Clintonite Robert Reich, who now teaches at UC Berkeley, recently said Free Introduction in an interview with the NYT magazine:
What are the disadvantages of shortness? I was bullied a lot when I was a kid. I was actually beat up because I was little. People frequently tell me in interviews that they were bullied as children. But no one ever steps forward and says, “I was the bully.” They don’t want to admit to being a bully.
What do you think playground bullies grow up to be? Right-wing Republicans.
He must not get out much in Berkeley and the Bay Area. It’s not right-wing Republicans assaulting police officers, abusing government authority to try and drive out the Marines, 发薪 nationwide war on recruiters及 terrorizing researchers in the name of animal rights.
On that last story, which I blogged about last month, here’s a 跟进:
In the hills above the University of California’s Berkeley campus, nine protesters gathered in front of the home of a toxicology professor, their faces covered with scarves and hoods despite the warm spring weather.
One scrawled “killer” in chalk on the scientist’s doorstep, while another hurled insults through a bullhorn and announced, “Your neighbor kills animals!” Someone shattered a window.
Borrowing the kind of tactics used by anti-abortion demonstrators, animal rights activists are increasingly taking their rage straight to scientists’ front doors.
Over the past couple of years, more and more researchers who experiment on animals have been harassed and terrorized in their own homes, with weapons that include firebombs, flooding and acid…
…The Washington-based Foundation for Biomedical Research said researchers were harassed or otherwise victimized more than 70 times in 2003, up from just 10 the year before. The number of attacks has held steady or risen ever since, according to the group.
Activists say the escalation in tactics results from a frustration that nonviolent methods have failed to stop what they call the needless torture and killing of animals.
“An animal has as much of a right to life as we do. To take a life without provocation is immoral, it’s violent, there’s no excuse for it,” said Jacob Black, 23, an organizer of demonstrations at the homes of UC Berkeley researchers. “To name and shame these people as morally bankrupt individuals in our society is key.”
Care to comment, Professor Reich?