Liberty Depends on Our Defense of Free Speech

“There can be no doubt that ideas have consequences.”

In his book, The Essential Hayek, renowned economist Don Boudreaux writes: “No stronger evidence of the power of ideas exists than the fact that totalitarian governments, without exception, go to extreme lengths to control the ideas that people encounter.”

As Robert Kennedy Jr. said in his recent campaign suspension speech, “When a U.S. president colludes with — or outright coerces — media companies to censor political speech, it is an attack on our most sacred right of free expression, the very right upon which all of our other constitutional rights rest.”

Kennedy spoke of the normalization of censorship in present-day America, noting that the mainstream media has abandoned its role as the protector of the First Amendment. He observed that the media “always justifies its censorship on the grounds of ‘combating misinformation,’ but oppressors don’t fear lies. They fear the truth.”

Kennedy is right. Professor Boudreaux elaborated on the connection between censorship and tyranny:

If ideas have no consequences, dictators and tyrants would spend no energy and treasure on preventing people from publishing whatever they please and saying whatever they wish. Nor would governments waste money on spreading propaganda. Freedom of expression would be universal if ideas had no power to determine what governments do and are prevented from doing.

Pay careful attention to Boudreaux's observation. Now you understand why the government and media censored and mocked RFK Jr. The good guys never assume the role of the censors.

As Andrew Doyle explains, we lose our rights as we lose our will to defend our rights:

Opposition to free speech never goes away, which is why it must be defended anew in each successive generation. It is a privilege that has been denied to the overwhelming majority of societies in human history. Our civilisation is abnormal, almost miraculous, in its dedication to this most estimable of principles. Free speech dies when the populace grows complacent and takes its liberties for granted.

RFK Jr. is a champion of independent thought and rigorous debate. His opponents treat both as dangerous. As Boudreaux emphasizes, “There can be no doubt that ideas have consequences.”

Take the time to listen to Kennedy's speech to grasp the current crises in America and the world. It is both moving and heartbreaking. Kennedy spoke of the consequences of censorship, America’s forever wars, and Americans' failing health.

Those who censors don't want you to contemplate the impact of the military-industrial complex, sick care-industrial complex, and the unaccountable administrative state on America.

The censors expect you to support Harris, a woman who lacks original ideas and relies on coercion to gain compliance with her edicts. Censors want you to believe democracy is saved by candidates who are anointed. They filter out Harris’s hate-filled demagoguery and pretend she is filled with joy. If enough people feel the fake joy, there will be no public demand to address the existential issues America faces. The Orwellian brainwashing of America is going full steam ahead.

A large number of Americans, who claim to cherish freedom, mindlessly repeat NPR/CNN/NYT/DNC/WP talking points to brand Harris as laudable and Kennedy as crazy. He’s antisemitic. He questions scientific truths that all “experts” agree on. His own family says he is dangerous. He is a disgrace to the Kennedy legacy, etc.

“It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth… The fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.” Erich Fromm—The Sane Society

Instead of objectively reporting Kennedy’s speech, the media shamelessly shaped their supposed "news" stories to reinforce their biased opinions. Once, opinions were reserved for op-ed pages.

George Orwell believed “if liberty means anything at all it measn the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” He understood the consequences of censorship are magnified as the public loses the will to listen to uncomfortable ideas.

How many people are open to hearing Kennedy’s poignant and detailed description of Americans' failing health? The censors don’t want you to consider how our food industry, subsidized by the government, serves up ultra-processed foods that kill gut health, compromise the immune system, and rob people of their health.

The truth will be upsetting, and why would anyone want to get upset? Are we willing to let uncomfortable ideas be heard to defend free speech? Supporting the views of censors allows them to more effortlessly carry out their job of shaping what listeners believe.

Any conscious medical doctor will report many of their patients prefer prescriptions over recommendations for diet and exercise. Sadly, many patients do not want to know they have a choice.

