One of the central affectations of the modern left is the irrepressible practice of attaching a modifier to the noun “justice.” Apparently, seeking to achieve plain old ordinary justice is not enough, even though Plato should have taught us in The Republic that simple justice is difficult enough to attain without any special adjectives. But the left is all about “social justice” (is there such a thing as “anti-social justice”?), and, lately, “climate justice”—the phrase appears in the Paris Climate Accord. What does it mean: everyone is entitled to the same climate?

Add to this “food justice.” Okay, maybe this could mean that everyone should be assured of basic nutrition, food being a daily necessity for all human beings. But that would be wrong, of course.

The slide immediately below comes to me from an informant who is having to suffer through a conference on “food justice,” where, this slide informs us, “black veganism” isn’t something to do with beans. This is not The Onion. It’s for real.

Here perhaps it is time to give a shout out to the late Anthony Bourdain, whose politics supposedly ran to the left, but who clearly wasn’t crazy. This, from his Kitchen Confidential:

“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.” “I don’t have any understanding of it. Being a vegan is a first-world phenomenon, completely self-indulgent.”

I’m with Bourdain, as any viewer of my Facebook grilling page knows: