Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ comical display over babies’ “onesies” during Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Senate confirmation hearing was an assault on Kennedy’s right to free speech. The speech policing of the Biden administration is not in the rearview mirror: it was on full display when Sanders demanded Kennedy curtail the First Amendment liberties of the nonprofit charity Children’s Health Defense.
The U.S. Constitution restrains government from regulating Americans’ speech. Bernie sought to stifle a political message he found distasteful (to his Big Pharma donors). No, he didn’t use Twitter or Facebook; he did it out openly:
The Vermont senator showed lawmakers at Wednesday’s confirmation photos of two baby onesies with the words, “No Vax, No Problem” and “Unvaxxed, Unafraid.”
He then urged Kennedy to agree that, considering his insistence that he was not against vaccines, he would take the items of clothing off the market.
It is not clear what message Bernie sought to castigate Kennedy for. Was it the word “Unafraid,” or was Sanders’ faux-outrage directed at the COVID-19 vaccines advertised by a deluge of government misinformation as “safe and effective” when they were neither? CDC indicates children were at almost no risk from COVID-19. Kennedy’s rabid attackers avoided challenging his criticisms of COVID-19 vaccines, lest the growing proof of “real science” intrude upon their Kafkaesque display
Parents are free to buy the baby clothes of their choice, and CHD is free to sell them. Kennedy’s riposte challenged the senator’s legendary if embarrassing Big Pharma coffer-stuffing:
“Bernie, you were the single largest accepter of pharmaceutical dollars. $1.5 million,” Kennedy responded.
“Yeah, out of $200 million,” Sanders conceded.
(Bernie also allegedly diverted $775,000 of campaign money to his Sanders Institute.)
Big Pharma gave Americans the opioid crisis and a long list of failed drugs. Challenging Big Bernie’s cash cow, though, is verboten: is questioning COVID-19’s gain-of-function research permissible?
Like Bernie’s surreal onesie rant, the facts of the Supreme Court’s decision in Cohen v California were both amusing and serious. Paul Cohen, a 19-year-old department store worker, walked into a California courthouse in 1968 with a onesie-ish message on his jacket objecting to the Vietnam War: "F*** THE DRAFT. STOP THE WAR." Sentenced to 30 days in jail, Cohen appealed to the Supreme Court.
In striking down California’s statute, Justice John Marshall Harlan laid down the law of the American land that still stands against Bernie’s bullying shenanigans today:
The constitutional right of free expression is powerful medicine in a society as diverse and populous as ours. It is designed and intended to remove governmental restraints from the arena of public discussion, putting the decision as to what views shall be voiced largely into the hands of each of us, in the hope that use of such freedom will ultimately produce a more capable citizenry and more perfect polity and in the belief that no other approach would comport with the premise of individual dignity and choice upon which our political system rests.
Elizabeth Warren attacked free speech as well, criticizing Kennedy for suing pharmaceutical companies to prove they sold dangerous products. Kennedy questioned COVID-19 vaccines for sound scientific reasons. He vocally condemned Big Food in his opening statement, using legitimate data. The Democrat watch-the-birdie hyena circus appears contrived to distract Americans from heeding RFK Jr.’s informed warnings about ultra-processed foods.
Bernie abused his bully pulpit as a senator precisely as the Harlan court cautioned:
...we cannot indulge the facile assumption that one can forbid particular words without also running a substantial risk of suppressing ideas in the process. Indeed, governments might soon seize upon the censorship of particular words as a convenient guise for banning the expression of unpopular views. We have been able, as noted above, to discern little social benefit that might result from running the risk of opening the door to such grave results.
The Cohen decision also had words for an ethically and cognitively compromised senator who shamelessly betrayed Americans in his zeal to protect Big Pharma 54 years later.
Indeed, as Mr. Justice Frankfurter has said,
"[o]ne of the prerogatives of American citizenship is the right to criticize public men and measures -- and that means not only informed and responsible criticism, but the freedom to speak foolishly and without moderation."
Attorney-farmer John Klar hosts the Small Farm Republic Substack and podcast from his Vermont farm. His MAHA-themed 2023 book is Small Farm Republic: Why Conservatives Must Embrace Local Agriculture, Reject Climate Alarmism, and Lead an Environmental Revival.
Image: Gage Skidmore