Neal McCluskey
CATO @ Liberty
3/1/2010
A few months ago I highlighted a report about growing college-student “activism” focused not on lofty ideals like ending war or oppression, but on taking money out of taxpayers’ wallets and putting it into students’. Well today I apologize for doubting the high-minded idealism of at least some of our crusading college kids. Yes, recent student rioting in Berkeley, California was partially animated by outrage over moves to have students pay more for their massively subsidized educations, but the property destruction was about much, MUCH more than that:
Crowds outside the building continued to swell, and by about 1:30 a.m., people began to clash with police, throwing bottles, setting trash ablaze and breaking several windows on Telegraph, including the plate-glass front windows of a Subway sandwich shop, police said. Protesters lit a large garbage container on fire, then rolled it into the street…
A protest leader, UC Berkeley student Callie Maidhof, defended the vandalism and said rioters targeted the sandwich shop because a second Subway is scheduled to open on campus, just across Bancroft Way.
“There will be two Subways within 100 feet of each other,” she said.
The Vietnam War. Crushing racial segregation. A glut of hoagie shops! The student battle for justice clearly goes on! And Californians have much more to look forward to: Thursday will be a statewide “Day of Action,” and in addition to deafening demands for continued taking from taxpayers, students will no doubt also give Fuddruckers, or maybe even Starbucks, it’s long-deserved comeuppance.
The day of liberation – and really amped-up rent-seeking — is finally at hand!
