Apparently, it’s true. It’s not in my Oxford American Dictionary but I do assign “different values or rights to beings on the basis of their species membership.” Yes, I do. I kill wasps, I step on ants, I kill mice and moths and flies and mosquitoes and lice when my cats have had them…and I eat meat.

According to British psychologist Richard D. Ryder, who coined the term in 1970 (his website here), “Speciesism and racism both overlook or underestimate the similarities between the discriminator and those discriminated against.”

As you can see from my unashamed admission above, you can take anything too far. According to Mr. Ryder, there is not a human on the planet who is a speciesist. Why is that? We all kill tiny microbes on our body, germs, viruses, tiny little things we can’t even see with our own eyes. And we do it all the time, indiscriminately. It’s a holocaust! Genocide on a vast scale.

Yet Vegans have chosen to direct the word at those who eat meat. Never mind that most of them do not eat their veggies crawling with bugs. Yes, bugs are killed folks so that you can eat your veggies. So when you start eating your veggies with all the original inhabitants of the plant of your choice, then we can talk about speciesism. Until then, I suggest you plant yourself in front of a mirror, never take a shower or a bath, and…well, just don’t move, because if you do, you might be smashing another lifeform, and as you yourself say, their lives are just as valuable as yours.

Seriously folks, when you start assigning microbes to the same level as humans, then you might as well just exterminate yourselves or voluntarily die off. I know there’s a group out there somewhere that swears off reproducing – The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement – and I consider you people fine candidates for the program. I’ll even recommend you! That’s just how I roll here on A Heathen’s Day.

I am Hrafnkell son of Harald, of the line of the Amundsons, and I am a speciesist.

And I’m proud of it.

This has nothing to do with anything but I thought I’d share it here because it’s hilarious – and mostly true. It was sent to me via email so the image might not show up here as well as I’d like but just click on it.

This was posted to a story on Digg here, about how people need to open their minds to other points of view. I got a kick out of it so I thought I’d share it here, along with my response:

Ihatesheep
alheithinn…… after viewing your site I can see that you are an activist who does not only not care about the truth but you hate it. You are indeed one of those who are pushing for the demise of the Traditional America and deception and corruption are the ways you and your are getting it done- because you know that a frontal assault will net you ….. You are an enemy of our freedom.

After I got done laughing, I managed to type the following:

Ihatesheep: pray tell (pardon the pun) but what, exactly, is the truth? You act like there is only one truth. Are you the final arbiter of whatever this might be? If so, move over cause you got over a thousand Christian denominations who all claim there is only one truth and they call claim to have it.

And the demise of “traditional America”? What, exactly, is “traditional” America? Do you mean the mythical Christian America? The one that is supposedly founded on biblical principles? Like Democracy? (that came from polytheistic Greece) or individual human rights? (that came from the European Enlightenment and the [very non-Christian] deists)

Deception and corruption? Wow. Where do you get that analysis from?

Enemy of our freedom? I’m against theocracy, pal. That makes me the champion of freedom.

Dude, you got to try harder. They say a man is judged by the quality of his enemies. If you’re my enemy, it’s a sad reflection on me.

I can see I’m going to have to try harder to rile these people up. I like to make people stop and think – that’s why I started this blog – but while I got ihatesheep to stop, he apparently failed to think.

I couldn’t resist throwing this little bit out there, since I got such a laugh out of it myself. For those of you who don’t know, Catholics think they are actually partaking of the body of Christ when they have communion (eucharist). Ancient Pagan claims that the Christians were cannibals were technically 100% accurate. You can’t say you are, after all, and then pretend that no, you’re not really. At any rate, a letter to “Catholic Answers Live” made the following statement:

Listening to your show made me hungry for the Eucharist

In other words,

Listening to your show made me hungry for human flesh

Sounds like some kind of weird zombie cult, doesn’t it?