PETA speaker too extreme
By David Martosko
Published on Wednesday, February 7, 2007
To the Editor:
Before Dartmouth students consider adopting the animal-rights philosophy of PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich, they should know how far he takes his beliefs ("PETA spokesman extols upsides to going vegan," Jan. 30).
He told hundreds of young activists in 2001 that he endorsed "blowing stuff up and smashing windows" to liberate animals.
To an eerie round of applause, Friedrich added: "It would be a great thing if all of these fast-food outlets, and these slaughterhouses, and these laboratories, and the banks that fund them exploded tomorrow." Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is one of those laboratories.
There's nothing wrong with being a vegetarian, a libertarian, a Unitarian, or whatever makes you happy. It's a free country. But following in the footsteps of dangerous misanthropes is generally not smart.