Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktFollowing our Giblets and Necks thread the other day, I got to thinking: Is there a more reliable non-political indicator of one’s politics than vegetarianism? I have never known a conservative vegetarian, and all of the vegetarians I have known are not just liberally inclined, but steadfast, politically active liberals. I’ve simply added to the list following our discussion. I would venture a guess that vegetarians vote Democrat in higher percentages than even African Americans.
ashot amusingly noted that he was easily convinced to drop his vegetarianism by his wife-to-be because he “wasn’t very committed to the cause.” And it is a “cause”, a politically liberal one at that, isn’t it? What is it about vegetarianism that attracts liberals?
And is there an equivalent, ostensibly non-political, lifestyle choice that is equally indicative of conservatism?
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All Things in Moderation 
Sean Hannity asked a similar question years ago. It didn't generate many comments, an indication that a vegetarian lifestyle amongst conservatives is rare.http://forums.hannity.com/showthread.php?t=1459541Seventh Day Adventists are encouraged to be vegetarians, and they tend to avoid tobacco and alcohol, too. At least some of their ranks, including Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) are conservative.I once had a conservative vegetarian colleague at work. She told me it was for health reasons, that her family history is filled with cardio-vascular problems. She was raising her kid vegetarian, too.
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Amusing. I know a pretty politically active conservative vegetarian. She's on Eric Cantor's advisory committee.
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OT:L'il ol' Illinois high school football has hit the big time, streaming on espn3.com. I am in heaven.
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It's an interesting question. Going full vegetarian does have some political aspects to it. That Bittman quote (Eat moderately, mostly plants) doesn't say go meatless, simply balance it out. I'd say that vegetarians probably skew mostly liberal, but I would also suggest that a fuller answer to the question means that one's perspective needs to be broadened. There are plenty of societies where meat is only an occasional dish. So, if I were to look for a conservative vegetarian, I'd probably look for an Indian or African immigrant.I'm an enthusiastic member of PETA (People for the Eating of Tasty Animals). I need to balance my diet out better as there are very tasty dishes without charred animal flesh. I do like having some meat with dinner for its satiating qualities. I also drink wine with most dinners.I might venture gun ownership as a corollary for Republicans. Liberals own guns too (liberals with guns is a fun blog), but I think it is identified with conservatism. For my part, I think that a gun in a house is more likely to be a danger to my household than the odds of it being used to successfully combat an intruder.BB
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What a good question, Scott!I've been discussing it with my (all registered Republican) cousin, aunt and second cousin and none of us have been able to come up with a corollary yet. Country club membership was suggested, but we've agreed that that isn't a really reliable bellweather.FB's suggestion of gun ownership also comes close, but (we thought of hunting as one ourselves) that's probably more a regional characteristic than a political one.And, yes, I'm the sole liberal in the house this Thanksgiving. 🙂
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'Goose, Hannah's chipotle yamms were like yours but she added sliced pecans as a top garnish.She also made a variation of my pie using dried cherries in rum instead of currants in gran marnier, and made her crust from scratch, which was better than my crust when I make it from scratch.
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And is there an equivalent, ostensibly non-political, lifestyle choice that is equally indicative of conservatism?How about refusal to recycle?
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I think the motivation in refusing to recycle is important. For example, in some communities, there is not recycling facility and the separated refuse ends up in the same place as the non-recyclables. Is refusing to recycle in this example an example of Republicanism or common sense?Supposing one recycles metal for the money rather than for the "environment?". Does that make the a republican, Democrat or money motivated?Finally, what if one recycles so that others think they are environmentalists rather than because they think it will help the environment?
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Yea, Mark!! I'll try the pecans next time I make them.How about refusal to recycle?Everybody I know recycles. . . so I don't think that would be it.
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lms:How about refusal to recycle?That's a good one. McWing: Is refusing to recycle in this example an example of Republicanism or common sense?Is there a difference? 😉
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Mich:Everybody I know recycles.Not any more.
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I never thought about recycling until our daughter spent a summer with an oil company in Midland. She was literally shocked at the lack of effort and an almost defiant attitude regarding aluminum cans and plastic water bottles. I don't know if there were local facilities for recycling or not, but it was essentially a joke to them.And is abstinence only too political?
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I recycle mainly because the alternative is to fill up the landfill that much faster. We have pick-up once a week and there's a drop-off along my way to work. I don't recycle as a political statement, rather I see it as being practical.I don't think that gun owner = Republican, but there suspected there was a correlation. According to a Gallup poll, a slight majority of Republicans have a gun in the home (55%) whereas only 1/3 of Democrats do (32%). I would argue a much stronger correlation with those who argue you should be able to pack heat wherever you want. [Note: not in my home. You won't be smoking either. You're more than welcome to have a drinkand eat tasty dead animals.] BB
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"I never thought about recycling", I suppose that should really just say I never thought about NOT recycling, it's something that's so second nature to us here. I didn't realize there were people out there who thought using an abundance of plastic water bottles without recycling them was okay. We tend not to use the bottles in the first place but I would just never throw one in the trash…………………weird.I agree FB it's as much a landfill issue as anything else.
