BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
2. No - it discourages incentive, increases dependence upon the government, and, if carried too far, impoverishes and oppresses people.

There is no question that taxation is needed for common programs that benefit the great majority of people. Taxes are needed for roads, schools, law enforcement, the military and other programs of this nature which benefit all. The above being said, there is a point at which taxation can become unjust, confiscatory and oppressive. Our Constitution was written to guide us in such matters. Our Constitution guarantees our "inalienable rights" which are not granted by men, but by God, (or if you choose personally not to use "God", then a power that is higher than mankind). These include the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We are also guaranteed an opportunity to strive for what we may gain by our own labors, whether it be material aquisition, property (land, homes) or a good education. What we are NOT guaranteed is an equal OUTCOME. Thus, when we hear ideas promoted such as "spreading the wealth" we need to be careful about the intention behind such a statement. Does the person (or persons) uttering such a phrase mean that we should confiscate the labors (and resulting property) of another to give it to someone else? What would be the justification for such an action? We are at a crossroads in this country in which more and more people are demanding things they feel "entitled" to. People have expressed that the government should pay for their college education, their birth control, their homes, and many, many other things - the list is endless. But when we say the "government" should pay for these things, what we are really saying is that those who produce - that is, everyone from those who do physical labor to those who run companies - should be taxed to pay for more and more things. Taken to its ultimate conclusion, there will come a point (and, indeed, this point has been reached for many) in which taxation becomes unjustly confiscatory, resulting in what we have already seen - companies hiring less workers and moving overseas; people being discouraged from working or starting businesses because they receive less and less of the rewards of their labor. We have also seen tremendous waste of our tax dollars and a lack of accounting for where our tax dollars go and what they are used for. When we look to government instead of ourselves to supply what we want or need, and government takes from one group of people to give to another, we see a leveling of the masses that begins to take place - not a leveling that takes place in a good way, but one that brings people down, not up. One that equalizes people in poverty and misery, and places them more and more at the mercy of a government that, as history has shown over and over, becomes more tyrannical over time.
Irrespective of its US provenance, we recognise that 'the most stringent protection of free speech w...

Irrespective of its US provenance, we recognise that 'the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.'[[Schenck v. United States, 3 March, 1919]]. Thus shouting fire in a crowded cinema when there is no fire, and you know it, is wrong. We accept this limit on free speech, therefore the principle is conceded.
Irrespective of its US provenance, we recognise that 'the most stringent protection of free speech w...

'After all, the practical reason why when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest'[[CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, H D Thoreau]] Tyranny of the majority is as good a reason as any to prevent Government from being involved in censorship - the majority of the population may be anti-homosexuality, or anti-immigrant, or indeed pro-genetically modified foods. In a healthy democracy it is vital that smaller groups be heard, and there is no way to guarantee these voices if the Government can restrict free speech.
Speech acts lead to physical acts. Thus pornography, hate speech and political polemic are causally ...

Society is self-regulating. (a) The link between speech acts and physical acts is a false one - people who commit hate crimes are likely to have read hate speech, people who commit sex crimes are likely to have watched pornography but not necessarily the other way around. Viewers of pornography and readers of hate speech are therefore not incited to commit anything they otherwise would not do. (b) Exposing pornography, hate speech and political polemic (extreme nationalism etc.) to society increase the likelihood that it will be discredited and defeated, rather than strengthened through persecution. This is Milton’s argument from 'Areopagitica' (1644) - truth will combat error.
People should be free to choose what they will eat.

