Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has launched a health crusade under the banner “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA). Yet his recent pronouncements ring disturbingly like: “I’m the government, and I’m here to help.” Kennedy’s agenda for national well-being—much of which has already been supported via executive order—betrays a proclivity for top-down intervention rather than genuine reform. A former environmental lawyer who amassed considerable wealth defending regulatory overreach, his prior positions ought to alarm self-proclaimed government minimalists. The dissonance between his professed commitment to transparency and the recent manifestation of centralized health mandates is even more disquieting. One must, therefore, ask: is MAHA a bona fide movement for individual liberty to empower people’s health choices or merely another guise for expansive government control?

As head of Health and Human Services (HHS), Kennedy has pledged to probe the etiology of autism, proscribe select synthetic food dyes, and streamline the federal agencies he oversees. His MAHA movement has won enthusiastic support—including from conservatives who profess allegiance to limited government. While the goal of reducing bureaucracy aligns with small-government ideals, many of Kennedy’s specific proposals towards health and wellness clash with the founding principles of American liberty. Frédéric Bastiat captured this spirit succinctly in The Law, “It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property exist beforehand, that men make laws.”

According to Bastiat, the sole purpose of the law is to protect these preexisting rights—life, liberty, and property. Any expansion of government power beyond that narrow mandate risks perverting its proper role and eroding individual freedoms. Though ostensibly aimed at improving public health, Kennedy’s initiatives threaten to sacrifice liberty on the altar of safety and health. Too many Americans appear willing to trade their freedoms for the promise of government-enforced health outcomes. …

If these “studies” result in regulatory action, it will perpetuate government overreach. Far from “making corporations accountable,” this approach will cement monopolistic power and stifle the very consumer choice it purports to protect, ultimately infringing on the citizens’ right to property.

Suppose RFK Jr. truly intends to embolden scientific inquiry and innovation. In that case, he should dismantle excess bureaucracy and slash regulatory red tape—empowering private researchers, independent laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, and non-profits to pursue breakthroughs born of private ambition and self-interest. Such reforms would drive down consumer costs and channel more private investment into research and development, fostering genuine discovery rather than government-directed mandates. Instead, his present course strips Americans of their liberties; he is no savior nor vindicator—he is a big-government bureaucrat and should be held accountable.