You don't even have to look for the hypocrisy of our treatment of animals; it just reveals itself

Paging through a Sports Illustrated magazine from a few weeks ago, I came across a praising profile of a bullfighter. Sports Illustrated is the same magazine that did much to vilify Michael Vick. I can't help but wonder, why is torturing dogs to death for sport evil, but torturing bulls to death for sport worthy of a lengthy profile piece in a respected sports magazine?

On effecting change

At Feministe, Jill endorses Nicolette Hahn Niman's proposals to end farm animal cruelty ("1. State laws should protect farm animal welfare." "2. Congress should prohibit overusing antibiotics in animal farming." "3. Government should better enforce environmental laws." "4. Farm subsidies should foster grass." "5. The United States should launch a domestic Peace Corps for farming. "), and then writes,

"That’s a lot more effective than 'go vegan.'"

That depends on what one means by "effective;" if it means to effect change, I'm not so sure. Surely Jill has considered the great difficulty of effecting even one of Niman's proposals. There are powerful economic interests, structural impediments, and cultural norms that entrench the status quo and make these changes difficult. It requires strengthening a political movement to elect the representatives willing to make such changes, and then the political pressure to make them do so. It takes cultural work of building the political will to make it possible (or necessary) for politicians to take on those entrenched, self-interested opponents, and to change people's attitude that being able to eat lots of cheap meat is a priority over concern for animals.

On the other hand, going vegan simply requires you to stop consuming animal products. As a movement, it also means convincing others to stop consuming animal products.

It's possible the political reform movement can effect change greater than the attempt to convince people to change their personal behavior (obviously people's personal behavior is quite entrenched as well, as you can see by the lengths people go to defend eating animals), but I'm not sure.

Jill's argument also raised a theoretical question: why is an animal worthy of enough moral concern that it should be treated nicely before being killed for your pleasure, but not worthy of enough moral concern to not be killed for your pleasure at all? The position that animals should be treated nicely before being killed assumes that an animal's suffering matters--yet it still assumes that the meat eater's pleasure is more important than that animal's suffering. That's not terribly much moral concern, however much better it makes a meat eater feel.

What the Live-And-Let-Live Argument for Eating Meat is Really About

Sometimes meat eaters make an argument like It’s fine if you don’t want to eat meat, but don’t be preachy about it/push your values on me/tell me what to do. I’ve often taken to parodying this line of argument with something like If you want to abstain from kicking elderly people in the shins, that’s your choice, but don’t bother me if I like to kick elderly people in the shins. I hope this parody shows the flaw of dismissing a moral argument about harm to other beings as if it is a matter of personal preference that you shouldn’t push on others.

But I think we could go further: there is a moral principle underlying the Mind-Your-Own-Business dismissal. That principle is obvious: animals are not beings worthy of moral consideration; their suffering doesn’t matter. If you accept this principle, then eating meat is a matter of personal preference, not an ethical choice. Think about it: very few people would say something like It’s fine if you don’t like child abuse, but don’t tell me not to abuse children. (I am not making a moral equivalence, but using a parallel argument for analogy). That’s because most people accept children as thinking, feeling beings, worthy of moral consideration, who should be protected from cruelty and unnecessary suffering. It’s harder to dismiss ethical consideration about behavior that causes harm with the Mind-Your-Own-Business dismissal. By using the Mind-Your-Own-Business dismissal, the meat eater is implicitly arguing that an animal’s suffering and death is not a matter of ethical concern, because nobody whose suffering matters is being harmed.

But the Mind-Your-Own-Business dismissal is annoying because it refuses to discuss this underlying principle. It refuses to engage in an ethical discussion about behavior that causes harm. It instead turns it into a Live-And-Let-Live argument. It’s not hard to make an argument like If you don’t like Diet Coke, fine, but I’m not hurting anybody else by drinking it, so leave me alone. When people engage in behaviors that don’t hurt anybody, we should live and let live. When people engage in behaviors that don’t hurt anybody but themselves, I think we probably should live and let live. But is an animal a Diet Coke?

I can summarize my (mostly vegan) vegetarian principle concisely: If I choose to eat meat, I am choosing my own pleasure over the death and suffering of an animal; given what we know about animals’ capacity to think, feel, and suffer, I do not think my pleasure is more important than an animal’s suffering and death. Those using the Mind-Your-Own-Business dismissal choose their pleasure over the animal, but refuse to engage in a discussion of what comes after the semicolon. They have a principle, but the dismissal leaves that principle implicit and often unacknowledged.

Alienated

I've been feeling a political despair. How can there be mainstream discussion about significant cuts on spending on the poor and in need, but discussion of cutting a massive military budget is still left to the lefty, antiwar fringes? How is reducing the social safety net a matter of serious discussion, but reducing the world's largest military budget is barely talked about? And whatever I could convince myself in the past, it is now abundantly clear that Democrats in general are barely less interested in military solutions than Republicans, as we now have a Democratic president proposing and maintaining a massive military budget and continuing to use violent military solutions around the world. So who among the politically powerful is actually going to call for reduced military spending?

But this Gallup Poll (via Kevin Drum) reminds me that it is not strictly a political problem, but a cultural problem. Only 14% of Americans think the military has too much power, 53% think its about right, and 28% think it doesn't have enough power. Twice as many people want the military to have more power than want it to have less, and a strong majority of the country thinks the military's power is what it should be. Put another way, 81% of Americans support the military's current power or want it to be greater.

