Freedom Does Not Mean Appointing New Taskmasters

by
Jacob G. Hornberger
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Reminder: I’ll be speaking at the JFK Lancer conference and also at the CAPA conference.  The Lancer conference is being held on November 22-24 in Dallas. The CAPA conference is now being held online. There is also another excellent JFK conference on the same weekend sponsored by the JFK Historical Group. All three of them are fantastic JFK-assassination-related conferences. I highly recommend registering for all three and then picking and choosing which sessions you would like to attend at all three conferences. The registration prices are moderate and it’s a great way to support three great conferences. I will have some of my JFK books at my presentations at the Lancer conference to autograph and sell at a discounted price. I hope to see you all there!

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Some libertarians are over-excited about Republican Donald Trump’s appointments of two liberal Democrats-turned-Trumpsters to his cabinet: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. They are also excited about Trump’s appointment of Republicans Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to Trump’s new federal Department of Government Efficiency.

Amidst all the excitement over Donald Trump’s election, however, we libertarians must never lose sight of our goal: the achievement of a free society. A genuinely free society does not entail putting “better” or “different” people in charge of running the welfare-warfare state departments and agencies that have destroyed our freedom and produced our serfdom. Genuine freedom necessarily entails the abolition of all departments and agencies that infringe on freedom.

In other words, we don’t win our freedom because a liberal-Democrat-turned-Trumpster like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., replaces liberal Democrat Xavier Becerra as head of the federal Department of Health and Human Resources. We win our freedom by achieving the dismantling — the abolition — the termination — the end — of the federal Department of Health and Human Resources.

In fact, as I have long maintained, the best way to achieve freedom with respect to healthcare is by totally separating healthcare and the state, just as our ancestors separated religion and state.

Republicans and, unfortunately, some conservative-libertarians hate that idea. They simply want to get rid of the liberal statists who run the healthcare agencies (and other welfare-warfare state agencies) and replace them with conservatives or liberal Democrats-turned-Trumpsters, such as Kennedy and Gabbard.

But that’s not freedom, even if one calls it “freedom.” In fact, Republicans running healthcare agencies can be just as tyrannical as Democrats, albeit in different ways. For example, Democrats lean toward mandates and lockdowns. While some Republicans oppose mandates and lockdowns, some of them want to unleash a rein of state-sponsored terror against doctors who prescribe vaccines to patients who wish to take vacccines.

A genuinely free society entails the right of people to decide for themselves what they wish to do with respect to healthcare. It’s none of the government’s business one way or the other, just as what church a person decides to attend is none of the government’s business. If a business owner wants to require his employees or customer to be vaccinated or masked, that is his right. By the same token, workers and consumers have the right to go elsewhere. If a doctor wishes to administer a vaccine to someone who wants it, that is their right. It’s none of the government’s business.

It also bears mentioning that the Constitution provides no authority to the federal government to provide Medicare, Medicaid, or any other type of healthcare to people. However, don’t tell that to liberal-Democrat-turned-Trumpster Kennedy. He actually praises communist Cuba’s socialist healthcare program, which is really nothing more than Medicare-and-Medicaid for All. But of course, Donald Trump and his merry band of Republican colleagues, along with, unfortunately, even some libertarians, are also ardent supporters of Medicare (even though they might oppose Obamacare) — as well as Medicaid, Social Security, subsidies, education grants, and other socialist welfare-state programs.

I have long held that the libertarian ideal in terms of healthcare freedom is a constitutional amendment modeled after the language in the First and Fourteenth Amendments: “No law shall be enacted, at either the federal or state level, providing or regulating healthcare or abridging the free exercise thereof.”

The principle is no different with respect to Gabbard’s appointment as Director of National Intelligence. That department is just part and parcel of the national-security state, a totalitarian type of governmental structure to which the federal government was converted after World War II, with the ostensible aim of keeping us “safe” from the communists, as well as the post-9/11 war-on-terrorism racket. With its omnipotent powers, including the powers of assassination, torture, military tribunals, indefinite detention, and mass secret surveillance, the national-security state has been a much greater destroyer of our freedom than even the welfare state. Thus, appointing Gabbard to run a part of the national-security-state system that destroys our freedom is comparable to having appointed a new, more gentle whip-master on a 19th-century slave plantation. Unfortunately, Republicans simply cannot see that. They love and adore the national-security state. They say it keeps us “safe” and, therefore, that it’s worth sacrificing our freedom for.

To achieve a genuinely free society, which should be the goal of every libertarian, it is necessary to dismantle — end — terminate — repeal — abolish — the entire national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the. CIA, and the NSA— and restore America’s founding system of a limited-government republic to our land, which would include simply a basic, small military force and the restoration of a non-interventionist foreign policy.

Some libertarians are bemoaning Trump’s foreign-policy appointments, who, they are observing, are quite similar to the interventionists and warmongers with whom Trump surrounded himself the last time around. But as Senator Frank Church of Church Committee fame, realized many years ago, opposing America’s forever wars and interventions will never accomplish anything without dismantling the national-security state form of governmental structure, which Republicans and some libertarians continue to ardently support.

Finally, it bears emphasizing that making the welfare-warfare state, regulated-managed economy, administrative state, Federal Reserve, drug war, and war on immigrants more efficient is no more freedom than having made a slave plantation more efficient. Genuine freedom entails the dismantling — termination — abolition — end — repeal — of all infringements on freedom.

We libertarians must never let ourselves get sucked into believing that we are achieving our freedom having a different set of taskmasters appointed to rule over us or by making our serfdom more efficient. We must continue steadfastly making the case for the genuinely free society, which means dismantling — terminating — ending — repealing — abolishing — all infringements on our freedom as well as all the departments and agencies that administer our serfdom.