There was a time when The New Republic was a bastion of sanity in a sea of crazy Leftists.

That was a long time ago, though, under the leadership of Marty Peretz, who is now a pariah among Leftists. Under the magazine’s banner columnists such as Mickey Kaus and Jacob Weisberg, along with Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke, Sidney Blumenthal, Robert Kuttner, Ronald Steel, Michael Walzer, and Irving Howe. The writers were mostly center left to center right.

These days you get articles more along this line:

If we’re serious about rationally managing resources and building a more sustainable food system, then surely such a brutal, inefficient, polluting industry as meat should be first on the chopping block, @jan_dutkiewicz writes. https://t.co/Exson4lRjU

— The New Republic (@newrepublic) October 21, 2022

If you aren’t aware, animal rights and climate change activists have banded together to wake up the normies like us to the dangers of animal husbandry. We are torturing animals (I have modest sympathy for this argument) and destroying Mother Earth (I have no sympathy for this argument) in order to feed our insatiable appetite for meat and dairy products. Their solution is to pour out milk in protest of our indifference to Gaia.

Milk Pours are currently happening across the UK. All are concerned individuals calling on the government to give us a livable future, a #PlantBasedFuture

Here's the latest milk pour happening in Edinburgh @waitrose pic.twitter.com/mawKIylEmI

— Animal Rebellion (@RebelsAnimal) October 15, 2022

There is nothing new about spoiled brats acting like spoiled brats, and many folks go through an insanity phase in their teens and early 20s. Ever since we invented adolescence (which is mostly a creation of a post-industrial economy and the upper-middle class) these people with resources but no responsibility have decided that their real job is to change the world through pointless acts of vandalism.

What is disturbing is the growing cast of older characters who should know better, but don’t. The belief that the world is in such a crisis that direct action is necessary in largely democratic society is absurd on its face, and anybody over 25 should be embarrassed to be associated with it.

Instead our intellectual class revels in it. Teachers lead their students in protests, academics kowtow to students who strike out in tantrums, and magazine and newspaper columnists shout their approval from the rooftops, or at the very least cluck cluck their disapproval of the methods while applauding their cause.

Here is a Scottish government Minister defending the protests:

"Soup being thrown over a Van Gogh masterpiece cause people didn't want new licences to be granted in the North Sea? Milk emptied onto the floor of a supermarket in Edinburgh? As a Scottish Government Minister, Do you endorse these forms of protest?" #SackHarvie #ResignSturgeon pic.twitter.com/Jg0eRwE9QF

— Marko Polo (@markthehibby) October 16, 2022

Grown adults gluing themselves to floors or pavement, children pouring out milk or throwing soup at priceless artworks, and all the other idiocy we see every day should be rejected by every sane person, yet there are plenty of opinion writers and academics who applaud the tactics as necessary to wake the world up to the real or imagined crises they decry.

Yet today we see things like this:

Our society is filled with people whose view of proper discourse is temper tantrums, not the rational weighing of costs and benefit. When world leaders bow down to teenagers who skip school to protest climate change the target of our anger shouldn’t be the teenager, but the adults who embrace her. The same with these idiots. We should publicly shame every adult who cheers on these absurd displays of childishness.