We live in a country that is supposed to be about individual freedom. Unfortunately we have seen a gradual erosion of those freedoms. Now there are those who would impose upon others their moralities and ideas of what people should and shouldn't eat. I would challenge, in particular, those who come from a moral standpoint. I would wager that many people who think it is immoral to eat meat are also the same people who think abortion is okay. If I am against abortion, (which I haven't said one way or another) shouldn't I be able to force my moral values on you? For that matter, there are many societal issues people on many sides could challenge from a "moral" standpoint. When we are debating about whether people should eat meat strictly from a nutritional viewpoint, vegetarians fall apart in their arguments, as you will read in the other points discussed from a nutritional standpoint. The problem is not with meat per se. The problem expressed by many who say "don't eat meat" is with how animals are raised, how they are fed, and how they are slaughtered. However, passing a law that says you cannot eat meat is short-sighted.. In a free society, we are free to buy or not buy products that we have an issue with, without imposing our morals and choices on others. If you don't like how a particular corporation or farmer raises, feeds and slaughters the animals, then don't buy their meat. Or, go through the proper legal channels to get regulations passed to change their practices. Don't just legislate that people can't eat meat anymore. That is a personal diet, as well as moral, choice. Personally, practicing "fair chase" and obeying the laws when hunting and making sure an animal is killed quickly and humanely is how we come by our venison, which we choose to eat over beef because we know the animal has lived and eaten natural foods. Another choice could be to buy from organically operated farms which raise animals in an environment as close to natural as possible, with the animals being able to roam freely in clean areas with natural foods to eat.
Water use

Due to the same phenomenon of meat being inefficient to produce in terms of the amount of grain needed to produce the same weight of meat, production requires a lot of water. Water is another scarce resource that we will soon not have enough of in various areas of the globe. Grain-fed beef production takes 100,000 liters of water for every kilogram of food. Raising broiler chickens takes 3,500 liters of water to make a kilogram of meat. In comparison, soybean production uses 2,000 liters for kilogram of food produced; rice, 1,912; wheat, 900; and potatoes, 500 liters.[[Roger Segelken, U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat, Cornell Science News, 7th August 1997, http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html%5D%5D This is while there are areas of the globe that have severe water shortages. With farming using up to 70 times more water than is used for domestic purposes: cooking and washing. A third of the population of the world is already suffering from a shortage of water. Groundwater levels are falling all over the world and rivers are beginning to dry up.[[Fiona Harvey, Water scarcity affects one in three, FT.com, 21st August 2003, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3e3eeab2-3137-11db-b953-0000779e2340,dwp_uuid=fc2aebdc-32a6-11db-87ac-0000779e2340.html%5D%5D Already some of the biggest rivers such as China’s Yellow river do not reach the sea.[[Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, Yellow river ‘drying up’, BBC News, 29th July 2-004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3937403.stm%5D%5D
Humans need meat in their diet

Meat is an essential part of the human diet. Although there are subsitutes for iron and protein gained from eating meat, these are not as good as the real thing; many vegetarians, while taking iron supplements and vitamins to "fill in" for the lack of meat, are anemic- their body isn't as storng as the bodies of those who eat meat. Pregnant vegetarians are advised by their doctors to eat meat, so that the phetis is born healthy. Besides, not everyone can afford to buy these supplements, which can be very expensive. Therefore, humans must eat meat to stay healthy, and should not ignore this important part of their diet.
No,

Human teeth are not like carnivores then what are they like? omnivores? Because we, meat eaters can still eat both vegetarian and non vegetarian dish? Then you are talking about the availability of the meat. Are plants not easily available? And what would you do in case scientists develop something which can help plants speak too? And for your information let me tell you that this has already taken place. And what would you do when such a speaking plant tells you, "Hey! vegan! don't eat me, I'm here to be eaten by a herbivore rather than you humans!" ? Though I do not support the cannibalism associated with the animals, but that should not deprive us of eating animals. The question here is for those people who involve themselves in such brutal acts towards our fellow animals. There exists a thing called "food chain" in the nature which doesn't allow or you can say we, humans are not that easily able to kill an animal like lion and the same thing applies to a deer. Source to support that plants can speak too http://www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article3500338.ece This article also talks about the brutality towards animals and rather gives the meat eaters like me who eat meat but at the same time have a concern towards their environment a choice to eat artificially produced( in the laboratories by scientists) meat. Shweta Singh Bisen
All the opposition's arguments are environmental

