Letters to the Editor
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Would you say she is my friend I will not question her and accept her as she is? I don't think so.
Actually, yes. I don't try to change my friends beleifs. It's a basic right I demand, to have the right to my beliefs. Well, if I expect that right, I must grant it to others, and I do. I grant others the right to their beliefs. I don't try to change friends to be the way I think they should be. I give them the respect I expect for myself and my beliefs. It's a 2-way street, remember. We can't claim we all have the right to our own beliefs if we aren't willing to grant that same to everyone else.
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What kind of 'friend' is that?
I don't care what kind of insane shit you spout. That's fine, you justify it and whatever crazyassed crackpot planet you live on I'm sure it makes perfect sense. But this notion that one has to defend and explain and justify what they do to their 'friends' is hysterically funny. End of story. Slam the door in his/her face and never speak to them again. If one of friends suddenly announced they were a Salon premium member with all the requisite Jew bashing and multicultural PC hatespeech, I'd wish them well with their new life in the nation of Fuckwitstan, slam down the phone and never speak to them again. Live long and perspire. Don't take it personally I just don't bother with toxic retards. So yeah, fur is murder, don't eat meat, marry your Malamute for all I care.
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Different Subject; Same Result
Take out the word "vegan" and insert "born-again christian" and the story reads exactly the same: a person with strong views on a subject then subjects his/her friends to a litany of reasons why only that person's philosophy has merit!
I have yet to meet a born-again christian who keeps his/her opinion to him/herself...along with a critique of the other person's life for NOT embracing that philosophy...or to the degree that the born-again does.
Perhaps vegans would consider devouring born-agains as they mostly seem pretty in-human to me.
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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.
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Revsionists
First they deny the Holocaust and now they deny that Hilter was a vegetarian.
When will this madness stop? Where is the moral outrage? This is not acceptable.
The Vegafascists will not rest until every domesticated farm animal is extinct!
America, don't let them take your hamburgers away from you! That think and juicy steak may be your last if these madmen have their way. It's about freedom and liberty and all who disagree should move to a vegetarian country.
/watches a little too much network news on sunday mornings - the logical fallacies are perfectly acceptable today if you choose the right nouns.
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omnivores are from earth, vegans are from vega...
1. kudos to huldrenette and cheekier for their explanations of what *should* be obvious to all living beings: you know, the teeny-tiny factoid that nekkid apes have been omnivores for lo these many hundreds of thousands of years...
got grubs ? ? ?
(*notwithstanding* the present sub-optimal systems of factory farming, etc...)
2. melodramatic romantics who are just so shaky-voiced upset over killing/eating soft and fuzzy creatures need to get over their pseudo-sensitivities... i love animals, and i also love to eat animals; there is NO contradiction...
(more than a few of them would love to eat us, given half a chance... so far, we've been better armed...)
i thank brother chicken for the his bbq arm i munch, i appreciate bessie has given her life so i might live, i am grateful that sister fishie has been broiled so that i might be fed; but i ain't gonna hold a funeral service for them...
3. thanks also to comrade rupert-c who made what i think is a real and valid point: vegans don't care about the 'feelings' of vegetables...
seriously...
i believe plants have 'feelings' (of a sort), i believe they react to being chopped down, uprooted, sliced up, boiled alive ...
but -ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN 'PRINCIPLES'- vegans don't really care, now do they...
*where* do we draw the line, kampers ? ? ?
4. gorgona made an excellent point regarding the inconsistency and foolishness of vegans who have pets and feed them meat...
not one defender of the vegan way would answer that seriously... hmmm, wonder why...
(creepy vegans who insist their pets love and thrive on *their* forced vegan diets are fooling no one, least of all their pets... given a 'choice' between some tofu crap and a steaming hunk of wormy meat, the abused pets will rip out their owner's throat to get the meat... so much for 'love'...)
5. sonofabastard, perhaps you are a bastard; but mostly, you're just a dick... case in point: the repudiation of anonymous posters (*as if* 'sonofabastard' is somehow less anonymous than saying 'anonymous'); i really have a difficult time respecting pompous pricks who are so dog damned self-righteous about the 'impropriety' of anonymous posters...
fuck all you dickheads...
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof