Excerpts from “Shall We Eat Flesh?” Rational Living Library, B. Liber 1934

Our best propaganda is the “propaganda by the deed”---just by being a vegetarian everywhere. All meat-eaters with some intelligence and sense of justice feel guilty in the presence of a vegetarian. They always begin to apologize without the least provocation: “I eat but little meat. I cannot stop it on account of my circumstances.” They are always on the defensive.

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In your enlightening work do not disregard the children. They may be and often are the best vegetarians without our teachings, but, generally, it is not difficult to make them see your point.

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Generally, persons who have not been vegetarians from their youth will not go to the trouble of adopting a new way of eating in advanced age. It is rare that such people should make an effort to change their habits. They are too conservative. Vegetarism is a revolution, a symbol of youth, of life and enthusiasm for a living idea. Only those young in spirit are capable of taking it up aggressively, confronting the surrounding scoffers and living it with their entire being.

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Those of us who eat eggs and milk products are guilty of forcing people to keep, and indirectly also to kill, animals.

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Whenever possible, it is best to reach an understanding about vegetarism before mating.

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As soon as one sees the truth contained in vegetarism and continues to eat meat, he is no longer innocent and ignorant of his mistake. He is guilty of crime.

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You may say the vegetarian is a sentimental, and therefore weak-willed, individual. Yes, he is sentimental. But he has a strong will-power as he is not going with the current, but against it, not imitating the unthinking flesh-eating majority or submitting to the dictates of the ignorant masses.

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They think they accomplish much by living a life apart from the rest of their fellow-men, adopt an attitude of superiority and are satisfied with their capacity not to soil their bodies with corpses.

They are, if they remain unchanged, forever paralyzed in their self-admiration and condemned to a limited activity and to mental sterility.

Their vegetarism is so strictly vegetarian, so unconcerned with larger human problems, that it is really non-vegetarian. They are so much in love with peace, that, by their silence and tolerance of the great social crime against the exploited class, they are criminals and are on the side of the criminal class, and are waging war against those who are chained and enslaved.

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"Shall We Eat Flesh?" Rational Living Library, B. Liber 1934
Benzion Liber, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at New York. Born in 1875, Liber was a Romanian Jewish Socialist, nicknamed "The People's Doctor" who worked at the Polyclinic Hospital and was a practicing physician in New York since 1904.