President Barack Obama wants to “tweak” your brain so you’ll be healthier and happier.
A CNN report from September 2 chronicles the various efforts currently underway at the White House to “nudge” Americans into doing things a “better” way — that is to say, the way the government wants them to do them.
CNN describes the president’s goal as codifying some “simple tweaks for helping people make healthier and more forward-looking decisions.”
Setting aside for a moment the question of whether Barack Obama knows what’s best for you, the more pertinent inquiry is where in the Constitution did the states give the executive branch the authority to “nudge” or “tweak” the people of the United States through behavioral modification programs?
Nowhere.
Every move a magistrate makes outside of his constitutional prescribed sphere of authority is prima facie tyrannical and must be resisted vigorously by anyone who prefers liberty to slavery and who recognizes the consent of the governed as the only legitimate basis for government.
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Such considerations are irrelevant to the statists occupying the seats of power in Washington and for his part, the president has been building his brain-tweaking bureaucracy for a while now.
In 2013, President Obama announced a plan to spend $100 million to “revolutionize our understanding of the human mind.”
Dubbed the BRAIN Initiative — short for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies — the program calls on the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the National Science Foundation to kickstart the research.
Describing the brain mapping project as one of his administration’s “Grand Challenges,” the president explained the goal behind the grants:
Imagine if no family had to feel helpless watching a loved one disappear behind the mask of Parkinson’s or struggle in the grip of epilepsy. Imagine if we could reverse traumatic brain injury or PTSD for our veterans who are coming home. Imagine if someone with a prosthetic limb can now play the piano or throw a baseball as well as anybody else, because the wiring from the brain to that prosthetic [sic] is direct and triggered by what’s already happening in the patient’s mind. What if computers could respond to our thoughts or our language barriers could come tumbling down. Or if millions of Americans were suddenly finding new jobs in these fields — jobs we haven’t even dreamt up yet — because we chose to invest in this project.
Freeing the human race from disease is a noble endeavor, but perhaps President Obama should explain how the military’s super-secret research and development group (DARPA) is going to help.
DARPA answers that question on its own website. In a statement announcing its participation in BRAIN, DARPA declares: “Better understanding of human brain supports national security.”
To help keep the country safe, DARPA is focusing on the following aspects of the function of the human brain:
DARPA plans to explore two key areas to elicit further understanding of the brain. New tools are needed to measure and analyze electrical signals and the biomolecular dynamics underpinning brain function. Researchers will also explore, abstract and model the vast spectrum of brain functions by examining its incredible complexity.
And:
DARPA’s planned investment includes new programs to address the areas outlined and ongoing efforts designed to advance fundamental understanding of the brain’s dynamics to drive applications (Revolutionizing Prosthetics, Restorative Encoding Memory Integration Neural Device, Reorganization and Plasticity to Accelerate Injury Recovery, Enabling Stress Resistance), manufacture sensing systems for neuroscience applications (Reliable Neutral Interface Technology, Blast Gauge), and analyze large data sets (Detection and Computational Analysis of Psychological Signals).
Somehow, it seems, in President Obama’s mind, the military needs to have a map of the mind and plans to manipulate that map, all in the name of “national security.”
And with millions of tax dollars deposited by BRAIN into its research coffers, DARPA can begin planning to identify brain activity typical of those who could potentially pose a threat to national security. These threats could be eliminated by bringing such citizens into a federal government lab run by the National Institutes of Health to have their “diseased” brains healed and returned to “normal” function.
President Obama is relying on DARPA and the Defense Department to carry out much of his mind control agenda.
In 2014, for example, the Pentagon announced plans to implant veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) with small electronic sensors that will map their brains. The project will proceed with the help of a $30-million grant provided by the DARPA.
According to a statement released by Massachusetts General Hospital — the creator of the chip — the “deep brain stimulation (DBS) device … will monitor signals across multiple brain structures in real time.”
“Our goal is to take DBS to the next level and create an implantable device to treat disorders like PTSD and TBI. Together with our partners we’re committed to developing this technology, which we hope will be a bold new step toward treating those suffering from these debilitating disorders,” said Dr. Emad Eskandar, director of functional neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and the project’s principal investigator.
Draper Laboratory, a non-profit research group with experience in the development of “miniaturized smart medical devices,” will partner with Massachusetts General and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in creating the brain implant.
In a description of its work that sounds more Manchurian Candidate and less like treatment for depressions and PTSD, Draper Laboratory reports that its “emphasis has shifted to research in innovative space navigation topics, intelligent systems that rely on sensors and computers to make autonomous decisions.”
The money for the implanting of veterans is coming from the funds DARPA received as part of the BRAIN program.
The other “tweaks” being tested out by the president sound less threatening than the mind mapping and chip implanting, but nonetheless have the same statist aim: to push the people into the arms of big government, making them reliable on Washington for that increased “happiness” and “health” the programs promise.
For example, CNN rejoices over the “promising stuff” included within the roster of the president’s experiments. Note the full-throated promotion of the nanny state.
“One initiative helped encourage people to apply for government benefits to which they were entitled,” the cable news story reports.
“Another one helped encourage low-income students to apply for federal student loans,” they list next.
Finally, the story describes a plan to tweak “the government’s approach to getting people to pay money they owed.”
Owed to the government, that is.
After claiming that most of these “experiments” sound “bureaucratic and unexciting,” CNN promises that if the president can just be given unfettered access to the minds of Americans, then he will be able to “make a big difference in people’s lives.”
The biggest difference will be the subtle “nudge” toward associating lasting happiness and health with increasing dependence on the “benefits” one is “owed” by and the debts one “owes” to the federal government.
In the post-1984 world, dependence is freedom.
