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Can Conservatives be Vegans? —TeeGee
I am pretty much just a lurker here, but I’m going to take my cloak of invisibility off for a moment.
DocJay had a thread a few days ago about diet and health weirdness. My confession: my wife and I lean toward being vegans. While she would prefer to embrace veganism entirely, I still enjoy meat from time to time.
Here’s the thing: I find I feel better when I keep meat consumption minimal. I feel mentally sharper and in better control. I also feel more energetic, focused, and productive when my diet is more Spartan than Epicurean.
Switching to a near-vegan diet did not lead to spiritual enlightenment. It did not clear up my complexion, make me happier, or produce any dramatic changes at all. It simply seems right.
There are two extreme points of view regarding veganism, both of which frankly bug me.
First: yes, absolutely, there is an abundance of left-wing nut jobs who eat vegan and who insist on calling it the “vegan movement.” I’ve met any number of vegans who insist their diet is a pathway to enlightenment. That’s not me. Food is just fuel for my body. If there is any spiritual component to my diet, it comes from the company I keep when I eat. I might be nuts, but I am emphatically not left-wing, new age nuts. Nor am I particularly given to evangelizing about eating vegan.
Second: A lot of people on the right seem to think that people who prefer eating fruits and vegetables can’t possibly be conservative.
I am a conservative and I generally prefer meatless meals. It’s got nothing to do with my spiritual, political and philosophical convictions. It’s just about what works for me.
So can conservatives be vegans? What do you think?
Invisibility cloak back on.
Published in General
Which is, of course, why I specified “sometimes”.
;-)
Yes. As far as I’m concerned, their speculations compare favorably to other ancients’.
I wonder if that partly explains why many orders of monks and nuns throughout history have cut or shaved their hair. Maintaining hair hygiene without modern plumbing and shampoos is a rather time-consuming distraction from ascetic pursuits, and lice can spread quickly in institutional settings such as monasteries.
Of course you can be a Conservative vegan. It’s the other side that has made food choices a matter of ideology – “You’re eating non-organic corn?? Don’t you know what Monsanto is doing in Third World countries?? And didn’t you watch that YouTube clip about chicken factories?? Do you want to eat chicken after seeing all those sad chicken faces?? Pigs have the right to the pursuit of happiness, too, you know – how does your eating bacon make you feel about that??”
Hedonism. In a materialistic society, physical health takes priority over spiritual health. Physical pleasure, physical pain, and physical purity are all given undue weight and attention.
Then there’s the notion that animals are people, too… or something.
I will only object to conservatives abandoning red meat if the decreased demand results in decreased supply.
Prove to me that the pig I just ate was unhappy.
Idiocy does not make it so.
That’s no doubt part of it Aaron, but there is a moral dimension for many of them because they connect it with sustainability too, along with the save-the-animals aspect. I think it’s misguided, but it’s a little more than hedonism and self-worship.
You’re all out of your mind. Maybe those ChiComs can eat twigs and sprouts and things, and those cheese-eating surrender monkeys in France only play pansy games like soccer. But here in ‘Murica, we love our Nascar, our beer, and our Texas beef. You can’t bulk up to play a real game like football without meat and potatoes. Go enjoy your hot cocoa in Canada, pajama boy.
Typical American. Always dumping yer effeminate refuse on a true Conservative nation.
;-)
I can’t prove it, but would you be happy if you were castrated?
Anyhow, male piglets are routinely castrated to avoid boar taint, a sweaty, urinous flavor that can accumulate in male pigs if their sex hormones are allowed to develop naturally. Now, given that livestock are usually prohibited from breeding, aside from the few that are selected as studs, maybe it is kinder to castrate them rather than leaving them sexually frustrated.
But the European Union begs to differ, and appears to have a plan for ending surgical castration of pigs by 2018. One of their initiatives is called “Boars Heading for 2018”.
Depends on why they’re doing it. If it’s just a matter of doing it for possible health benefits, sure. If it’s because you think “meat is murder” and all that PETA rot, no.
I’m not a pig.
I don’t find it odd if a conservative is a vegan or vegetarian. I should warn any vegetarians coming to the Fargo Meetup at Famous Dave’s Barbecue, though, you’ll probably want to eat before you get there. That place is a meatopolis. I really should have branded the gathering as the Fargo Meat-Up.
Quick Tip: If you ever throw a barbecue and you want it to be vegetarian-friendly, try serving gluten instead of tofu. It’s much more meat-like, and you get the added benefit that you’ll still offend a good proportion of ’em.
You can buy blocks of gluten? I thought gluten was just a protein in wheat, rye, and barley. I’d never heard of anyone isolating gluten as a stand-alone food product.
In China, they’ve used gluten as a meat substitute for a really long time, I understand. The old method of preparation involved slowly and painstakingly washing the starch away from a wad of gluten-rich dough after the gluten strands had been developed by kneading. I think.
You could’ve fooled me ;-)
Yup. I have bought it canned from asian groceries, where it might be called “seitan”, but usually I get it in powder form from the health food store. It’s sold mainly as an additive for bread-making, but I’ve made this recipe from time to time, which I really enjoy:
http://www.food.com/recipe/homemade-seitan-barbecue-bbq-ribs-vegan-295097
Yup. It isn’t nearly as popular as tofu because the process for isolating gluten tends to be expensive and wasteful if yer simply flushing all the starch down the drain.
For the record: I’m not vegetarian. I’m into soy and gluten because they make great, lightweight, meat substitutes when camping.
How quickly can you prepare a palatable gluten-powder meal? For us, speed of cooking (including cleanup) is the main concern while camping, both in terms of scheduling and fuel use. (We do fairly strenuous day hikes, but not backpacking.)
As to whether pigs are happy – I grew up around lots of pigs (not my family, the critters outside) and they didn’t seem to be particularly happy. They squeal a lot, which if you haven’t heard it you’d think would sound kind of cute, but it actually sounds like screaming. I have also heard that pigs are very intelligent, but from my recollection they were particularly and annoyingly stubborn. There’s a reason obstinate people are called pig-headed. I only saw my very mild-mannered dad lose his temper when working with pigs.
We always figured you had some sort of fatal Canadian flaw despite your usual conservative bona fides. We’re on to you now! (By we I mean me and the cat.)
Fast. Premix the dry ingredients. Add water or broth. Cook. Smother in barbecue sauce.
That last step is especially important.
My fatal Canadian flaw is that I don’t like hockey.
Until you prove it, I’m gonna keep eating them.
Probably afterwards as well, to be honest…
In my experience, intelligent people can be particularly and annoyingly stubborn, too. Difference between intelligence and wisdom.
Smart animals can often make nuisances of themselves, since that extra intelligence helps them be more adept at finding ways to thwart human efforts to control them. It’s apparently not as easy as you’d think, for example, to raven-proof your belongings, as ravens are smart enough to figure out what zippers and velcro are for.
What’s to prove? Anything that gives us bacon, ribs, chops, tenderloin should be glad for its contribution to the table.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcXYYuHOaMM
Yes a Conservative can be a vegan.
As a Kentuckian, though, I reject any implication that you can eat horse.*
1.) It’s French (cheval)
2.) Horses are hard working animals -eating one is like eating your mechanic
3.) They are also friendly and charismatic animals who are partners with their owners in their tasks -like dogs.
*(I’m actually not that broken up about horse consumption, if we raised horses for food like they do in France I’d probably not eat it, but I wouldn’t throw a fit, either.)