Vegetarian Trends - Micro Or Macro?

Freedom Democrats, a blog for libertarian Democrats, writes: "There's an underlying reason to why I always keep animal rights in my mind as a potential problem for libertarianism. The problem is not just an ideological challenge to libertarians saying that they don't have a system that has a place for animals. There is a political challenge of how libertarianism can adapt to a political system that will increasingly develop stronger sympathies for animals. My own comment in the previous thread was taken from the book 'Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights' by Steven Wise and I find it the best book so far on the subject of how libertarianism could develop a system of animal rights. Wise is not a libertarian but he comes at the issue of animal rights from a more common law background that could be adopted by libertarians. That system is built on the idea of a bundle of rights so that even if an animal doesn't reach the full level of humans they deserve some degree of fair treatment due to levels of intelligence. But for this post I want to focus on the political problems on the horizon."

More commentary from Freedom Democrats: "Chris Bowers at Open Left notes that vegetarians or semi-vegetarians make up about 10% of the population [in the U.S.] and, assuming they break Democratic in the same way that non-Christians do they'd make up close to 14% of the Democratic base. I don't know if I entirely agree with the assumption that they favor the Democrats at the same level as non-Christians but I'm sure that they trend Democratic. This percentage of the population will only continue to grow, as will their share of the Democratic Party. Even if someone is only 'semi-veg' and eats poultry and fish, the growing influence of vegetarians will impact the wider populace's views on animal rights, agriculture, diet, and more."