It is not so much that we have elites ignoring the needs of struggling people to maintain military spending and warfare against our own wishes. It is that, evidently, Americans are devoted to militarism.

The Temptation to Justifiable Violence

A conscientious person who wishes to do good in the world faces the temptation for violence. When one looks at the brute evil that causes harm in the world, there is a temptation to use violence to prevent harm or to cause good. The temptation to violence for a good cause is a strong one, and one that requires vigilant, committed resistance. Men like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Cesar Chavez certainly had just causes, and they deliberately chose means of nonviolence to strive for their causes.

According to John Howard Yoder in The Politics of Jesus, Jesus was tempted greatly by violent political action, that he "perceived the Zealot alternative, was tempted by it as by no other, and nonetheless rejected it" (52). By "Zealot option," Yoder means "the issue was whether violence is justified in principle for what one considers to be a very righteous political cause" (58). Yoder's thesis is provocative: even Jesus, who taught his followers to love their enemies, who even forgave his murderers and mockers as he suffered painful death, who was willing to sacrifice his own life, was tempted to righteous violence.

Nicholas Kristof devotes his life to traveling the world and exposing suffering and injustice: he is a man who does and desires to do good for the world. He is eloquent and passionate in his efforts to do good and prevent evil. And so he makes a worthy tempter for supporting military action in Libya, as here and here. Kristof's is the liberal case for military action, it is the argument that sometimes, however rarely it may be, a positive impact of military violence can outweigh the negative. Kristof's is a reasoned, realistic rather than idealistic argument, and a tempting one. Why reject it?

There are, of course, practical reasons: the cost of war, the suffering that come with war, the unpredictability of war's outcomes, the tendency of violence of war to spread and cycle over distance and time and to leave long-term problems. There is also the argument that war puts aside creative nonviolent intervention strategies. I find these arguments compelling: the fear of war's unpredictable, lingering effects makes me wary of any argument for war. Yet Kristof's argument is practical too.

This is where the religious grounding of pacifism is important for me: when the practical argument is tempting, I must stand with the theological commitment to peace. This is where I have to rely on Jesus's teachings and example of nonviolence, of loving and forgiving enemies, of what Yoder calls "revolutionary subordination." I have to remember that he too was tempted. This is where I have to remind myself that Martin Luther King Jr., with firm knowledge that his cause was just, with belief that God had called him to this cause, as he faced violent opposition to his cause remained committed to the principle of nonviolence, and his cause was the better for it.

Peace, too, can look scary. Practicing nonviolence, too, means uncertain, unpredictable outcomes, and can mean suffering. But I place my faith in peace rather than war.

Works Cited

Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus (2nd edition). Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994.

Why be a pacifist?

"All the others. The others who spend their lives believing that we still believe. It is our task in the world to believe things no one else takes seriously. To abandon such beliefs completely, the human race would die. This is why we are here. A tiny minority. To embody old things, old beliefs. The devil, the angels, heaven, hell. If we did not pretend to believe these things, the world would collapse. [...] We are left to believe. Fools, children. Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure that they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes. There must always be believers. Fools, idiots, those who hear voices, those who speak in tongues. We are your lunatics. We surrender our lives to make your nonbelief possible. You are sure that you are right but you don't want everyone to think as you do. There is no truth without fools. We are your fools, your madwomen, rising at dawn to pray, lighting candles, asking statues for good health, long life."

--Don DeLillo, White Noise

Why be a pacifist? When the world dismisses us as naive, ignorant, stupid, immature? Why be a pacifist, when our cry is dismissed, mocked, marginalized, and ignored? Why be a pacifist, when we turn to the liberal writers you've come to read for their insight and find some of them embracing military violence? Why be a pacifist, when there are evil people filling the world with brutality and blood and our beliefs feel utopian and ideals feel sheltered?

Because in this world, there needs to be somebody there to always preach an antiwar message to the others. There needs to be somebody there who will always be skeptical of war's aims, that will always fear war's consequences, that will always remind people of its costs. There needs to be people there to point out the horrors and atrocities of war. Somebody, even a very few, must be there to always reject the rationale for war, no matter how just or humanitarian it seems. There needs to be somebody that will reject war regardless of who calls for it. Somebody must be there to try and find other solutions (for nonviolence is not isolationist, not opposed to intervention but opposed to violent intervention). There must be somebody to claim that violence is always immoral.

If pacifists gain the power of decision making, then you can tell me how hopelessly naive and lost we are, how harmful or wrong-headed our beliefs are. But until then, while you are running things, we need to be here, rejecting violence and demanding peace.

Addendum

See Eric Stoner on "Why war on Libya is wrong" and "Is there no other way in Libya?"

Wars do things you don't want them to do.

Matthew Yglesias on "The Mostly Hypothetical Case for Armed Humanitarianism:"

"I think it’s telling that enthusiasts for this kind of war typically have to make the case with reference to hypothetical success stories about military operations we didn’t undertake. These are useful cases to deploy in arguments, because since the intervention didn’t happen one doesn't need to wrestle with the potentially problematic consequences and downside risks. [...] I think it’s a problem when all your best evidence is drawn from scenarios that didn’t unfold." (emphasis mine)

One reason to oppose war, to avoid war, and to be skeptical of claims calling for war, is that wars almost always have unpredictable, unforeseen consequences. These unexpected consequences, which can be deeper, wider, and go on longer than war proponents' imaginations seem to grasp, are almost always negative. When you unleash a war, that war becomes a thing itself, going places and doing things you didn't know it would do and certainly didn't plan for.