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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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healing culture

Healing the Culture with Poetry and Song

We now endure times of deconstruction that feel unprecedented, crises of confidence in almost all parts of our culture. With institutions crumbling, we may also question the language, the words, that built and sustain these institutions. Many words no longer mean the same or have the same associations — “Left” and “Right; “Liberal” and “Conservative;” “safe” and “free.” Relationships rupture.  This rupturing may create openings for new meanings, associations, and alliances.

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social science and humanities

A Crumbling Regime: Lessons for the Social Sciences and Humanities

COVID-19 landed in an impoverished information ecology – especially in academic institutions – where increasingly all forms of information and arguments are vetted through ideological lines. In other words, arguments are measured against an always moving line of demarcation based on their suspected rootedness in simplistic political camps. 

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safety signal

What Is a Safety Signal and Why Does It Matter? 

The authorities intentionally conflated the common public understanding with the technical precision of the medical specialists in insisting that serious side effects have been very rare. This was facilitated with the pandemic of media malfeasance. The Censorship-Industrial Complex was weaponized into a powerful tool of state power in an evolving system of governance that is a threat to the very survival of free society.

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essential and nonessential

What They Meant by Essential and Nonessential

Think of totalitarian societies like in The Hunger Games, with a District One and everyone else, or perhaps the old Soviet Union in which the party elites dined in luxury and everyone else stood in bread lines, or perhaps a scene from Oliver! in which the owners of the orphanage got fat while the kids in the workhouse lived on gruel until they could escape to live in the underground economy. It appears that the pandemic planners think of society the same way.

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manipulation

The Manipulation of the Public Mind

Each of us is, way down, a black-box pool – our innermost thoughts and feelings known only to ourselves, and to God. Honouring that autonomy of thought, and decision making is to respect one’s own and other peoples individuality, freedom and place in the world. By the same token, the manipulation of someone’s free will through deliberate propaganda and psychological tactics is an abomination.

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World Health Organization abortion

The WHO’s Updated Abortion Care Guideline and Its Implications for Member States

Abortion is a morally complicated area. Policy must be based on compassion and respect for all of humanity. To impose one’s views on others irrespective of evidence and without respect for alternate opinion is a form of fascism. The WHO may have a place in advising on safety of a medical procedure, but not in pontificating over moral rights and wrongs. It is not there to tell people how to live their lives, but to support them with the tools to do so.

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Coronamania and the End of the World

Coronamania and the End of the World

Too many Americans are gullible and fearful. Many blindly believe what the media presents and thus, suffer from mass delusion and anxiety. The media feels no obligation to tell the truth. To the contrary, news managers deliberately distort and sensationalize information to create alarm and audience/readership. No institution will punish them for their chicanery. Thus, they continually, routinely misrepresent. 

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Surveillance

The Road to Oceania

For many, living in a state of constant surveillance seems only natural – especially for younger generations that have lived their lives online and have had their every movement since childhood tracked by their parents through their phones to ensure their safety. News of government doing the same, although sometimes with fancier tools like automatic license plate readers and facial recognition, no longer even causes a stir. 

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mask induced exhaustion syndrome

Long Covid Could be Mask Induced Exhaustion Syndrome (MIES)

Can masks be responsible for a misinterpreted long-COVID-19-syndrome after an effectively treated COVID-19 infection? Nearly 40% of main long-COVID-19 symptoms overlap with mask related complaints and symptoms described by Kisielinski et al. as MIES like fatigue, dyspnea, confusion, anxiety, depression, tachycardia, dizziness, and headache, which we also detected in the qualitative and quantitative analysis of face mask effects in our systematic review. It is possible that some symptoms attributed to long-COVID-19 are predominantly mask-related.

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Read the Label! It’s BioNTech’s Vaccine, Not Pfizer’s

Whether or not it is the intention, the effect of the incessant raging against Pfizer is to hide what is in plain sight: namely, that it is BioNTech’s product and that it is BioNTech, not Pfizer, that has been the main corporate beneficiary of the creation by government fiat of a massive Covid-19 vaccine market.

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fear of a microbial planet

Fear of a Microbial Planet by Dr. Steve Templeton

It was always pointless to try to stop much less eradicate this virus. We’ve evolved with pathogens and need to learn to live with them without imposing mass psychological, social, economic, and public-health damage. Everyone who panicked to the point of meltdown needs this book as a corrective. And even if you did not, everyone knows someone who did, public-health officials above all else. 

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