Join 30,000+ Independent Readers: Get the FREE Brownstone Journal Newsletter

Brownstone Journal

Brownstone Journal features in-depth articles, news, research, and commentary on public health, science, economics, social theory, and related policy issues — offering critical perspectives on institutional failures, government interventions, and threats to liberty.

Brownstone Institute » Brownstone Journal
When Panic Became Normalized - Brownstone Institute

When Panic Became Normalized

What leaders in government did, whether it be President Trump on the national level or your health department head on the local level, was an abject failure in what is one of the first duties of good leadership. To encourage panic and the psychological devastation that accompanies panic is wicked and depraved. The lack of accountability for nearly any of those guilty portends a future even more devoid of the necessary virtues required for good leadership.

When Panic Became Normalized Continue Reading

How Will We Remember the Pandemic Era? - Brownstone Institute

How Will We Remember the Pandemic Era?

Jump ahead a couple decades from the present and it seems almost certain that there will be no shortage of people reluctant to accept that organizations like the CDC behaved in a disreputable and dishonest manner. Moreover, it does not seem difficult to imagine mothers reprimanding sons for vowing disobedience in future pandemics, while older relatives shake their heads in disbelief at how young contrarians somehow don’t understand the reason we locked down and masked up was to do our part and help flatten the curve.

How Will We Remember the Pandemic Era? Continue Reading

The PREP Act Swallowed the Bill of Rights - Brownstone Institute

The PREP Act Swallowed the Bill of Rights

The US sold its citizens’ right to jury trials to the country’s largest lobbying force, and Americans now bear the costs after Pharma cashed record profits. The PREP Act, a 2005 statute invoked by HHS Secretary Alex Azar at the onset of the pandemic, guarantees immunity “with respect to all claims caused by, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the administration to or the use by an individual of a covered countermeasure,” including mRNA vaccines.

The PREP Act Swallowed the Bill of Rights Continue Reading

How Did American Capitalism Mutate Into American Corporatism? - Brownstone Institute

How Did American Capitalism Mutate Into American Corporatism?

I truly wish these companies were genuinely private, but they are not. They are de facto state actors. More precisely, they all work hand-in-glove and which is the hand and which is the glove is no longer clear. Coming to terms with this intellectually is the major challenge of our times. Dealing with it juridically and politically seems like a much more daunting task, to say the least. The problem is complicated by the drive to purge serious dissent at all levels of society. How did American capitalism become American corporatism? A little at a time and then all at once.

How Did American Capitalism Mutate Into American Corporatism? Continue Reading

Germany's Role in What Happened - Brownstone Institute

Germany’s Role in What Happened

It is all the more remarkable that these German connections are being ignored given that the supposedly ‘American’ story of the creation and release of Covid-19 points right back to them: namely, to a German or, more exactly, German-Dutch coronavirus research nexus, which has played a key role in the Covid-19 response and at whose centre we find none other than Christian Drosten. Drosten is, of course, the German creator of the notoriously hypersensitive and unreliable Covid-19 PCR test which was the very basis of the declaration of a pandemic. 

Germany’s Role in What Happened Continue Reading

Brownstone Institute - Our Last Innocent Moment

In the Shadow of Oedipus

I want to take the thesis of the last essay a step further and explore what might be causing our collapse. Is it a coincidence that we are suffering in so many different areas of life right now? Is it a little misstep on an otherwise progressive path? If we are on the verge of collapse, is it part of the arc of all great civilizations? Or, like Oedipus, do we suffer from some tragic flaw — a collective destructive character trait that we all share — that is responsible for bringing us to this place at this moment in history?

In the Shadow of Oedipus Continue Reading

Reflections on Brownstone's Retreat - Brownstone Institute

Reflections on Brownstone’s Retreat

People participating at the Brownstone Institute Retreat understand what is happening. It was a relief to be reminded that a wide range of committed and highly intelligent people understand the critical importance of challenging and interdicting what is being attempted. This resistance to power was a theme that ran through many of the presentations and discussions we experienced at the Retreat. I feel privileged to have been a part.

Reflections on Brownstone’s Retreat Continue Reading