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Freedom-hating “nudger” appointed to regulatory post

Skip Oliva writes about the appointment of Harvard law school professor Cass R. Sunstein as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. This is one of the most important “regulatory” (murder/slavery-mongering) bureaucracies in the federal government. There isn’t much I could add to Oliva’s post. Except to link to my own post about the idiocy and anti-libertarianism of “libertarian paternalism”, which was a lot of fun to write and fun for many people to read, I understand.

I did like two passages that Oliva quoted in his post. First, from David Gordon, critiquing Sunstein and Thaler’s conception of “libertarian paternalism”:

In their view, only actions that meet rigid requirements count as full choices. Smokers, research indicates, haven’t fully taken into account the heath risks of smoking. Thus, they cannot be said “really” to choose to smoke. Further, people are often subject to so-called “framing” effects: they will “choose” differently when confronted with identical options, depending on how the options are presented. Choices in these circumstances, Thaler and Sunstein aver, are problematic: how can we say that people in the grip of conceptual illusions are freely choosing?

In other words, their own ideas of choice and individual rights fail under their own argument’s premises.

What is left? Given the authors’ wide net, few actions count as rational choices. There is thus practically unlimited scope for the state to suppress liberty: in doing so, it is not interfering with what the self “really” wants. True enough, the authors preach a mild doctrine. Nudges, not force, are on their agenda. But they lack a rational basis for this limit. If people do not “really” choose their actions, why not forcibly restrict them? After all, doing so may enable them better to achieve what they “really” want—as experts, suitably instructed by Thaler and Sunstein, determine.

Second was a critique written by Tom Palmer of Sunstein’s earlier book, The Cost of Rights:

Mild-mannered University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein has been advancing the radical notion that all rights—including rights usually held to be “against” the state, such as the right to freedom of speech and the right not to be arbitrarily imprisoned or tortured—are grants from the state. In a book co-authored with Stephen Holmes, The Cost of Rights, he argued that “all legal rights are, or aspire to be, welfare rights,” that is, positive grants from the state. There is no difference in kind between the right not to be tortured and the right to taxpayer-subsidized dental care.

[Sunstein and Holmes fully endorse FDR's] “second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all.” Among the rights FDR proposed were the rights to “a useful and remunerative job,” “a decent home,” “adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health,” “adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment,” and “a good education.”

…he states that “if the nation becomes committed to certain rights, they may migrate into the Constitution itself”.

Uh, I already read about how that would turn out, and I didn’t like it one bit. (Btw, I have that movie on VHS. It is so rare. It’s one of my most prized possessions.)

There is no one who understands the first thing about freedom or individualism who would mistake a single thought excreted by this useless piece of shit for anything remotely approaching libertarian. It isn’t even paternalistic. It is pure militant fascism.

Cass R. Sunstein would shoot you and your family right in your foreheads before allowing you to live your lives as you please, as free, sovereign individuals.

Posted in Fascism, Obama failures, Philosophy, Statolatry, Stupid, Unrealistic