The Kennedy campaign did not succeed because of censorship and because not enough people wanted to hear his message.

Free people do not fear choice. People who are scared of having to choose will not remain free.

During COVID, when a family member told you to get with the program and get your shot, they were scared. They couldn't pretend they didn't have a choice if you had a choice. To make a choice is to be responsible for that choice; for some, that isn't very comforting.

Life is messy. Good health cannot be achieved through a single pathway, and there are no guarantees. But people stack the odds against good health when they consume a diet of ultra-processed foods and have less than an active lifestyle. Those choices put people just where Big Pharma, Big Healthcare, Big Agriculture, and their totalitarian enablers want them to be—cowed followers too concerned about their own survival to make other choices.

The government vows to provide safety, security, and health. Instead, they deliver war and disease and strip us of our liberty.

Robert Kennedy Jr. is a  tireless advocate for the health of Americans. Perhaps not everything he says aligns with your beliefs, but Kennedy is not a dangerous kook. Censors are dangerous. They work tirelessly to shape our minds  and cultivate individuals who unquestioningly comply and expect others to do the same.

If we let fear consume us and refuse to listen to what we do not want to hear, we renounce our power to choose, and America will be left with no hope.  Liberty will be lost.

The following is a transcript of the segment of Kennedy's speech in which he addressed the health of America:

Why I Am Suspending My Campaign for President

“Less than two hours after President Trump narrowly escaped assassination, Calley Means called me on my cell phone. Calley is arguably the leading advocate for food safety, soil regeneration, and ending the chronic disease epidemic that is destroying American health and ruining our economy. Calley has exposed the insidious corruption at the FDA, NIH, HHS, and USDA that has caused the epidemic. Calley had been working on and off for my campaign, advising me on those subjects, which have been my primary focus for the last twenty years. I was delighted when Calley told me, that day, that he had also been advising President Trump. He told me President Trump was anxious to talk to me about chronic disease — and other subjects — and to explore avenues of cooperation. He asked if I would take a call from the President. President Trump telephoned me a few minutes later, and I met with him the following day.

“The childhood chronic disease epidemic is the sleeper issue of this campaign and last night the forgotten child was thrust squarely into the national conversation”—Calley Means

“A few weeks later, I met again with President Trump and his family members and closest advisors in Florida. In a series of long, intense discussions, I was surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues. In those meetings, he suggested that we join forces as a unity party. We talked about Abraham Lincoln’s team of rivals. That arrangement would allow us to disagree publicly and privately on the issues over which we differ, while working together on the existential issues upon which we are in concordance. I was a fierce critic of many of the policies of his first administration, and there are still issues and approaches upon which we continue to dispute. But we are aligned with each other on key issues like ending the forever wars, ending the childhood disease epidemics, securing the border, protecting our freedom of speech, unraveling corporate capture of the regulatory agencies, and getting U.S. intelligence agencies out of the business of propagandizing, censoring, and surveilling Americans, and interfering in our elections.

Following my first discussion with President Trump, I tried unsuccessfully to open up similar discussions with the Harris campaign. Vice President Harris declined to meet or speak with me.

Suspending my candidacy is a heartrending decision for me. But I am convinced that it is the best hope for ending the Ukraine war and ending the chronic disease epidemic that is eroding our nation’s vitality from the inside and for protecting free speech. I feel a moral obligation to use this opportunity to save millions of American children. 

In case some of you don’t realize how dire the condition is of our children’s health and chronic disease in general, I urge you to view Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Calley Means and his sister, Dr. Casey Means, who was the top graduate of her class at Stanford Medical School. This is an issue that affects us far more directly and urgently than the culture war issues that are tearing the country apart. Therefore, it has the potential to bring us together. So let me share just a little bit about why I believe it is so urgent.

Today, two-thirds of American adults and half of children suffer chronic health issues. Fifty years ago, the number for children was less than one percent. 

