Cass Sunstein: Regulatory Czar

Our new unelected, unconfirmed, unaccountable, and unconstitutional Regulatory Czar is Cass Sunstein, a law professor and longtime adviser to Barack Obama. In 1999 Sunstein co-authored an article entitled “Why We Should Celebrate Paying Taxes”. To call the article “appalling” is an understatement. It begins by, basically, crediting government with all of civilization’s progress.

“It’s our money, and we want to keep it!”

“Why should the IRS take our money, when the government wastes it and we want to spend it on ourselves!”

These are piercing sentiments, especially on April 15. But are they defensible? 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 support from bank regulators? Could we spend it (say, on the installment plan) if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live?

Do not get up tomorrow and drape your house in black! For tax day is not a day of national mourning. 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.

Cass Sunstein is crediting government with creating wealth, implying that property rights emanate from government. I believe it’s self-evidently logical to equate “taxes” with “government” when reading Sunstein’s article. Government is not responsible for individual innovators and entrepreneurs. If these men of the mind did not put their faculties to use and create wealth, there would be nothing for the tax collectors to collect. As for the emanation of property rights; I’ve stated before my firm belief that they are a natural by-product of man’s right to his life.

There should be no question that man’s life is his and his alone. If we accept this basic premise, we see also that he has an inalienable right to his property. If, by his time (i.e. his life), he has produced property (this would also apply to maintaining property, such as land) he has the right to that property. When man works, he is, in effect, trading his time (a portion of his life) for whatever it is that he is producing. Because he had a right to his time/life, he has a right to whatever thing he traded it for.

As for Sunstein’s claim that government coordinators are necessary to effectively allocate resources – it’s barely worth responding to. The record of history is indisputable that (with the exception of certain non-rivalrous, non-excludable goods and services) the invisible hand of the free market (i.e. individuals acting in their own selfish interests) is far superior to any centrally-planned effort.

But perhaps I’ve jumped the gun. Cass Sunstein offers some examples of the validity of his ideas:

Indeed, property owners are more deeply “dependent” on government than food-stamp recipients. The man who purchases several news organizations owes more to legislative, adjudicative and administrative action than the woman who sleeps under one newspaper at a time.

While it is true that the property owner may be subject to more legislative, adjudicative, and administrative action than the homeless woman, he is hardly “dependent” on government. To the contrary, government is a roadblock in his path of fulfilling his potential as a human being. Government protects property rights because that is a more efficient system than each individual protecting his own property.

Even if we lived in a perfect world, there would still be some need for a government to protect against the possibility of looters attempting to attack the rights of human beings. Perhaps in Cass Sunstein’s perfect world, businessmen are extremely dependent on the government – or to put it more accurately: in Cass Sunstein’s perfect world, the individual is dependent on the collective. I, for one, would call this type of world a hell on earth (those unfortunate soul’s who lived in Soviet Russia under Joseph Stalin would likely agree with me). Some might say that I’m reading too much into Sunstein’s comments. Sadly, this is not so. Sunstein goes on to say:

This is all a truism, in a way. But it has yet to become a commonplace. Its implications are seldom thought through. Most importantly, the dependency of individual freedoms on collective contributions has not sufficiently penetrated the American debate over our basic rights and the proper limits of the state.

Unfortunately for Sunstein and his depraved philosophy, observable reality does not support his premises. There is no such thing as “collective contributions” because there is no such thing as a “collective” among mankind. Man exists as an individual. Any contributions come from an individual mind. This, to me, is self-evident. Spiritual notions about a “collective” aside, can any one name one invention, discovery, work of art, or idea that has come from a “collective” mind? No. Individuals may collaborate and work together, but they are merely using their individual faculties in concert – each specific action, idea, contribution comes from an individual mind. Individual freedoms depend on absolutely nothing. Individual rights are possessed by every human being as an inherent and inalienable quality that is an integral part of his or her nature.

