The Devil is a Vegetarian

The New Orleans disaster on one rather leftish email list I frequent prompted an anguished discussion of the plight of abandoned pets. A petition was gotten up demanding they be rescued. Money was collected. Some offered to take New Orelans pets into their homes. In Canada.

I note no such offer was made for New Orleans humans. No money was collected for them. No petitions were signed.

Other such petitions and collections are popping up everywhere. One group is dedicated specifically to rescuing the stray ferrets of New Orleans.

Meanwhile, thousands of humans are still unaccounted for, and may be in urgent need.

The following comment on the list I’ve been monitoring is typical:

“We're at the top of the food chain right now. That's the only difference, in the big picture, between us and any other species on earth. We may not eat our young, but we're pretty darned good at killing each other and anything else that gets in our way.”

Never mind the nonsense concept “top of the food chain.” Surely we take a lower place than tapeworms, mosquitoes, lice, viruses, and some other parasites. Nor is this a justification for anything.

It is the naked misanthropy of the comment that strikes me. It does not ennoble animals by raising to human level. Rather, inevitably, it denigrates humans by reducing them to animals. Or below.

Just think where this leads.

This is particularly striking to my Filipina wife, who reacts viscerally to the North American sentimentality towards animals. The typical pet in North America is given more than she ever had growing up. The message is that North American animals are worth more than she is.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am a vegetarian myself; have been for twenty years. But I know too many animal rights activists and vegetarians who love animals as a sort of alibi for hating people.

Animals are utterly dependent on you. There is no danger of their challenging your self-esteem. Good for those who are lonely or depressed, and a great blessing. But they are a dangerous drug to those whose egos are already inflated. They can be used as a substitute for human contact by those who must control all they survey. Hitler, Caligula, Ceausescu, were animal lovers.

It has been said that the devil is a vegetarian. It certainly could be so.