In America, 74% of adults are now overweight or obese, and close to 50% of children. One hundred and twenty years ago, when someone was obese, they were sent to the circus. In Japan, the childhood obesity rate is 3%. 

Half of Americans now have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. When my uncle was president, juvenile diabetes was effectively nonexistent. The average pediatrician would see a single case in their lifetime. Today, one of every three kids who walk through their office door is diabetic or prediabetic.

There’s been an explosion of neurological diseases that I never saw as a child. ADD, ADHD, speech delay, language delay, Tourette’s, narcolepsy, ASD, and Asperger’s. In the year 2000, the autism rate was one in 1,500. Now, autism rates in kids are one in 36 nationally, and 1 in 22 in California. The screening has not changed. Nor has the definition. The incidence has changed. 

About 18% of teens have fatty liver disease, a disease that primarily used to be found only in late-stage alcoholics. Cancer rates are skyrocketing in the young and the old. Young adult cancers are up 79%. 

One in four American women is on an antidepressant medication. 40% of teens have a mental health diagnosis. Today, 15% of high schoolers are on Adderall and half a million children are on SSRIs. 

So what’s causing all this suffering? I’ll name two culprits. First is ultra-processed foods. About 70% of American children’s diet is ultra-processed — industrially manufactured in a factory. These foods consist primarily of processed sugar, ultra-processed grains, and seed oils. Lab scientists concoct thousands of other ingredients to make these foods more palatable, more addictive. These ingredients didn’t exist 100 years ago, and humans aren’t biologically adapted to eat them. Hundreds of these chemicals are banned in Europe, but ubiquitous in America’s processed foods. 

The second culprit is toxic chemicals in our food, medicine, and environment. Pesticides, food additives, pharmaceutical drugs, and toxic waste permeate every cell of our bodies. The assault on a child’s cells and hormones is unrelenting. To name just one problem, many of these chemicals increase estrogen. Because young children are ingesting hormone disruptors, the average girl in America is reaching puberty at age 10 to 13 — six years earlier than girls were in 1900. Our country has the earliest puberty rates on any continent. And no, this isn’t because of “better nutrition.” This is not normal. Breast cancer, an estrogen-driven cancer, now strikes one in eight women.

Considering the grievous human cost of this tragic epidemic of chronic disease, it seems almost crass to mention the damage it does to our economy. But I’ll say, it is crippling our nation’s finances. When my uncle was President, our country spent zero dollars on chronic disease. Today, government healthcare spending is mostly for chronic disease, and it is double the military budget. And chronic disease costs the economy as a whole at least $4 trillion. Probably more when you consider the indirect costs. That’s a 20% drag on everything we could aspire to. And it is the fastest-growing cost.

Poor and minority communities suffer disproportionately. Industry lobbyists make sure that most of the food stamp and school lunch program dollars are funding processed foods. We are systematically mass-poisoning America’s poorest citizens. 

The same food industry lobbied to make sure that nearly all agricultural subsidies go to the commodity crops that are the feedstock of the processed food industry. The policies are destroying small farms and our soils.

The good news is that we can change all of this, and change it quickly. America can get healthy again. To do that we need to do three things. First, root out the corruption in our health agencies. Second, change the incentives of the healthcare system. And third, inspire Americans to get healthy again. 

Eighty percent of NIH grants go to people who have conflicts of interest. These agencies, the FDA, the USDA, the CDC, all of them are controlled by huge for-profit corporations. 75% of the FDA’s funding doesn’t come from taxpayers. It comes from pharma. And pharma executives and consultants and lobbyists cycle in and out of these agencies. 

With President Trump’s backing, I am going to change that. We are going to staff these agencies with honest scientists and doctors free from industry funding. We will make sure that the decisions of consumers, doctors, and patients are informed by unbiased science. 

