Let me just throw in a quick preamble to this entry by expressing to all of you clever and competent readers how very much I love animals. I happen to live with four canines in my home – three Great Danes and a Boxer (three of these four deprived souls are pictured below). My dogs have pretty much the same rights as the teenagers who also share my home. They have free reign of the house, the couches, the beds (when we’re not paying attention), and if they had opposable thumbs, I’d guess they’d be able to grab a Diet Coke and some snacks when they felt like it, too.
As you can see, I’m not a stranger to adoring animals. I actually like my dogs more than a lot of people I know – just so we’re clear.
So, when I first heard about this Cass Sunstein character – Obama’s Regulatory Czar – I was intrigued, at best, to hear his stance on animal rights. As stated above, I love me some animals and I believe in being kind to them, but this dude has taken animal kindness to the next wacked-out level.
In The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer (2002), Sunstein said:
“I think we should go further … the law should impose further regulation on hunting, scientific experiments, entertainment, and (above all) farming to ensure against unnecessary animal suffering. It is easy to imagine a set of initiatives that would do a great deal here, and indeed European nations have moved in just this direction. There are many possibilities.”
On page 11 of the book Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, he spews, “We could even grant animals a right to bring suit without insisting that animals are persons, or that they are not property.”
I think what he’s saying there is that my four dogs should be able to bring suit against me in a court of law if I’m not nice to them and stuff. Um, alrighty then. Here’s a thought. When my four dogs can start contributing to the mortgage payment, then maybe I’ll listen to that complete lunacy. Until then, um….no.
A Harvard Law grad (shocker), he’s also ruffled some feathers with the whole Second Amendment issue. Gun owners (which I also happen to be), farmers, and hunters are not too keen on Sunstein because of his stance on the Second Amendment:
Oh yeah, and he isn’t a fan of the First Amendment either:
He is in favor of “reformulating” the First Amendment. The purpose of this reformulation would be to “reinvigorate processes of democratic deliberation, by ensuring greater attention to public issues and greater diversity of views.” Sunstein would apparently have the government apply a sliding scale of importance to First Amendment and free speech issues favored by the state (under the control of ideologically biased intellectuals such as Sunstein) at the expense of those disfavored or deemed less important.
And then there’s that whole favoring of a Net Fairness Doctrine. He has said, “A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government, Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom’s name.”
Wow. Really?
I’m sure there’s more crazy-dirt on this guy, but that’s about all I can stomach this morning on a half a cup of coffee. Oh, but one more thing. He was confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday. Isn’t that just flat-out AWESOME?
