But all criticism is not created equal. As outlined above, your criticism is, on balance, not reasonable. And if that's true, my criticism of your criticism is reasonable. Obviously this is just my perspective, and you're free to take it or leave it.

I just want to point out that this "racism is just an emotional appeal" is about the stupidest bull**** you've come up with yet. Yes, in Letter From Birmingham Jail when MLK tells the story about his daughter seeing an ad for an amusement park and then asking if he would take her, that was an appeal to emotion. Because racism ****s actual human beings. And racist people like Bruce and Foldn actually interact with other human beings in real life, unlike, apparently, you.

So **** off.

You have a little mistake here in declaring my criticism as unreasonable but not identifying something, anything specific to support the assumption.

Now I know my criticism is more accurate and as such has a better quality, I can point to MrWookie's emotional appeals. I can point out the information he scoffs at which is outside his narrow view. I can point to how Dids continues to behave the same, assuming he has cover to bully by both authority and the popular crowd. FlyWf was blatantly racist, totally acted bigoted.

It maybe unreasonable I am fighting below my weight class, but hey I think on balance being outnumbered and by people more mean than me can make it work out.

Maybe there's a lesson for BruceZ here to say "People thought X was good" instead of "X was good" so people don't confuse the thoughts of advocates for X with one's own thoughts on X

Or, you know, just calmly tell people that you're playing devil's advocate - especially when someone calls you out on what you've posted.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoma...on_and_slavery

Maybe you guys should go amend the Wikipedia entry to add bits making Jefferson look more like pond scum. As it stands, it looks like most of the world is giving him the same pass as I am, pointing out he worked pretty hard to end slavery.

Is it mean to point out that you don't believe a word you say and you're full of ****? Maybe instead of playing stupid games to earn the admiration of internet racists you should cultivate an actual personality.

Commander hindsight and his amazingly robotic expectations of human behavior.

LET'S SPANKIFY THIS POST:

Seriously, spank, The Internet You is now arguing against appeals to emotion and "don't be mean to racists because it hurts their feelings" in the same breath. It's time to Kevorkian yourself by posting a bunch of horsepron and then start again from scratch.

ONE MORE TIME

You must mean I reserve my passion to fight racism and prejudice for it to be based in the present and when real people are targeted, rather than shooting tombstones in the graveyards of history for political and/or solely selfish reasons.

Racists actually tend to really hate me, more than you and Dids do.

You have mischaracterized my position, again. It's okay I have no trouble correcting the record if need be.

They’re arguing that say a few hundred years hence if the common view is killing and eating animals is akin to murder, then MLK was a murder and pond scum since veganism was not a foreign concept to him.

Yeah, we know all that, bro. It supports my position.

Even if eating meat is eventually considered wrong it won't be because animals will be considered in the same general category as humans. Pro slavery people on the other hand were fully aware that black people were at worst only a bit dumber than white people and most were aware that there were at least a few black people, outside the south who were smarter and more respectable than most whites.

In other words even if vegetarianism eventually becomes law, intelligent people of the future will never consider meat eaters of their past nearly as evil as we should consider slaveholders of our past.

I actually think the environmental point is a not horrible comparison. And I think we'll be rightfully judged for not doing more to stop environmental damage for purely selfish economic reasons.

That's true but the its still the case that in the future we might well be considered scum for the way we treat animals now. The point being whether the future judgement on us will be justified just because we are aware of the issues now.

I agree that an equally harsh judgement on meat eaters as on slave owners would be very unreasonable but is that the point?

ever present disclaimers: I've no idea if this was the original point being discussed.

The point is that it is wrong to invoke the possibility that animals will be considered uneatable as some kind of excuse for pro slavers. Its not in the same ballpark.

I agree

But trying to find analogies that are in the ballpark is a bit of a problem

How about the observation that the evils of today have more practical weight than the evils of history.

Racism killed the mockingbird, yo.

I would urge you to think outside the box a bit here. There are people today who think just this. That killing animals is as bad as killing humans. Animals have feelings, feel pain and sorrow, they have families, they aren't much different than humans. What do we have, intelligence? Hmm, someday it might even be proven we are just animals ourselves, though I'm not certain if they'll ever prove we're more intelligent.

I remember a radio show where they had this animal rights activist on who claimed she'd toss a human off the boat before a chicken, oh how we all laughed. If someday a purely vegan society who treats animals with exactly the same respect as humans looks back at us, I hope they think of us better than slave owners, but I don't know why they would.

Comparing killing animals with killing humans is different to comparing killing animals with slavery.

I don't think anyone would argue with that though some of the problems of today are linked to past evils.

Its also about considering the practical matters of today. Its hard to see what we do sometimes so its useful to relate it to things we see more clearly from the past even if the analogies are weak in some ways.