Sunstein continues on in his ignorance and rejection of basic human dignity:

Unlike fees, levied on those who directly enjoy a service, taxes are levied on the community as a whole, regardless of who enjoys the benefits of the public services funded thereby. Most rights are funded by taxes, not by fees. This is why the overused distinction between “negative” and “positive” rights makes little sense. Rights to private property, freedom of speech, immunity from police abuse, contractual liberty, free exercise of religion–just as much as rights to Social Security, Medicare and food stamps–are taxpayer-funded and government-managed social services designed to improve collective and individual well-being.

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. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great Supreme Court justice, liked to say, taxes are “the price we pay for civilization.”

There is much in these statements that could be attacked – but every above blasphemy against the individual rests on two statements found in the preceding paragraphs. The first is the notion of “collective well-being”, and the second is the sentence “There is no liberty without dependency.”

What, exactly, does “collective well-being” mean? It could mean whatever allocation of resources is best for every individual member of society. The first problem with this view is that it is highly unlikely that, in a society of millions, one given scheme for allocating resources is optimal for every member. The second problem is that this would require (if we reject a free-market system as Sunstein clearly has) that some central body dictate the uses of every individual’s property. Not only is this abhorrent to anyone who values his freedom, history has shown time and time again that it leads to ruin.

The second possible meaning of “collective well-being” is even more grotesque than the first. This meaning holds that the “collective well-being” is the best allocation of resources for the majority of people – in other words, the greatest good for the greatest number. But if we practice this philosophy, if even one member of society is harmed for the sake of the rest, we have turned the slighted minority into sacrificial animals. If we hold down one to raise up another, we have, as Ayn Rand said, become a society of cannibals.

As for “no liberty without dependency”, this is just false. It is true that in a free market system, individuals depend on one another – but only when they have chosen to. The type of collectivization that Sunstein would like to see take place in America would force dependency on American citizens. For centuries, mankind operated in societies based on dependency. From the earliest human tribes, to ancient Egypt, to feudal Europe, to Soviet Russia: everyone who lived under these systems was dependent, but none were free. Not until the United States of America, where the individual was held to be sacred above all else on earth, was freedom truly understood and practiced (albeit to a limited extent at first, but still to a far greater extent than had previously been known).

Cass Sunstein’s ideals are antithetical to the ideals of the Founding Fathers. They should be abhorrent to all Americans, and his very presence in the White House should be viewed as an abomination to our country, and as a blasphemy against the sanctity of individual rights.

‘Let Them Eat Cake’ Democrats

Democrats across the nation seem to be flabbergasted by public opposition to so much of their collectivist agenda. This shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. President Obama won 52% of the popular vote. While decisive, this is by no means a landslide.  Now, this is not to discredit President Obama’s victory, I am merely pointing out that the President has less of a mandate than he believes. Unfortunately for the DNC as a whole, Congressional Democrats are following the President’s lead. Monica Crowley draws a comparison between the current political climate and the French Revolution:

Shortly before the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette was reportedly told that the peasants were growing increasingly restless, particularly because of widespread bread shortages. As the legend goes, she callously replied, “Let them eat cake.” The revolt exploded shortly thereafter.

And so it goes with the Democratic leadership today, with three major examples of breathtaking arrogance in just the last week:

– Democrats’ “Let Them Eat Cake” Moment No. 1: This week, Mrs. Pelosi and her deputy, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, wrote an op-ed in which they called everyone who opposes their plan for socialized medicine “un-American.” (This, of course, has it backward: Socialized health care itself is “un-American.”) They also called those average Americans who have the audacity to hold their elected leaders accountable part of “an ugly campaign.” Their op-ed came on the heels of the Obama White House denigrating Americans’ deep and genuine concern about the future of their health care as “manufactured anger.” Earlier, Mrs. Pelosi had dismissed Americans’ demand for answers at town hall meetings as phony “astro-turfing.”

Earth to Democrats: Displaying contempt for the American people when you are being paid by those people to serve their interests is generally not a good political move.

– Democrats’ “Let Them Eat Cake” Moment No. 2: This week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the deficit grew by $181 billion in July alone, to $1.3 trillion. The massive spending, bailouts and collapsing tax receipts (individual tax receipts fell by 22 percent and corporate tax receipts fell by a staggering 57 percent) have led Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to ask Congress to raise the $12.1 trillion debt limit, so the government can spend and borrow even more.

