The Morality Of Food, Ctd

Julian Sanchez responds to Max Fisher:

I’m not an evangelist vegetarian; I don’t recall ever trying to press a carnivore of my acquaintance to give the stuff up. This isn’t because I think it’s a matter of pure pesonal aesthetics: In fact, I think they all ought to stop. But part of “making life livable for ourselves” means not turning into the sort of noodge who browbeats friends and acquaintances about their dietary choicesat least until they start ordering the Flipper Tempura Roll at Nobu.  But let’s not coat this in self-deluding horseshit about pluralism or tolerance or “live and let live.” That debases our ethical impulses by making concern for animal (or, indeed human) suffering one more matter of tastelike a preference for anchovies. Respecting other people’s right to make a different choiceat least within certain broad parametersshouldn’t mean denying we can judge some choices better than others.