U.S. Senator Cory Booker, who compared himself to Spartacus during a particularly cringeworthy moment in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, thinks the world would be better off going vegan. The New Jersey Democrat says that his own vegetarian to vegan journey started in 1992 when a vegetarian diet gave him more energy, and he subsequently concluded that eggs “didn’t align with [his] spirit.” In the interview with VegNews, the 2020 presidential candidate insisted he would never dictate what Americans can eat or not eat. Liberals seldom try to restrict individual freedom, right?
Booker’s Spartacus Moment
As you may recall, Booker claimed Spartacus status for releasing confidential Judiciary Committee documents, ones that allegedly would damage Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, that had actually been already released. As a result, that line of attack by Spartacus failed.
” It’s not every day that a politician with national pretensions becomes a leader of a gladiatorial revolt against the state. But that’s what Booker did, squabbling theatrically with Republicans over supposedly confidential Kavanaugh documents…The emails showed Kavanaugh to be opposed to racial profiling of all kinds,” Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass recalled.
Booker has already signed on to the theoretical Green New Deal as proposed by progressives in the U.S. House.
Booker Has a Beef with Meat and Dairy
“Booker’s fight against dairy intersects with the aims of the Green New Deal. Initial plans put out by democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez revealed ambitions to eliminate ‘farting cows,'” the Washington Free Beacon asserted.
Against that backdrop, the pandering, virtue-signaling lawmaker — who claims his lives his life “authentically” — apparently believes that animal protein, plus fossil fuels, should be phased out.
“We’ve seen this massive increase in consumption of meat produced by the industrial animal agriculture industry. The tragic reality is this planet simply can’t sustain billions of people consuming industrially produced animal agriculture because of environmental impact…We will destroy our planet unless we start figuring out a better way forward when it comes to our climate change and our environment.”
Cory Booker’s general suggestions that the factory farm process needs reform and that meat producers should go organic are nonetheless well taken.
As far as individual choice is concerned, however, some people do well on a 100-percent plant-based diet, while others thrive by consuming a combination of vegetables and animal protein.
Ironically perhaps given his opposition to steak, while running for Newark, N.J., mayor, Booker often related anecdotes about a drug dealer that he befriended named T-Bone who he insisted is a real person.
Booker initially claimed that T-Bone threatened him. “I later got to know this guy and his name was T-Bone and I’m a vegetarian so that was a particularly vicious threat.”
Writes Chicago Tribune‘s Kass:
“Reporters fanned out to find T-Bone, but he just wasn’t there. Booker finally stopped mentioning T-Bone. Opponents said Booker was a serial theatrical embellisher….He’s not a theatrical embellisher. He’s Spartacus.”
Banning Meat = Environmental Activism
The prestigious British medical journal The Lancet recently published a paper from 37 scientists “that recommends draconian restriction of animal protein with a dual agenda of promoting human health and saving the planet from environmental catastrophe,” integrative physician and Intelligent Medicine radio host Dr. Ronald Hoffman explains on his website.
Related story: Alternative Healthcare: Silicon Valley’s Next Censorship Target?
Noting that most of the “EAT-Lancet” authors are pro-vegetarian/vegan, Dr. Hoffman writes the following:
“It’s one thing to claim that it’s healthier for humans to eschew most animal protein. But to hitch that proposition—which remains highly contested—to a completely separate and distinct controversial environmental agenda is rhetorically powerful, but inherently unscientific…
“The EAT-Lancet report basically doubles down on challenged orthodoxy: That saturated fat and animal protein are inherently bad, and drivers of our dual epidemics of cancer and cardiovascular disease. These contentions are belied by the latest studies that exonerate meat and dairy. The EAT-Lancet diet recommendations are completely at odds with findings that a low-carb Paleo-style diet can be the best way reverse metabolic syndrome and obesity….
“There’s a world-wide trend towards regulation, curbing of individual freedoms, and outright totalitarianism, ostensibly to achieve lofty goals. A diet diktat that punishes meat consumers is yet another step toward more government control.”
Dr. Hoffman adds that some marketers will try to cash in by pushing unhealthy products to unsuspecting, environmentally conscious consumers.
“The profit margin on unadulterated, non-processed animal products is razor-thin. That’s why the food industry is continually hunting for ways to tart up cheap commodities like corn, soy, and wheat—mostly GMO—into highly-processed, tasty faux foods. The ‘Greenwashing’ effect gives these unscrupulous marketers a halo of social responsibility. They’re banking on harnessing your eco-anxiety and environmental guilt to goose their sales of profitable low-fat and vegan products your grandparents would instinctively reject…
“In the coming months and years, you’ll be seeing a big media push to promote the EAT-Lancet agenda. Many powerful industry, academic and government forces are aligning to implement it. Caveat emptor! “
Spartacus Strikes Again
Parenthetically, Booker made a fool of himself at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this month by asking nominee Neomi Rao if she had ever hired an LGBTQ law clerk. This presumably was a pathetic attempt to smear her as a religious bigot.
If confirmed, Rao would take Brett Kavanaugh’s vacant seat on the D.C. Circuit.
“I have not been a judge, so I don’t have any law clerks,” Rao told the grandstanding senator.
In another awkward moment at the same hearing, Booker pressed Rao about whether she considered gay relationships sinful. Rao, the daughter of immigrants from India, replied that whatever her personal views, if any, on that subject were irrelevant to her obligation to abide by Supreme Court precedent. (Incidentally, the nominee would have been better served by avoiding the “to be honest” preamble, however.)
Currently working in the Trump administration in the Office of Management and Budget, Neomi Rao appropriately underscored that the sexual orientation of any of her staff is also irrelevant.
“All Spartacus did was expose his own bigoted ignorance,” the New York Post declared.
A Meatless World?
Considering all the climate change activists (especially those who live in gaudy mansions surrounded by walls) traveling to international conferences on private jets and motoring on the ground in gas-guzzling limousines, would it be a surprise that some of them who claim that meat production is unsustainable might also have a freezer full of filet mignon?
[Featured image credit: public domain, U.S. Congress]