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lms/FB:Pretty much everything I have read says that the one issue about which there really is no debate is landfill. That is to say, landfill is not an issue. The usual calculation I see is that all of the garbage produced over the next 1000 years in the US could be contained in a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles across, a tiny space relative to the land available in the US. So landfill space is not a sensible reason to recycle.For me, recycling will make sense when someone starts paying me to do it rather than ordering me to do it.FYI, here's an article from Popular Mechanics about whether recycling is actually worth the cost.
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That was an interesting piece scott. I guess my daughter's impression from Midland was more or less typical. Another change I've noticed is that unless my father was a very unusual conservative in his day, which I highly doubt, we always treated proper trash disposal and protecting the environment as a personal responsibility issue. He was thrilled when the recycling movement began and considered it an affirmation of his principles. He was very strict about it though.Houston, which boasts the nation's worst recycling rate (2.6 percent), has a voluntary recycling program that forces its trucks to drive long distances between pickups.The VerdictEven after the environmental and economic questions have been answered, the decision about how much to recycle depends on how you reconcile those two factors. "High recycling rates are usually a function of, first, a political decision, and second, the strength of local markets," Miller says. San Francisco's 70 percent recycling rate isn't enough for Mayor Gavin Newsom, who wants to ramp it up to 75 percent–even if that means making recycling compulsory. Houston's willingness to squander resources with its paltry recycling rate is also as much a political decision as it is an economic one.Most cities lie somewhere between those two extremes. For them, recycling is generally desirable, but it's not automatically good and efficient and cheap. It takes significant up-front capital investment to implement a state-of-the-art single-stream recycling program. For that reason, the newfound stability of the recycling market is just as important as the high prices, because it allows cities to plan investments around future revenue streams. "Chicago used to pay haulers to take its recycled materials," says Ed Skernolis of the National Recycling Coalition. Now, it has invested $24 million to buy recycling carts for 600,000 homes and will deliver the recyclables to a single-stream processing facility–which will now pay the city instead of being paid.Ultimately, every community will develop its own unique program. "The bigger the city," Porter says, "the more you can recycle." The dividing line between environmental and economic factors will also begin to blur. On the Chicago Climate Exchange, the world's first greenhouse-gas trading market, the price for a ton of avoided carbon-dioxide emissions peaked at over $7 this summer. Morris has created a model for municipal waste decision-makers that assigns values to environmental impacts ranging from toxins to acid rain and greenhouse gases. Most telling, though, is a recent study that found that about 90 percent of the material going to landfills has a market value. Given today's economy, we won't keep burying that value for long.
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For me, recycling will make sense when someone starts paying me to do itEssentially, I get paid to do it. My garbage bill is lower because I have a recycling bin, also.
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It's funny here because once we moved the business home we realized we needed a dumpster and so the city wouldn't give us recycle bins and a dumpster other than the green one for grass, leaves, horse poop etc. So now we recycle on our own and get the money back for glass, aluminum and plastic. We have a guy who comes by every Sat for boxes (ones we can't reuse) and newspapers etc. I liked it better the other way but what can you do?
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As a fairly conservative guy: – I eat meat a lot. I don't begrudge those who don't but I can't help it – I like it. I think that vegetarianism is probably more liberal and know no conservative vegetarians. I know people who, for health reasons, have very limited meat.I don't own a gun (wife and home-safety) but go shooting several times a year. I do both target and some bird hunting from time to time. I love shooting a wide variety of guns from AK47 to little pistols. The people I shoot with are all conservative.And I recycle. Where I live, in Northern VA, it is too easy not to. Paper, glass, plastic, and metal go into one can and everything else in another. But I have always looked to recycle, my motivation wanting to be a good steward of the environment.
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Dave–I shoot, but that probably reflects my military past more than anything else, and I gave up all my guns in the divorce (even my folding stock side-by-side double barreled shotgun that was a Christmas gift one year) since I didn't feel a burning need to hang on to any of them. I would agree that the majority of firearms aficionados are probably conservative, though.
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I make a lot of my decisions based on practicality. I did a little bit of hunting around and found one particularly interesting tidbit from the Fort Collins. I was intrigued given that in areas with high population density, the landfill/recycling balance is going to be different than in Flatland. Recycling costs Fort Collins $40 per ton less than landfilling.http://www.fcgov.com/recycling/why_recycle.phpScott – You say you'll start recycling when someone pays you to do it. Well, those are your taxes. You didn't strike me as someone who wants to pay higher taxes. But hey, if it helps you prove a point, go for it.BB
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FB:Well, those are your taxes. No, I didn't mean when the government starts paying me. When it is economically worthwhile to use recycled material rather than new, raw materials, those who need it for the production of goods will pay for the recycled goods.
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Ah. Apologies for the confusion on my part. In the case of landfill vs. recycling, both have costs. As a practical matter, one would choose the option that costs least. I would suppose it becomes a political matter when the cost of the recycling exceeds that of landfill, but the local authority chooses to go that way anyway.Well, I'm off to take our sons out for their birthday dinner at Firefly. It's purely coincidental that Sunday night is half price wine. ;-)Cheers!
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