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A few words is all that vegetables deserve in the estimation of most people. So I may include one or two about animals, but I'll keep it quiet.What I have are a few questions I'd like to direct to vegetarians, vegans, PETA, ecologists, the entire population of Boulder, Colorado, and people of other assorted stripes I don't know, who ride the currents of political correctness in canoes with extra paddles.
I think the original premise was that animals, i.e. cattle, hogs, chickens - those we think of as "meat" - have as much right to live as we humans do and are, in fact, our equals, so we shouldn't be eating them. Correct me if I got it wrong. I'm not referring to health reasons, which are certainly in the daily news and recalls a lot more recently, but to the prevailing political winds. If this is the case .......
And if trees have as much right to live as we do, being also our equals as I understand the rants; and if plants have as much right to live as we do, which I also hear....
Then why are these people eating plants? It kills a vegetable to eat it, too. I'm pretty sure of that. Doesn't that carrot have just as much right to live as that person, by their reasoning? Excuse me, why not?
And why are they living in houses made at least partially from wood? Unless I missed something, wood is still obtained by cutting down trees. I'm pretty sure a tree is dead when it becomes lumber. Why aren't they digging holes and living underground instead? I know underground homes were briefly popular in the 1970s, but it didn't seem to catch on.
And if it is wrong to kill a living thing (except for other humans that disagree with the eco-nuts' views, which they are always trying to blow up), why do they kill the bacteria in their wounds (which I presume they get from various activities involving axes and explosives...you know, just like the rest of us)? Why do they kill the virus that makes them sick? Those are living things. For that matter, why aren't bacteria and viruses on the endangered lists when we have almost eradicated one? Why don't they insist on taking property rights away from people to create a sanctuary for the ticks that cause Lyme Disease, for example? Don't they have just as much right to life as a fruit fly does, or gee, maybe even a human?
And, incidently, why doesn't an unborn baby have the same rights and generate the same concern as a calf or a fruit fly? Or is that somehow different? I see.........
Then back to other forms of life, other living things, such as vegetables. Did my questions sound ridiculous? You noticed? Good. That was only an attempt to think through the ideas of these politically correct environmentalists-to-vegans, who all seem to be the same folks, to their logical conclusions, which these folks haven't got around to doing. I'm just trying to help out.
For the sake of comparison, imagine the moral dilemma of a vegan who discovers a worm in his coleslaw. Does he go hungry and allow the worm to have it? Does he commit murder by killing the worm? Does he gently escort the worm outside to a nice spot of dirt? Does he then eat the cabbage that someone, possibly himself, killed? I think those are all of his choices, since I don't believe cabbages have resurrections; at least not after they have become coleslaw.
Gee, I wouldn't want to be him.
Thanks for reading.