If you were rational, you would see in these numbers an impetus to restrain spending. But among Democrats, such rationality doesn’t exist. They continue their hog-wild spending by pushing everything from $2 billion more for Cash for Clunkers to trillions more for the health care overhaul. Concerned about deficits? Too bad.

– Democrats’ “Let Them Eat Cake” Moment No. 3: Mrs. Pelosi and her gang used the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill to sneak in funding for three luxury jets for their personal transport. Total projected cost to you: hundreds of millions. These are the same people who profess a love of the environment, a desire to minimize America’s carbon footprint, and concern about spending. If you believe that, I’ve got a plane to sell you. Public outrage grew so loud that they canceled the plane order this week. But if they hadn’t been caught red-handed, Democrats would’ve been flying in luxury while you boarded Jet Blue carrying a soggy tuna sandwich you had to buy yourself.

History tends to treat such arrogance unkindly. The people, pushed to their limits of patience and understanding, reach a breaking point. Meanwhile, the soulless leaders carry on self-indulgently until they are finally swept away.

I’ve expressed this opinion before, but I’ll express it again now: Democrats are in for a tough fight in 2010, and possibly 2012. I’m typically not excessively partisan, but the agenda of the current powers-that-be is aggressively collectivist. Republicans have plenty of failings, but President Obama and his Congressional allies make even George W. Bush appear fiscally responsible.

HT: Toomey for U.S. Senate

Control Freaks

An excerpt from Jonah Goldberg‘s latest column on health care nationalization:

But here’s the kicker: The more life expectancy improves, the more we will spend on health care. Despite his professed outrage over charges of “death panels” and whatnot, Obama admits this. In an interview with the New York Times last spring, he acknowledged that oldsters are a “huge driver of cost.” The “chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health-care bill out here,” Obama explained. Which is why he advocated an advisory panel of experts to offer “guidance” on end-of-life care and costs. But don’t you dare call it a “death panel.”

Now, I don’t think Soylent Green-style solutions are coming down the pike. (Government cheese is people!) But every nationalized health-care system to one degree or another rations care based on the quality of life and number of “life years” a procedure will yield. That’s perfectly reasonable. If you put me in charge of everyone’s health care, I would do that, too. That’s a really good argument for not giving me — or anyone else — that power.

When it comes to civil liberties, liberals are often distrustful of government power. But, for reasons that baffle me, they are quite comfortable with Uncle Sam getting into the business of deciding, or providing “guidance” on, which lives are more valuable than others. A government charged with extending life expectancy must meddle not just with our health care, but with what we eat, how we drive, how we live. A government determined to cut costs must meddle not just with how we live, but how we die.

Make no mistake, President Obama, his Cabinet, and many of the Democrats (and, surely, a few Republicans) in Congress are not pushing for nationalization of the banking, health care, and automotive industries (to name a few) in a mere effort to amass power. Our current government’s agenda is about more than power, it is about control. This fight is between the individual and the collective. Fighting against President’s Obama’s health care “reform” is not merely a fight against policy, it is a fight for the right of every individual to live his own life as he sees fit.

Freedom of Conscience

Most Americans will, at least, pay lip service to the Freedom of Religion. It is the first right guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and very few Americans would openly oppose it. But many U.S. citizens either do not apply it consistently to their political beliefs or they construe it far too narrowly. The first case is easy to find examples for – the most glaring being conservatives with their opposition to gay marriage and their use of religion-based pro-life arguments. The second type of inconsistency (construing freedom of religion too narrowly) is, in my opinion, not as recognized but just as fatal.

Terms such as “freedom of religion” and “separation of church and state” are somewhat outdated. They come from a time when religion and morality were seen to be inseparable. The terms we should be using – to more accurately describe the application of individual rights to the moral, philosophical, and spiritual aspects of our lives – are “freedom of conscience” and “separation of morality and state”. For the former, I must thank Eric Rassbach, who recently went to court to defend his client’s right to sacrifice goats. He also penned an excellent WSJ op-ed on the topic.

