The Conservative Vegetarian

As you know if you've read any of my writing, I am a staunch conservative. There are about a gross (look it up) of us. The rest of those who call themselves conservatives, are Pavlov conservatives. And of course, all liberals are of that strain.

Anyway, what you may not know is that I am also a vegetarian. "But Ted, you ask, how can you be a conservative and a vegetarian? Isn't vegetarianism incompatible with the hunting, environment rampaging image that any good conservative not only embraces. but proclaims proudly?"

Au contraire! Your problem may lie in those who identify themselves as vegetarians, i.e. those who don't eat meat out of sympathy for animals which are on the same cognitive level as they are, and who hug trees - and swear the trees hug back.

I'm not like that. While I don't eat meat because neither I nor (I'm guessing) most of you would, for example, chew on a chicken leg if it were still attached to the walking, clucking bird, I don't have any particular sympathy for animals since my last dog died. No, I don't hold any other animal responsible for that, I just don't like them because they are dirty, take up space, make a mess, and in the case of the eating variety, they are probably uneconomical and hazardous to your health - although I'm not much concerned about that either. At least not where you're concerned.

So I was particularly pleased to see that the UN thinks cows are way more responsible for global warming than people are. Of course, the idea that the UN thinks global warming is a pressing problem or that any living thing is responsible is an issue for far smaller thinkers than I.

What's important is that the UN thinks cows are a problem, and so do I - a rare agreement. So what does this esteemed terrorist haven recommend? Cow catalytic converters (CCC)? How about we do my idea - get rid of them?!?

Now you ask, "But Ted, what about the milk?" Well, now that they've pretty much perfected soy ice cream, who cares?

As you see, I'm a pragmatic conservative. That's one who believes that the best way to stop the senseless slaughter of animals is to remove them from the planet. What do we need them for, anyway? They're cute? What, we don't have enough on film?

You'll miss the birds chirping? Then you've never been asleep beside an open window and have birds wake you at 5am. Maybe your birds chirp. Mine squawk, squeal, and shriek. Then they move to the tree on the other side of the window and do it some more.

Some people argue that some bugs clean up waste, and others catch and kill stuff that destroy crops. They miss the point. OK, keep the petting zoos, everything else goes. DDT their ass!

Yes, I know that means we'll have healthier Africans, but we'll deal with that problem as the need arises. Perhaps I should note here that while I don't want to go on killing animals, people are another story entirely. Let's do a don't-ask-don't tell on that for now.

But I'm not stupid. by all means, preserve the animals' DNA so we can reconstitute them if we find they're useful for something in a couple of hundred years or so. By that time, if we do bring them back, the decision to do it won't be an emotional one like, "My daughter wants a pony." By that time, she'll be jet skiing around the universe, so she probably won't be wanting to clean up road apples.

By the way, I bet Noah would be pissed as hell at God if he knew that if God had only waited a few thousand years to flood the place, all Noah would have had to do today is gather cells instead of whole animals. Not to mention that it would have been somebody else's problem entirely

To recap, I feel the most humane thing, the best thing for the environment, the best thing to stem disease, and the best thing for such disparate peoples such as loggers, dam builders, and property developers, not to mention wilderness joggers is to do the right thing and rid this planet of lesser life forms immediately.

I know that's sounds like a bad idea to liberals, but at least they can take a test to definitively determine if they are a lower life form before we shoot 'em. You put that test in front of a mosquito, and all you'll get is buzzing. The sounds liberals will make may not be any more intelligible, but that's why we'll have a test.