There’s nothing new about the anti-globalization movement – it’s just another chance for a small self-selected elite to demonstrate its moral superiority over the rest of us, and as usual this latest generation of prigs, saints and busybodies is doing so by demonstrations of conspicuous non-consumption, the ascetic self-indulgence that has persisted through generations of the annoying, from hermits to Savanarola, to early Bolsheviks to the grotesques at the Center for ‘Science’ in the ‘Public Interest’ and to far too many others. Unfortunately, these sorts of people are never just content to pose – they have programs to work out, plans to set and laws to impose – all so the rest of us can’t make decisions of which they disapprove. And if their actions involve theft, confiscation, compulsion or the destruction of private property, so much the better.

Here’s a prime example from France:

“The McDonalds franchise located in Paris at Strasbourg St. Denis has been shut down by striking workers for the better part of a year. Now the strikers are occupying the McDonalds and using it as a storefront to sell t-shirts to fund striking French artists and anything that José Bove [the ‘peasant’ totalitarian who destroyed another McDonalds] is up to at the moment. So here we have the confiscation of private property that has been turned into a squat, and illegal commerce, and nothing is done about it.”

Via the blogger at Merde in France (as its name would suggest, this blog contains, ahem, ‘indelicate’ language.