Other than the truly sick people who find crush films to their liking, it’s hard to fathom why anyone would take pleasure from the infliction of needless harm and pain to animals. But does the Stevens decision lead us to stop eating meat? I was a little surprised to see that Marc Randazza found the reasoning in Jon Katz’s argument compelling:
I wish for Stevens to be an opportunity not only to celebrate and strengthen the First Amendment, but also for people to re-examine their relationship with and treatment of all animals, both of different species and their own species.
Violence begets violence, and that concept is not limited only to human-on-human violence. How desensitized do people become about harming other humans when they eat other mammals, who are not so unrelated biologically to humans? Of course, chickens and fish also bleed and feel pain and suffering from being slaughtered.
Randazza responds:
My food consumption is one of my admitted hypocrisies. While I agree with everything Katz has to say about this subject, I simply love eating animals. Even veal and foie gras. I don’t see changing that (but never say never). Nevertheless, I do think the argument is compelling. Believe it or not, I consciously try to be more compassionate every day. I think that Jon makes a very strong, if not indisputable, point.
This has the joint failing of conceding hypocrisy while adopting a straw argument. Maybe all that San Diego sunshine has done something to Randazza?
I respect Jon’s choice to go vegan; it’s entirely up to him to be comfortable with his own conduct, and certainly there’s no harm in not eating meat. But I don’t share the feeling. While inflicting cruelty upon animals for kicks disgusts me, I am a carnivore. Human beings are carnivores. It’s our nature. That we raise, and kill, animals for food is consistent with out nature, and consistent with the natural world, even though we’ve altered it to satisfy the need to feed ourselves.
I’ve watched the National Geographic channel. Wild animals are often unkind to their own, and even more unkind to those critters they eat. There’s nothing pretty about one snatching the other in mid-air, or the bank of a river, or wherever they happen to find them. It’s brutal.
Does it cause pain? I’ve no doubt it does, as I’ve no doubt the alpha rhino hurts the young bull hoping to catch the interest of a mate when it give it a piece of its horn. This is still part of the natural process of the rhino’s life, and it’s unlikely that rhino matchmaking will find a place on cable.
Jon draws a connection between the desensitization that comes from eating meat and human on human violence. I see no connection whatsoever. There’s no explanation for the analogy, but merely a question of “how desensitized to people become.” Not at all, I say. Why would they? One involves eating meat, as is our nature and maintains our existence, while the other has nothing whatsoever to do with that. I can accept the parallel between crush films and harming other humans, but not eating.
There are people who cannot bear to eat meat knowing that an animal died to provide it. There are people who cannot bear to eat meat knowing the conditions under which livestock is raised to supply us with meat, or knowing how the animals are slaughtered. It’s understandable, and I do not begrudge anyone who feels this way from making whatever choice he or she feels necessary.
That doesn’t mean, however, that there is a sound basis to extrapolate the disgust we feel toward something as horrible as a crush film with our nature as carnivores. There is simply no rational connection between the two, and the effort to draw one will tend to make it increasingly difficult to enforce the constitutional rights that underlie cases like Stevens by suggesting that they lead down the slippery slope to such outcomes as veganism.
Preserving the First Amendment is not the gateway to becoming a vegan, or any other personal choices for which no rational connection exists. Let’s not get crazy about this and provide ammunition to be used to shoot down sensible court decisions in guise of shooting down dinner.
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You know this is gonna be a fun comment thread!
FWIW, I don’t agree with this, in fact if anything US v. Stevens demonstrates the opposite:
“That doesn’t mean, however, that there is a sound basis to extrapolate the disgust we feel toward something as horrible as a crush film with our nature as carnivores. There is simply no rational connection between the two, and the effort to draw one will tend to make it increasingly difficult to enforce the constitutional rights that underlie cases like Stevens by suggesting that they lead down the slippery slope to such outcomes as veganism.”
You do realize, don’t you, that you’ve offered no clue what the “this” is, so that it’s impossible to tell what you think from what you’ve written.
“the effort to draw one will tend to make it increasingly difficult to enforce the constitutional rights that underlie cases like Stevens by suggesting that they lead down the slippery slope to such outcomes as veganism”
I have trouble seeing how the supposed relationship between crush films and our nature as carnivores will ever affect the outcome of these cases.
I guess people at the crazy end of the spectrum could make arguments around how having these films or not having these films can lead to widespread veganism (?)
I think I understand you now. I am not questioning Jon Katz’s position, but Randazza’s, who says he sees Jon’s argument as “compelling”. My fear is that this will give rise to others accepting (despite the absence of any logical nexus) that there is a connection between the Stevens decision and veganism. People frequently accept the position of someone they respect, like Marc, without much additional thought, and then the sound legal argument is thus guilty by association.
It’s quite possible the lack of meat in my diet led to my problems digesting this argument 🙂
While I agree a cause-and-effect connection between meat-eating and violence is too attenuated to be “compelling,” I think there is a similar but more logical point to be made based on the following: (1) no decent person would cook and eat an animal slaughtered in a crush film; (2) one reason — presumably the main one — a decent person would not eat such an animal is actual knowledge of the pointless suffering the animal endured before death (also known as “compassion”); and (3)there is needless suffering in our actual food system (as Jon’s post also argues) that one gets used to ignoring over years of carnivorism. If these assumptions hold then the exposure to animal suffering the Stevens case provides should serve as the impetus for less meat-eating and a net increase in society’s compassion, the flip side to the decrease in violence Jon suggests.
