Category Archives: Proslavery

It’s crueller not to eat it

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Few things raise the hackles of thoughtful eaters quite like veal—unless it’s veal with a side order of foie gras. Bleak images of calves in cramped crates or being herded on to lorries linger in the memory. And they should—as a reminder of the worst excesses of indifference to animal welfare, they take some beating. But today I’m unashamedly putting on my rose-tinted spectacles and flying the flag for British rose veal. To be honest, if you drink milk or eat cheese, it’s crueller not to eat it.

Spare a thought for male dairy calves. Over a quarter of a million of them are killed each year. Unable to produce milk (obviously) and unsuitable for beef production, they are shot soon after birth as a “waste product” of the dairy industry. Either that or they’re exported to Europe, where the continental craving for pale meat means their welfare is profoundly compromised.

In the past few years, there’s been a growing interest in high-welfare rose veal in this country, and I for one am glad of it. Calves live in small groups, with deep straw bedding and access to a varied diet that leads to their distinctive pink meat; in free-range or organic production, they’re also given access to outdoor grazing. The animals are killed at around six months old, roughly the same age as most pigs or sheep slaughtered for pork and lamb.
~ Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (May 20, 2011)

Source: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s veal recipes

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I believe that every bowl of tofu is responsible for the death of billions of things

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If I really wanted to maximize the death toll, I would go into business creating tofu for the vegetarians. ’Cause in order to create tofu, you have to take that wonderful giant tractor, you have to go across that field and every songbird, every gopher, every squirrel, every turtle, every rabbit, every mouse, every shrew, every snake, every bug, everything there must die.

In order to go full tofu, you have to have 100% complete annihilation of all life forms. To the vegetarians, how deep is the cloak of denial? How can you pretend that Paul McCartney isn’t responsible for killing anything? I kill stuff one arrow at a time. Meanwhile, Paul McCartney, master of the final solution, only thinks of his tofu consumption. I believe that every bowl of tofu is responsible for the death of billions of things. I can’t compete with that and I can’t compete with Paul McCartney’s death toll.
~ Ted Nugent (December 29, 2009)

Source: Inside the Mind of Ted Nugent

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The very things necessary to the overthrow of American slavery, were left undone

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THE controversy on SLAVERY, in the United States, has been one of an exciting and complicated character. The power to emancipate existing, in fact, in the States separately and not in the general government, the efforts to abolish it, by appeals to public opinion, have been fruitless except when confined to single States. In Great Britain the question was simple. The power to abolish slavery in her West Indian colonies was vested in Parliament. To agitate the people of England, and call out a full expression of sentiment, was to control Parliament and secure its abolition. The success of the English abolitionists, in the employment of moral force, had a powerful influence in modifying the policy of American anti-slavery men. Failing to discern the difference in the condition of the two countries, they attempted to create a public sentiment throughout the United States adverse to slavery, in the confident expectation of speedily overthrowing the institution. The issue taken, that slavery is malum in se—a sin in itself—was prosecuted with all the zeal and eloquence they could command. Churches adopting the sin per se doctrine, inquired of their converts, not whether they supported slavery by the use of its products, but whether they believed the institution itself sinful. Could public sentiment be brought to assume the proper ground; could the slaveholder be convinced that the world denounced him as equally criminal with the robber and murderer; then, it was believed, he would abandon the system. Political parties, subsequently organized, taught, that to vote for a slave-holder, or a pro-slavery man, was sinful, and could not be done without violence to conscience; while, at the same time, they made no scruples of using the products of slave labor—the exorbitant demand for which was the great bulwark of the institution. This was a radical error. It laid who adopted it open to the charge of practical inconsistency, and left them without any moral power over the consciences of others. As long as all used their products, so long the slaveholders found the per se doctrine working them no harm; as long as no provision was made for supplying the demand for tropical products by free labor, so long there was no risk in extending the field of operations. Thus, the very things necessary to the overthrow of American slavery, were left undone, while those essential to its prosperity, were continued in the most active operation; so that, now, after more than a thirty years’ war, we may say, emphatically, COTTEN IS KING, and his enemies are vanquished.
~ David Christy (1860)

Source: Cotton is King, and Proslavery Arguments: Comprising the Writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, On This Important Subject, p. 33-34

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Where do we draw the line?

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In his latest piece for the Atlantic Food Channel, he [James McWilliams] attempts to refine his earlier argument by saying that animals are sentient beings, and therefore it is wrong to kill and eat them. Not an argument I personally agree with, but so far, so good. The trouble comes with his definition of “sentient.” If sentient means, according to McWilliams, “capable of suffering,” where do we draw the line? And if animals are so sentient, doesn’t that make a farm system where they suffer less, if at all, dramatically better than one that causes nothing but suffering for all of the animals and many of the people involved?

