This article was originally published by Matthew Williams at The Mises Institute.
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.
MAHA’s Decisions are Based Off Technocratic Rule, Not Transparency
Kennedy’s MAHA agenda increasingly resembles a technocratic recalibration of Americans’ health decisions rather than a genuine commitment to open governance and transparency. He’s channeling HHS resources into inquiries spanning autism etiologies (with ambitions of using private health records), vaccine-safety evaluations, food-dye prohibitions, psychiatric-medication protocols, and emergent weight-loss therapeutics, using taxpayer dollars and the full force of federal research and the threat and enforcement of regulatory action. So far, these programs have moved forward with little public insight into how decisions are made, all while widening the reach of government control.
One of his earliest initiatives is the proposed ban on petroleum-based food dyes. This measure—devoid of comprehensive scientific evaluation on his behalf—resembles the impulses of social media health influencers more than transparent, evidence-based policymaking. It represents unwarranted bureaucratic overreach for three main reasons. First, many manufacturers were already phasing out these dyes in response to consumer demand and public pressure—demonstrating the market’s ability to self-correct. The FDA’s heavy-handed intervention, arriving after these voluntary corporate actions, seems redundant and encroaches on private-sector autonomy.
Second, as Dr. Jeffrey A. Singer observes, Americans already enjoy a plethora of healthy alternatives lining grocery shelves—stores like Whole Foods, Aldi, and Trader Joe’s offer ample dye-free options. This dogmatic stance infringes on personal liberty rather than defending it. Some people may choose to buy the less expensive food items with dyes as they have no real impact on their health. Dr. Singer invokes John Stuart Mill’s principle that only the individual can properly assess which risks are worth taking: “Only the affected individual is best qualified to judge whether a risk is worth taking because no other person cares more about that individual’s best interest.”
Yet state-led research can preempt that personal judgment, substituting a one-size-fits-all mandate for individual choice. The suggestion that Americans lack options is an alarmist fallacy. At its core, this policy prioritizes equality of outcome over equality of opportunity—and the purported harms of food dyes remain inconclusive, making any ban both premature and unjustified.
Third, the health effects of synthetic dyes remain unsettled. A preponderance of evidence affirms their safety at the levels typically consumed in foods. Alarmist labels like “poison,” “toxin,” and “petroleum-based” are hyperbolic, evoking images of gasoline-grade hydrocarbons entering our bodies—yet hydrocarbon-derived molecules are ubiquitous in natural foods. The studies often cited to vilify these additives rely on mouse models dosed at supra-physiological levels, far beyond any realistic human intake. Moreover, Mr. Kennedy advanced this draconian ban without the rigorous, gold-standard research and methodological transparency he pledged during his confirmation.
Kennedy has vowed to produce definitive answers on autism by September, confidently blaming environmental toxins and proclaiming the condition preventable, implying he’s unearthed groundbreaking science overnight. Why wait until September? RFK Jr.’s record reveals a penchant for wielding public office as a cudgel against corporate adversaries in the name of “public health.” As an environmental lawyer, he spearheaded high-profile lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies—a lucrative endeavor—and opposed energy projects like Keystone XL, initiatives that might have reduced consumer costs and expanded trade. Like his food-dye crusade, Kennedy’s looming autism inquiry suggests an intent to convert preliminary findings (if any) into regulatory edicts that will inflate prices and curtail individual choices.
MAHA’s Paternalistic Tendency
This newfound faith in centralized authority to deliver definitive health solutions verges on classic government paternalism—an irony not lost when we recall another Kennedy who popularized a similar ethos: John F. Kennedy’s admonition, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” Milton Friedman noted that both clauses betray a warped view of the relationship between free individuals and their government. RFK Jr. appears to share that distortion, conflating his service to the American people with top-down stewardship of personal health.
Frédéric Bastiat excoriated that bureaucracies could outthink individuals acting in their own interests, chiding officials who presume to usurp personal judgment. In Bastiat’s words:
Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow them liberty, how comes it to pass that the tendencies of organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their agents form a part of the human race?
By outsourcing health decisions to technocrats, the MAHA movement risks supplanting private research, consumer choice, and market innovation with one-size-fits-all mandates.
If MAHA research serves as a precursor to legislation against pharmaceutical or food producers, the burden will ultimately fall on consumers. Fixed regulatory burdens favor large corporations who can absorb them, marginalizing smaller competitors, and fostering crony capitalism. Moreover, taxpayer-funded studies masquerading as impartial evidence function as hidden taxes or tariffs—diverting wealth through centralized power rather than voluntary exchange. As Bastiat warned, “The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.”
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.
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