| January
15, 2009 - Center for
Consumer Freedom
Exposed: The Secret Animal Rights Agenda Of America’s
Next Regulatory Czar
Barack Obama’s
pick for “regulatory czar,” Harvard Law
School Professor Cass Sunstein, may be the incoming
president’s most popular appointment so far.
Judging from his resume -- best-selling author, “pre-eminent
legal scholar of our time,” and an endorsement
from The Wall Street Journal -- we can almost understand
why. Almost. Because as we’re telling the media
today, there’s one troubling portion of the
new Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)
Administrator’s C.V. that has seems to have
flown under everyone’s radar: Cass Sunstein
is a radical animal rights activist.
Don’t believe us? Sunstein
has made no secret of his devotion to the cause of
establishing legal “rights” for livestock,
wildlife, and pets. “[T]here
should be extensive regulation of the use of animals
in entertainment, scientific experiments, and agriculture,”
Sunstein wrote in a 2002 working paper while at the
University of Chicago Law school.
“Extensive regulation
of the use of animals.” That's PETA-speak for
using government to get everything PETA and the Humane
Society of the United States can't get through gentle
pressure or not-so-gentle coercion. Not exactly the
kind of thing American ranchers, restaurateurs, hunters,
and biomedical researchers (to say nothing of ordinary
consumers) would like to hear from their next “regulatory
czar.”
A version of the same paper
also appeared as the introduction to Animal Rights:
Current Debates and New Directions, a 2004 book that
Sunstein co-edited with then-girlfriend Martha Nussbaum.
In that book, Sunstein set out an ambitious plan to
give animals the legal “right” to file
lawsuits. We're not joking:
“[A]nimals should be
permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their
representatives, to prevent violations of current
law … Any animals that are entitled to bring
suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who
would owe guardian like obligations and make decisions,
subject to those obligations, on their clients’
behalf.”
It doesn't end there. Sunstein
delivered a keynote speech at Harvard University’s
2007 “Facing Animals” conference. (Click
here to watch the video; his speech starts around
39:00.) Keep in mind that as OIRA Administrator, Sunstein
will have the political authority to implement a massive
federal government overhaul. Consider this tidbit:
“We ought to ban hunting,
I suggest, if there isn’t a purpose other than
sport and fun. That should be against the law. It’s
time now.”
Sunstein also argued in favor
of “eliminating current practices such as greyhound
racing, cosmetic testing, and meat eating, most controversially.”
He concluded his Harvard speech
by expressing his “more ambitious animating
concern” that the current
treatment of livestock and other animals should be
considered “a form of unconscionable barbarity
not the same as, but in many ways morally akin to,
slavery and mass extermination of human beings.”
Sound familiar?
As the individual about to
assume “the most important position that Americans
know nothing about,” Sunstein owes the public
an honest appraisal of his animal rights goals before
taking office. Will the next four years be a dream-come-true
for anti-meat, anti-hunting, and anti-everything-else
radicals? Time will tell. For now, meat lovers might
want to stock their freezers.
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