A fish does not register “pain” or “fear”. It might exhibit a rush of stress hormones when confronted with a lethal situation, but plants also release stress hormones, especially as a result of any sort of damage. Like when you snap a tree branch to pick an apple. Or shear off leaves from a spinach plant for salad. I’m not making the argument that plants are sentient beings, but as long as we’re “lifting veils” and performing “mental exercises,” to use McWilliams’ parlance, we might as well go whole hog, don’t you think?
~ Nicole Washington (January 11, 2011)

Source: Reason Is What Separates Us From the Animals

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Should the immediate Abolitionists ever succeed

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Should the immediate Abolitionists ever succeed, in bringing about such an awful result, let them beware lest they themselves, and not the slave-holder, may be offered up first as burnt offering, to the Genius of Fanatacism. Their true object is now palpable, like Erostratus of old, who fired the temple of Diana, to immortalize his name, so would they, build up their fame, upon their destruction of every thing, at present, noble and glorious in our great Republic.

It is true that the almost unanimous voice of our white population now deprecates the conduct of such unprincipled incendiaries, but the public voice cannot prevent the natural and rapid increase of the blacks, nor the secret efforts of the bigots, (whatever these efforts may be.)
~ Richard H. Colfax (1833)

Source: Evidence Against the Views of the Abolitionists, Consisting of Physical and Moral Proofs, of the Natural Inferiority of the Negroes, p. 32

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Ergo, it is Just

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The total abolitionists appear to consider the political expediency of liberating the slaves as a secondary or minor consideration, and contend principally for the abstract justice of such a measure. We are willing to concede to them that all of GOD’S creatures have a natural right to liberty, and that the natural inferiority of the negro which we expect to prove, (but what our oponents do not admit,) does not justify the white man in an assumption of unjust power. But when it is shown that the negro and his master, together with the noisy bigots of the north, are all benefited by the present condition of the slaves, then it is undeniably expedient in every view of the case;—ergo, it is Just.
~ Richard H. Colfax (1833)

Source: Evidence Against the Views of the Abolitionists, Consisting of Physical and Moral Proofs, of the Natural Inferiority of the Negroes, p. 8

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“Human Zoos”

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Over four centuries from the first voyages of discovery, European societies developed an appetite for exhibiting exotic human “specimens” shipped back to Paris, London or Berlin for the interest and delectation of the crowd.

What started as wide-eyed curiosity on the part of observers turned into ghoulish pseudo-science in the mid-1800s, as researchers sought out physical evidence for their theory of races.

Finally, in high colonial times, hundreds of thousands of people visited “human zoos” created as part of the great international trade fairs.
~ Hugh Schofield (December 27, 2011)

Source: Human zoos: When real people were exhibits

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I hate to kill

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I hate to kill.

I know that must sound like an odd confession coming from an avid deer hunter, a guy who, like thousands of others in my home state of Pennsylvania, spends the better part of the year looking forward to those few short weeks in October and November, and especially to the special flintlock season that begins the day after Christmas, when I can load up my rifle and get lost in the mountains behind my home all alone. But I suspect that if you could wade through their boot-top-deep braggadocio and really talk to hunters, many of them would tell you the same thing.

For me, and I suspect for many others like me, the art of hunting is far more profound than taking trophies. It’s about taking responsibility. For my needs. For my family. For the delicate environmental balance of this wounded but recovering part of the country. There is something sobering about hunting for your food. Meat tastes different, more precious, when you’ve not only watched it die, but killed it yourself. There is no seasoning in the world that can compare with moral ambiguity.

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I might never have gotten out

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I’m actually glad that I was a vegan when less was known and it was easier to fail. If I’d figured out how to be a healthy vegan indefinitely, I might never have gotten out. That’s why I worry about the vegans of the future. If science ever discovers the most nutritionally optimal animal-product-free diet possible, that’s one less deus ex machina to set vegans free.
~ Rhys Southan (February 12, 2011)

Source: The History of My Diet

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Every time I drop them in the boiling water I cry for a moment

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Aside from chicken wings, one of my favorite things to eat is lobster. As you know, in order for lobster to be yummy, you have to buy them when they are alive and then kill them during the cooking process.

I always place the lobsters in the kitchen sink while I boil the water. I see their big eyeballs staring at me, and sometimes my son will give them names, which makes this whole situation worse. Every time I drop them in the boiling water I cry for a moment because I see them flap around, until they are suddenly still, and dead.
~ Diana Adams (January 22, 2010)

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