Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: The New Republican-Lite Libertarian Party Heartthrob, Part 3

I am a candidate for the 2024 Libertarian Party presidential nomination: jacobforliberty.com.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: The New Republican-Lite Libertarian Party Heartthrob, Part 1
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: The New Republican-Lite Libertarian Party Heartthrob, Part 2
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: The New Republican-Lite Libertarian Party Heartthrob, Part 4

Gun Rights

As every Libertarian knows, gun ownership is one of the fundamental, natural, God-given rights to which Thomas Jefferson referred in the Declaration of Independence and is a key prerequisite to a genuinely free society. People have the right to defend themselves from the likes of murderers, robbers, rapists, and government tyrants. Guns provide them the means of such self-defense.

Democratic Party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., says that he is a gun-rights advocate … well, except if Republicans and Democrats in Congress reach a bi-partisan consensus and enact an assault-weapons ban. In that case, Kennedy says, if he is elected president, he will willingly and eagerly sign the measure into law, immediately converting countless American gun owners into potential felons. 

Kennedy steadfastly maintains that if he is elected president, he’s not going to go out and grab people’s guns. He doesn’t have to. All he has to do is make it a felony offense to own assault rifles, handguns, or any other weapon. In that case, peaceful and law-abiding gun owners would have to decide whether to dutifully turn in their guns to the government or illegally keep them and risk a felony prosecution and several years in a federal penitentiary. 

That’s what Kennedy’s icon President Franklin D. Roosevelt did with gold coins, which had been the official money of the American people under the Constitution for more than 100 years. FDR didn’t go out and grab people’s gold, any more than RFK, Jr., would go out and grab people’s guns. FDR simply made it a federal felony to own gold and most everyone dutifully turned in his gold. That’s what Kennedy would do with guns.

So much for a principled commitment to the right to keep and bear arms. Kennedy’s position shows why no one can ever depend on a Democrat when it comes to gun rights.

Just imagine the spectacle of a Libertarian Party presidential candidate openly and publicly calling for an assault-weapons ban or supporting a bipartisan Republican-Democrat ban on handguns or other weapons. Libertarian Party members would end up spending years correcting people’s misconceptions about the L.P. and gun rights. 

Healthcare, Covid, and vaccines

America once had the finest healthcare system in the world, one based on the principles of the free market and voluntary charity. Hardly anyone had major medical insurance because healthcare costs were low and stable. Going to the doctor was like going to the grocery store. Doctors in my hometown of Laredo, Texas, which was one of the poorest cities in the United States, were more than willing to provide free medical care to the poor on a purely voluntary basis.

And then came Medicare and Medicaid, two massive socialist programs that ended up destroying that finest healthcare system in history. That’s why healthcare costs began soaring through the roof. That’s when many doctors began hating what they did in life and began retiring early.

Not surprisingly, both of these socialist programs are ardently supported by Democratic Party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has even heaped praise on Cuba’s fully socialist healthcare system. For that matter, Kennedy was also a fan of Venezuela’s now-deceased socialist president Hugo Chavez and his socialist programs, which ended up plunging Venezuela into poverty, suffering, violence, crisis, and chaos.

Covid

To his credit, Kennedy was an ardent opponent of the Covid governmental lockdowns and vaccine and mask mandates. That’s one major reason why some Republican-Lite Libertarian Party members now wish to recruit him into coming into the Libertarian Party and becoming the 2024 L.P. presidential nominee. After all, opposition to the lockdowns and mandates was a central feature of the Libertarian response to the government’s mishandling of Covid.

However, Kennedy goes much further than that, and that poses a big problem for Libertarians. 

Even though he denies that he is “anti-vaxx,” the fact is that Kennedy has been defined as one of the fiercest and most fanatical opponents of vaccines in the world. Therefore, like it or not, if Kennedy were to be made the L.P. presidential nominee, the L.P. would be identified as the anti-vaccine party for years to come. 

What’s wrong with that? Everything! Libertarianism is no more anti-vaccine than it is pro-vaccine. Moreover, libertarianism is neither anti-mask nor pro-mask. Libertarianism is pro-liberty. Our philosophy is that people should be free to make whatever peaceful choices they want in life, without governmental interference, regulation, control, or punishment, so long as such choices do not involve the initiation of force or fraud.

