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
Living Everywhere in a Carceral Surveillance State

Living Everywhere in a Carceral Surveillance State

If you live in a Chinese city, or even in London, you are probably so used to surveillance cameras all around you – on lamp posts, the corners of buildings, and so on – that you would hardly bat an eyelid. Yet what contemporary city-denizens take for granted was not always the case, and most people would be surprised to know that surveillance has a long history, and was linked to modes of punishment from early on. 

Living Everywhere in a Carceral Surveillance State Continue Reading

Why Does the WHO Make False Claims Regarding Proposals to Seize States’ Sovereignty?

Why Does the WHO Make False Claims Regarding Proposals to Seize States’ Sovereignty?

If it is indeed the case that our authorities and their supporters within the public health community consider that powers currently vested within national jurisdictions should be given over to external bodies on the basis of this level of recorded harm, it would be best to have a public conversation as to whether this is sufficient basis for abandoning democratic ideals in favor of a more fascist or otherwise authoritarian approach. We are, after all, talking about restricting basic human rights essential for a democracy to function. 

Why Does the WHO Make False Claims Regarding Proposals to Seize States’ Sovereignty? Continue Reading

These Amendments Would Open the Door to a Dangerous Global Health Bureacracy

These Amendments Would Open the Door to a Dangerous Global Health Bureaucracy

The Covid pandemic gave the World Health Organisation and its partners unprecedented visibility and a tremendous amount of “soft” power to shape public health law and policies across the world. Over the past year or so, the WHO has been pushing hard to consolidate and expand its power to declare and manage public health emergencies on a global scale.

These Amendments Would Open the Door to a Dangerous Global Health Bureaucracy Continue Reading

It’s Not Too Early to Name the Decade 

The times are terrible not because of some impersonal forces of history as Hegel might have it, but because a small minority decided to play dangerous games with fundamental rights, liberties, and law. They broke the world and are now pillaging what’s left. It promises to stay broken and looted so long as the same people either gain the courage to admit wrongdoing or, like the decrepit old men who ruled the Soviet empire in its last days, they finally perish from the earth. 

It’s Not Too Early to Name the Decade  Continue Reading

Human Rights Discarded at the Gates of Hell

Human Rights Discarded at the Gates of Hell

Human rights claims are claims by citizens on governments. The advocacy, juridical, and enforcement revolutions in human rights led to a rapid expansion of governmental activism on legislation backed by monitoring and compliance machinery. Yet human rights are also abused most systematically, pervasively and widely by governments. 

Human Rights Discarded at the Gates of Hell Continue Reading

The Grateful Dead Succumbed to Coronamania, but We Didn't Follow

The Grateful Dead Succumbed to Coronamania, but We Didn’t Conform

Throughout, my unimpaired eyes and ears told me that the Covid response was an extreme overreaction that was causing widespread harm. Instead of following a gullibly unhinged crowd, I found new friends who knew bad Scamdemic music when they heard it. Instead of “staying safe,” buying the hysteria and flailing their arms, my new tribe stayed sane and moved, vitally and on-time, to their own, unmistakable beat of reality.

The Grateful Dead Succumbed to Coronamania, but We Didn’t Conform Continue Reading

EUA Countermeasures are Neither Investigational nor Experimental

EUA Countermeasures Are Neither Investigational nor Experimental

Judge Hughes is correct that it is “false and irrelevant” to call Covid injections experimental and dangerous. It is false because EUA is not experimental and can never be. It is irrelevant because safety is irrelevant to EUA, which gets issued based on opinions and not approved based on data. There is no way to collect clinical trial data and collate it such that an assessment of risk benefit (as defined in FDCA) can be made.

EUA Countermeasures Are Neither Investigational nor Experimental Continue Reading

The Crazy Covid Copulation Exemption

The Crazy Covid Copulation Exemption

The crazy Covid copulation exemption deserves far more ridicule than it will ever receive. When politicians are permitted to selectively nullify freedom, the injustices will be exceeded only by the absurdities. As historian John Barry, author of The Great Influenza, observed: “When you mix politics and science, you get politics.” 

The Crazy Covid Copulation Exemption Continue Reading

To Whom Should the Right of Speech Belong?

To Whom Should the Right of Speech Belong?

Judge Doughty’s injunction may have flaws, but on the question of whether it advances or hinders free speech in the United States, the answer is undeniable. Missouri v. Biden is a litmus test for Americans. Either the Government has a right to curate citizens’ newsfeeds by using the power of the federal government to nationalize our information centers, or we embrace the First Amendment and unshackle ourselves from the militarized system of informational warfare that has dominated our airwaves for over three years.

To Whom Should the Right of Speech Belong? Continue Reading