Did anyone else do a double take at Singer's use of the phrase "Loving Kindness"? Was that an intentional Judaic allusion? Does he have time for Judaism?

I wish I could have this experience replicated all the time. When I debate people online about capitalism, I could get Marx and Adam Smith to weigh in on my side (well, their own side that i joined). Maybe I could get Kant to weigh in when I tell folks that I know nothing about God and they can't either. I might get Christopher Hitchens to weigh in on... well, just about anything.

Thanks, Pete, you made a vegetarian out of a lover of corned beef and hot dogs.

Can someone please explain to me what exactly this "loving kindness" hippie bullshit is? Humans are the meanest motherfuckers on this planet. Their history is a grotesque patchwork of slaughter and malice against themselves and their own habitats. They do not have much of a problem with violence, whether it is amongst themselves or for their dinner plate. I think it's laughable to expect them to care about the suffering of herd animals. Humans eat meat because it's built into their evolutionary process to do so. The arguments for vegetarianism seem to come from either bourgeois arrogance and entitlement, or backward, religious stupidity. The former is simply another form of intellectual snobbery.

Oh, Eddy, I am SO going to pwn you when I come back from picking up the rental car!

Don't invoke the nerd lexicon on me, Senor Kurtzman!

Eddy, my nerd lexicon is so vast, pulls from so many different and disparate realms of miserable, pathetic obsession, that even a guy with a crazy twisted-up red pepper thing at his nose couldn't hang. Anyway, I share your contempt for hippie bullshit and chattering-class snobbery masquerading as progressivism! But aren't you an old Yiddish socialist? So why the naturalistic fallacy? Yes, we're brutes who've eaten meat throughout our evolutionary history...we've also got a solid history of exploiting the proles and squeezing the peasants and dashing the heads of the little ones against rocks. But to the extent that we can stop doing these things, why such a tongue-lashing for the effort?

All true. And, unfortunately, none of it's going to change. Basically, I've given up on humanity. It stinks on ice. And yet...

Even though my Schachtmanite instincts tell me this whole discussion is pettifogging bourgeois decadence, at least Comrade Portnoy is on the side of materialism and progress. Bread, Land and Peace are nice, but Juicy Porterhouse Steak, Rent Stabilization and Liberal Interventionism -- so, so right.

I've still got my autographed first edition of Animal Liberation and have been vegan for over 10 years now. Nobody has ever successfuly refuted Peter Singer's argument for vegetarianism rooted in ethical consistancy.

By the way, Joey, nice work pulling the 'naturalist fallacy'! Haven't seen that trump card in a while...

Since I haven't and won't bother reading a book called Animal Liberation (The title itself is ridiculous), I don't know what the "naturalist fallacy" is, other than maybe the fact that it's "natural" for humans to eat meat appears to be fallacious for followers of Mr. Singer. If that's the case, I hardly see it as a trump card. Killing for food is not unethical. In fact, to the extent that meat has aided humans in evolving, it's very ethical. More meat, more evolution. And we certainly could use some more evolution.

I'm evolving right now. Anyone wanna watch?

Doesn't come from Animal Liberation at all. If I recall correctly from a philosophy course long ago, its a logical fallacy that occurs whenever you try to derive a statement of "should" from a statement of "is." Otherwise put, normative conclusions cannot be drawn from statements of fact. Therefore, what Joey was saying is that whether your (somewhat melodramatic) cyncicism about human nature is 'true' or not, has no bearing on whether humans have an ethical obligation to extend rights to animals, etc. I consider it a trump card because whether you are right about human nature or not, you cannot justify your conclusions about vegetarianism based on your assumptions about human nature, without committing the naturalist fallacy.

Don't feel too bad though, I have noticed that the naturalist fallacy is abundant in conversations about animal rights and vegetarianism. For instance, over in the original thread there are still several people wasting each other's time arguing about the significance of vestigial human canines, which of course has no necessary logical implications for whether human beings ought to eat meat or not in the future...

The only connection to Animal Liberation, Peter Singer, etc. comes from the fact that Singer's approach to animal rights (and ethics in general) is one that explicitly attempts to and (in my opinion) successfuly bypasses the naturalist fallacy.

"I have noticed that the naturalist fallacy is abundant in conversations about animal rights and vegetarianism."

Yep, any apologist for vegetarianism bumps up against it constantly. But it's not limited to this debate, by any means. Campaign against extreme poverty runs into "The poor will always be with us" thinking (thank you, Jesus and Deuteronomy), which is really just "the poor have always been with us," so the naturalist fallacy again. Of course, John Lennon's assault on the fallacy was inadequate, "you may say that I'm a dreamer, but like, let's suddenly start doing shit way different!" You've got to pay close attention to why things have unfolded the way have, and how/why/whether the pattern can be altered. In the case of both vegetarianism and extreme poverty, though, I think there's lots of evidence that change is very much within reach.

Let's just cut to the chase, shall we?

You will get your dick sucked more often, and more enthusiastically, if your cum doesn't taste like ass.  Vegetarian cum is, without question, preferable to carnivore cum.  Everyone knows this. "Insert" joke about "beating around the bush" here.  Har de har.  But "funky spunk" -- as put by Sex and the City's otherwise idiotic Samantha in episode #39 ("Easy Come, Easy Go") -- is no laughing matter.  

(Sorry, Ma.) 

"You will get your dick sucked more often, and more enthusiastically, if your cum doesn't taste like ass."

Now that, my friends, is a trump card!

Holy cow! Where do I get a copy of this Animal Liberation?

cute vegetarian Jewish girls = best argument ever (sorry Mr. Singer)

I just sent my Big Mac into deep orbit.

Anecdotical evidence against: http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/1226.html
I'll write more soon, but I'm busy cooking some Amish chicken (I presume this is more sustainable?)

I thought it was clear from my initial offering that I take the heinousness of the commercial meat industry as a given. Yet most of the letters accuse me of not understanding that many vegetarians are motivated by that, and not by the question of killing. Real understanding and peace will never come from caricaturizing another person's views, but only by deeply listening (or reading).

The position that gorilla diets, human dentition, or the human digestive tract prove that we are not "meant" to eat meat are old canards that have been thoroughly debunked by such people as Sally Fallon and Jared Diamond, among many many others. In the third episode of this dialogue I tell my own story of how I transitioned from veganism to eating meat again.