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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.

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never again

Never Again

During what government deems crisis, it’s those most willing and eager to flout convention and expert opinion who produce crucial information for the rest of us. If living freely results in sickness and death, then we all know what not to do. But if as was the case with the coronavirus that living freely wasn’t much of a risk at all except for the already very old and already very sick, then those who didn’t flout convention and expert opinion have the information necessary to alter their lifestyles with the information created by the rebellious.  

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fungal apocalypse

A Fungal Non-Apocalypse

Bottom line—there’s not going to be a fungal apocalypse. I say this as a fungal immunologist that would certainly benefit from making the case for a fungal apocalypse, but I think we’ve had enough fearmongering the last few years for many lifetimes, and fearmongering ultimately further erodes public trust in scientists and public health “experts.”

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free speech rights

A Tremendous Victory for Free Speech 

Friday’s decision provides a crucial step in fighting against that informational totalitarianism. The Fifth Circuit issued an injunction that prohibits the Biden Administration from taking actions, “to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech.”  

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DSA

You Should Be Very Worried About the Digital Services Act

The only hope is that this ugly, complicated and regressive piece of legislation ends up before a judge who understands that freedom of expression means nothing if held hostage to the views of the European Commission on pandemic-preparedness, the Russia-Ukraine war, or what counts as “offensive” or “hateful” speech.

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Cochrane Mask

Lead Author of Cochrane Mask Review Responds to Fauci’s Dismissal of Evidence 

Jefferson explains that the entire point of the Cochrane review was to systematically sift through all the available randomised data on physical interventions such as masks and determine what was useful and what was not. “It might be that Fauci is relying on trash studies,” said Jefferson. “Many of them are observational, some are cross-sectional, and some actually use modelling. That is not strong evidence.”

Lead Author of Cochrane Mask Review Responds to Fauci’s Dismissal of Evidence  Continue Reading

public-private tyranny

The Rise of the Public-Private Partnership in Tyranny

Call it the public-private tyranny partnership. Traditionally coercion and tyranny have been the preserve of states, with citizen consent the exclusive preserve of liberal democratic states. The private sector has been the domain of choice and competition where the customer is always right. Now the citizen must hew to state-dictated morality and the customer must bow to the corporate moral compass.

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Fauci's very bad week

Anthony Fauci’s Very Bad Week

Despite Fauci’s wishes, the most extreme aspects of lockdowns gradually faded away in time, most anointed experts can pretend as if the vaccine ended the worst aspects of the pandemic (that’s why the mandates became necessary, if only to maximize uptake and confound the science), and Fauci keeps going on national television, despite his age and wealth, to dial back his responsibility for any aspect of it, including the lockdowns he is on record backing from February 26, 2020, onward. 

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laborers

The Dignity of Labor Requires Freedom and Truth

The same dynamic that Jesus encountered in Nazareth held true today; bringing “glad tidings to the poor” is a popular slogan but very often those who embrace it most quickly care little for being called out for their own sins which prevent delivery of these glad tidings. Sadly, this is precisely what has happened to those whose political history has been tied up with what was once called the labor movement.

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