Bill Dollinger, Washington Director for Friends of Animals, in a Letter to the Editor in today's Washington Post, reminds us that Leo Tolstoy gave us a key to eliminating war:

Leo Tolstoy, for example, once warned that as long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.

I'll freely admit I haven't read War and Peace, or even Anna Karenina, so I don't have Tolstoy's philosophy on peace floating around my head, but a Google search failed to turn up anything linking Tolstoy, slaughterhouses and battlefields. But maybe he did say something to that effect. Either he didn't mean what Dollinger ascribes to him, or he was just as loopy as Dollinger.

By the way, Dollinger was writing in response to an earlier Post article on the growing popularity of meat in the People's Republic of Takoma Park, a long-time liberal bastion in Maryland just across the DC line. Here's a representative quote from the article:

Jennifer Gillispie, 60, said she never imagined that meat consumption would become so conspicuous -- and that she would be one of the guilty ones.

The Takoma Park yoga teacher once told her most devoted students to become vegetarians. Now, she suggests meat eating as a path to karma.

Of her salad days, Gillispie said, "I was forcing my own being to do something that, clearly, that being was saying wasn't working."

Gillispie, who had been a vegetarian for more than 10 years, said she was feeling weak and unmotivated a couple of years ago and didn't know why. When two formerly vegetarian friends suggested a new diet, she figured she had nothing to lose. She went to Whole Foods, ordered half a roasted chicken and found a table.

"I said a blessing, and I asked forgiveness for the chicken. I took one bite -- and it was like all my cells exploded, 'Yes!' " Gillispie recalled. "I ate the whole thing, bones and all. I couldn't get it into my mouth fast enough. People were staring."

As a Texan, you won't find it surprising that I'm nodding my head with a knowing smile on my face, although I think she would have been better off with a nice ribeye. Anyway, in his letter, Dollinger goes on to say:

And Alice Walker sees a vegetarian diet as an essential component of achieving a peaceful world.

Alice Walker? Who's that? Oh, she's apparently a vegan activist. But I fail to see where she gets any credentials as an authority on peace. Vegetables, sure. Ask her about corn sometime. But peace? Erm, thanks, but I think I'd consult with Jimmy Carter first.

But now we know that, as long as humans continue to eat meat, there will be no peace. Yeah. Sure.

Knuckleheads like these do their movement no favors.