 A sick child is the best thing for the pharmaceutical industry. When American children, or adults, get sick with a chronic condition, they are put on medications for their entire life. Imagine what will happen when Medicaid starts paying for Ozempic, which costs $1,500 a month and is being recommended for children as young as six. All for a condition, obesity, that is completely preventable and barely even existed a hundred years ago. Since 74% of Americans are obese, the costs could be as high as $3 trillion a year. With a fraction of that money, we could buy organic food for every American and get rid of diabetes altogether. We will bring healthy food back to school lunches. We will stop subsidizing the worst foods with our agricultural subsidies. We will get the toxic chemicals out of our food. We will reform the entire food system.

And for that, we need new leadership in Washington, because unfortunately, both the Democratic and Republican Parties are in cahoots with the food producers, Big Pharma, and Big Ag, which are among their major donors. Vice President Harris has expressed no interest in addressing this issue. Four more years of Democratic rule will complete the consolidation of corporate and Neocon power. And our children will be the ones who suffer the most.

I got involved with chronic disease 20 years ago, not because I chose to. It was thrust upon me. It was an issue that should have been central to the environmental movement, but it was widely ignored by all the institutions that should have been protecting our kids against toxins. It was an orphaned issue — I had a weakness for orphans. 

I watched generations of children get sicker and sicker in front of my eyes. And nobody in power seemed to care or even notice. For 19 years, I prayed every morning that God would put me in a position to end this calamity. The chronic disease crisis was one of the primary reasons for running for President. Along with ending the censorship, and the Ukraine war, it is the reason I have made this heart-wrenching decision to suspend my campaign and to support President Trump. This decision is agonizing for me, because of the difficulties it causes to my wife, my children, my family, and my friends. But I have the certainty that this is what I’m meant to do and that certainly gives me internal peace even in storms. If I’m given the chance to fix the chronic disease crisis and reform our food production, I promise that within two years, we will watch the chronic disease burden lift dramatically. We will make Americans healthy again. Within four years, America will be a healthy country. We will be stronger, more resilient, more optimistic, and happier. I won’t fail. Ultimately the future is in the hands of God, the American voters, and President Trump. If President Trump is elected and honors his word, the vast burden of chronic disease that now demoralizes and bankrupts the country, will disappear.

This is a spiritual journey for me. I reached my decision through deep prayer and hard-nosed logic. I ask myself, what choices must I make to maximize my chances to save America’s children and restore national health? I felt that if I refused this opportunity, I would not be able to look at myself in the mirror, knowing I could have saved the lives of countless children and reversed this country’s chronic disease epidemic.

I’m 70 years old. I have maybe a decade to be effective. I cannot imagine that a President Harris will allow me or anyone else to solve these problems. After eight years of President Harris, any opportunity for me to fix the problem will be out of my reach forever. President Trump has told me he wants this as his legacy. I’m choosing to believe that this time, he will follow through. His son, his biggest donors, and closest friends also support this objective. My joining the Trump campaign will be a difficult sacrifice for my wife and children, but worthwhile if there is even a small chance of success.

Ultimately the only thing that will save our children and our country is if we choose to love them more than we hate each other. That’s why I launched my campaign to unify this country. My dad and my uncle made such an enduring mark on the character of our nation not so much because of any particular policy, but because they were able to inspire profound love for our country and to fortify our sense of ourselves as a national community held together by shared ideals. They were able to put their love into the intentions and hearts of ordinary Americans, and to unify a national populist movement of all Americans — of Blacks and Whites and Hispanics, urban and rural. They inspired affection, love, high hopes, and a culture of kindness that continue to radiate from their memories. 

That is the spirit on which I ran my campaign, and that I intend to bring into the campaign of President Trump. Instead of vitriol and polarization, I will appeal to the values that unite us, the goals we could achieve if only we weren’t at each others’ throats. The most unifying theme for all Americans is that we all love our children. If we all unite around this issue now, we will finally give them protection, the health, and the future that they deserve.”