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

Radicals or revolutionists who believe in justice for men and who exclude the animals are only half-enlightened. The meat habit, handed down from a reactionary past, is being encouraged by interested capitalists. But progressive people and intelligent proletarians ought to break down all such cruelties inherited from a dark antiquity. A new world will need new modes of living.

******

Vegetarism is not merely a cranky or narrow food theory. It is a philosophy and its scope is as wide as the world. Its principals may be applied all through life and shape our personal conduct in all our affairs and relations with other people as well as the duties of society toward the individual. A thinker will apply his food thoughts to the rights of his mate and child, to those of his fellowmen and fellow animals.

A thinker should not be indifferent to the origin of the food which is going into his flesh and blood and upon which his physical strength and even his mental make-up will depend.

******

Of course, a vegetarian is against war. But not necessarily so and I am not certain whether all vegetarians will say that this is an absolute. I am convinced that a worker who is class-conscious will not oppose class war when necessary, even if he is a vegetarian. At any rate, if a vegetarian does oppose war, let him not hide away behind an excuse. If at all possible, he should openly refuse service and take the consequences. Even the “red cross” chapter during war time belongs to war and is an unsuitable work for vegetarians who are objectors.

******

True vegetarians cannot be religious. All important religions have been and are cruel and have encouraged killing and meat-eating and slave-driving and economic exploitation and “untouchability” of pariahs---and have sided with the oppressors.

******

Vegetarism has nothing to do with religion, except to be opposed to it and to its great harm. If a divinity had ordered me to abstain from meat, that would be vegetarism by force. The true vegetarian needs no commands. He is convinced both by reason and by sentiment.

The Bible says, “Thou shalt not kill.” But that never meant not to kill animals---and most Jews and Christians and most believers in the Bible are meat-eaters. It did not even mean not to kill man---during war time. “Jehovah is a warrior,” says the same book, which is full of all sorts of horrible cruelties. And does not the Bible and do not other related books prescribe just how to kill the animals for food and sacrifice to the God of the same Bible?

******

We---the cranks? We---the fanatics?

No.

There are no worse cranks than the meat-eaters in spite of the fact that they are in the majority. Particularly those who are informed from practical experience, and from scientific work that flesh is unnecessary and still fear not to be sufficiently nourished on a vegetarian or lacto-vegetarian diet and think they must have meat food.

Fanatics are those who in our times of technical progress, when animal food is no longer a necessity, continue to insist, under more or less “logical” excuses, on sacrificing life for eating purposes, just the same as their poor, ignorant, helpless, non-civilized, primitive ancestors did.

"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.

And even more excerpts from “Shall We Eat Flesh?” Rational Living Library, B. Liber 1934

What proofs have you personally of the harmlessness of a vegetarian diet for the health of large numbers of people?

Harmlessness? It would be more correct to say usefulness or superiority. I cannot help repeating that during thirty years of a busy medical practice in New York, with over a hundred and fifty thousand consultations, not to speak of previous years and of my experience outside my practice, I have come in contact with tens of thousands of cases of disease where the discontinuance of meat-eating has been undoubtedly directly responsible for a healing or an improvement of the condition. And that is no exaggeration, as I have studied my cases closely, taking notes and figures concerning them. Of the hundreds of vegetarian---mostly lacto-vegetarian---children who have passed through my hands, I have followed many almost from babyhood to adult age. Most of them were children of vegetarian parents. Some were vegetarians by themselves. All of these children have become young men and women, physically healthier than the average, mentally bright, happy, almost always taller, stronger, better built than their parents and than other members of their families. During their childhood they were almost free from the common diseases and, when ill, had but little trouble in getting rid of their ailments. They certainly are the flower of humanity.

******

The large and successful vegetarian co-operative fruit and vegetable producing colony “Eden” near Oranienburg, Germany (not far from Berlin) was 36 years old at the advent of Nazism. It was one of the rare places in Germany where meat, alcoholic beverages and tobacco could not be obtained. There was no church and no policeman. They had co-operative stores and a co-operative fruit cannery. The land belonged to the colony. It could neither be bought nor sold by individual colonists. The worker on the land received the full product of his toil. The hundreds of children raised there were in good health and normal in every respect. The vegetarian community was particularly proud of its Kindergarten, “Vegetarische Kinderheim.” It differed from other places of this sort “in that the children had more freedom; that they were treated kindly and individually; that they were most of the time in the open, in contact with nature; that, while playing farmers, they grew up to be real farmers, that they ate vegetarian food which they helped their teacher-friend to prepare.”

"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.

Louisiana schools deem to ignore children and dumb animals

At the core of all curriculums, lies the state's school code. Taking a look at Louisiana's, it seems the corpse-munchers in charge do as they deem appropriate when dealing with children and dumb animals. Not vegan

Louisiana

266. Kindness to dumb animals

The state board of education may take such steps as it may think necessary and wise to provide for the teaching of kindness to dumb animals in the public schools, it being understood that the state superintendent of education, by the direction of the board, will issue such suggestions and furnish such information to the superintendents and teachers as the board may deem appropriate and necessary.

http://www.legis.state.la.us/lss/lss.asp?doc=80389

Wow, I was worried the children were not receiving Humane Education. Now I can sleep better.

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

Children are often born vegetarians. They are in love with other animals. They talk to them, and understand them.

How tragic it is to take their pet, their friend, their animal-comrade and kill it for food, as it is often done! The anecdote about the child and its pet chicken is not a joke: Overhearing arrangements for tomorrow’s dinner, “Oh, mummy, not Jane! I’ve known her since she was an egg.”

Many children would never eat meat if not forced. They feel a fraternity between themselves and the animals. When you call an unspoiled child a “pig,” he is happy. He would like to be a pig.

It is just as irrational to give a child war-toys, as it is to put into his hands butchers’ blocks with imitation slaughtering tools, as I have seen it done. Of course, it depends on the spirit in which it is done. Even playing with live rabbit pets or fish in a bowl, which may seem innocent, can be encouraged in the wrong way and changed into atrocity.

When we are taught to hate or despise animals, we libel them, especially if we compare them to man and lend them our qualities or defects. All the fables in which animals are villains, are stupid and grotesque misrepresentations and calumnies.

In many families children are vegetarians of their own accord and in spite of the great opposition of their parents and their entire environment, in spite of ridicule and even corporal punishment or enlisting their doctors to scare them---and they fare well.

"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.

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.

*******

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.

*******

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.

*******

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

*******

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

*******

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.

*******

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.

*******

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.

*******

"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.