1. Leunig on violence Learning Goal: To understand Leunig’s idea that violence and cruelty should be acknowledged.

3. Questions: What is Leunig’s perspective about meat-eaters? What experiences led him to form this reality? Do you have the same perspective? Why/Why not? ‘I had held the theoretical view that if you eat meat you had better be prepared to kill the animal. Perhaps in my youthful sensitivity I felt betrayed and isolated because I was being cast into something that I felt all meat eaters should face but were mostly refusing to…’

4. Analogy A comparison to highlight some form of similarity. Can be used to strengthen arguments

5. Summarise Leunig’s ideas above in your own words. (What does he suggest about the reality of our politicians who decide whether we go to war?) “the refined and educated Western man’ who has no direct contact with violence, yet ‘can sign with an elegant golden pen the document that unleashes the cowardly invasion and who can then go out to dine on claret and lamb cutlets.’

6. Work out the analogy… Eating meat without knowing what is like to kill an animal is like…..

7. For Leunig: eating meat when you don’t kill animals is akin to sending people to war without experiencing it yourself. The people who suffer in war have a very different reality to those who make the decision to go to war. There is a lack of integrity in those who ‘sign with an elegant golden pen’.

8. lk Smedley Butler Retired Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps 1935 wrote 'War is a Racket'

9. “A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the very many. ” “In the World War, a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. A t least twenty one thousand new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat infested dug out? How many of them spent sleepless frightened nights ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets?”

10. “Take the World War. It cost the United States taxpayer some fifty two billion dollars, and we haven't paid that debt yet. Ultimately, it is the soldier that pays the biggest part of the bill. If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad, or visit any of the veterans hospitals in the United States.”

11. Writing…. Write a paragraph connecting Leunig's ideas about war to Smedley Butler's.

12. Why should our violent side not be ignored? Return to the learning goal To understand Leunig’s idea that violence and cruelty should be acknowledged. 14-2-10