Yesterday, the most important political battle of our lifetimes spilled out onto the anchor table at CNN in one contentious interview that splashed across social media. Yesterday, an appalled Politico reported, “RFK Jr. tells CNN host that constitutional rights take priority over public health” Visible between every printed line was the implied question: how could ANYTHING take priority over ‘public health?’

CLIP: “Now we know Anthony Fauci was lying about everything (2:12).”

Yesterday morning, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. appeared for a rare corporate media interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” show with Dana Bash. The first surprise was they platformed Kennedy at all. Before he was in government, they could safely ignore him; but now he’s running HHS. So it’s a new strategy: Kennedy Derangement Syndrome.

Anyway, Dana —who isn’t normally what you would call a cheerful type— was clearly miserable about letting Kennedy talk. Politico, quoting Bash herself, described the interview as “contentious.” Which was mostly her doing. “I don’t want to allow you to say things that aren’t entirely true,” Bash told the Secretary, in her best mean girl tone of voice.

Allow him. That is how Bash views the media’s job. She is the gatekeeper. She decides what top government officials are allowed to say on the news. What could go wrong? Respectfully, Ms. Bash is no rocket surgeon. “All you know how to do,” the Secretary correctly noted, “is repeat things that people told you and say, ‘Trust the experts.’”

But Bash wasn’t listening. Nah-nah-nah I can’t hear you.

💉 For a written article about a televised interview, Politico actually quoted surprisingly little of the pair’s back-and-forth. Instead, readers mostly got Politico’s interpretive paraphrases. But it did (mostly) quote the key part that became the discussion’s theme (and the article’s headline)— the core, unresolved question of which has priority: our individual or collective rights?

“I think we did virtually everything wrong the last time,” the Secretary explained. He said the government’s “primary obligation” in a future pandemic is “protecting our constitutional rights.” Dana was appalled. “You’re talking about rights,” she gasped, “and I’m asking about a potential public health crisis.”

Dana didn’t challenge Kennedy’s claim that we did virtually everything wrong last time. Instead, Bash acted as though even mentioning individual rights was irrelevant, or maybe even dangerous, when we have an urgent hypothetical health crisis to deal with.

In other words, they are already looking yearningly toward the next pandemic —never mind that pandemics used to come 100 years apart— and they are already wondering how to broom our pesky constitutional rights before we get there.

Anyway, Kennedy shot right back, doubling down. He pointed out that, during the pandemic, citizens’ individual rights were tossed out the window, and even worse, for reasons that turned out to be wrong or mendacious. Making it even worse, the experts refused to listen to any criticism:

Let’s be clear: Dana Bash, who probably doesn’t even realize this is her role, represents a direct threat to the American system. The Constitution’s essence prioritizes individual rights over collective ones, even in “pandemics.” A journalist who intellectually grasped the Constitutional rights hierarchy would at least have acknowledged that individual rights are the baseline, and then argued about how preparedness fits within those rights.

Instead, she reacted like even mentioning rights was a distraction from the hypothetical crisis.

The interview proved that we’ve allowed a dark passenger to be smuggled into the public debate. That dark passenger is an attack on the foundations of our Constitutional framework itself. A technocratic group of largely self-appointed experts is attempting to use “pandemic preparedness” to amend the Constitution and flip it on its head.

They need only convince five Justices, and it is all over. That’s why Kennedy’s painful sacrifice —arguing with a nitwit— was so important.

Two longstanding constitutional principles are under attack from civilization’s enemies— Marxist-sympathetic public health technocracy, global health NGOs, progressive academics, and deferential media. With help from birdbrains like Dana Bash —useful idiots— these enemies are dribbling acid on the Bill of Rights.

Their goal is to convince the Supreme Court to find an “emergency” exception in the nation’s founding document, based on two “common sense” arguments about collective safety:

• The Constitution doesn’t really sanctify individual rights; collective rights must trump individual rights in emergencies.
• The Constitution doesn’t always delegate decision-making to juries, judges, and civilian elected officials; intelligence agencies (secret police) and technocratic ‘experts’ must run things during emergencies.

These arguments have already won over the elites and the institutions. If they can convince just two or three Supreme Court Justices, it’s all over. The Endless State of Emergency will be declared on Day One and will expire with the heat death of the Universe. Don’t believe it? Consider the unkillable “climate emergency.”

Bless Secretary Kennedy for taking the time to do it, and for enduring something comparable to arguing with an aggressive drunk on live TV. And, this may surprise you, but we also owe CNN thanks for airing this critical debate. Being charitable, it appears CNN threaded the needle; the network satisfied its partisan viewers with Bash’s Kennedy-bossing.

But it still platformed his (stronger) arguments, albeit punctuated with eye-rolling and constant interruption, and muted by shrill overtalk.

Never forget that “Public Health” is not “health.” The slogan “trust public health” sounds like “we care whether you live.” That is false. It’s not a conspiracy theory to say so, either.

If “Public Health” were synonymous with “health,” the modifier “public” would be redundant. Like “jumbo shrimp,” it’s an oxymoronic modifier that flips the literal meaning on its head. You, as an individual, don’t even need to be healthy for the public health framework to ‘succeed.’ You could be ordered to an infected nursing home to die alone in agony, and that could still be counted as a plus for ‘public health.’ I think about that often.

Our generation faces an all-new assault on the nation’s constitutional order, and the shock troops are dressed in white lab coats. That critical debate about rights, priorities, and emergencies surfaced during the pandemic, at immeasurable cost, and was still being argued this weekend.

We shall never back down. We will never retreat. Onward, soldiers.

