In a move destined to garner less attention than cap-and-trade or health care, Barack Obama’s choice for the position of Information Czar could have drastic implications for the conservative blogosphere.
by Michael Naragon
Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor and friend to the national Messiah, has been tapped to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Sunstein was one of the major influences on a young Obama’s attitudes on government regulation and economics, a scary proposition considering the degree to which the Obama administration is attempting to pull us toward Soviet-style communism.
According to the Journal, many of those familiar with Sunstein’s work and philosophy have said that his fingerprints are obvious in many of the administration’s policies, including credit card reform and the push for climate change legislation, the now-infamous cap-and-trade debacle.
But it is Sunstein’s ideas about the First Amendment that make him dangerous to free thought and free exchange of ideas. In Sunstein’s last published book, Nudge, he advises that the role of government should be to “nudge” people into being better human beings, an apparent contradiction to the accepted idea that morality cannot be legislated.
Now, Kyle Smith of the New York Post reported Sunday, the release of Sunstein’s next publication, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, is imminent. The Harvard professor’s new book gives us the blueprint for his agenda as Information Overlord in the White House, and it shows why his appointment will potentially be more critical to free speech and the Constitution than the possible confirmation of Judge Sonya Sotomayor, whose Senate hearing is scheduled to begin Monday.
In his new book, according to the Post article, Sunstein warns against the dangers of social networking sites and the “false information” that can be spread quickly and efficiently through their use. Some of the ways he has suggested to clean up the rabble–which includes bloggers and those who comment on blogs–have been to relax the standard by which libel can be proved and to create a system through which the federal government will strong-arm and fine those bloggers that post information deemed to be “false rumors” by the Obama administration.
So, let’s say, you have written a nice blog on Obama’s newest attempt at nationalizing health care. The president has claimed that the government has no interest in taking over the health care industry, but in your blog you illustrate the logical progression of the program, from “competitive” government option to “monolithic” government mandate.
If Sunstein had his way, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs–or some other federal branch under the guidance of his department–would sent you a letter asking you to remove your post because it contained “rumor.” If you do, the administration is happy, the First Amendment is trampled, and you’ve learned your lesson to never again write anything harmful about Sunstein’s friend. If you don’t, the federal government could then force you to fight them in court to the tune of thousands of dollars.
Most bloggers would have no financial possibility of fighting such legal action against the taxpayer-funded federal government. Faced with such pressure, a blogger would, naturally, take down their post rather than destroy their own financial future. And the First Amendment would still become a worthless paragraph in the annals of American history. It would only take one or two examples to silence the entire blogosphere, turning it into a place where you can only learn about Aunt Kathy’s twins or Jimmy’s Great Dane, while Congress and the executive branch, insulated from legitimate criticism, can pass their anti-American, anti-taxpayer laws.
Post writer Smith suggests a war be waged on Sunstein by the news organizations and blogosphere before Obama’s comrade can launch his own assault. If such a war to preserve the First Amendment is unsuccessful, how long will it be before we are hiding in our basements, huddled around short-wave radios, listening to broadcasts of Radio Free America while party officials like Sunstein and Janet Napolitano concern themselves with rooting out the dissidents?
Source: The Constitutional Alamo
