Big tent: Meat-eaters and hunter-haters getting along (also: why veggies don’t cut it)

This is fun, especially when you consider the fact that conservatives and Republicans are supposed to be closed-minded bigots who don’t want anything to do with those not sharing their perspective.

Our next Vice President is a lifelong hunter who fills her freezer and feeds her family with the flesh of hooved mammals that she proudly stalked, killed and field dressed herself.

…Yet her speechwriter is an animal-rightist and vegan activist whose book was hailed by PETA in 2003 as their “Book of the Year!” And for excellent reasons. In his book, Governor Palin’s speechwriter denounces hunters as: “assassins … miscreants… bullies and cowards taking out their problems on animals.” …Matthew Scully denounces the sport of hunting as “a debauchery..an abomination!” Hunting magazines are “the pornography of blood-lust. And like other obscenities today, a multi-million dollar industry…. Sport hunters operate in a subculture like pornographers.”

…”groups like Ducks Unlimited, Quail Unlimited and Pheasants Forever, far from demonstrating those timeless “rural values” that “urbanites” simply can’t understand–these organizations reflect some of the worst traits of modern society.”

Wow, strong words! Yet Palin and Scully aren’t at each other’s throats. Amazing!

Now, if you are a hunter, you’ll want to read the entire post from American Thinker’s Humberto Fontova. He does a fine job of pointing out that, unlike most Americans, hunters actually contribute more to the well-being of nature than your average citizen, including PETA peeps. To the tune of nearly $2 billion dollars in 2007, to be exact.

And the meat thing?

A lot of people seem to think man doesn’t “need” meat. But this is silly, because frankly, there are proteins and other necessary things in meat not obtainable from any other food source. As someone whose health requires that I eat well — by which I mean eating healthfully — I know this stuff pretty well. Additionally, the basic rules of biology point to our being meat-eaters of the omnivorian set.

…note that The Big Bad Wolf, The Lion King, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger all have eyes that point forward, for the purpose of stalking the sources of their nutrition, whereas Bambi and Thumper have their eyes on the side of the head, to detect and attempt to evade these stalkers. Note that we humans also have our eyes pointing forward, like all predators. Our digestive system (hence, nutritional needs) likewise follow those of lions and tigers and bears. “Fifty percent of the fatty acids that make up the human central nervous system are only available in meat.” [Jen here: Some say 60%.] That’s not the Beef Council or The Texas Cattleman’s Association. That’s Britain’s Nuffield Institute of Comparative Medicine.

Interestingly, and if you’ll excuse my tangent, some scientists believe that game meat is even better for us that cattle, since it is what our ancestors ate, and there is a very small possibility that our bodies have adjusted to the different kind of meat cattle happens to be. (This goes for your pets especially, which is why a raw-food diet is far better for your dog and cat than the dried pellets and bizarre reconstructions of food found at the pet store.)

So Mrs Palin could inform her speechwriter that his digestive tract is much more akin to the Lion King’s than to King Louie the Orangutan’s, and utterly unlike Bambi and Thumper’s. …unlike the herbivores he seeks to mimic, his stomach secretes hydrochloric acid — and for one reason: to digest meat. That acid means the human stomach breaks down Moose-burgers in no time — much faster than his tofu, which is as unnatural a food for homo sapiens as granola. In fact, cellulose which makes up the walls of all plant cells, cannot be digested by the human digestive system at all, unlike grilled Caribou backstrap, which like all meat ingested by humans, crumbles down in two hours flat.

Tofu and other soy-based products are indeed horrendously unnatural for man to eat, and frankly, are downright harmful, especially to women and unborn children in the wombs of soy-eating women. But I’ve gotten pretty tired of beating that horse.

So to speak.

So, for a human, veganism is an attempt to fool Mother Nature. And as we all know: that’s not nice. Vitamin B-12, for instance, is only available in meat. And according to the Andrews University Nutrition Council (themselves vegetarians who take it in pill form), “Vitamin B-12 is essential for the development of red blood cells and it plays an important role in the normal function of the nervous system. A vitamin B-12 deficiency usually leads to disorientation, depression, mood disturbances, irritability, memory loss, and dementia.”

This explains much. Every vegetarian I’ve met is a Democrat.

Love it. The comments are superb as well. Now, I must say that if someone wants to be vegan or a vegetarian, that is just fine. Indeed, we eat vegetarian meals a couple of times a week, more often in summer when tons of fresh produce is available; for one thing, it’s lighter and easier to cook, and for another…Why not? I sincerely don’t mind vegetarians at all…as long as you leave my steak, venison, poultry, and fish alone. I won’t throw a T-bone on your plate if you don’t try to steal it off mine.

Additionally, one must keep in mind that some of us (myself included) can’t eat the meat “substitutes” because our bodies cannot process them properly or, worse, these “substitutes” (and there is no such thing, really) are harmful to us, soy being foremost among these. Many people get along just fine without meat, but not everyone can do so.

Additionally, and for some reason animal rights types don’t seem to understand this, if we don’t hunt, as it turns out, the prey-animal populations tend to get too big, which leads to starving, deformed, and generally ill animals. For some reason this doesn’t happen as often with predators (until we stop allowing humans to hunt down or trap the ones harassing the homestead, interestingly enough); nature seems to deal with them pretty fairly most of the time as far as I know. But deer? Rabbits? Nope. They overpopulate very, very quickly. Personally, were I Faline (or anything, really), I’d rather die of a gunshot wound than by starving to death or slowly wasting away due to some sort of malnutrition-caused illness.

Anyhow. Good stuff, and a very interesting conversation over at the original article.