So, telling you how it feels to be treated wrongly by vegans is irrelavent to a post about how the FBI is treating vegans, where I'm sure the FBI uses the same idea of the treatment others receive at the hands of vegans.How strict does YOUR toopic have to be?

I support your decision to moderate the discussion how you see fit. We vegans are constantly bombarded by offtopic discussions, accusations, and ridiculousness. For self-preservation purposes alone, I support your choice. I do it myself, here and there. As I wrote elsewhere:

Block or ignore the anti-vegans and anti-animal people. If someone says pro-meat, pro-dairy, pro-hunting, etc stuff, just block them and erase their comments. They don't deserve your time or attention. And they don't deserve a chance to influence the discussion. Their viewpoint is easily accessible EVERYWHERE else in this omnivorous world. They don't need more space to put vegans or animals down.

This is NOT censorship: There is a BIG difference between what I suggest, which is like removing their "graffiti" from your "walls," versus real censorship, which is like going to their house and stealing their pens, canvases, cameras, paint, etc. In order to respect someone's opinion, you need not hand them a soapbox and a megaphone. But if you allow them to overtake your YourTube channel with their ridiculous, petty, and mean comments you aren't helping anyone.

I always find it curious when non-vegans somehow become "victims" of vegan oppression. We must re-think our assumptions when 97% (or so) of the population can be victimized by the remaining, lacking any political or social clout, 3%.

Another very good post on this topic of the terrorist most-wanted list, illuminating its absurdity, is here:

http://www.vegansoapbox.com/fbi-vegan-terrorist-23-omnivores-still-at-large/

Gerald, the philosophy of "animal rights" doesn't conceive of causing unnecessary harm and death as a "choice" like any other. Therefore, if a vegan "berates" you for eating animal bodies, which is definitionally unnecessary given the abundance of available alternatives, they are merely being consistent; not "taking their idea so far..." 

Your statements about "being booted," etc. does imply that you do believe you are a victim. So again, it's curious when the absolute majority claims the status of "victim" at the hands of the absolute minority. 

I guess "victim" is a dirty word here. I'll agree to your statement if you, like you did with victim, qualify "berate". I just made a statement about some vegans I ran into sitting on the sidewalk against the wall of the store I went to who were pretty vocal and name-calling before they even knew what I'd bought for cryin out loud. I mentioned that this type of behavior is....Oh, never mind, I know how I feel about things like this and there's no way to change that because I won't.  My body evolved to eat meat and meat eating is what made our brains larger and we more intelligent than the "lower life forms" (a phrase), but I am a partner of 4 cats and an animal rights acitvist in my own way, boycotting and the like, but this whole thread is a soliloquey about vegans being victimized so why am I not allowed to tell a story about my victimization at the hands of screaming children with no idea what or who I am, before I even went in the store for cryin out loud. Ok, so I feel victimized now that you mention it, so what, it's true.

Gerald,

Correction, your body, just as mine did, evolved consuming both animal bodies and plant matter. Neither your body nor mine evolved to consume any product specific -- we're neither natural carnivores or herbivores. Therefore, the evidence proves -- the ADA, for example, found that veganism is healthy at all stages of the life-cycle -- that one can choose to consume all plant matter, or a mixture of flesh and plants (never all flesh, however, because we aren't carnivores).


With this said, your argument begs the question: Don't you have to be held ethically accountable for choosing to eat the body parts of animals given the tremendous suffering and death involved in these processes and the irrefutable evidence that it is unnecessary?


Furthermore, I am white and male. I exist within institutions and and an ethical paradigm that has been conceived to favor "white-ness" and "male-ness." Indeed, slavery along both sex and racial lines were institutionalized manifestations of this.


Could I, therefore, in keeping with your argument about how the consumption of flesh led to our evolutionary cognitive advantages, that sexism and racism are still ethically acceptable? The white male group would certainly think so. A lurking premise in your argument seems to be that what had its advantages for our group in the past is categorically ethically "good" today. But that doesn't follow for obvious reasons.


Finally, the original post is a suggestion that governmental institutions possess and wield the power to caricaturize the animal rights movement and act to resist the movement through legal mechanisms. If we were to discuss daily encounters of non-vegans criticizing vegans the list could certainly go on ad nauseam -- we are the super-minority Gerald, and we reflect an outright challenge to the dominant paradigm.


However, the much more substantive point is that the federal government has decided to bring its weight down on the animal rights movement under a dubious conception of "terrorism," and that is real victimization.    

Alex, you say:However, the much more substantive point is that the federal government has decided to bring its weight down on the animal rights movement under a dubious conception of "terrorism," and that is real victimization.    I agree of course becaue I said the same thing days ago to Steph but she won't post to me anymore. I think because I called her on the links she sent me to read. I read them and they had the program all wrong,I said so and all of a sudden, she's gone.  But to get back to the point.You forgot to mention that we evolced to be OMNIVORE, like you said so my question was, "Are lions and cheetahs evil?

You also say:   If we were to discuss daily encounters of non-vegans criticizing vegans the list could certainly go on ad nauseam -- Talk about victimization. Trust me on this one, the FBI did not give a hoot about vegans or being vegan until this nut took it too far and blew things up. He destroyed property and lucky no one was there. There is no way this nut could have known the buildings were absolutely empty. I'm not justifying or defending the FBI's making the guy a terrorist,that's way too far, but we regular folk who are also animal activists and animal partners who are omnivores do not care about you people for cryin out loud!!!You must understand no one thinks you are evil,bad,nasty or anything negative at all, NO ONE, except idiotic FBI administrators and justice dep. idiots. I only mentioned that some of the vegans take it too far by berating citizens who they know nothing about, they had no idea whether I ate meat or not they assumed so and started in on me. That's all,no victim just a discussion and y'all got bent out of shape. Geeeeeeeze

No Gerald, lions are not "evil" because, like children and mentally handicapped members of our species, they are not capable of making moral choices. Thus, they can't be held morally accountable. They are, however, moral patients: recipients of "rights," but they do not have obligations to reciprocate, for example. 

