THE LATEST: RFK Jr was just confirmed by the Finance Committee 14-13. Next we go to a senate floor vote!
The Trump Effect has rendered a major weapon in the Left’s arsenal impotent.
The old definitions no longer apply. This has left Deep State bureaucrats and Leftist politicians scrambling for a new identity.
For decades, the Left has worked hard to scramble traditional definitions so that freedom means licentiousness, and words like “boy” and “girl” can mean anything.
On the political front, libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul is backing Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
At first glance, this makes as much sense as a rabbit laying eggs at Easter. The Kennedy family is a Who’s Who of legendary liberals like JFK, RFK, and Ted Kennedy–the opposite of the libertarian call for small government.
Rand Paul is a big fan of RFK Jr. because RFK Jr. has an open mind that transcends labels. The scientific method requires open minds that can critically assess new information as it comes in.
This is the opposite of so-called scientists like Fauci who make up their minds before all the facts are in. Paul backs RFK Jr. because he is the opposite of Fauci.
No matter what you think about RFK Jr., he’s light years ahead of the status quo called the Deep State.
Liberals believe they know better than the citizens who elected them because, well, the citizens who elected them believe it as well.
Libertarians, on the other hand, put stock in the individual. This means the government must stay out of the way as much as possible.
Why would Rand Paul back a lifelong liberal like JFK Jr.?
One way to boil it down is economics.
Austrian Economics
Kurt Wallace recently interviewed libertarian-minded Tom Mullen on the Rand Paul Review podcast.
Mullen is a writer and podcaster at Tom Mullen Talks Freedom. He knows a lot about economics.
He also knows a thing or two about RFK Jr. and why some–not all–libertarians back him as head of HHS.
The interview was wide-ranging, beginning and ending with–at times complex–economics. Suffice it to say that any libertarian worth their salt is an adherent of Austrian Economics.
Simply put, Austrian Economics is all about how the individual assigns value to goods in the marketplace–not the government and not the means of production. This applies to health as much as it does economics–the individual comes first.
This flies in the face of the Leftist notion that the government, not the individual, knows what is best.
The recent resurgence of Austrian Economics is in large part due to the influence of Nobel-winning economist Friedrich August von Hayek and the influential Ludwig von Mises.
It’s also due to the average American getting sick and tired of a gaggle of incompetent bureaucrats and the politicians in their thrall making stupid decisions and imposing them on the citizens of this country.
The COVID-19 debacle is a glaring example. Vaccine and mask mandates. Shutting down schools and churches. Forcing people into a crippling isolation that impacted both young and old alike and can be felt to this day.
In reality, economics, public health, education, religious freedom, and just about everything else are not separate academic disciplines. They are parts of the whole called society.
Mullen, who has written for the Mises Institute, understands that a government built according to the Constitution would be geared to do nothing else but protect the individual’s inalienable rights–as stated in The Declaration of Independence.
So, is RFK Jr. a libertarian who values individual rights over government power? Whatever you label him, as head of HHS he will be a big step in the right direction.
Health and Human Services
According to the HHS website, “The mission of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans, by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services.”
The way you define “health and well-being,” “effective health” services, and “fostering” the sciences that impact “medicine, public health, and social services” depends on your view of the individual.
Is the individual equipped to make decisions for themselves, or do they require help from the government when it comes to things like being vaccinated?
RFK Jr. is against the kind of incompetent government intervention that came with the pandemic.
“Given the unlikelihood the administrative state will be eliminated anytime soon,” Mullen stated, “libertarian support for Kennedy is certainly pragmatic. It is unlikely anything like what happened in 2020-22 would happen again under his leadership–something Americans of every political persuasion have good reason to worry about.”
So far, so good.
“However, much like President Trump on foreign policy, Kennedy could only make marginal improvements to the system,” Mullen continued. “There is no chance of fundamental change because, like Trump, Kennedy believes in the federal leviathan. He just thinks the wrong people have been running it.”
For Mullen, this means that Trump and Kennedy–though a thousand times better than Biden/Harris and Fauci–are still part of the problem: big government.
Even if Trump manages to significantly shrink the federal government, it will still be big government and the HHS will still be making decisions that impact the individual.
There’s no way around it.
Wallace pointed out in the interview that the federal government is inherently a collective idea necessarily at odds with the individual.
The Constitution, on the other hand, was designed to protect the individual from the government.
Quite the paradox. That’s America.
One thing is indisputable: when the individual is diminished, excellence is lost. The fact that the federal government is the nation's largest employer proves this point.
In the interview, Wallace talked about an interview with an employee who worked at the CDC for almost 50 years. He asked him about the Ebola virus scare and the fact that it was suddenly not being talked about in the mainstream media in 2013.
The employee told Wallace that the CDC ran out of PR funding for the virus.
“This is a guy that worked at the CDC as an epidemiologist,” Wallace said. “He helped eradicate some diseases in Africa. He was a boots on the ground kind of guy.”
According to the epidemiologist, 1200 people worked at the CDC when he started, and that was too many. At the point of the interview, there were 12,000 CDC employees.
Enter COVID-19 and you have a proverbial cluster f**k. Excellence goes extinct as mediocrity flourishes.
The good news is that RFK Jr. values free speech and that means he values the individual, both in voicing their opinions and in being able to make informed decisions by listening to others.
Trump, too, values the individual. That’s why he is attempting to eradicate DEI and replace it with meritocracy. By the looks of things, he is doing what he can to shrink the federal government.
Trump’s nomination of RFK Jr. has muddied the ideological waters.
Everything is in flux because Trump is a change agent. So is RFK Jr. Disruption may be the only way to drain the swamp and tame the federal leviathan.
Is RFK Jr. a liberal or a libertarian? He’s a disruptor who will help loosen the Deep State’s stranglehold on America.
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