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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.

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donald trump

The Buck Stops Where?

The most outrageous breakout of statist excess in US history happened on Donald Trump’s watch with his full complicity. In turn, these Covid-lockdown assaults on normal economic function transformed what was a mediocre economic record during his first 38 months in office into a complete disaster during the last 10 months.

The Buck Stops Where? Continue Reading

social isolation

Social Isolation Bad For Social Mammals – Who Knew?

What were the cumulative health effects of encouraging, coercing, and forcing large populations into states of prolonged social isolation while simultaneously instilling in them intense fear and inflicting upon them economic uncertainty and hardship? What will the long-term effects of this be? And how could our public health experts not have considered that doing this to a social mammal might have been bad for their health? 

Social Isolation Bad For Social Mammals – Who Knew? Continue Reading

india pfizer

The Contra Example of India’s Rejection of Indemnity for Pfizer

How does this help with the notion that mRNA vaccines might be driving Covid cases and deaths in many Western countries? Because the main vaccine administered in India is a virus-vector type. The Indian government would not agree to demands by Pfizer and Moderna that their approvals elsewhere, based on trial results from overseas, were sufficient to be granted emergency use authorization in India with full legal indemnity.

The Contra Example of India’s Rejection of Indemnity for Pfizer Continue Reading

human rights

The Most Dangerous International Treaty Ever Proposed

The proposed new powers would cut across not only the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. They would signal a new watershed in our understanding of cornerstone human rights: an express amendment to the IHR deletes language currently reading “[t]he implementation of these Regulations shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons” to replace it with a nebulous confirmation that “[t]he implementation of these Regulations shall be based on the principles of equity, inclusivity, coherence…”.

The Most Dangerous International Treaty Ever Proposed Continue Reading

inherent deceit

The Inherent Deceit of Modern Medicine

The dominant Western culture of the modern era will not relinquish its ingrained deceitfulness without first going through a nasty and lengthy transformation in which we are acutely reminded that life is risky and humans are imperfect. It is conceivable that long-run side effects of the covid vaccines will help to remind us of this. The best we can hope for in the longer run is to design our institutions to lead the population gradually into a mindset of comfort with human limitations.

The Inherent Deceit of Modern Medicine Continue Reading

reopening

The Reopening Racket 

The “reopening” plan was a presumptuous use of state power that had no basis in science but rather only served to broadcast the message of who had power and who did not. It was structured to fail, and fail again if it accidentally succeeded. Dressed up in the authority of a grand government plan, it was nothing but a stalking horse for continued lockdowns on a rolling basis until our masters in Washington decided otherwis

The Reopening Racket  Continue Reading

Alien and Sedition Acts

The Alien and Sedition Acts are Back 

With the Alien and Sedition Acts, not-yet-Presidents Thomas Jefferson (an icon of freedom, having been the primary author of the Declaration of Independence) and James Madison (an icon of a strong but restricted Federal government, having been the primary author of the Constitution) both suggested the individual states nullify the Acts within those individual states. HB1333 has the potential to codify what frightened Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. 

The Alien and Sedition Acts are Back  Continue Reading

decline in patriotism

The Decline in Patriotism 

The trouble with the survey is not the numbers but the interpretation. This is being seen as some weird fog of nihilism and greed that has mysteriously slipped over the population, as if it were an entirely organic trend over which no one has any control. That’s wrong. There is a definite cause and it all traces to the same egregious policies without precedent. We still do not have honesty about what happened. And until we get it, we cannot repair the grave damage to the culture or the national soul. 

The Decline in Patriotism  Continue Reading

technology tyranny

Technology and a Tyranny Worse than Prison 

There is a lesson in this as far as the ineluctable need for action is concerned when rational argument with would-be oppressors gets one nowhere. This is especially the case when it becomes obvious that these oppressors are not remotely interested in a reasonable exchange of ideas, but summarily resort to the current unreasonable incarnation of technical rationality, namely AI-controlled mass surveillance, with the purpose of subjugating entire populations. 

Technology and a Tyranny Worse than Prison  Continue Reading