If the only arguments that the opposition can come up with are environmental, than we should stop using any form of electronic devices that aren't completely neccessary (like iPods, computers, TVs etc.) Also, most of the meat eaten is taken from livestock - animals that have been domesticated so much that they are incapable of sustaining themselves, and not eating meat would mean that they would be left out in the wild and be easy meat for predators - which would have a huge impact on the ecosystem, which is in a precarious state anyway.
The farming of animals causes suffering. Causing suffering is wrong. The farming of animals is wrong

Animals have a range of cognitive abilities that are suggestive of consciousness. This includes associative/non-elemental learning and episodic-like memory, the ability to remember the "what, where and when" of an event. This suggest animals such as mice can create new representations of the world in novel combinations, binding together different sensory modalities in the same way that consciousness binds together our experiences. Animals can feel pain, and feel emotion in response to that pain that affects their ability to learn in much the same way as in humans. The life of a farmed animal is filled with pain. This may include being branded with scolding iron, castration and being de-horned all without pain relief. Many factory farmed animals will be forced to live in cramped and dirty conditions without the opportunity for much exercise or environment enrichment. In the dairy industry after giving birth, calves will be forcibly removed from their mother. After a short life of being made pregnant, having their calves forcibly removed and being milked at a high intensity many dairy cows can get mastitis(a very painful udder infection) and have reduced milk production and are then killed. Some of those male calves are then used for veal. Those cows used for beef are transported in poor cramped condition's in lorries to the slaughter house. The capacitive bolt is not a humane method of inducing permanent unconsciousness before killing, the prevalence of a shallow depth of concussion after being hit with the bolt in one study was 7.7% for all cattle, and 15.1% for young bulls. [[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0309174007001544]] This suggests many cows could regain consciousness before being slaughtered. These animals are psychologically damaged by these experiences. One animal model of depression in rodents is enforced separation of pups from the mother. These animals show a reduced performance in a forced swim test, ie they stop trying to tread water and escape from a tank of water and instead enter a state of despair. Another way of inducing depression in animals is the chronic mild stress model that involves the exposure of animals to a series of mild and unpredictable stressors and results in long lasting changes of behavioural and neurological function that can be reversed with antidepressants, just like in humans. If one values psychological well being of sentient animals then one must also oppose the eating of meat.
We shouldn't eat as muh meat.

Meat is not inherently wrong. It is something we as human's are designed to eat, we are Apex predators , top of the food chain, we are built to hunt and consume other animals. The arguments that meat is inefficient and environmentally unfriendly do not mean that we should not eat meat, it simply means that we should not eat as much. We as a species have developed some obsense methdos of slughter and production to feed our gluttony, it is not moral to keep a pig in a cage simply because we want to consume its flesh, however this does not mean we should not eat meat. We should not activly practose cruelty to animals, we should treat them as living things that do require protection, but we should also treat them as a food source, not a food source to be exploited and mass farmed like we currently use them but a food source to be hunted to satisfy hunger and nutritianal needs. Lets look back to early civilization where most of a person;s diet would consist of grains and vegetables. A small villiage would practise farming of grains to make breads and vegetables, this was most of their diet. They would use cattle to pull plows and occasionally tehy would kill the cattle and eat it. This was how life was. I do not believe that this was an immoral way of living, it is not about wether we shoudl eat meat it is about how we currently eat meat. We need to have an awarness of environmental harm and look at reducing it, we need to aknowledge animal cruelty and stop it, we need to farm and prodice efficiently but we do not need to stop eating meat.
Meat is inefficient

There are large numbers of livestock particularly sheep and goats graze on land that would not be suitable for any other type of farming. Therefore if they are just living off land that would otherwise not be used for farming the production of their meat is efficient and not directly competing with grain for land. This renders any comparison between grain and meat invalid. Furthermore, one can't equate different foods and make comparisons of how efficient or inefficient foods might be - there's a big difference in the kinds of nutrients that human beings can derive out of meat, which cannot be given through any amount of grain.
Animals are below humans, therefore humans can eat them

