Kagan and the Cass Sunstein Connection

On Monday I did a broad overview report on Who is Elena Kagan. While doing research on Kagan, I realized that although she does have a pretty light paper trail on her firm opinions regarding controversial issues, her opinions that are public knowledge are very concerning – especially her opinions on First Amendment rights. However, I missed one very important clue that allows us to delve the mind of Kagan. That clue is Cass Sunstein. There is an old saying that you can tell who a person is by looking at their friends. Well, I am not certain if Elena Kagan and Cass Sunstein are friends, but she definitely had some very enthusiastic words to say about him:

“Cass Sunstein is the preeminent legal scholar of our time — the most wide-ranging, the most prolific, the most cited, and the most influential. His work in any one of the fields he pursues — administrative law and policy, constitutional law and theory, behavioral economics and law, environmental law, to name a non-exhaustive few — would put him in the very front ranks of legal scholars; the combination is singular and breathtaking.”

Understanding that Kagan thinks so highly of Cass Sunstein, we must take a look at who he is exactly and what he believes. Luckily, his paper trail is long and detailed as he has been very outspoken about his opinions.

Cass Sunstein is considered by some to be the most dangerous man in America. His socialist views on everything from the redistribution of wealth to the redistribution of speech is about as radical as it gets in America. He is a well versed scholar of constitutional, administrative, and environmental law, as well as behavioral economics. He has been a law professor at the University of Chicago for 27 years and he is also a professor at Harvard Law School. Sunstein is still a professor at both schools, but his status has changed to ‘visiting professor’ at the University of Chicago and ‘professor on leave’ at Harvard when he went on to serve as an advisor to Obama’s campaign. Now Sunstein works as Obama’s Regulation Czar – his title officially being the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Take a look at Cass Sunstein in his own words:

Sustein has suggested that American rights come from the government, while promoting that Americans should celebrate paying taxes, in his The Chicago Tribune article, Why We Should Celebrate Paying Taxes

“In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live”

”Without taxes there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending.”

“In any case, to recognize the dependency of property rights on the contributions of the whole community, managed by the government, is to repel the rhetorical attack on welfare rights as somehow deeply un-American, and totally alien or different in kind from classical or “real” rights. No right can be exercised independently, for every rights-holder has a claim on public resources–on money that has been extracted from citizens at large.”

“For all rights–call them negative, call them positive–have that effect. There is no liberty without dependency. That is why we should celebrate tax day.”

Broadcast: Sunstein proposes in his book The Partial Constitution, a First Amendment New Deal forcing the “moral obligation” of airing opposing viewpoints on broadcast companies.

“In a market system, this goal [of airing diverse views] may be compromised. It is hardly clear that ‘the freedom of speech’ is promoted by a regime in which people are permitted to speak only if other people are willing to pay enough to allow them to be heard.”

“The notion that access [to the airwaves] will be a product of the marketplace might well be constitutionally troublesome.”

“It seems quite possible that a law that contained regulatory remedies would promote rather than undermine the ‘freedom of speech.”

Sunstein’s argument that somehow regulating free speech will promote free speech is about as idiotic as Bush’s argument that he “abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”

Internet: Sunstein suggests the internet poses a threat to democracy because it promotes cyberbalkanization.

“Sites of one point of view [would] agree to provide links to other sites, so that if you’re reading a conservative magazine, they would provide a link to a liberal site and vice versa, just to make it easy for people to get access to competing views. Or maybe a pop-up on your screen that would show an advertisement or maybe even a quick argument for a competing view. [break] The best would be for this to be done voluntarily, but the word ‘voluntary’ is a little complicated, and sometimes people don’t do what’s best for our society unless Congress holds hearings or unless the public demands it. And the idea would be to have a legal mandate as the last resort, and to make sure it’s as neutral as possible if we have to get there, but to have that as, you know, an ultimate weapon designed to encourage people to do better.” (2001 interview)

Sunstein did later retract this statement, suggesting that it was a bad idea. Maybe because he realized he was the only person suggesting those pesky pop-up windows?

Sunstein has argued for the redistribution of wealth, both in America and globally. Here is what he had to say about local redistribution of wealth:

“The absence of a European-style social welfare state is certainly connected with the widespread perception among the white majority that the relevant programs would disproportionately benefit African Americans (and more recently Hispanics).” (Brietbart)

Now on global redistribution of America’s wealth too poor nations, through climate change which compliments my article on Crime Inc.:

“It is even possible that desirable redistribution is more likely to occur through climate change policy than otherwise, or to be accomplished more effectively through climate policy than through direct foreign aid.”

“If the United States agrees to participate in a climate change agreement on terms that are not in the nation’s interest, but that help the world as a whole, there would be no reason for complaint, certainly if such participation is more helpful to poor nations than conventional foreign-aid alternatives.”

“If we care about social welfare, we should approve of a situation in which a wealthy nation is willing to engage in a degree of self-sacrifice when the world benefits more than that nation loses.”

