Cass Sunstein: Yet Another Wacky Totalitarian Czar

by Van Helsing | July 23, 2009 2:11 pm

What a coincidence — another one of Chairman Zero’s “Czars” just happens to be a totalitarian screwball. Cass Sunstein is the Moonbat Messiah’s pick for Regulatory Czar. Considering the mountains of extraneous regulations that accrue in the District of Criminals with each passing day, he’ll have many opportunities to apply his ideology. Knowledge Is Power[1] introduces us to his point of view.

Sunstain believes in “libertarian paternalism.” This phrase means that statists plan to do to the word libertarian what they did to the word liberal. Here’s how Buttstain explains it[2]:

The idea of libertarian paternalism might seem to be an oxymoron, but it is both possible and legitimate for private and public institutions to affect behavior while also respecting freedom of choice. Often people’s preferences are ill-formed, and their choices will inevitably be influenced by default rules, framing effects, and starting points. In these circumstances, a form of paternalism cannot be avoided. Equipped with an understanding of behavioral findings of bounded rationality and bounded self-control, libertarian paternalists should attempt to steer people’s choices in welfare-promoting directions without eliminating freedom of choice. It is also possible to show how a libertarian paternalist might select among the possible options and to assess how much choice to offer.

In other words, our authoritarian masters will be “libertarian” by letting us decide if we want our cot on the left side of the cell or the right side.

Cass gets even wackier[3]:

[R]epresentatives of animals should be able to bring private suits to ensure that anticruelty and related laws are actually enforced. Of course, any animals would be represented by human beings, just like any other litigant who lacks ordinary (human) competence; for example, the interests of children are protected by prosecutors, and also by trustees and guardians in private litigation brought on children’s behalf. … If getting rid of the idea that animals are property is helpful in reducing suffering, then we should get rid of the idea that animals are property.

If the government is going to treat citizens like farm animals, why shouldn’t animals be treated like citizens? Sorry, hunters!

This sounds especially ominous:

The cruel and abusive practices generally involved in contemporary farming are largely unregulated at the state level.

Now might be a good time to start stockpiling food. Maybe next week’s crisis requiring immediate draconian legislation will be animal oppression, solvable only by federal seizure of all farms. Something similar kept Stalin in power for a generation.

Unsurprisingly, Ass doesn’t like the Internet:

We hardly need to imagine a world, however, in which people and institutions are being harmed by the rapid spread of damaging falsehoods via the Internet. We live in that world. What might be done to reduce the harm?

Let me guess: Regulate online communication.

Sure enough, Sunstein thinks bloggers should be held punishable for anything any commenter says that can’t be proven to be true. FDR killed the Tenth Amendment; this Ivy League cockroach might help Chairman Zero do the same to the First.

cass-sunstein.jpg
What could be more humiliating than this twerp’s loafer on our faces?

On a tip from V the K[4]. Cross-posted at Moonbattery[5].

Endnotes:
  1. Knowledge Is Power: http://www.sondrak.com/index.php/weblog/czarcon_encrusted_tweezers/
  2. explains it: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=405940
  3. even wackier: http://www.cattlenetwork.com/Content.asp?ContentID=328617
  4. V the K: http://kurlander.blogspot.com/
  5. Moonbattery: http://www.moonbattery.com/

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