He’s a very smart fellow, generally pretty rational, but … wow … Cass Sunstein is really dedicated to the proposition that some people know better than others and should use force and violence to make the rest of us behave. Every year he comes up with a new set of arguments against individual liberty. Here’s my review of his book The Second Bill of Rights: FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever: “Absolutism Redux.” That essay isn’t in my forthcoming book, Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice, but Realizing Freedom offers a lot more pummeling of Sunstein’s ideas (and his other books).
I’ll be autographing copies at the upcoming Freedom Fest, where I’ll speak on “The Future of Freedom in America” and on “The Dangerous Consequences of FDR’s Four Freedoms Speech.” The book is being sold online and distributed by Laissez Faire Books.
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My favorite Sunstein quote is this one, from his paper “Overreaction to Fearsome Risks”: (with Richard Zeckhauser):
As I wrote at the time: “Cass, will you please explain ‘action bias’ to the President and Congresssional leaders before they completely restructure the US economy in response to the current economic downturn?”