Sign these kids up for EATAPETA Day

“Meatless Monday” at Bowdoin college backfired, big-time. The students organized a protest by finding their own ways to eat meat for dinner.

Dozens of students held an impromptu barbecue outside one facility in protest. Two other students sold McDonald’s cheeseburgers while simultaneously raising funds for a local humane society. Another group of students ate buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken inside the dining hall.

How is it that no matter how often it’s tried, people who think that forcing us to do what they think is right simply create resistance to whatever their cause was in the first place?

But Doug Johnston, a junior who helped organize the barbecue (and who said he and his friends consider themselves generally to be liberal), said that as soon as he heard about Meatless Monday, “we were saying, ‘This isn’t quite right.’ ”

He explained that “the assumption that is implied by saying we need to raise awareness by having Meatless Monday is that people aren’t aware,” which he questions. “I think taking away the option to moderately eat meat from those who are aware of the issues — it upset me, that they decided I shouldn’t have access to meat on Monday, denying the option to eat meat even moderately.”

Johnston found an irony in the fact that much of the “Meatless Monday” campaign focused on eating less meat, in having a more balanced diet, yet the organizers made the day completely meat-free.

Note that the kids are self-identified liberals, and even they are rebelling against the nanny statism of the college. I think the kids coming out of high school and college today are far more independent than they are made out to be. I think you’re going to see the pendulum swing back to the middle, after being so far left, for so long. The battle over the unions in Wisconsin is just the first of many.