No more free speech at Cato

The Cato Institute, a so-called "libertarian think-tank" has canned adjunct scholar Dom Armentano.

Why? Because he wrote an op-ed discussing the implications to our lives and our government if it were to be publicly proven that UFOs do exist.

The most astonishing news story of all time would be the confirmation of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Such a discovery would have multi-faceted social, religious, scientific and economic ramifications that can only be described as out-of-this-world. As an example, try to imagine the price of crude oil or the gyrations of the stock market just one day after such a revelation. The existence of off-the-planet intelligence could change what most people believe about almost everything.

Yet in some ways an even more significant story, perhaps even more significant than the discovery of extraterrestrial life itself, would be the revelation that certain elements of the U.S. government may have known about — and covered up — that discovery (even from elected officials without a “need to know”) for more than 50 years.

Now, that story, a deliberate half-century of deception to cover an inconvenient truth, likely would shake this nation to its very political foundations. That outrageous disclosure could change almost everything, too.

Yet outrageous as it may seem, many who have studied the UFO phenomenon now conclude that starting with Roswell in July 1947, elements of the U.S. government may have systematically lied to the American people (and to elected officials) concerning the actual nature of the UFO phenomenon. The evidence for that deception is substantial and is to be found in thoroughly documented books, dozens of declassified “top secret” documents, and many sworn testimonials from key military-intelligence community insiders.

He didn't say UFOs were full of little green men. In fact, the opinion he proffered was this:

Heavily censored information, billion-dollar “black budgets” and super-secret “black projects “ (UFOs are likely a very black project) ultimately make open government and representative democracy a joke and a sham.

The above sentence, possibly excepting the parenthetical remark, should be something that everyone except big-government statists can agree with. But what does Cato Executive Vice President David Boaz say?

“I won’t deny that this latest op-ed played a role in our decision. Some day we may look back and wish we’d listened to you. But for now this strikes us as not an issue that we want to have as part of Cato’s research agenda.”

No research into black budgets? What's up, Cato?