Again, then, you must answer for your choice to continue eating animal bodies. We evolved to need certain nutrients, etc, not specific products. We simply got these nutrients from both plants and flesh. Therefore, since we can get all these things from plant sources, and since you are a moral agent capable of making moral choices, you must defend the suffering involved. That is a moral choice Gerald.

Gerald, don't be ridiculous, my comment was to illuminate one thing: how strange your claim to victimization was given your status as a majority. Your claim about being "berated" by individual vegans, and then extrapolating a "victim status" from this makes you suspect. It's either a complex, or a gut reaction because you're uncomfortable with the subject.  

If I were uncomfortable with the subject I wouldn't have posted here, don't you think? 
But before that you claim victimization with your "minority" comment. The only minority you are my friend is that you're Hispanic in America, or maybe not now, who knows?  Reiterating something is not extrapolating that subject, rather it is repeating the point to make it clearer. But do go on yourself with your new minority status.  BTW, I'm a double amputee, Viet Nam veteran, 57 YO, with the genes of Native American, Caucasian, African American and who knows which Europeans sneaked into my family but it made my complexion white with blue eyes and I've always been a short man. So, who's the minority? My point is minority is a relative term and y'all seem to be using it as a tool to garner pity or whatever and you say it over and over with your innuendos, "we are righteous because we don't eat any animal products and the rest of you are evil brutal creatures".
  

Gerald,

So, can I take your non-response to the substance of my comment as evidence of the lack of a counter argument?

I made two very clear points. One, there is a difference between a moral agent and a moral patient, and this explains why you and I have to account for our choice to kill and eat animals, while a lion or a human infant doesn't. And two, according to the ADA, for example, veganism is healthy and therefore we did not evolve to eat flesh. We evolved eating certain food items to attain nutrients, etc., which means it is a choice that must be defended if we are to take the moral point of view. Do you want to act morally Gerald?

To continue along this line of your "victimization" is juvenile, and you should move on. If you can't admit that the original post is evidence that those within the animal rights movement are being targeted by the federal government, the only institution capable of making real one's "victimization," then we are at an impasse.

All that's transpired here is exactly what I was trying to avoid when I deleted your first comment, Gerald. I have no desire to see comment threads constantly turn into arguments about veganism in general or into other off-topic personal debates such as the one you've created here, and luckily for me, as the blogger and moderator here, I don't have to. If you don't like it, you can start your own blog and rant about vegans persecuting you all you want.

I stopped responding to you on the other thread about Cesar Millan's tactics because your reaction to commentaries from experts made it clear that you have a closed mind and blind devotion, and I don't have the energy or time to engage in arguments that go nowhere.

As for the private message you just sent me accusing me of censorship and having a "hair up my butt," luckily, I also don't care what you think. The Obama dog conversation had gone on for a very long time, no one was saying anything new, and this is not an open forum for anyone and everyone to post whatever they want. These are blog posts, with comment threads, comment threads that I'm free to close if and when the conversations go way off track, become nothing but people saying the same things over and over again, or become a place where some users (and no, I never said it was you; it should have been rather clear to whom I was referring when I closec comments) become out of line with their insults, language, and personal attacks.

And if this sub-thread continues and delves deeper into off-topic conversation, yes, I'll close it too. It's my blog, and in my attempts to foster on-point, constructive conversations, I'm allowed to moderate comment threads to that end.

I responded but you won't read. Trust me, booting me from this thread is not that big of a deal for me you must understand that. The threat is futile and childish, yet YOU are the victims of these evil people...do I want to be moral??I suppose next you'll be telling me I have to believe in god or something as ignorant to have morals. I'm not sure where you peole stand except that right now you stand for cry baby!! call a waaaaaambulance.

You said to me without the benifit of defense:
As for the private message you just sent me accusing me of censorship and having a "hair up my butt," luckily, I also don't care what you think. The Obama dog conversation had gone on for a very long time, no one was saying anything new, and this is not an open forum for anyone and everyone to post whatever they want. These are blog posts, with comment threads, comment threads that I'm free to close if and when the conversations go way off track, become nothing but people saying the same things over and over again, or become a place where some users (and no, I never said it was you; it should have been rather clear to whom I was referring when I closec comments) become out of line with their insults, language, and personal attacks.

You're a liar I did not personally attack anyone you did!!!!

Congratulations, Gerald. You've entered the ranks of the few commenters who can irritate me and wear on my patience enough to close down a thread. Half the things you've written here don't even make sense, and if you'd tried reading carefully instead of hysterically shouting that I'm a liar, perhaps you'd have realized that I never accused you of personally attacking anyone. "I never said it was you"--did you see that? The other thread that I closed, I closed because someone else was engaging in personal attacks. But the closing of this thread? This is all thanks to you, buddy.

Very good post. She's right you know guys.

Our primary concern isn't with the definition of "terrorism," but how we conceive of terrorism post-9/11. That is a distinction with significance. On this conception of terrorism, it is blatantly question begging to label someone who purposefully intends not to harm any sentient beings a "terrorist," while implicitly condoning mass suffering and death that compelled the act of property destruction in the first place. 

It stands to reason, given ALF's explicit policy against harming sentient beings, that a vivisectors "fear," which is allegedly the end being sought by these acts of destruction, is definitionally irrational. They don't fear for their lives, they fear for their profit. 

Therefore, our challenge is to the question begging nature of applying the general conception of "terrorist" to this individual given the irrefutable politicization of the concept post-9/11.