November 24, 2014

Santiago, Chile

Science is about truth. It’s about fact.

It’s about forming hypothesis and either proving or disproving that hypothesis through what we can observe, test, and measure.

For thousands of years it’s been through this method that humanity has progressed. And history shows that every time “authorities” get involved, it invariably arrests this process.

Human civilization lost centuries of progress in the “Dark Ages” (a bit of a misnomer, given that societies were flourishing in Asia at the same time).

European governments would burn anyone at the stake who dared to write that the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe.

We’d like to think we’ve come a long way since then. But have we really?

It was just a few years ago that the EPA was slammed in a scandal for putting political pressure on scientists to influence their work.

And just last week, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill that effectively kicks the scientists out of the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board, and makes room for industry insiders.

What’s curious is that this bill specifically allows for industry representatives to serve on the advisory board even when they have a direct conflict of interest with the board’s advisory activities.

This makes it yet even easier for a handful of big companies to influence public policy and force everyone else to do their bidding.

By themselves, companies would never be able to set policy. But when you put them in bed with government, they can do so at the point of a gun.

To give you an analogy, this would be the same thing as commercial banks like Citi or JP Morgan getting to choose the representatives that set monetary policy at the Federal Reserve.

—Oh wait, they’re already doing that.

Or it would be like the Department of Homeland Security buying completely useless body scanners from a company linked to the former head of DHS.

—Oh wait, they already did that too.

Or it would be like the FDA selecting some of its top executives from big agriculture companies like Monsanto.

—Oh wait, they already do that too.

Abraham Lincoln famously said at Gettysburg in 1863 that a government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The system we have today is none of those things.

The EPA is not there to protect the environment.

Homeland Security is not there to secure the homeland.

The FDA is not there for the health and safety of Americans.

And you’re far more likely to get shot by a police officer now in the Land of the Free than you are to ever even see a terrorist.

This system isn’t there to support you or protect you. It’s there to extract as much as possible from you through taxes and inflation at the point of a gun, and then force you to follow the rules that they create which benefit themselves the most.

That’s what passes as a free society today.

And it’s the biggest threat to our liberty, the biggest threat to our livelihood, and the biggest threat to future generations that won’t even be born for decades.

PS. A survey was recently conducted on Americans’ favorite government agency. What they chose tells you pretty much everything you need to know about government today—find out what that was.