When you cut through all of the cant and posturing of the anti-meat movement you find that there is very little to be found underneath. This brings to mind what Fran Lebowitz once wrote, that “Vegetables are interesting but they lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.” It is a strange sort of superiority where that which is regarded as superior has to be disguised as that which is regarded as inferior. That these options usually take the form of plant-based imitations of meat products is itself testimony against the vegan claim for the superiority of their diet. I have not bothered to look up the statistics, assuming they are there to be looked up, but the fact that almost every major restaurant franchise has been adding vegan options to its menu speaks for itself. The percentage of the population that is either vegan or vegetarian seems to have significantly increased in recent years. We can only expect more of this sort of fuzzyheaded irrationality as more and more people starve their brains of essential nutrients by going vegan. Which, of course, completely contradicts veganism’s primary position.
When this latter reasoning is taken to its logical extreme it becomes an argument, not for veganism, but for eliminating animals altogether. On the other hand, Thunberg’s version of veganism condemns the raising of animals for meat because of all the greenhouse gasses that they emit. On the one hand veganism condemns the eating of meat because it is cruel, because animals lose their lives in order that we may eat. Raising livestock, you see, has a huge carbon footprint due to all the greenhouse gasses that the animals emit.ĭo you see the extremely ironic self-contradiction in her position? When she is not attacking the oil industry she turns her wrath upon the raising of livestock for the production of meat. This infamous Swedish rabble-rousing juvenile delinquent combines her veganism with her other cause célèbre, her fight against the bogeyman of anthropogenic climate change. One young woman driven mad by her vegan diet and the lack of any real discipline in her home country is the notorious Greta Thunberg. Auberon Waugh hit the nail on the head when he said “too much salad can drive people mad, especially young women.” Veganism itself may make people susceptible to the influence of other silly ideas simply because the brain, starved of nutrients, cannot be expected to work right. Trendy causes like pro-abortion and veganism always seem to draw the same crowd of supporters regardless of how incompatible and contradictory the arguments for the causes may be. I think it would be a safe wager to say that the people behind that sign are “pro-choice”. Pro-abortionists, as we all know, describe themselves as pro-choice, and if any choice deserves to be described as cruel surely it is abortion. My second thought was to wonder whether or not those who decry the cruelty of eating meat are for or against abortion. A world even more out of touch with reality than the one portrayed in Disney cartoons.
Perhaps vegetarians and vegans live in a fantasy world where Tennyson’s memorable description of nature as “red in tooth and claw” does not apply and animals all live in harmony with one another. If eating animals is cruelty, then surely it is no less cruel when done by a lion, a tiger, or a bear than by a human being. My first thought, upon reading the banal message upon this hideous sign was to wonder how those who are promoting this message plan to get it across to that vast body of meat eaters who cannot read signs in English or any other human language, that is to say, carnivorous animals. I noticed recently that across the street from the Tim Horton’s coffee franchise that I frequent somebody has put up a large, garish, billboard with the message “if eating animals is a choice, why choose to be cruel?” It is the only one of its kind that I have seen so far, although I suspect that many others can be found around our city significantly reducing her aesthetic value.