Is Sunstein a good target on “czars”?

From http://www.stopsunstein.com/

“We ought to ban hunting”

- Cass Sunstein, in a 2007 speech at Harvard University

“[A]lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine. And if the Court is right, then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. ”

- Cass Sunstein, writing in his book, “Radicals in Robes”

“Animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives …”

- 2004 book Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions

“[Humans’] willingness to subject animals to unjustified suffering will be seen … as a form of unconscionable barbarity… morally akin to slavery and the mass extermination of human beings.”

- Cass Sunstein, in a 2007 speech at Harvard University

“[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, in scientific experiments, and in agriculture.”

- Cass Sunstein, “The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer,”
August 2002.

“A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily
in the interest of citizenship and
self-government.”

-Cass Sunstein, arguing for a Fairness Doctrine for the
Internet in his book, Republic.com 2.0 (page 137).

Akzed on September 9, 2009 at 10:45 AM

Consider the view that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to own guns. The view is respectable, but it may be wrong, and prominent specialists reject it on
various grounds. As late as 1980, it would have been preposterous to argue that the Second Amendment creates an individual right to own guns, and no federal court
invalidated a gun control restriction on Second Amendment grounds until 2007. Yet countless Americans politicians, in recent years, have acknowledged that they respect the
individual right to bear arms, at least in general terms. Their views are a product of the energetic efforts of meaning entrepreneurs – some from the National Rifle Association, who have press a particular view of the Second Amendment. –Cass R. Sunstein, A Constitution of Many Minds, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 172-173

Akzed on September 9, 2009 at 10:47 AM

The National Association of Broadcasters and others with similar economic interests typically use the First Amendment in precisely the same way the National Rifle
Association uses the Second Amendment. We should think of the two camps as jurisprudential twins. The National Association of Broadcasters is prepared to make selfserving
and outlandish claims about the First Amendment before the public and before the courts, and to pay lawyers and publicists a lot of money to help establish those claims.
(Perhaps they will ultimately succeed.) The National Rifle Association does the same thing with the Second Amendment. In both cases, those whose social and economic interests are at stake are prepared to use the Constitution, however implausibly invoked, in order to give a veneer of principle and respectability to arguments that would otherwise seem hopelessly partisan and self-interested. –Cass R. Sunstein, Republic 2.0, Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 173

Akzed on September 9, 2009 at 10:48 AM

To the extent that they weaken the power of the general interest intermediaries and increase people’s ability to wall themselves off from topics and opinions that they would
prefer to avoid, emerging technologies, including the Internet, create serious dangers.

I don’t want government regulation of the blogosphere in the form of mandated links or mandated civility or, you know, if you’re doing liberal ideas on your site you have to
have conservative ideas too. I don’t want any of that stuff… But I do have some ideas and they’re about private voluntary solutions. One is that blog providers, either writers or those who operate them should, if they are involved in opinion – at least most of the time, work hard to obey norms of, let’s call them, civility and diversity. So not complete diversity. You’re entitled to have a point of view. But to think that some of the time if people are reading you its good to catch their eye with something that might irritate them a bit. – Bloggingheads.tv, Cass R. Sunstein, University of Chicago Law School and Eugene Volokh, The Volokh Conspiracy, UCLA Law School video debate, recorded May 27, 2008 and posted June 2, 2008.

==Well, Ed & Allah are already on board…

Akzed on September 9, 2009 at 10:58 AM

Consider the “fairness doctrine,” now largely abandoned but once requiring radio and television broadcasters:
…[I]n light of astonishing economic and technological changes, we must doubt whether, as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving democratic goals. It is past time for a large-scale reassessment of the appropriate role of the First Amendment in the democratic process. –Cass R. Sunstein, Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech, The Free Press, 1995, p. xi

A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government. –Cass Sunstein, arguing for a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet in his book,
Republic.com 2.0 (Princeton University Press, 2007), p.137

[M]any people all over the world have become even more concerned about the risks of a situation in which like-minded people speak or listen mostly to one another…Democracy does best with what James Madison called ‘yielding and accommodating spirit,’ and
that spirit is at risk whenever people sort themselves into enclaves in which their own views and commitments are constantly reaffirmed… [S]uch sorting should not be
identified with freedom, and much less with democratic self-government. –Cass Sunstein, arguing for a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet in his book, Republic.com 2.0 (Princeton University Press, 2007), p. xii

Akzed on September 9, 2009 at 11:02 AM

My major aim in this book is to uncover an important but neglected part of America’s heritage: the idea of a second bill of rights. In brief, the second bill attempts to protect both opportunity and security, by creating rights to employment, adequate food and clothing, decent shelter, education, recreation, and medical care. — Cass R. Sunstein, The Second Bill of Rights: FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need it More Than Ever, Basic Books, New York, 2004, p. 1

Much of the time, the United States seems to have embraced a confused and pernicious form of individualism. This approach endorses rights of private property and freedom of
contract, and respects political liberty, but claims to distrust “government intervention” and insists that people must fend for themselves. This form of so-called individualism is incoherent, a tangle of confusions.
– Cass R. Sunstein, The Second Bill of Rights: FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need it More Than Ever, Basic Books, New York, 2004, p. 3

In a nutshell, the New Deal helped vindicate a simple idea: No one really opposes government intervention. Even the people who most loudly denounce government interference depend on it every day. — Cass R. Sunstein, The Second Bill of Rights: FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need it More Than Ever, Basic Books, New York, 2004, p. 19

Akzed on September 9, 2009 at 11:05 AM