I read with interest and understanding the article by PJM’s Zombie entitled “I am Ashamed to be a Vegetarian”:
I’m a vegetarian. I haven’t eaten meat in 20 years.
Up until this morning I was OK with my dietary choice.
But then I saw this video just uploaded by “Direct Action Everywhere,” a radical vegetarian activist gang, and now I am ashamed. Ashamed to be associated with them. Ashamed that everyone I meet must think I’m some sort of anti-meat revolutionary. Ashamed that mean-spirited lunatics have hijacked my personal food preference and turned it into rallyng cry for passive-aggressive bullying….
The difference between me and Direct Action Everywhere — which actually encapsulates the difference between my brand of “conservatarianism” and all types of progressivism — is that when I don’t eat meat, I don’t eat meat; but when a progressive doesn’t eat meat, she insists that nobody else eat meat either.
I don’t care what you do. But a progressive wants to boss you around.
It’s all very cutesy and pathetic when they employ juvenile attempts at emotional manipulation to get their way — but it quickly becomes brutal coercive totalitarianism when people like this get into positions of power.
To protest their protest, I may eat some chicken today. Just a nibble. To prove I’m not like the vegefascists.
I used to be a vegetarian too. From the age of 12 until 24, I ate no fish, chicken or meat. What was I thinking? Apparently, I wasn’t. Today, my diet consists mainly of meat and protein and I feel much better. Like Zombie, I never thought it was up to me to tell others what to eat, that was a personal decision. It seems like vegetarianism is now a code word for angry leftist and that is a shame. These totalitarians are filled with anger and have found a politically correct outlet to wield power over others.
That said, there are some aspects of the diet that are healthy and if people want to stop eating meat or eat less, why not? But now that it is filled with political connotations, it is easy to see why Zombie is ready to eat chicken in protest of the kooks in the vegetarian world. However, the shame should be targeted at totalitarians who force their views on others, not run-of-the mill types who simply want to try out vegetarianism for reasons other than politics. It is too bad that a simple diet change is now a symbol of kooky radicalism.
Are any readers here vegetarian? If so, do you have reasons other than politics for your decision?
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