GEORGE WILL: I KNOW YOU DON'T WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT...

It's always amusing to hear meat-eaters claim they have "no problem" facing the fact that they're eating corpses of unfairly, unnecessarily killed sentient beings, because we all know otherwise, and we know that it's imperative for most people to keep up a wall of denial about it. In this piece from Newsweek discussing the latest from Matthew Scully, George Will lays that on the table: "If you value your peace of mind, not to mention your breakfast bacon, you should not read Scully's essay 'Fear Factories: The Case for Compassionate Conservatism-for Animals.'" He goes on: "Yes, of course: You don't want to think about this. Who does?" and: "You were warned not to read this. Have a nice day."

Will even points out the duplicity in humans' excuses for meat addiction: Scully "knows that man is not only a rational creature but a rationalizing creature, putting his intellectual nimbleness in the service of his desires" - and dances perilously close to the ideas of Gary Francione: "It is the sense that even though the law can regard an individual's animal as the individual's property, there nevertheless are certain things the individual cannot do to that property. Which means it is property with a difference. The difference is the capacity for enjoyment and suffering. So why, Scully asks, is cruelty to a puppy appalling and cruelty to livestock by the billions a matter of social indifference? There cannot be any intrinsic difference of worth between a puppy and a pig."

This is all old news to us, of course. What's notable is that it's being put forward by one of the nation's most famous Conservative pundits on the pages of one of our country's biggest newsweeklies.