Jonah Goldberg makes an interesting argument in the latest dead-tree version of National Review: Many liberals would like the world to function more like a college campus.
I concede that this particular scenario hardly reflects the full reality of campus life. Vast numbers of students work their way through school or take out crippling student loans. But for a certain type of elite student, the campus provides the illusion of an ideal life ? one divided between having fun and doing good, all on somebody else’s dime ? a model that he carries with him after graduation. He may be able to put off the real world for a long time ? the five-year plan, grad school ? but once he earns his Ph.D. in social work and enters a career in which he makes less money than your neighborhood barrista, he is inclined to look for the same kind of support he enjoyed in college, with government grants replacing the allowance his parents gave him.
What implications does this have for policy?
Michael Bloomberg doesn’t think he’s infringing on individual rights; he sees himself as an administrator making the responsible decisions to offer more healthy food in the cafeteria and ban smoking in the dorm. Barack Obama’s “beer summit” was idiotic from a normal adult’s perspective, but entirely normal from the campus perspective. Don’t think of Nancy Pelosi as a wide-eyed, aging hippie, but as the maternal dean of students for all of the American people. The End of History for liberals is not, as Francis Fukuyama had it, liberal democracy, but a vast college campus, where all are nurtured, encouraged, supported, educated ? and told what to do, for their own good. In other words, Canada with a better meal plan.
