Our old friend Chef Bourdain notwithstanding, I don’t think there’s any similarity between Hezbollah and veganism. Eating plants could hardly be called an act of violent terrorism. In fact, we have all been told our whole lives that we need to eat more broccoli, or that Popeye eats spinach to grow strong (and “wimpy” eats hamburgers). There is little wonder that children have a difficult time eating vegetables (I know I did), as most people in America can’t really cook vegetables well or creatively, and people like our old friend Chef Bourdain either call people who eat vegetables “rude,” or suggest that vegans should be “hunted down and destroyed” so that we can’t pass on our genes to “future generations.”

But I have no problem with overt rabble-rousers such as Bourdain, who, just like Howard Stern or Ann Coulter, knows that all publicity is good publicity. No, the thing that I am saddest about is the general disdain for veganism from the liberal left.

I have written before that I am not a fan of using either increased health or life expectancy, or environmental degradation, as the main pillars of the vegan argument. If eating plants is better for the planet, I think that’s great. Super. If it makes you healthier, that’s also great. Neato. But it’s sort of like a Christmas bonus; it’s nice and all, but Chevy Chase taught us that we can’t plan our lives around a Christmas bonus.

Imagine trying to make a similar sort of side argument against racism. I think, for instance, that ending institutionalized bigotry is, in theory, better for the entire economic spectrum, the poor and the rich, the light and the dark-skinned. I think it could hardly be called coincidental that when we outsource undesirable and/or low-paying jobs, it is to the poorer and browner parts of the world. And look how beneficial that policy has turned out to be. So, imagine a white person approaching a non-white person and telling them that they have decided not to be racist because it is better for the economy. I think this would be just like walking up to an animal and saying, “Hey, don’t worry, I’m not going to eat you…because it’s bad for my health.” If the animal could understand you, what two words do you think they’d offer in response? (I think they’d begin with an “F” and a “Y.”)

I have written before about how being a vegan is just part of a larger, informed worldview, and that I am not vegan for one reason, but about three-hundred different and varied reasons. For instance, Erik Marcus reminds us here that “slaughterhouses are often plunked into poor rural communities with bad schools and insufficient social service.” This got me to thinking about those people in Nantucket who didn’t want windmills built in their expensive ocean views. There are all things that we don’t want to live next to, like, say, a landfill. I, myself, generate garbage that ends up in landfills, although I try and live as cleanly as possible, and reuse and recycle as much as I can. But I don’t work at a dump, and I don’t live near one, either. However, I also support changing our society fundamentally, with technology and social policy, so that, one day soon, maybe all of the waste we produce is reused and recycled, and there won’t be any more landfills. The average person who proudly (or otherwise) proclaims their omnivorousness, if asked, would see no end in sight for their ‘necessary evil’ (or is that ‘necessarily evil?’) slaughterhouses.

What I don’t understand about the liberal fascination with happy meat is that even the happiest, most organic, grass-fed or free-range farmed animal still ends up in a slaughterhouse. And slaughterhouses, in addition to being places of intense violence, are also environmental nightmares. And the humans who work in those slaughterhouses are often exploited wage slaves.

It has also been well documented that the resources which go into producing meat (land, water, feed) far outweigh the amount of meat actually produced. So, the entire industry is designed to burn up more food and other resources than it generates. Therefore, on both an economic and environmental level, using that system, we simply can’t kill enough animals to feed everyone on the planet the Standard American Diet. And even farmland itself is going to be a problem in the looming bio-fuels crisis.

This is a problem that also touches on racism; hoarding the most wasteful and expensive food in the wealthier, usually whiter, nations, using farmland wastefully, and leaving everyone else to fend for themselves with their increasingly expensive staples.

These are just some of the many other issues surrounding veganism (other than the obvious animal rights issues) that the average lefty liberal ought to be sympathetic to. But simply going vegan, which would go a long way towards helping solve most of this, is still seen, in those circles, as too ‘radical’ a solution. No windmill farms in my ocean, no change in my living habits. That would be either too inconvenient or too “rude.”

Let’s see.  Growing and eating vegetables, grains and legumes is a smarter and cleaner use of resources, and therefore it could help the environment; it also could help make everyone healthier; it flies in the face of racist capitalism; and, oh yes, it could spare billions of innocent lives while also eliminating an entire industry dedicated to exploitation, torture and violence.

Radical, indeed.

Does anyone have Hezbollah’s email address?