Obama alum aims to ‘nudge’ Americans into ‘fundamentally transforming’ their attitudes

Special to WorldTribune, June 2, 2021

Commentary by Joe Schaeffer

The New York Times on May 31 had a “scoop” revealing what has long been known: the Biden administration is throwing America’s doors wide open to a human floodtide:

If President Biden gets his way, it will soon be far easier to immigrate to the United States. There will be shorter, simpler forms and applicants will have to jump through fewer security hoops. Foreigners will have better opportunities to join their families and more chances to secure work visas.

A 46-page draft blueprint obtained by The New York Times maps out the Biden administration’s plans to significantly expand the legal immigration system….

‘Sunstein has earned the nickname “Professor Nudge” due to his publicly stated belief that human beings can be passively coerced in desired directions.’ L.A. Review of Books

An extraordinarily significant aspect of the report is buried far down in the article:

The administration is planning to fast-track immigration applications by expanding virtual interviews and electronic filing, as well as limiting the requests for evidence from applicants. Mr. Biden has tapped Cass R. Sunstein, a former Obama administration official and legal scholar at Harvard Law School, to remake the immigration system so it is “more effective and less burdensome” than it has been in decades by “reducing paperwork and other administrative requirements.”

The appointment of Sunstein to oversee this work to refashion America into nothing more than an anchor tenant in a globalist shopping mall is telling on several fronts. First off is the Obama alum status.

Former President Barack Obama on June 1 told The Times that Biden is “essentially finishing the job” began by the man who vowed to “fundamentally transform” this nation.

“Ninety percent of the folks who were there in my administration, they are continuing and building on the policies we talked about,” a clearly ecstatic Obama told The Times.

It is crucial to note that Obama’s planned transformation of America is not just physical, but psychological. Americans are to be reconditioned to accept a new internationalist world order. In this regard, Sunstein is the perfect man to tap for the immigration spoke of this multi-faceted wheel.

In September 2016, Sunstein, writing an opinion piece for Bloomberg News, explained why tens of millions of Americans oppose immigration. It all comes down to racist wrongthink by the white citizenry:

In 2008, the University of Michigan’s Nicholas Valentino, Ted Brader and Ashley Jardina asked respondents a series of questions about “several groups in society,” asking them to rate their attitude toward blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and whites…. Their central finding was that whites’ attitudes toward other groups have a “statistically enormous effect on negative views of the cultural and economic impact of immigration.” Social scientists don’t ordinarily use the word “enormous,” so what we have here is a really dramatic effect: As whites show more negative attitudes toward blacks, Asians and Hispanics, their negative feelings toward immigration skyrocket.

You might not be amazed that nativists would tend not to like members of different racial groups. But there’s a kicker: Once the data are disaggregated, it emerges that essentially all of the movement came from negative attitudes toward Hispanics. Attitudes toward Asians and blacks didn’t correlate with views about immigration.

Ignore the partisan racial agitating for a moment and focus on the patronizing attitude. It is bad enough to casually label white people as “evil” racists. But what Obama and his cohorts believe is that white people are racist and that is behavior that can be changed. The “evil” of racism provides the moral justification for behavioral control under the guise of “social science.”

Sunstein has earned the nickname “Professor Nudge” due to his publicly stated belief that human beings can be passively coerced in desired directions. His 2009 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness” laid out his thought processes on this matter.

In 2013, Bowdoin College professor Sarah Conly wrote an even more forthright book published by the prestigious Cambridge University Press titled “Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism.”

Its thesis was just what the title suggests.

Conly is so devoted to her Maoist coercion sentiments that she penned an op-ed piece for The Boston Globe in 2015 that not only lamented communist China’s decision to end its ruthless one-child population control policy but pined for it to be implemented in the U.S. as well. She wrote:

“Given the [environmental] damage we are causing, and the suffering we foresee for all those who live after us, it is clear that having more than one child is just something that none of us — Chinese or American — has a moral right to do.”

A listing on the Cambridge University Press for Conly’s “Against Autonomy” book notes that it was praised by Cass Sunstein as “… careful, provocative, and novel, and it is a fundamental challenge to [philosopher John Stuart] Mill and the many people who follow him….”

Equally ominous is Sunstein’s seemingly exotic 2020 endorsement of urbanization as seen through the prism of nature.

In another op-ed for Bloomberg News last June, Sunstein gushed over reports that foxes residing in urban areas are showing signs of dog-like domestication. “Urban foxes are able to find shelter in built-up areas, and over one-third of their diet consists of scavenged food,” he wrote. “Their home ranges are much smaller than those of rural foxes, meaning that they are likely to breed with one another.

“Intriguingly, [researchers] speculate that because they have taken up residence near people, urban foxes might show reduced levels of stress and fear – and hence ‘urban tameness,’ signaling a capacity to trust.”

But it is not urban foxes that Professor Nudge really has in mind. If urbanization can transform wild foxes into gentle souls, then why can’t it do the same for human beings?

“Some foxes are evolving to become more like dogs. Could this ‘domestication syndrome’ help humans, too?” the column’s subhead asked.

Sunstein goes on to state that it is the ability to work together, not independence, that led to humans’ highest levels of development:

These abilities are “the gateway to a sophisticated social and cultural world.” The central reason that we flourished, and that other human species did not, is that we “excel at a particular kind of collaboration.” True, we are not the only species capable of collaboration. But we are uniquely good at it, as reflected in our buildings, our cities, and most of all our cultures and our norms.

Amid Covid-19, and protests over racial injustice, we are seeing a great deal of division, suspicion and polarization. At the same time, nations all over the world are experiencing extraordinary levels of cooperation, collaboration and trust. To take just one example, we are witnessing an outpouring of thinking about how to help the elderly during the pandemic, especially when they are isolated.

This is what an Obama Man has in the back of his head when tasked with dealing with massive immigration into the United States. The implications are deeply disturbing.

Obama and his team – which now fully controls the “Joe Biden” administration – truly believe Americans simply have the “wrong” ideas about the new world being created and just need have their minds Made Right.

Immigration will change your neighborhood and your community. But that is not enough. Ultimately, Professor Nudge and his old boss want to change you.


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