Let's Stick With The First BOR

Cass Sunstein, Obama's newly confirmed regulatory czar, has written a book which calls for a second Bill of Rights. This, apparently, complemented his conference at Yale Law School where he calls for a reworking of the constitution by the year 2020. Because, you know, the founders weren't insightful enough we need the likes of Cass Sunstein *shudder* telling us how we are going to live. Sunstein's list of rights read something like the how I would have liked to see the world when I was seven years old and really could not comprehend why it just was not like it should be. It's the stuff of small child fantasy.

"Mommy why can't we just not have money and go to the store and get whatever we want?" Who has not been asked that by their children? I have, years ago, by my, now, 12 year old daughter. I remember the conversation vividly and the funny thing is when I explained the "why" to her, she got it. She didn't like it any better but she grasped it and it is a lesson that has stuck with her to this day.

Except, Sunstein is a grown up. He shapes and molds young thinkers in our most prestigious and respected universities. And he is in the halls of our government today. Sunstein has a whole spectrum of crazy ideas from limiting and criminalizing free speech to extending legal rights to farm animals we tend to rely on for protein sources. However, like most leftist radicals, he speaks the quiet, careful and thoughtful educated speak of an Ivy Leaguer. The kind of serious, polished demeanor and bio that would lead one to take him seriously and would never associate with crazy.

Behold his eight simple mandates:

1) The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

2) The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

3) The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

4) The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

5) The right of every family to a decent home;

6) The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

7) The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

8) The right to a good education.

"Decent" home, "good" education, "adequate" food -- sure leaves a lot of wiggle room. I am guessing as the five year plans keep on expiring what constitutes good, adequate and decent becomes a little less good, adequate and decent. Good healthcare can become an aspirin and a dirty cot, a decent education can become sharing the same book for 10 students, decent housing can become Soviet style three families sharing one apartment where the heat sometimes works. You can bet, like every other experiment in Utopian style remaking of society, it will. When enough of the people who make society work finally object to being financially obligated by force to support the voracious appetites of those who do not or who were made less by such a system.

How about we just stick to being the place where you have the opportunity to acquire these things through hard work, effort and, even, a little luck? It is a formula that has served us (and the rest of the world) well for 229 years. It is the reason why more people dream of coming here and risk life and limb to do it. How about we reject the recycled utopian worldview that holds humanity in contempt, and that has enabled some of history's worst mass murderers and suffering?