WD West wrote:

> The older I get, the more I am leaning towards becoming a vegetarian.
> Not for any health reasons but it seems so hypocritical of me to care
> as much about animals as I do and then consume them.

Where is the hypocrisy in that? I don't see it.

On the other hand, so-called "ethical vegetarianism" is
fundamentally hypocritical. The reason is that animals
are killed gruesomely and in large numbers in the
course of growing, storing and distributing vegetables,
but smarmy "vegans" don't think about them because
those animals aren't eaten. "vegans", or so-called
"ethical vegetarians", engage in a classic logical
fallacy: Denying the Antecedent. It runs like this:

If I eat meat, I cause animals to suffer and die.

I do not eat meat;

Therefore, I do not cause animals to suffer and die.


The conclusion clearly does not follow: "vegans"
cause, through their demand for fruit and vegetables,
the suffering and death of animals. They merely don't
eat any of the animals.

All "vegans" believe this fallacious argument to one
degree or another, even those who have been forced to
acknowledge it directly. They dance and bob and weave
and try to get into a bogus distinction about the
motivations behind the deaths, but no amount of sleazy
sophistry can disguise the fallacy and HYPOCRISY.

> My problem
> (which I hope is not unique) is this: I was raised in a "meat and
> potatoes" family. Every meal, every day, had some form of meat, from
> bacon in the morning to a roast etc. and night. Somehow the idea of a
> meatless meal seems like no meal at all.

That isn't your real problem. The real problem is, you
are an ethically weak person who confuses ethics with
esthetics. You have an esthetic liking for meat in a
meal, and you can't see that ethics MUST override
esthetics, if it is going to be any kind of legitimate
ethics at all.

....