people who deeply believe that racism is wrong is that their beliefs proceed, like mine do, from deep subjectivity. Theirs belief may be supportable, but they are not really arguable.
I also sense that they want us to be non-racist. They probably can't help wanting us to be non-racists. But precisely how they manage their own desire to change us is what makes them either brilliant, amusing and loyal friends or people you want to run from.
I'm definitely going to use this insight the next time my friend starts hassling me about my racial slurs. It will also be useful in dealing with my anti-murder friend and my anti-rape friend - those two are a real drag. I'll just confront them and say "Hey, if we're going to continue being friends, we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this whole racism/murder/rape business. You have your subjective experience and I have mine."
Oh wait, no. That's horrifically bad advice if you take yourself to be talking about a genuine moral matter. And yet the letter writer's friend thinks this is a genuine moral matter. Even the letter writer seems committed to thinking he/she is in a position equivalent to some kind of racist/nationalist/tribalist who fails to recognize the status of some outgroup that will ultimately be recognized to be owed moral concern.
I don't think meat eating is anywhere on the same moral plane as racism, murder, or rape, and it's true that some vegans (like some religious people, some liberals, some conservatives, some meat eaters, etc, etc) can be both hypocritical and needlessly self-righteous.
But the overall general message seems to be - get over your friends' moral failings - nobody every convinces anyone of anything anyway, so either end the friendship or just go along to get along. That sort of approach shows neither the proper concern for morality nor the proper concern for one's friends.
The columnist is right about this point, though - no one's knowledge is infallible, so when you find yourself in disagreement with a friend (or, most often, even a stranger) the appropriate response is not to preach to your friend or demand a justification without being similarly prepared to give one.