Scientific discovery and innovations in medicine require a private sphere protected from government censorship. Properly understood, the First Amendment denies the government power over speech and press, thus enabling the free interchange of ideas and information. Dr. Anthony Fauci has proven himself an enemy of the First Amendment and an heir to the infamous legacy of another who forced science to heel to falsehood in service of his own ambitions, Trofim Lysenko of Stalin’s Soviet Union.
The era of COVID is also an era of widespread federal government censorship enabled by Big Tech at the behest of the White House and the FBI. A virulent virus created with Fauci’s complicity at the Wuhan lab has caused not only the deaths of over one million Americans but also widespread government deprivations of civil liberties akin to those common in communist China, including bans on freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of speech and press. The public has been manipulated and misled into believing falsehoods communicated by the White House, Fauci, the CDC, and other public health authorities (e.g., that COVID is a disease of the unvaccinated; that COVID is only spread by the unvaccinated; that natural immunity is inferior to vaccinated immunity; and that children are at high risk of COVID infection and illness).
Those falsehoods have led to orders and laws that have increased childhood depression and youth suicide rates, set children back entire grades in their educational development, deprived Americans of effective medical treatments, pitted the vaccinated against the unvaccinated, caused the unvaccinated to be denied critical care, and led people in relative ignorance to make misinformed life-affecting, even life-ending, decisions.
There is no single person more responsible for this era of censorship than NIAID Director and White House Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci. Fauci’s COVID related email correspondence, testimony given before Senate committees, and recent deposition in State of Missouri et al. v. Biden reveal him to be a ruthless, hedonistic, and egotistical bureaucrat whose decisions have cost American lives and liberty. Repeatedly, he has undermined and attempted to destroy those whose views conflict with his own. He has used his influence to deprive his enemies of federal grants and supply them tocronies, including those involved in gain of function research and horrific animal experiments.
Much material information remains to be uncovered about Fauci. The Republican House must discover: (1) the royalties he has received and from which sources in connection with COVID-19 research and vaccine development; (2) the nature and extent of his conflicts of interest; (3) the full involvement he has had with gain-of-function research; (4) the extent to which he violated executive orders and federal laws against gain-of-function research; (5) whether he delayed communication of COVID-19 risks to the Trump Administration or otherwise misled the Administration; (6) the number of instances in which he wittingly misled the American people and Congress concerning the need for and effectiveness of masking and vaccination, and the origins of COVID-19; and (7) each instance of abuse of power in furtherance of his own interests and, conversely, against the interests of those whose research, views, or revelations he opposed during his long career in public service.
From a full adduction of the relevant evidence, Americans must be informed of the extent to which Fauci is to blame for aiding and abetting the creation of COVID-19. The maddening reality is that Fauci wittingly enabled research to take place in an enemy state, China, that has long avowed its intention to use biological weapons in warfare against the United States and the West. Through complicity with our enemies, Fauci and those he caused to be funded and supported have betrayed the United States to our worst adversary. That must never happen again.
When we make a flawed mortal like Fauci a state-sponsored oracle of scientific truth we destroy science itself. Science is messy with conflicting views pushing, tugging, and pulling knowledge this way and that, ultimately achieving a relative consensus that, in time, almost always gives way to a new “truth.” That unending contest is the one on which we all depend for discovery and innovation that saves lives. It only occurs if freedom reigns and debate rages. Instead of that vital contest, Fauci proclaims himself science itself, clinging to the anti-scientific view that his own notions are the final word. When one scientist is elevated to the false equivalent of ultimate truth, as happened with Fauci, all others recoil to avoid offending Fauci, suffer a chilling effect on their independent publication, and effectively promote Fauci’s falsehood through acts of self-censorship. Through silence and self-serving complicity, rather than contest against Fauci, they emasculate the search for truth and retard discovery and innovation.
Fauci is the American heir to the legacy of another whose actions cost the lives of millions. In the 1920s, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin made Trofim Lysenko the last word on science in the former Soviet Union. Lysenko rejected well-accepted Mendelian genetic theory in favor of the dubious notion that offspring take on adaptive characteristics based on the life experiences of their progenitors. This led Lysenko to contend with virtually no proof that crops would change to accommodate arid conditions, enabling, e.g., Siberia to become a new Garden of Eden. Stalin applauded this “science” and used it and Lysenko to propagandize in favor of the forced collectivization of farms in the late 1920s, leading to the deaths of millions. Like Fauci, Lysenko attacked his enemies with the full support of the state. While Fauci extinguishes the research of those he opposes, Lysenko did that and, with the aid of Stalin, enabled the arrest, incarceration and execution of his intellectual opponents.
In State of Missouri et al. v. Biden et al., efforts are underway to make Fauci and other state censors account for their actions complicit with Big Tech in depriving the American people of vital information essential to their exercise of health choices and the franchise. Ultimately, if Biden Administration efforts at censorship to shape public opinion are not brought to an end, an indispensable foundation of our republic, our free enterprise system, and of liberty itself, the First Amendment, will be routinely honored in the breach, not in the observance.
This article was written on December 7, 2022, and published on Townhall.com