The reason it is difficult is that we have been conditioned to laugh at conspiracy theories, and few people will risk public ridicule by advocating them. On the other hand, to endorse the accidental view is absurd. Almost all of history is an unbroken trail of one conspiracy after another. Conspiracies are the norm, not the exception.

During the fiscal year ending in 1861, expenses of the federal government had been $67 million. After the first year of armed conflict they were $475 million and, by 1865, had risen to one billion, three-hundred million dollars. On the income side of the ledger, taxes covered only about eleven per cent of that figure. By the end of the war, the deficit had risen to $2.61 billion. That money had to come from somewhere.

The Civil War was started over economic issues, not slavery. The War was not popular in the North until the issue of slavery was added at a later time to turn it into a moral crusade.

1914...Dr. Joseph Goldberger had proven that (pellagra) was related to diet, and later showed that it could be prevented by simply eating liver or yeast. But it wasn't until the 1940's...that the 'modern' medical world fully accepted pellagra as a vitamin B deficiency.

First, it is providing a means whereby key individuals on its payroll are able to obtain both power and wealth through granting special favors to certain politically influential groups that are subject to its regulation. This activity is similar to the 'protection racket' of organized crime: for a price, one can induce FDA administrators to provide 'protection' from the FDA itself.

The timid and fearful cannot defend liberty -- or anything else.

And thirdly, the FDA occasionally does some genuine public good with whatever energies it has left over after serving the vested political and commercial interest of its first two activities.