Why RFK, Jr. Defends Free Speech

Reflections on the foundation of all liberty

“Did you ever hear anyone say ‘That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very dangerous to me?’”—Joseph Henry Jackson, American critic, travel-writer (1894-1955)

“These days no one holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.”—Italo Calvino, Italian novelist (1923–1985)

“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” —John Milton, English statesman and poet (1608-1674)

Staunch Defenders of Free Speech: James Madison and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

For most of U.S. history, censorship was only considered a legitimate action for suppressing obscenity and incitements of violence and crime. During times of war, many accepted that censorship was necessary for maintaining the secrecy of military operations.

Now it is commonplace for any utterance about a range of scientific, social, and political topics to be to be censored because it is purportedly “misinformation” or a violation of “community standards.” The censors offer no definitions of “misinformation” or “community standards.” Their assertions imply that the censored party is challenging an orthodoxy established by an official authority.

But how exactly was the orthodoxy established, and what exactly are the credentials of its guardians? Regarding novel phenomena such as COVID-19, how was it determined that the heads of federal health agencies possessed greater knowledge of the infectious disease than doctors in the field who treated the sick?

The tension between central authority and independent thinkers is an ancient one that is probably rooted in our age-old tendency to seek religious and metaphysical explanations for the human condition. The so-called Scientific Revolution in thinking about the world did not eliminate the conflict between orthodoxy and heresy. During the pandemic, NIAID chief, Dr. Anthony Fauci, availed himself of something akin to Papal Infallibility. He reminded me of notable popes during the Counter-Reformation, when church orthodoxy was questioned by scientists such as Galileo, who was tried and convicted of heresy and spent the last nine years of his life under house arrest.

The English statesman and poet, John Milton, visited Galileo in 1633, shortly after his trial. It was a moving experience that influenced Milton’s famous defense of free speech that he published in a 1644 pamphlet titled Areopagitica. In this speech he described censors as “oligarchs” who “bring a famine upon our minds.”

Until recently, most Americans associated censorship with the police states of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and other totalitarian dictatorships. While the comparison with these regimes may seem hyperbolic to those who haven’t yet run afoul of censors, it’s important to bear in mind that full-blown tyranny typically doesn’t emerge all at once, but through a step-by-step process.

The tyrant begins with censorship. Over time, much of the citizenry grows accustomed to it and largely accepts it. However, for those who continue to speak out, the tyrant imposes additional penalties. The dissenting voice is banned from the public forum, then he is subjected to fines, taxes, and other limitations on his ability to make a living. Finally, if the dissenter persists in speaking out, he is arrested and perhaps even put to death. As the German poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) put it, “Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.”

We’ve already taken a few steps down the road to tyranny. First, we grew numb to censorship and hearing about scientists, intellectuals and artists being banned from social media platforms and cancelled from their professional associations. Then we started seeing independent voices being punished with monetary fines and confiscation of their property. In February of 2022, I watched with horror as the Canadian government froze the bank accounts of truckers who assembled peaceably to protest vaccine mandates. The U.S. Founding Fathers considered freedom of speech and freedom of peaceable assembly to be closely related, and therefore protected both with the First Amendment.

Regarding censorship, the Roman satirical poet Juvenal posed the question: “Who will watch the watchers?” Juvenal was one of many writers in Classical antiquity who observed that the trouble with censorship is that it is carried out by a man and that no man is infallible, while many are corrupt. And though censors always claim they are doing it for “public safety” (the dictator’s favorite ruse), history has shown that the greatest tyrants were invariably the most thorough censors.

James Madison, the author of the U.S. Constitution, was an avid student of classical antiquity. He understood better than anyone the vital importance of free speech for the maintenance of a free republic. That is why he expressly protected it with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. 

Free speech is essential for the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge. If it is suppressed in the name of “protecting the citizenry from misinformation,” the citizenry will not remain free for long. As Madison put it:

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both.

For decades, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has worked tirelessly to investigate and report a range of activities affecting our natural environment and our public health. His entire career has been about acquiring knowledge and disseminating it to the people so that they will have the means of doing what is best for their families, communities, and country. All his activities—as a lawyer, professor, author, and children’s heath advocate—have been a personal exercise of free thought and speech.

For reasons that I will explore in subsequent columns, the free speech for which Kennedy advocates is now under a coordinated assault by what investigative reporter Michael Shellenberger calls the Censorship-Industrial Complex. Because RFK, Jr. long ago dared to speak out about the risks of childhood vaccines, he has been censored with shocking thoroughness by the U.S. mainstream media.

A key objective of The Kennedy Beacon will be “to watch the watchers.” We will document how censors—those “oligarchs who bring a famine on our minds”—are working to suppress free thought, inquiry, and speech, and how Kennedy is fighting back in defense of this foundation of all our liberties.