Humans have uniquely evolved to be able to consider the moral worth of their actions, however from a utilitarian perspective, the fact that animals do not have the ability to rationally consider the moral worth of their actions, has no ethical impact as it does not affect their ability to suffer. As eating meat causes suffering to animals, it is therefore wrong. From a rights based perspective many humans who have developmental disorders also lack the the ability to be a moral agent, be creative or have rational thought, yet i doubt anybody would advocate eating them or denying them rights. The lack of these abilities are therefore irrelevant for judging if animals should be eaten or have rights. Additionally many animals use tools to help them get food such as sticks or stones to get at otherewise unreachable food sources. Is this not the same kind of thinking that we consider creative? The ability of many animals to solve problems and even display meta-cognition (ie the ability to be aware of whether they know something or not) is well documented (see Couchman et al. 2011). As the exact cognitive abilities of animals is still unknown would it no be prudent to give them the benefit of the doubt especially when one can be perfectly healthy not eating meat?
Environment

As a result of the above point producing meat damages the environment. The demand for meat drives deforestation. Daniel Cesar Avelino of Brazil's Federal Public Prosecution Office says “We know that the single biggest driver of deforestation in the Amazon is cattle.” This clearing of tropical rainforests such as the Amazon for agriculture is estimated to produce 17% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.[[David Adam, Supermarket suppliers ‘helping to destroy Amazon rainforest’, The Guardian, 21st June 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/21/supermarket-suppliers-amazon-rainforest-deforestation%5D%5D Not only this but the production of meat takes a lot more energy than it ultimately gives us chicken meat production consumes energy in a 4:1 ratio to protein output; beef cattle production requires an energy input to protein output ratio of 54:1.[[Roger Segelken, U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat, Cornell Science News, 7th August 1997, http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html%5D%5D
If humans are like animals they should be able to eat them

Having the right to eat animals does not mean we have to eat animals. While there are obviously many carnivores there are also many herbivores that do not eat other animals. The level we are on does not make any difference to whether we should eat meat or not. Even if we are superior to animals does that mean we should automatically consider them food, animals perform other tasks for us; companionship, beasts of burden, used in war, as symbols etc Eating meat is indeed natural in the sense that other animals do it as well. In fact, it is even done on occasion by our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees. However, there are many other things which are also natural. For example, chimpanzee males sometimes rape the females in their tribe. Chimpanzees sometimes engage in organized warfare against other tribes with which they compete for territory. A chimpanzee male, in a moment of rage, sometimes picks up a nearby infant, and crushes his skull against a rock. If we believed that eating meat was ethically permissible simply because other animals did it as well, then this would imply that there is nothing wrong with rape, cannibalism, or infanticide, all of which routinely occurs throughout the animal kingdom.
No,

Because human teeth are not like carnivores ? Everything is clear we eat meat because it is easily available...the animal we kill can't say a word..he/she can not explain his pain...there is no need of scientific explanation because it is exact similar like some one chop off your tongue and cut your one hand for his food so you can just feel the pain but you can not do anything ? In many religion its valid i don't know why because god created everything equally without biasing but human always try to disturb the harmony between souls...they don't have reason why they eat meat they said its just mention in book its halal..i cow got a full life to live one earth but a man killed it at an age of 5 years so its not gods fault that he made it for sacrifice or serving it in hotels its only man who killed it not god gave this over...if man asked to eat lion i am sure he will n't make it because he on't have guts to kill lion he can kill cow boz she is helpless... I am always open for debate on non veg and veg... Dharmender Karhana
There's nothing inherently wrong with eating animals

While i disagree that animals are capable of being moral, If they are, then is it not also true that animals would also be capable of immoral acts? Take for instance infanticide in wild chimpanzees, does the fact that chimps can kill and eat their offspring imply that humans are morally justified in doing the same? The way that animals behave is "designed" by evolution, but their is no designer in this process, and no ethics behind the behaviours of animals as they do not consider the moral value of their actions. Therefore to appeal to nature to defend an ethical principle is flawed. While killing may be justifiable in some circumstances at the extremes of survival, the eating of meat is not required for any aspect of our health, and eating a meat free diet may reduce the occurrence of many diseases including cancer, heart disease and diabetes. As most people will never encounter those conditions under which killing of any animal is necessary for survival, the eating of meat by those people is wrong.