Five Ways Being Vegan Includes More than Not Eating Animals

There’s a form of veganism that a Vegan Samurai calls “Vegan Lite.”

Vegan Lite is…

A person doesn’t consume any food products derived from the capture, domination of, enslavement, torture, or killing of animals.

This includes eggs, dairy, fish, and meat.

The Vegan Lite person limits their vegan activism to their dietary choices.

In contrast, an authentic “Vegan Samurai” refuses to participate in any industry that exploits and harm animals.

Here’s what I mean…

The Vegan Samurai Opposes the Animal Entertainment Industry

The animal entertainment industry includes circuses, Seaworld, zoos, rodeos, dolphin encounter businesses, and other facilities that take animals away from their natural habitats, biological pathways, and social groupings.

The zoo and animal theme park industries claim their facilities educate people about and expose them to animals, but the most pervasive message animal captivity facilities implant in peoples’ heads is that animals have no rights to live as Nature intended, and are ours to capture, cage, and gawk at.

There are limited exceptions one could make for wildlife rehab centers and farm animal sanctuaries, although I’ve seen examples where both of these categories are actually exploiting animals rather than helping them.

The Vegan Samurai Opposes Using Animals for Clothing & Other Materials

For centuries, trapping of animals for fur has been one of the most brutal ways humans abuse animals.

In the modern era, so-called “fur farms” imprison, enslave, and often electrocute animals so their furs can be made into fancy coats for humans.

We also see cows, pigs, and other animals skinned alive so leather, pigskin, and other materials can be made into wallets, shoes, gloves, coats, and other items that instead could  be made with materials from non-animal sources.

Animals in the wild are hunted for furs, or for ludicrous uses such as “bearskin rugs.”

The Vegan Samurai Opposes Hunting & Fishing

Other than the few remote, indigenous native peoples whose cultures have no choice but to rely on hunting for sustenance, nobody on the planet needs to hunt to eat.

They do it because they like to kill innocent animals, not because they have to do it.

Hunting and fishing are nothing more than humans invading the homes of other animals, using vehicles, dogs, hooks, boats, overwhelming firepower and other means to murder animals that haven’t done anything wrong, and can’t fight back.

The Vegan Samurai Opposes Vivisection (Animal Experimentation)

The horrors of vivisection in some cases are more disgusting even than the terrible atrocities you see in undercover videos that expose the animal foods industry.

And the “benefits” of vivisection are vastly overstated.

In fact, the defense given for vivisection is that vivisection helps humans develop medical treatments and medicines, and is wholly based on specieism (the belief that our species is more important than all other species).

I’ve spoken to animal experimenters who actually say things like, “If I have to stick electrodes into the heads of kittens so I can help even one human, it’s worth it.”

The real truth is that most vivisection is unnecessary if not inapplicable to human medical needs, experiments can be conducted without animals, and a lot of animal experimentation is conducted for ridiculous purposes, such as the torture done to rabbits by eye make-up companies.

A Vegan Samuria also opposes transgenic experimentation, such as the creation of chimeras that are part non-human animal, part human animal.

We oppose Frankenstein experiments done with animals!

The Vegan Samurai Opposes Animals Used for Labor

Have you seen the incredible movie War Horse?

One of the most powerful scenes is when majestic horses are harnessed and used to pull heavy military equipment, which injures and kills them.

Contrary to the nostalgic way we’ve been taught to look at oxen and horses hooked up to plows and other human machinery, the Vegan Samurai opposes ALL use of animals for labor.

Why? Because animals can never give us explicit, non-coerced, voluntary consent to what we want them to do.

And yes, this includes “service dogs.”

I realize that people who are Vegan Lite may initially feel the Vegan Samurai paradigm is challenging, shocking, or “too extreme.”

But I can assure you the Vegan Samurai paradigm is well-analyzed and totally solid from the perspective of logical, ethical consistency.

If it’s wrong to be a customer of a food industry that imprisons, enslaves, and harms animals, then it’s wrong to be a customer of other industries (such as zoos, aquariums, circuses, animal experimentation labs, rodeos, animal labor, etc.) that also harm animals by imprisoning and harming them.

I urge everyone who’s a vegan to adopt the Vegan Samurai paradigm as described above.

It’s the most all-encompassing, morally-consistent vegan paradigm, and it cleanses you from being a participant in any system that harms animals.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Loved to Kill Innocent Animals for Fun

Deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was passionate about shooting innocent animals that had no chance to defend themselves.

In fact, when he died recently on a West Texas ranch during a gift vacation given him by wealthy ranch owner John Poindexter (who had had cases in front of the Supreme Court), he was there communing with members of the “International Order of St. Hubertus,” an elite, clandestine group that worships recreational hunting.

The International Order of St. Hubertus is a male-only organization organized around a supposed “patron saint” of hunting and fishing named Hubert.

Not only that, but the group’s logo contains a Latin saying that translates as “honoring God by honoring His creatures.”

I’d guess these hunters don’t get the irony of describing killing innocent animals as “honoring” them.

Their form of honor includes shooting pheasants, quails, and partridges that are kept in boxes and then released right in front of the hunters.

And on the last day of his life, Antonin Scalia was out killing little birds.

Scalia was accompanied on his free vacation by Washington, DC attorney C. Allen Foster, who is publicly known as an avid international hunter.

Media reports describe Foster celebrating his 65th birthday by flying his family and nearly 50 of his friends to Moravia, where they shot pigs and sheep in “canned hunts” while celebrating at night with masked costume balls, sumptuous eating and drinking, and wild dancing.

Scalia is known for his right-wing viewpoints, his disdain for the poor and minorities, his opposition to women’s reproductive rights, and his favoritism for the wealthy elites with whom he parties and kills.

Scalia’s judicial pronouncements reveal a cold-hearted man, which makes his fondness for killing innocent animals totally in character.

But you may be surprised to know that so-called “liberal” Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan went on hunting trips with Scalia.

“I shoot birds with him, fairly — you know, two or three times a year now,” Justice Kagan said. “We had been bird shooting four or five times. He said to me, ‘It’s time for big game hunting.’ And we actually went out to Wyoming this past fall to shoot deer and antelope.”

Vegans and animal rights people realize that hunting is just another example of the speciesism that also fosters carnism, animal experimentation, circuses, fur farms, and other animal exploitation.

Many progressives openly celebrated Scalia’s death because they view him as a regressive jurist whose presence on the Supreme Court swung the court even further to the political right than it would have been.

One thing is for sure–Scalia’s death means there’s one less person in the world who loves to kill for fun.

The quail, deer, pheasants and other animals Scalia loved to kill are safer today now that he’s gone.