Articles ⋆ Brownstone Institute

Twenty Steps to End the Madness

By Paul Elias Alexander September 23, 2021 September 24, 2021 Public Health 15 minute read

The medical experts and these Task Forces have been wrong. Every decision has proven disastrous and they have caused far greater suffering and death from the collateral effects of the lockdowns and restrictions. Medical experts who inform governments should broaden the advisement table and allow other voices to be heard. Allow other scientists and lay persons a seat at the table for as it stands, those currently at the table have only made illogical, irrational, unscientific, nonsensical, often absurd and even reckless decisions that have only hurt lives.

Copycat Governments: How the World Locked Down

By Jeffrey A. Tucker September 23, 2021 September 23, 2021 History, Policy, Public Health 7 minute read

Why did so many governments go so nuts at once, disregarding their own laws, traditions, and values by bludgeoning their own people with the excuse of science that has turned out to be almost completely bogus?

Will There Be Backlash?

By Paul Frijters, Gigi Foster, Michael Baker September 22, 2021 September 22, 2021 History, Policy, Public Health 6 minute read

The gains secured through corruption and abuses of power are likely to remain in the claws of those who grabbed them, a prediction supported by the scarcity in human history of examples in which those who abused their positions have later been punished and stripped of their wealth.

A Conversation with Lord Sumption

By Jayanta Bhattacharya September 22, 2021 September 22, 2021 Policy, Public Health, Society 37 minute read

All despotisms – or almost all despotisms – believe that it is for the good of the people that they are being deprived of their freedom of action.

The Deprecation of Human Rights in the Age of Covid

By Michael Tomlinson September 22, 2021 September 22, 2021 Philosophy, Policy, Public Health 10 minute read

Government should not gamble with the lives and livelihoods of their people by taking extreme measures in the hope that they might work.

The Wrecking of New York City: Accident or Design?

By Jeffrey A. Tucker September 21, 2021 September 24, 2021 Policy, Public Health, Society 9 minute read

We find ourselves in an emergency situation. The world is tottering between two visions of human life. One centers on freedom and all its creativity, including cities, arts, friendships, technology, and great lives. The other centers on despotism and the relentless drive back to a state of nature: foraging for food, living in rural settings, stuck in one place, and dying young.

No, Niall Ferguson, Travel and Trade Improved Health

By George Gilder September 20, 2021 September 20, 2021 History, Public Health 14 minute read

Are we killing ourselves through our cosmopolitan bustle of business, technology, immigration, cultural exchange, agriculture, and exogamous sex? The distinguished historian and transatlantic pundit-philosopher Niall Ferguson says so in this laboriously learned, encyclopedic catalogue, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.

The Travel Bans Achieve Nothing for Public Health

By John Tamny September 20, 2021 September 20, 2021 Policy, Public Health 5 minute read

Many countries have economies reliant on tourism, but it seems the businesses created to serve the tourists weren’t asked their opinions about this overreach. It’s worth adding that investment is the driver of all economic progress, but with travel limited, how many interesting concepts have been suffocated by a lack of exposure to the financiers whose allocations would, in normal times, propel them to greater heights?

Covid Chaos and the Collapse of European Unity

By Sofia van der Vegt September 19, 2021 September 20, 2021 History, Policy, Society 7 minute read

No matter how much the public narrative tries to ignore it, no matter how much the media attempts to suppress serious discussion, critical voices are becoming louder by the day. Ever more people in both the old and the new Europe are demanding their fundamental rights and freedoms back.

Why Does the CDC Recognize Natural Immunity for Chicken Pox but Not Covid?

By Paul Elias Alexander September 17, 2021 September 19, 2021 Policy, Public Health 3 minute read

What is different for COVID-19? Why the different standard or application of core immunology or virology principles? Some say the guidance on Covid is purely political and has zero to do with science or evidence.

Are You Ready and Willing to Be Free Again?

By Stacey Rudin September 16, 2021 September 17, 2021 Philosophy, Public Health, Society 11 minute read

To today’s Americans, appearances are everything — we are afraid to be different, lest it make our friends uncomfortable (maybe we will lose one, whatever will we do?!) We have ceased caring about truth and authenticity entirely. We have tacitly agreed as a society that true things should be hidden whenever they conflict with what is “popular”; with what everyone “smart” and “cool” is doing. Anyone acting outside of these boundaries — the “eccentrics” of centuries past, considered by Mill to be geniuses — are today’s untouchables.

These Travel Restrictions Must End

By Jeffrey A. Tucker September 15, 2021 September 19, 2021 Economics, History, Public Health 10 minute read

International tourist arrivals are down by 85% from 2019. A third of the world’s borders are shut. There seems to be no movement in the direction of reversing this disaster and reinstituting the wonderful world of 2019. In fact, there seems to be very little awareness that this has happened to us much less of the terrible consequences. Forget the freedom of movement; the Biden administration has only promised to open up “when it is safe to do so.”