I’m not sure why everyone is so up in arms about “Pink Slime” meat.

As a former student in the Texas public school system, I have eaten grade “E” meat for most of my life, and there are no immediate health effects. Honestly, I applaud the ingenuity of our scientists to be able to strip all possible meat ­— edible and partially edible — from a carcass and turn it into something that school children, prisoners, pets and Taco Bell patrons can enjoy.

This “waste not” mentality is exactly the direction that America needs to take. As populations expand, it would be irresponsible of us to not mechanically separate every possible piece of meat from everything we eat. The only other possible solution to our imminent food shortage problems would be some sort of low-population eugenics.

Which is not to say that I support eugenics — except for the sort that are achieved through semi-natural means.

Social Darwinism comes to mind — cut social services and health care for the poor and let the cream rise to the top. The problem with social Darwinism is that it doesn’t foster physical strength in those that move up the social ladder. The ones that triumph in social Darwinism are the clever, and there are already enough clever people at the top.

That’s what Governor Romney doesn’t realize about his proposals. If that pasty, non-Leaguer has his way, our society will be full of clever, doughy white people — which is not what we need as a species.

Our species needs to be reforged in the crucible of natural selection whence it was formed.

Face it, our previous attempts to whittle down the undesirable parts of our population have failed spectacularly. Fast food, foreign conflict, video games and environmental contaminants fail to produce quick results because they lack the daily threat of death.

The fact is, when people are constantly looking over their shoulder for sources of painful death, they don’t think too much about social change. They also tend to buy more impulsively, which will be a boon to our economy.

The only problem is where to find something that can do the job reliably. Assassins can’t be trusted, and a war on U.S. soil would make us look bad abroad.

There’s only one logical solution — tigers.

Think about it, we’ve got thousands of the big, stripy things locked up in zoos. It would just be a matter of cloning them to increase the numbers, giving them a taste for poor people, and letting them loose. Nothing strikes fear in a person like a 400-pound Bengal tiger breathing down their neck.

It could be done without anyone noticing it at first. Those tree-hugging liberal pansies won’t say anything because tigers are an endangered species. They’ll eat it up.

Plus, the whole “freedom-to-do-whatever-the-hell-you-want” movement is perfect for this. We can even take it further than that weird little Texan. The banks are free to foreclose on your house, and — if you’re not eaten first — you’re free to blow it up. The saboteurs can be rounded up and then fed to tigers. I bet we could even broadcast it on the Internet.

And can you imagine what it will mean for those meddling kids? Legalize pot and most of the dangerous ones will be so drugged out that they won’t a problem. Sure, feel free to lie stoned in the gutter, just don’t come crying to the government when a tiger comes and eats you.

The only problem with that would be the all the stoned tigers wandering around, if that can even be called a problem. They’ll go nuts on the weed and get some major, tiger-sized munchies. It won’t be our fault if people walking around drunk just happen to taste like Doritos and beer.

That’s seriously the only way I could get behind Romney at this point. Maybe he could change his slogan to “Fewer Taxes, More Tigers.”

Food for thought.

Rob Bradfield is a senior journalism news-editorial major from Waco and is a staff writer for the Lariat.