Posted on June 11, 2008

by

Daniel Clark

"You want flies with that?"

This bad pun, and others like it, may soon be coming to a restaurant near you. That is, at least, if the environmental activists get their way, as they always seem to do.

A May 29^th Time magazine article extolling the virtues of "entomophagy," or bug-eating, has drawn a few snickers from conservative commentators. When viewed in the context of a broader public relations campaign, however, it becomes apparent that it won't be laughed off so easily. Since the United Nations held a symposium on the issue in February, its conclusions have become the template for a series of stories in American and British publications like the New York Times, Discover magazine, the Independent and the Evening Standard.

The first bullet point they touch is usually an admonition that North Americans and Europeans are among the world's minority in their aversion to entomophagy. In the Far East, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, they tell us, bugs are often seen as a delicacy. Gosh, when they put it that way, refusing to eat a tarantula seems downright racist.

As if to emphasize our alleged cultural inferiority, the stories inform us that Westerners have a phobia about bugs, which are not as filthy as we think. As the Times explains it, "we regard cockroaches as unclean." Got that? It's not that cockroaches are unclean, but that "we regard" them as such. The obvious question is how such a slur has been allowed to pass for so long. The Invertebrate Anti-Defamation League must have been lying down on the job.

The Time magazine story describes insects as "crawling packets of nutrition," and points out that "[w]ater bugs have four times as much iron as beef." To translate that into American: one quarter-pounder, plus one Flintstones vitamin, equals no need to eat a quarter pound of water bugs.

Both British papers condemn pesticides through the telling of how locusts were devouring all the crops in Thailand, so the Thai government encouraged the people to eat the locusts instead. In a way, this ranks people below even the locusts, because at least the pests get to feast on all those flavorful vegetables, whereas the people are left to eat bugs.

The main point, as if you couldn't have guessed, is that bugs are more eco-friendly than livestock. That's because they require less land and water to produce, and they supposedly contribute less to "climate change." Activist David Gracer, who seemingly aspires to be the Al Gore of entomophagy, ominously hints at what's to come when he says, "Cows and pigs are the SUVs; bugs are the bicycles."

If this comparison holds true, we can expect the media to become participants in a relentless publicity war against meat, to the point where steaks and chops are depicted as vicious criminals. Before long, we'll be reading headlines like, "Sausage chokes child to death, shows no remorse."

Next, the government will adopt measures designed to drive meat prices out of sight, a process which our ethanol policy will by then have already started. If all goes according to plan, the only ones who will be regularly eating meat will be the elitists who tell the rest of us not to. Don't expect to see Barbra Streisand dining on scorpion thermidor, for instance. The greenies will always find a way to justify their own eating habits, perhaps through the purchase of "meat credits."

Like so many other liberal causes, the entomophagy movement uses environmentalism as a means to its true end, which is the debasement of Western civilization. This conclusion is supported by the activists' lack of curiosity about the repercussions should they succeed. If they really believed, as they claim, that the ecosystem is precariously balanced, then the prospect of Americans and Europeans gobbling up every wasp, worm and grasshopper in sight would surely give them pause. Yet none of these articles stops to question the purported ecological benefits of eating bugs, because that would impede the advancement of "economic justice."

As long as it causes the people of Kansas to live more like the people of Cambodia, liberals will declare their mission a success, regardless of what else ensues. If this result fails to materialize, it will only be because the greenies themselves don't believe they can pull it off. It's one thing to browbeat us into driving around in wind-up clown cars, but the image of Americans subsisting on vermin might strike them as just too good to be true.

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