Some people just give me a funny look and say nothing. Others say, “Goat sacrifice?,” laugh nervously, and look for the nearest exit. Only the most forthright ask me directly: Why in the world would I go to court to defend my client José Merced’s religious practice of killing goats in his home in the Dallas suburbs? I then explain, often to dubious ears, that Mr. Merced is a priest of the Santería religion and must sacrifice goats in order to ordain new priests. Without goat sacrifice, his religion would die out. Sometimes my questioners nod in agreement, sometimes they don’t.

The simple fact is that freedom of religion doesn’t mean much if it protects only those beliefs that the government, or the general populace, decides it likes. It is first and foremost unpopular beliefs that need the protections afforded by the First Amendment and international human rights treaties like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

No student of history could disagree. A constant in world history has been the marriage of despotism and the suppression of conscience. Pharaoh forbade the Jews to worship God in their own way. Socrates was executed for supposedly not believing in Athens’ gods. The Romans called Christians “atheists” and threw them to the lions for failing to worship Caesar. Heretics of one sort or the other–including agnostics and atheists–were executed during Europe’s religious wars. Hitler killed Jews as well as ministers like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who rejected his crimes against humanity. Stalin persecuted Jews, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and many others. Mao closed almost every house of worship in China.

From the very beginning, the United States has taken freedom of conscience far more seriously than many other countries, making it the first principle in our Bill of Rights, coming before even freedom of speech. But the United States has had its fair share of government suppression of religion, from the hanging of Quaker ministers in Puritan Massachusetts, to the anti-Catholic laws of the 19th Century. And many modern Americans–from both the right and the left–would choose a coerced moral conformity over the individual conscience. Religious freedom will remain at risk, even in the United States, for as long as one group of people is tempted to employ state power to suppress another group’s peaceful attempts to act on conscience [emphasis mine] .

Which brings us back to Mr. Merced. Last week the federal Court of Appeals in New Orleans put itself on the side of freedom of conscience, ruling for Mr. Merced and telling the city he lives in–Euless, Texas–to let him start sacrificing goats again. The Court did not decide whether Mr. Merced’s beliefs were right or wrong, orthodox or unorthodox. It simply held that as long as he is not endangering public health or safety, the government had to leave those beliefs up to him and his gods.

It is a small victory for religious freedom in this country, not just for Mr. Merced, but for everyone who believes the human conscience is a precious gift to be protected. Of course, Christians, Jews, Muslims, or others may want to convince Mr. Merced that his beliefs are in error, and the same religious liberty will protect their right to try to persuade him. That’s the point: Persuasion, not state coercion, is the way all of us should engage our fellow citizens as they seek to obey the “still small voice” of conscience.

So ask not why I defend goat sacrifice. Ask me how you can too.

The most important point made by Mr. Rassbach is that we must broadly define the First Amendment. Many in this country (liberals, in particular) believe in the absurd concept of the “common good”. I won’t attempt to argue against it here, for the purposes of this post we’ll assume that it is, in fact, moral for society to pursue the “common good”.  Does this then give the government (or a majority of citizens) to enforce this morality of the “common good” on a minority? Absolutely not. Just as Christians or Muslims cannot, in accordance with the natural rights of man, coerce their fellow man to follow their religious dictates (even if the Christians or Muslims comprise a majority), society cannot coerce individuals to sacrifice themselves for the collective. Freedom is a black/white issue. There is no area of gray. True, some oppressive governments are more severe in attacking freedom than others, but that is only a difference in degree, not principle. A benevolent dictator is still a dictator. And a violation of an individual’s rights for the sake of the “common good” is still a violation of that individual’s rights.

Quote of the Day

“Freedom (i.e. individual liberty) and democracy (i.e. unlimited majority rule over the individual) are entirely different and incompatible things, the second being an enemy of the first.”

~ Yaron Brook

Said the Pot to the Kettle

The DNC has launched a new TV ad chastising Republicans for their “mob” behavior at town hall meetings. The irony is overwhelming. Liberals are the champions of the “common good”, the “collective”, “democracy” – in other words, the left champions rule by the majority, rule by the mob, rule by force. For collectivists to disparagingly label any group a “mob” is laughable. Gateway Pundit has the ad here, along with some very ironic words from (then) Senator Obama.

