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Friday, August 5. 2016

Soft authoritarianism, and hating people like Bloomberg and Sunstein


Those guys have devoted significant parts of their lives to trying to save me and "society" from ourselves. We are not their children, nor are they our moral and intellectual superiors. This is a deeply obnoxious and condescending mission to which the normal, healthy reaction is "Leave me the f- alone and worry about your own life, jerk. If I want your advice, I will ask for it. Which means never."


I guess these guys are looking for meaning in life, in all the wrong places. Here's an example from the insufferable Cass Sunstein who wants to save me from Coca Cola and lots of other things too.


Pardon me, but I like Coke and I like guns. You do not. So it's your loss.  CS Lewis said it best:


Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Posted by The Barrister in Politics at 14:15 | Comments (11) | Trackbacks (0)

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We have made real progress since Lewis' day. We now have a class of robber barons who are also omnipotent moral busybodies.
#1 Peter B on 2016-08-05 15:37 (Reply)
Yes, there's nothing better than having competing mega-wealthy candidates for office extolling their own humble, just-plain-folks virtues!
#1.1 JJM on 2016-08-05 15:51 (Reply)
That was marvelous, Peter.
#1.2 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2016-08-05 15:54 (Reply)
Which is technically the correct definition of fascism; not any one the left hates as they use it.
#1.3 Ken in NH on 2016-08-06 14:06 (Reply)
Really nothing new, the impulse has always been around, remember something called, "Prohibition"? Much worse. Probably couldn't pass that today. Was it Ben that said, " Beer is proof God loves us"?
#2 Oldblood on 2016-08-05 15:53 (Reply)
The War on the American People, AKA The War on (some) Drugs is nothing but another prohibition that was declared by Nixon in 1971 and continues to this day.
#2.1 Michael R. Kesti on 2016-08-05 20:16 (Reply)
The Harvard alumni magazine published a disgraceful puff piece on Sunstein in January of last year, and I was pleased to see that the letters to the editor in the next issue were almost all condemnatory of both Sunstein and the author of the puff piece. You can read them here:

http://harvardmagazine.com/2015/03/cambridge-02138
#3 Reader on 2016-08-05 16:31 (Reply)
I am unwilling to grant Sunstein the assumption that he wants to do good by us, but on his terms, as he sees it. I think the SOB is an unreconstructed control freak who is hot to rule others.
#4 WalkingHorse on 2016-08-05 21:10 (Reply)
In other words, a typical leftist.
#4.1 Sam L. on 2016-08-06 10:51 (Reply)
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” ― T.S. Eliot

As to these two clowns, they're the usual self-hating suspect ....
#5 g6loq on 2016-08-05 21:22 (Reply)
My usual response is "You're not smart enough to tell me how to live." h/t Kathy Shaidle, fivefeetoffury.
#6 RosalindJ on 2016-08-07 00:18 (Reply)

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