Following FDR’s lead, Sunstein again suggests in his book that Americans rights exist only to as granted by the government. Mandates laid out in his book include:

- The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

- The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

- The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

- The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

- The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

- The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

I could continue detailing Cass Sunstein’s radical socialist views, but the quotes I listed above are more than enough to clearly show what he believes. Discover The Networks has much more information on Sunstein if you have not gotten enough already.

The primary point I am drawing is, if Elena Kagan believes so passionately that Sunstein is the “the most influential”, “preeminent legal scholar of our time”, should we not take that to understand that she almost certainly believes what he believes. I absolutely think so, particularly when Kagan has made similar comments regarding the regulation of free speech, which I detailed on Monday.

Kagan is clearly a highly educated, socialist thinker. If she is appointed to the nation’s highest court at the age of 50, she will no doubt cause enormous harm to our nation for decades. Senators must take a step back from any personal bias they may have on Kagan and oppose her for the sake of preserving the Constitution of the United States.

From my files:

Obama Regulation Czar: Organ Harvesting Without Consent
Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Cass Sunstein, has advocated that laws be changed so that deceased patients’ organs may be harvested for transplant without prior consent from the patient or family.
Sunstein and co-author Richard H. Thaler outlined the policy in their 2008 book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Many organs that could be used in transplants are lost because patients fail to give their consent before dying, Sunstein and Thaler note, and family members often refuse to donate their loved one’s organs.
This “explicit consent” should be turned into a “presumed consent,” write Sunstein and Thaler, where laws would assume that, unless people explicitly choose not to, they want to donate their organs to science for transplant or other medical uses.

Also see:

The Future's Shadow (Obama's Organ Harvesting Plan)

That man is just evil, the next step is involuntary euthanasia for those not deemed "productive", you can count on it.

There is another thread today about the liberalism of professors in America's colleges and universities. On that thread I posted an excerpt from a Thomas Jefferson letter about the degree of ignorance about liberty and freedom in Europe (the old world) and the oppression and poverty which accompanied it versus the spread of the light of liberty in America.

Yet, here, with a glorious 200-year history of America's progress, prosperity and generosity, its noble history of being a refuge for the oppressed from all over the world, we have these intellectual midgets of today like Sunstein and now, Kagan, fawning over each other to make us more like the Europe of 200 years ago.

How astounding!

For any who may not have read Jefferson's words, here is my post on the other thread: Clearly, the "professors" at most colleges and universities have, for many years, not spent much time in what this writer calls the "dusty stacks" of libraries--at least in the American History section of those stacks!

Had they spent time in the writings of America's Founders, they would not have been teaching Marx and Mao and undermining the very ideas which have allowed them their so-called "academic freedom" to propagandize the nation's youth.

A reading of the following excerpt from a letter written from abroad by Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe on August 13, 1786, speaks of the lack of "emancipation of the minds" of Europeans of that day and of the necessity for teaching the ideas of liberty to rising generations of Americans in order to enlighten their minds and preserve freedom:

"The European papers have announced that the assembly of Virginia were occupied on the revisal of their code of laws. This, with some other similar intelligence, has contributed much to convince the people of Europe, that what the English papers are constantly publishing of our anarchy, is false; as they are sensible that such a work is that of a people only who are in perfect tranquillity. Our act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. The ambassadors & ministers of the several nations of Europe resident at this court have asked of me copies of it to send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in several books now in the press; among others, in the new Encyclopedie.

"I think it will produce considerable good even in these countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty, & oppression of body & mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the people, that their redemption from them can never be hoped. If the Almighty had begotten a thousand sons, instead of one, they would not have sufficed for this task. If all the sovereigns of Europe were to set themselves to work to emancipate the minds of their subjects from their present ignorance & prejudices, & that as zealously as they now endeavor the contrary, a thousand years would not place them on that high ground on which our common people are now setting out. Ours could not have been so fairly put into the hands of their own common sense had they not been separated from their parent stock & kept from contamination, either from them, or the other people of the old world, by the intervention of so wide an ocean. To know the worth of this, one must see the want of it here. I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowlege among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness. If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, or priests are good conservators of the public happiness send them here. It is the best school in the universe to cure them of that folly. They will see here with their own eyes that these descriptions of men are an abandoned confederacy against the happiness of the mass of the people. The omnipotence of their effect cannot be better proved than in this country particularly, where notwithstanding the finest soil upon earth, the finest climate under heaven, and a people of the most benevolent, the most gay and amiable character of which the human form is susceptible, where such a people I say, surrounded by so many blessings from nature, are yet loaded with misery by kings, nobles and priests, and by them alone. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils, and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests & nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance."

Jefferson's final point here is important, for by allowing the Progressives of the 20th Century to censor the Founders' ideas of liberty from America's school textbooks, from the teachings in the colleges, universities, and law schools, we have the present crop of pseudointellectuals who dominate the current Administration, media, academia, and now, alas, threaten to become Supreme Court justices.

These folks, ignorant of the history of civilization's struggle for liberty, wish to take on the failed ideas from which the Founders fled Europe. The Chicago political elitist class, one supposes, constitutes the "nobles" Jefferson envisioned who might rise up, were the Americans to fail to teach rising generations the ideas of liberty.

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