Yesterday, the most important political battle of our lifetimes spilled out onto the anchor table at CNN in one contentious interview that splashed across social media. Yesterday, an appalled Politico reported, “RFK Jr. tells CNN host that constitutional rights take priority over public health” Visible between every printed line was the implied question: how could ANYTHING take priority over ‘public health?’

CLIP: “Now we know Anthony Fauci was lying about everything (2:12).”

Yesterday morning, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. appeared for a rare corporate media interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” show with Dana Bash. The first surprise was they platformed Kennedy at all. Before he was in government, they could safely ignore him; but now he’s running HHS. So it’s a new strategy: Kennedy Derangement Syndrome.

Anyway, Dana —who isn’t normally what you would call a cheerful type— was clearly miserable about letting Kennedy talk. Politico, quoting Bash herself, described the interview as “contentious.” Which was mostly her doing. “I don’t want to allow you to say things that aren’t entirely true,” Bash told the Secretary, in her best mean girl tone of voice.

Allow him. That is how Bash views the media’s job. She is the gatekeeper. She decides what top government officials are allowed to say on the news. What could go wrong? Respectfully, Ms. Bash is no rocket surgeon. “All you know how to do,” the Secretary correctly noted, “is repeat things that people told you and say, ‘Trust the experts.’”

But Bash wasn’t listening. Nah-nah-nah I can’t hear you.

💉 For a written article about a televised interview, Politico actually quoted surprisingly little of the pair’s back-and-forth. Instead, readers mostly got Politico’s interpretive paraphrases. But it did (mostly) quote the key part that became the discussion’s theme (and the article’s headline)— the core, unresolved question of which has priority: our individual or collective rights?

“I think we did virtually everything wrong the last time,” the Secretary explained. He said the government’s “primary obligation” in a future pandemic is “protecting our constitutional rights.” Dana was appalled. “You’re talking about rights,” she gasped, “and I’m asking about a potential public health crisis.”

Dana didn’t challenge Kennedy’s claim that we did virtually everything wrong last time. Instead, Bash acted as though even mentioning individual rights was irrelevant, or maybe even dangerous, when we have an urgent hypothetical health crisis to deal with.

In other words, they are already looking yearningly toward the next pandemic —never mind that pandemics used to come 100 years apart— and they are already wondering how to broom our pesky constitutional rights before we get there.

Anyway, Kennedy shot right back, doubling down. He pointed out that, during the pandemic, citizens’ individual rights were tossed out the window, and even worse, for reasons that turned out to be wrong or mendacious. Making it even worse, the experts refused to listen to any criticism:

Let’s be clear: Dana Bash, who probably doesn’t even realize this is her role, represents a direct threat to the American system. The Constitution’s essence prioritizes individual rights over collective ones, even in “pandemics.” A journalist who intellectually grasped the Constitutional rights hierarchy would at least have acknowledged that individual rights are the baseline, and then argued about how preparedness fits within those rights.

Instead, she reacted like even mentioning rights was a distraction from the hypothetical crisis.

The interview proved that we’ve allowed a dark passenger to be smuggled into the public debate. That dark passenger is an attack on the foundations of our Constitutional framework itself. A technocratic group of largely self-appointed experts is attempting to use “pandemic preparedness” to amend the Constitution and flip it on its head.

They need only convince five Justices, and it is all over. That’s why Kennedy’s painful sacrifice —arguing with a nitwit— was so important.

Two longstanding constitutional principles are under attack from civilization’s enemies— Marxist-sympathetic public health technocracy, global health NGOs, progressive academics, and deferential media. With help from birdbrains like Dana Bash —useful idiots— these enemies are dribbling acid on the Bill of Rights.

Their goal is to convince the Supreme Court to find an “emergency” exception in the nation’s founding document, based on two “common sense” arguments about collective safety:

• The Constitution doesn’t really sanctify individual rights; collective rights must trump individual rights in emergencies.
• The Constitution doesn’t always delegate decision-making to juries, judges, and civilian elected officials; intelligence agencies (secret police) and technocratic ‘experts’ must run things during emergencies.

These arguments have already won over the elites and the institutions. If they can convince just two or three Supreme Court Justices, it’s all over. The Endless State of Emergency will be declared on Day One and will expire with the heat death of the Universe. Don’t believe it? Consider the unkillable “climate emergency.”

Bless Secretary Kennedy for taking the time to do it, and for enduring something comparable to arguing with an aggressive drunk on live TV. And, this may surprise you, but we also owe CNN thanks for airing this critical debate. Being charitable, it appears CNN threaded the needle; the network satisfied its partisan viewers with Bash’s Kennedy-bossing.

But it still platformed his (stronger) arguments, albeit punctuated with eye-rolling and constant interruption, and muted by shrill overtalk.

Never forget that “Public Health” is not “health.” The slogan “trust public health” sounds like “we care whether you live.” That is false. It’s not a conspiracy theory to say so, either.

If “Public Health” were synonymous with “health,” the modifier “public” would be redundant. Like “jumbo shrimp,” it’s an oxymoronic modifier that flips the literal meaning on its head. You, as an individual, don’t even need to be healthy for the public health framework to ‘succeed.’ You could be ordered to an infected nursing home to die alone in agony, and that could still be counted as a plus for ‘public health.’ I think about that often.

Our generation faces an all-new assault on the nation’s constitutional order, and the shock troops are dressed in white lab coats. That critical debate about rights, priorities, and emergencies surfaced during the pandemic, at immeasurable cost, and was still being argued this weekend.

We shall never back down. We will never retreat. Onward, soldiers.