Thread: Sunstein: Economic crises could usher in socialism

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Sunstein: Economic crises could usher in socialism

'With a little nudge our culture could go in many directions'

Posted: October 11, 2009
6:43 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein
© 2009 WorldNetDaily


Cass Sunstein

TEL AVIV – Economic crises can be used to usher socialism into the U.S., argued President Obama's newly confirmed regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein.

In his 2004 book "The Second Bill of Rights," Sunstein used the precedent of the Great Depression to point out that historic economic crises "provided the most promising conditions for the emergence of socialism in the U.S."

"With a little nudge or a slight change in emphasis, our culture could have gone, and could still go, in many different directions," wrote Sunstein in his book, which was reviewed by WND.

Last week, WND reported Sunstein wrote in the same book the U.S. should move in the direction of socialism but the country's "white majority" opposes welfare, since such programs largely would benefit minorities, especially blacks and Hispanics.

"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)," wrote Sunstein.

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In Sunstein's book, the Obama appointee openly argues for bringing socialism to the U.S. and even lends support to communism.

"During the Cold War, the debate about [social welfare] guarantees took the form of pervasive disagreement between the United States and its communist adversaries. Americans emphasized the importance of civil and political liberties, above all free speech and freedom of religion, while communist nations stressed the right to a job, health care and a social minimum."

Continued Sunstein: "I think this debate was unhelpful; it is most plausible to see the two sets of rights as mutually reinforcing, not antagonistic."

Sunstein claims the "socialist movement" did not take hold in the U.S. in part because of a "smaller and weaker political left or lack of enthusiasm for redistributive programs."

He laments, "In a variety of ways, subtle and less subtle, public and private actions have made it most difficult for socialism to have any traction in the United States."

Sunstein wants to spread America's wealth

WND first reported Sunstein penned a 2007 University of Chicago Law School paper in which he debated whether America should pay "justice" to the world by entering into a compensation agreement that would be a net financial loss for the U.S. He argues it is "desirable" to redistribute America's wealth to poorer nations.

A prominent theme throughout Sunstein's 39-page paper, entitled "Climate Change Justice" and reviewed by WND, maintains U.S. wealth should be redistributed to poorer nations. He uses terms such as "distributive justice" several times. The paper was written with fellow attorney Eric A. Posner.

"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," wrote Sunstein.

He posited: "We agree that if the United States does spend a great deal on emissions reductions as part of an international agreement, and if the agreement does give particular help to disadvantaged people, considerations of distributive justice support its action, even if better redistributive mechanisms are imaginable.

"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," he wrote.

Sunstein maintains: "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."

Proposed 'socialist' bill of rights

In "The Second Bill of Rights," WND also reported, Sunstein proposed a new "bill of rights" in which he advanced the radical notion that welfare rights, including some controversial inceptions, be granted by the state. Among his mandates:

* 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 of every family to a decent home;

* 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;

* The right to a good education.

On one page in his book, Sunstein claims he is "not seriously arguing" his bill of rights be "encompassed by anything in the Constitution," but on the next page he states that "if the nation becomes committed to certain rights, they may migrate into the Constitution itself."

Later in the book, Sunstein argues that "at a minimum, the second bill should be seen as part and parcel of America's constitutive commitments."

WND has learned that in April 2005, Sunstein opened up a conference at Yale Law School entitled "The Constitution in 2020," which sought to change the nature and interpretation of the Constitution by that year.

Sunstein has been a main participant in the movement, which openly seeks to create a "progressive" consensus as to what the U.S. Constitution should provide for by the year 2020. It also suggests strategy for how liberal lawyers and judges might bring such a constitutional regime into being.

Just before his appearance at the conference, Sunstein wrote a blog entry in which he explained he "will be urging that it is important to resist, on democratic grounds, the idea that the document should be interpreted to reflect the view of the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party."

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=112630

From: Constitution2020(dot)org

Social Rights—Recap: Economic Rights in Disguise
Isabel Bussarakum

Risa Goluboff began the Social Rights panel fittingly by posing the "what" question: what are social rights? Are they civil rights, political rights, or civil liberties? As it turns out, what most of the authors in The Constitution in 2020 and what the panelists at the conference were referring to can more accurately be categorized as "economic rights."

Goluboff then swiftly introduced a question that would linger throughout the panel: why call these rights, social rights, and not economic rights? In fact, Goluboff suggested that calling these rights, social rights, may doom them from the outset. Historically, social rights have not fared well in America. As part of the nineteenth-century tripartite conception of citizenship, the judiciary refused to enforce social rights, providing them with the weakest protections. In the human rights arena, the Executive, while signing other major rights-based covenants, has failed to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The second speaker, Jacob Hacker, shifted gears and focused on the "why" question: why should America care about economic rights? Initially, he marshaled compelling statistics to illustrate the surreal stratification in recent years, suggesting that the justification was increasing economic inequality itself. However, it later became clear that the problem was not economic inequality alone. Rather, Hacker's real concern was that economic inequality had resulted in unequal--that is, undemocratic--political representation. Politicians increasingly cater to the concerns of the wealthy, while the voices of lower-income classes have diminished to a "whisper." For Hacker, it was a foregone conclusion that reform must come from the legislature.


Panel Recap: Localism and Democracy
Daniel Winik

At the inception of the American Constitution Society, just eight years ago, this panel might well have been viewed as an anomaly. Federalism was the watchword of conservatives struggling to constrain the power of the national government.

How times have changed. As Ernie Young noted in his pre-conference blog post, "During the Bush years, progressives trained since the 1960's to disparage state autonomy as indelibly tainted by racism rediscovered the importance of state policy diversity. They defended California's right to go its own way on environmental policy and Massachusetts' prerogatives to allow gay marriage at home and protest human rights violations abroad." The result has been a flourishing progressive federalism movement—or more accurately, as several panelists noted, a federalism without political valence.

The four panelists last Saturday spoke to divergent features of today's federalism. What united their presentations was a sense of the dynamism and possibility of the new federalist movement.