Kelly Bennett

This song always picks me up: I think music is hard because so much of it is just people whining and wallowing is self pity. Everyone seems to thing that Depression is "Artistic", but to me it's just boring. Lyrics usually ruin songs for me because of the content, I have a hard time ignoring them. Even though its somewhat sarcastic, this song has such confidence that I can't help but love it: I'd really love to find some good, up tempo, lyric-less music - like Scott Joplin, but a bit more modern, and with a few more 'voices'.

Just saw it today. It was great! If you haven't even seen the trailer, this might be a *little* bit of a spoiler --- His appearance in congress was so AWESOME! I don't think I've ever seen such a great moment of selfishness in any movie since The Fountainhead.

My reasons were totally altruistic, as I said before. My moral reason was improving the lives of animals. And since you ask, I was an atheist, though I'm not sure why that's relevant. When I first heard Ayn Rand speak (in a you tube video about 6 months ago) it was the first time I'd ever heard anyone challenge altruism. I'd always just taken it as a given,

Yes 100%. And for the record, I've stopped being vegan and contrary to the vegan propaganda, I did not get sick from eating meat or cheese -- even after 9 years of being vegan. Actually I feel pretty good.

Absolutely, except that I never liked the taste.

There are a ton of videos and websites and books. One example is the video titled "Meat Your Meat". I'm not really interested in what PETA does with their money or how many animals they kill because I have never been affiliated with PETA and have never supported PETA. The only thing I've ever had to do with PETA is to have read their pamphlets and watched a video they produced. PETA has never been of much interest to me. I agree completely. The normal process of the farm / slaughterhouse is fine. I have no problem with this part of the process. I'm concerned with the excesses which you can see on these videos. These things have nothing to do with the act of making meat for consumption. But again, its hard to say how often and where these things are taking place. But my question basically is. How do you find good information on wether these things are actually taking place, and if so, which companies are doing it. Maybe it's such a marginal issue that I shouldn't be worried about it!

I agree that "Factory" farms are vilified unjustly by PETA and vegi-nazi's because they are successful. That is precisely why I put quotes around "Factory". I am pro-life (in the Ayn Rand values meaning (not the abortion meaning)), pro-man, pro-business, pro-profit, etc. I'm not a hippy or a PETA follower or anything of the sort -- although I WAS an altruist for many years, which is why I've been vegan for the past 9 years. Now that I'm not an altruist anymore I'm trying to figure out the best thing to do with respect to being vegan, what meat to buy (if any), etc. But without actually going to all the slaughter houses myself to see if the animals are being tortured, I can only go by what I can find on-line or in documentaries. Unfortunately I don't know of any such documentary or websites that aren't made by either a radical vegan, or the meat industry itself. In other words, it's hard to find objective information on the subject. I have seen some horrible things in the vegan propaganda videos and you're told that these are regular occurrences. I'm sure that the propaganda is exaggerated, but its hard to say by how much. Yeah, you're right about that.

Hello, I'm new to the forums but I'm a huge fan of Ayn Rand and have read VOS, Atlas, Fountainhead, Anthem and most of TVOR. I have also listened to all of Dr.Piekoff's podcasts. After all this I think I have a fairly good understanding of what the Objectivist stand on animal rights is and I happen to agree with it for the most part. Dr.Piekoff and Ayn Rand have expressed that they disapprove of the 'torturing' of animals. I also agree with this position, and for the same reasons they convey. This is where I see an issue with eating meat. In this country something like 90% of meat that we eat in restaurants and buy in stores comes from a "factory" farm. Many investigations have shown that the animals in these places endure unconscionable acts of cruelty. Videos and articles I've read suggest that these abuses occur on a daily/hourly basis (if not constantly in the case of tiny cages and lack of medical care) and are the kind of abuses that even objectivists would object to. We do not have a moral obligation to be vegan or vegetarian, but do we have a moral obligation to boycott these producers? Are the abuses overstated? Am I missing something? My final question is this: I'm not a doctor so I can't possible judge wether being vegan can be healthy. I've been vegan for 9 years and I have no major health problems to complain about. Sometimes I feel like I could have more energy, but I know omnivores who seem to have even less energy than I have. I've been vegan for so long that I don't have any frame of reference to know what I would feel like if I were to eat an omnivorous diet. Just as many Dr's will tell you that meat is healthy and veganism will kill you as vice versa so the question is --- How do I know what doctor to trust? Thanks for reading!