The “needless suffering” of animals slaughtered for food would have to be pereceived as the equivalent of the cruelty inflicted upon animals in crush films for your conclusion to follow. Given that someone like Randazza, who finds the argument “compelling”, isn’t buying, and I doubt anyone would call Randazza uncompassionate, my guess is that the logical gap between the two will not be bridged.
If the needless suffering were somewhat less, that would impact the magnitude of the increase in society’s compassion, not its direction. Stated another way, even if one believed that the commonly-performed and anesthesia-free branding, castration, horn removal, head-smash, and throat slash endured by your average cattle was not equivalent to the horrors visited on victims of crush films (a proposition which, though likely often true, is not self-evidently always true), the exposure to and thinking about these issues a case like Stevens engenders would still have an impact.
Doubtful as to it having an impact; less than doubtful as to crush films serving as an impetus for American society to rethink eating meat. The two are not the same, nor even close to the same, no matter how deeply you feel they should be.
A greater concern is watching a first amendment issue turned into a vegan propaganda tool, further marginalizing constitutional rights and further associating them with fringe positions. Stevens is not about veganism. Argue against eating meat all you want, but don’t involve the fight to preserve first amendment rights as part of the argument.
The twain shall not meet here, so I will leave you with the brilliant thesis of a legendary blawger put forth in response to the Court’s last major First Amendment case, to the point that, while it protected pretty despicable “speech,” it could someday lead to one man’s vision of a better society:
Perhaps this decision [will] force the public to be far more knowledgeable, more discerning, in how we approach our civic duty. Perhaps the age of spoon fed information from people more powerful than us will come to an end. They can spend as much as they want, but they can’t force us to believe lies.
We have become a lazy people. We sit on the couch and wait to be told what we think. We can stand up for ourselves any time we want. We can laugh off hate-filled messages or facile manipulation, knowing that it’s just some special interest trying to spin our heads around. We know what they are doing. We can choose to be smarter and better than to blindly accept it.
The only force more powerful than unconstrained corporate cash is a knowledgeable and thoughtful citizenry. Maybe this is the kick in the butt we need to resume our rightful place in the democratic process. It’s entirely up to us.
SHG, 1/22/10 (on Citizens United)
Damn, he’s good.
The issues surrounding the way we slaughter meat are certainly worthy of discussion, and may well prove to help in making our ways more humane. I would hope so. And if it makes us a more compassionate people in the process, though a bit more attentuated, that would be great as well.
But let’s be careful not to mash everything together, and end up with nothing.
Deal.
I saw Scott Abeles first. My find. So kiss off.
Get in line, Mary. Have a Tipperillo.
Still a control queen.
Do I win?
I like butter and fois gras and make a mean duck l’orange. Pheasant, sweetbreads, tuna. You name it, I’ll it eat. The Katz post didn’t convince me otherwise, and honestly, I thought it was so far out of left field that I just shrugged my shoulders and moved on.
Hag.
You win.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Hi, Scott- Thanks for commenting on my vegan posting. Here are a few points:
– It is important for us to point out injustices in society — e.g., meat-eating — whether or not we advocate laws to cure the particular injustice. For instance, as much as I decry the libel laws as incompatible with the First Amendment, I still speak out about people who are reckless with the truth to the harm of others’ reputations and well being.
– Humans can survive just fine as ovo-lacto vegetarians, and as vegans.
-Humans are not designed to require meat, even though many crave it (which often passes the longer one remains a vegetarian). For instance, humans are the only animals that dress and cook animals, rather than just eating them as is, blood, guts and all.
– Unlike carnivorous non-human animals, humans do not salivate upon seeing their animal prey alive.
– Humans’ intestines are very long, which is not suitable to good health, versus the other meat-eating animals with short intestines. The long intestines contribute heavily to colon cancer in meat eaters.Of course, heavy meat-eating increases risks of other cancers, heart disease, impotence (from poor blood circulation), and my health insurance rates from the eating behavior of meat eaters.
– For those who will continue eating meat, fish and fowl, they can reduce the rampant suffering of the slaughtered animals by doing the slaughtering themselves. Do not expect animals to be raised, transported, and slaughtered humanely, if such a thing exists. PETA has documented — with undercover video — severe mistreatment of animals by their slaughterers, who often are suffering themselves from working with death the entire workday, and who often start skinning and dressing animals while they still are conscious, because time is money.
– Do not expect that fish and land animals slaughtered abroad for hamburger, crab cakes and other items are raised and killed with the same animal protection laws and oversight as in the U.S.
– If you think fish-eating is more humane than eating land animals, think again about fish gasping to breathe once removed from the water, and being scaled alive (which is apparently common in Chinese markets and Chinese restaurants, for ease of scaling or for the palate, just as many believe it is easier to pluck a chicken it remains alive).
– Centuries of millions of vegetarian Indian Hindus have demonstrated that people can be healthy vegetarians.
– When you eat meat, you turn your body into a grave for the animals you eat, if not also as a receptacle for the suffering and fear of the animals you eat and of the animals’ slaughterers.
– Non-human animals may not be advanced enough to choose healthy alternatives to eating meat, fish and fowl. Humans are able to do so.
Thanks for listening. Jon
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Supreme Court’s “crush film” decision raises meat-eating issues.
Is meat-eating possible without cruelty to animals? Certainly, meat is no treat for those you eat. How unaware to the cruelty of their own meat eating were meat eaters who passed the federal ban on "animal cruelty" videos that the Supreme Co
Seriously, did I win? Was I the 20,000,000,000 comment?
Nope. I was forced by Norm Pattis to do a recount. Now he wins. Don’t blame me. Blame Norm.