New Book Just Comes Straight Out With It: "Against Autonomy: The Case for Collective Paternalism"

You can read a digest of the review at Althouse, or the full review (by leftwing collectivist legal critic and Obama crony) Cass Sunstein.

If the benefits justify the costs, [the wrytyr] is willing to eliminate freedom of choice, not to prevent people from obtaining their own goals but to ensure that they do so....

A natural objection is that autonomy is an end in itself and not merely a means. On this view, people should be entitled to choose as they like, even if they end up choosing poorly. In a free society, people must be allowed to make their own mistakes, and to the extent possible learn from them, rather than facing correction and punishment from bureaucratic meddlers. Conly responds that when government makes (some) decisions for us, we gain not only in personal welfare but also in autonomy, if only because our time is freed up to deal with what most concerns us....

Chew on that.

Inspector @sshole:

...So, tell me again the difference between (1) living under such a far-left regime and (2) being a monk of a religious order that imposes harsh discipline 24 hours a day, or (3) being a dog trained to kill other dogs in a kennel, or (4) being a slave of an autocratic ruler who delights in controlling every aspect of every subject including death?

Actually, #2 provides much, much more freedom in that you are allowed to leave freely (non-Islamic, since Islam demands death for leaving it) and #3, the dog can always lick its own balls in the off time.

So basically being a slave is the same as being a slave - one is by committee, and one is by birth.

The totalitarians have a lot of Five-Year Plans and schemes to organize us and direct our actions like bees in a hive.

They seem to forget the first principle, the Human Principle: We are humans, we are not bees. We are humans, we are not things. We are humans, we are not gears to be flattened and ground to fit the Machine.

C.S. Lewis should always be quoted here:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may 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.

A commenter said they want a monarch, and another said they want to be monarch.

This understates their ambition dramatically. At the end of the day all a monarch really wants is for his subjects to pay for his upkeep, not rebel against him, and take military duty when he decides he should go to war. And of course he'd like fancy gowns and jewels.

But beyond that, the king does not care all that much about interfering in the lives of his subjects. Treason and taxes are the extent of his real emotional investment in them.

But the totalitarian...? Oh my, do they want to do so much more to for you.

posted by Ace at 05:15 PM

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