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ex-PFC Wintergreen[_2_] ex-PFC Wintergreen[_2_] is offline
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Default Sorry, vegans: Brussels sprouts like to live, too

DC wrote:
> NY Times
>
> In his new book, “Eating Animals” (Amazon.com:
> http://snurl.com/EatAni ), the novelist Jonathan Safran
> Foer describes his gradual transformation from omnivorous,
> oblivious slacker who “waffled among any number of diets”
> to “committed vegetarian.” Last month, Gary Steiner, a
> philosopher at Bucknell University, argued on the Op-Ed
> page of The New York Times http://snurl.com/ttw8w that
> people should strive to be “strict ethical vegans” like
> himself, avoiding all products derived from animals,
> including wool and silk. Killing animals for human food and
> finery is nothing less than “outright murder,” he said...
>
> But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed
> vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider
> that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok
> than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my
> Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument
> or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it
> that way. The more that scientists learn about the
> complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the
> environment, the speed with which they react to changes in
> the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks
> that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit
> help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and
> the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill
> backdrop...
>
> Continued: http://snurl.com/ttw97


"vegans" are not "more ethical" for refusing to consume animal products.
In fact, the very fact of being "vegan" is an indication that the
person describing himself as such is morally bankrupt, because
"veganism" isn't about doing the right thing at all; it's purely about
making an invidious, sanctimonious comparison with others and then
patting oneself on the back.