Cass Sunstein Quotes
When like-minded people deliberate as an organized group, the general opinion shifts towards extreme versions of their common beliefs.
Cass Sunstein, Attorney & Legal Scholar, The Law of Group Polarization, Quoted in The Washington Post, November 28, 2004
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He was too ill to read the speech himself and it was read by James Wilson for him. Franklin, ever the practical man, thought perfection to be an unreachable and impossible standard.
This was a written form of Constitution of the first democracy of the New World. It was written before the whites came to the land that would become the United States.
Of the different kinds of political parties, the one that was formed on principles was at that time a new notion. Hume was particularly skeptical of those as the tended not to be as amenable to compromise as parties unified by simple vested material interests.
The reason that this quote is important is that during the time that Graham served in the Senate, most of his Republican colleagues had evolved a political style where they just criticized everything the Democrats did or advocated. They would outdo each other to characterize problems more dramatically. They would even vote against legislation that they had supported earlier and in some cases, that they had even sponsored. They generally never made any specific suggestions or offered specific legislative options as once they did, there would be something that some might criticize them for. The tactic was reasonably effective in the short run, but a few Republicans, like Graham, felt that it was their duty to try and legislate solutions to national problems and not just uncover, describe or harp on what is a problem and attack Democrats.
This turns out to be very much a cultural phenomenon. Amongst educated Englishmen and many scientists and philosophers from America and other cultures but in some cultures opinions stated without passion are often not believed�this is particularly true in the Middle East but exists in many subcultures of America. In science, and the logical philosophy that Russell was so expert in, either you could prove something or you could not. If you could, the passion was unnecessary. If you could not, it was irrelevant. However, in most political issues, except those based on science, most assertions are not provable and although there may be some evidence for a view, it is not determinative. So volume. Bombast, and passion tries to persuade where logic cannot. Russell and many scientists and Philosophers distrust these statements, but the politician must deal with most of them, as public policy must be made whether the issue is scientifically demonstrable or not. Life and society must go on. However, when scientists testify before Congressional committees or in other political arenas, their lack of passion is taken by many as a lack of conviction or a lack of surety, while if they did speak with great passion, they would break the norms of the scientific community in which they work, for it is regarded as unethical to persuade people with anything but the evidence and logic.
Cass Robert Sunstein is an American legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics. He is also The New York Times best-selling author of The World According to Star Wars (2016) and Nudge (2008). He was the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2012.
