Placenta Liberals

Thirty years ago, as part of a birthing class, I was offered a recipe for delicious placenta. I don’t recall the particulars, but my wife tells me that sautéed onions were a key ingredient.

Ever since, I have wrestled with why people would want to eat placenta. The theory at the time was that it might help with post-partum depression–that animals do it, so it must, in any case, be a good idea. And indeed, at least of the cultures that eat placentas do so because they are emulating animals who eat the afterbirth (possibly for nutrition, possibly to reduce the risk from predators).

There is a long tradition of mankind thinking of ourselves as nothing more or less than animals. All primitive pagan cultures identify with animals (as do their spiritual cousins, modern high schools and colleges). I think seeing oneself as an animal is very attractive to most people, because they want an excuse to “be true to" themselves and not grow up.

Identifying as animals is not an innocent definition, a description. It is instead aggressively pre-scriptive, telling us all what we should be. After all, while people are able to grow and adapt, animals don’t change, and certainly not by themselves (absent inputs from people).

I think liberals really do see animalistic behavior as a goal. Perhaps they aspire to be true to the nature imbued in us by Mother Earth, and that it is inherently good to act in that way? And if that means we have to stretch a little toward animalism, and ready our forks and knives for the sous vide placenta (with onions!), then so be it.

No animal, it has been reported, recognizes their own grand-offspring. And so, too, societies should be arranged around schools that rip children from their parents as soon as practically possible.

In this vein, every spiritual and even emotionally uplifting part of humanity must be stripped away. “Love” is defined by chemicals in the brain. Each person is not the sum of their choices, but instead, like animals, mere slaves to their nature and nurture. Families are artificial, especially families bound in holy matrimony. Liberals take away the holiness of marriage and replace it with empty narcissistic intercourse. “Mother,” that beautiful, loving and spiritual word, becomes the mechanistic “birthing person.”

The Torah guides my life. And it tells me that animals that are unable to elevate (tamei) cannot change into animals that are able to elevate (tahor). But the text tells me that people are not animals. We can, do, and should change. We are meant to adapt and grow beyond our physical selves.

I’ll pass on the placenta, thank you.

P.S. Rabbi Lapin argues that much of liberal policy can be understood by seeing things their way: people are animals. Thus, individualism can be erased, and people are nothing more than socio-economic drones who can be managed and controlled by a central authority of experts, like zookeepers. This might explain the outrage liberals have for wealth inequality. After all, there is no reason why one ape should get far more food than some other ape.

Of course, liberals see themselves as the zookeepers, and not the ape, much as limousine liberals who rail against CO2 emissions fly on private jets. This thought is admittedly somewhat at odds with the main thesis, that liberals want the comfort of identifying as apes whenever it suits them.