Temporal Savior? No Such Thing

In troubled times, a nation often turns to a strong leader with vision and answers to society’s problems. This usually has disastrous results. History overflows with examples: Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Franklin Delano Roosevelt – all offered their nation a way out and some portrayed themselves as temporal messiahs.

Before I continue, let me make clear that I do not equate Franklin Roosevelt with Adolf Hitler (or any other dictator mentioned). What all of these figures have in common is their solutions to societal problems hinged on force and their belief that the collective good was to be pursued at the expense of the individual. To be sure, all of these leaders had (or, at least, claimed) altruistic motivations for their actions. Joseph Stalin was moving society towards a utopia, Adolf Hitler was eliminating the “inferior” in order to create a stronger human race, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims to be doing God’s will, and Franklin Roosevelt was merely acting on behalf of the common good. But there is a fatal (literal and figurative) flaw in the thinking of each of these leaders. They, as many people do today, assumed that such a thing as the “collective” or “common” good exists.

Man does not exist as a collective, there is nothing common among mankind’s members. Man is an individual being – not a member of a beehive. What is good for most is not good for all. And if even one individual is sacrificed for the “common good” it is destructive to the entire society. If a society does not hold every individual life as an irreplaceable value, as an end and not a mean, then that society is, at best, the equivalent of an ant colony and, at worst, the equivalent of a tribe of cannibals. How can one man value himself (i.e. possess self-esteem) while he has attempted to morally justify the sacrifice of his neighbor?

This generation of Americans has ignored history and turned to a new temporal messiah: President Barack Obama. He is using government (i.e. force) to solve all of America’s problems. Our government is currently in a rapid process of devaluing the individual and establishing the “collective” as the end goal. Never in history has this approach produced prosperity, it defies the law of causality and the basic principles of economics. The news is full of protests and angry groups of citizens rising up against the rapid growth of government, but many of these are surely the same citizens who long ago accepted collectivist principles. Until we once again learn to regard the individual as the end and not the mean, we will not know liberty.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent op-ed concerning “Obama on Gates Police Incident” – and my colleague has a great post on the subject.  I believe one of the most frequently overlooked negative consequences of a collectivist mindset is the excitement of tensions between subsets of society. If one looks at the world from an individualist point of view, that person is far less likely to have his thoughts distorted and his actions changed by prejudices against a particular group of people (be those prejudices religious, ethnic, nationalistic, or of any other nature). An individualist does not even recognize groups amongst men – to him, everything is reduced to the level of a single human being. A collectivist (such as President Obama), on the other hand, necessarily sees mankind as consisting of varying groups. A collectivist’s view of man being that of a collective creature rather than an individual, he will necessarily tend to see a conflict between a black professor and a white police officer as a conflict between two groups, as he does not perceive man on the individual level. An individualist will look at the individuals and their actions – and hold them accountable for those actions, rather than society.

To be sure, this is not to say that individualists and their societies have not been guilty of crimes emanating from prejudices held against certain groups. However, the entire course of history was dominated by one group of men pitted against another based on religious, ethnic, national, or any other host of seemingly arbitrary distances. Until the United States of America. Even though slavery was an accepted practice throughout the world at the time, our Founding Father’s questioned its morality. Thomas Jefferson referred to the institution of slavery as an “abominable crime,” a “moral depravity,”  and a “fatal stain”. The U.S., being the first country based on the subordination of the collective to the individual, was also one of the first nations to question the institution of slavery – not to mention fighting a bloody civil war over the issue.

Given President Obama’s socialist/collectivist views, it is no surprise that his immediate response to this incident was to view it as a race conflict. Barack Obama is the United States’ first black President – an absolutely astounding testament to the strength of our Founders’ ideals. It is shameful that President Obama is now perpetuating racial tension and collectivist thinking, rather than continuing our progress as a society that is concerned only with an individual’s future potential, rather than the sins or darkness of his past.