Thus, in a genuinely free society, businesses would be free to establish their own healthcare conditions for their businesses, whether it be masks, vaccines, or anything else. 

By the same token, employees and consumers would be free to make their own choices accordingly. 

Moreover, producers would be free to produce and sell whatever vaccines they want. And consumers would be free to decide which vaccines, if any, they choose to take. Healthcare professionals and private certification agencies would assist consumers to make the best choices.

Kennedy accepts this freedom-of-choice principle with respect to consumers. He says that if he’s elected president, he’ll leave them alone. 

But not so with producers. It is clear that if he were to be elected president, he would go after vaccine producers with a ruthlessness and a vengeance that would match or exceed anything that the Trump-Biden-Fauci people did with their lockdowns and mandates.

Kennedy’s reign of healthcare terror would begin, by his own admission, with an “invitation” to vaccine producers, who he says are killing people or causing severe bodily harm, to come to the White House for a little “talk.” During that little “talk,” he would read them the riot act, threatening them with all sorts of governmental retribution if they continued producing and selling vaccines that hadn’t been “tested” to Kennedy’s satisfaction.

Every one of those “Big Pharma” vaccine producers would know what was going to happen to them if they violated the edicts set forth in that little White House “talk.” Kennedy’s personnel would go after them with a vengeance, much like his uncle President John F. Kennedy went after officials in the steel industry with a vengeance after they violated JFK’s edict that he set forth in a little White House “talk” in which he ordered them not to raise their prices. 

There is something extremely important for every Libertarian and every American to understand about Kennedy’s healthcare policy. He doesn’t want to abolish the Centers for Disease Control, the FDA, or any other federal, state, or local healthcare regulatory agency. He wants to keep those agencies in existence so that he and his statist cohorts can take control of them and impose their little tyrannical healthcare vision on the American people in what would amount to a ruthless healthcare reign of terror, one that would make RFK, Jr., a very dangerous president.

In fact, RFK, Jr., has stated that on his first day in office, he intends to issue an order to the television networks commanding them to cease carrying pharmaceutical advertisements on television. That’s quite a dictatorial order, especially coming from a person who complains about being “censored” by both the private and public sectors. 

Healthcare terror and tyranny are not what libertarianism is all about. Libertarianism is about achieving the genuinely free society. Our job as Libertarians is not to get different people to run governmental healthcare agencies, as Kennedy wants to do. Our job is to lead America to freedom — genuine freedom. To do that, we need to raise the vision of the American people to a higher level — to the level of genuine healthcare freedom — to the total separation of healthcare and the state —that is, getting government entirely out of the healthcare arena at the national, state, and local levels. That’s how we restore a free and healthy society to our land.

Education

It would be difficult to find a better example of a socialist program than public (i.e., government) schooling. It is a government-run operation, at the national, state, and local levels. Officials and employees are government personnel. The educational process is based on the core socialist principle of central planning. The entire process is politicized, including the political election of school-board members. Textbooks and curricula are set by the state. Customers are acquired through compulsory-attendance laws. Funding is through the coercive apparatus of taxation.

Not surprisingly, as a big-government, welfare-state liberal Democrat, Kennedy is a fierce advocate of this socialist program, at all levels of government, including the U.S. Department of Education. Thus, as a L.P. presidential nominee, he would be making the case to the American people as to how government can fix and reform this catastrophic socialist program. 

But what Kennedy, along with his big-government, welfare-state liberal Democrat cohorts, fails to understand is that it is impossible to fix and reform socialism. That’s because socialism is an inherently defective system. No one can fix and reform public schooling, not even with a system of school vouchers, which is nothing more than another socialist reform plan, albeit one embraced by Republicans, intended to fix and improve public schooling through “choice” and “competition.”

There is only one solution to the socialist morass of public (i.e, government) schooling — the total separation of school and state — the end of all governmental involvement in education — a total free market in education. That’s the key not only to educational liberty but also to establishing the finest possible education for children, especially those at the bottom of the economic ladder. That’s the case that a Libertarian presidential candidate should be making to the American people.

NEXT: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: The New Republican-Lite Libertarian Party Heartthrob, Part 4 [Final Part]