For many years now, Ireland has been subject to a particularly intense cultural offensive. Why this should be so is an open question. It may be that Ireland is – or was, at least – more than usually culturally robust, an opportunity for the technocrats to really cut their teeth.
In sum, while the poisonous aspect of the media pharmakon has not nearly exhausted its toxic potency, the curative side has incrementally been gaining strength and therapeutic effectiveness, as reflected in the anxiety of the ‘Davos elites,’ detectable in their worry, that they no longer ‘own the news.’ They thought they had it all under control, but were caught unawares by the unexpected power of the alternative media – those ever-expanding digital spaces of the machine inhabited by the resistance.
Health insurance needs a new pricing structure that is not based on a one-size-fits-all model that it is now. Health and therefore healthcare expense is highly tuned to individual choice. We need more information about the best choices, and that information can only come to us once the specialists who know the data are allowed to impact pricing structures in ways they currently cannot.
In many countries, business leaders are facing a decline in productivity with an increasing risk for bankruptcy. In many discussions, the real problem of a poor economy is kept hidden. The dramatic eroding of human capital by poor health, increased sickness, early deaths in all ages, and lost education among the youth will disrupt business performance for years to come. This downward spiral urgently needs a U-turn to save human capital and economic flourishing. This transformation should be guided by trusted business leaders with high integrity who understand that profit is a result of investments in human capital and starts with good health and affordable pure nutritious food.
These are big questions. The answers to them need and demand an independent, impartial, and rigorous inquiry helmed by credible people with the appropriate mix of qualifications, experience, expertise, and integrity, who are not tainted with conflicts of interest.
It will be jarring for many to hear a scientist speak with such certainty. It should be jarring. We are trained to present ideas with caution, as hypotheses in need of a test. But in this case I have tested the idea and I am as certain of this as I am of anything. We are being systematically blinded. It is the only explanation I have encountered that not only describes the present, but also, in my experience, predicts the future with all but perfect accuracy.
Looking back, Daniel Bell’s “end of ideology” seems more like an attempt to draw closed a green velvet curtain that was hiding something terrible, namely that we were gradually giving up citizen control of our societies to an elite that pretended to possess wisdom, judgment, and prudence to the point that the rest of us could do no better than to outsource our penchant for exercising freedom and democracy to them. Pull back that curtain and we find ignorance, institutional interest, fraud, graft, and a shocking lack of empathy.
This is not politics, this is dictatorship by unaccountable apparatchik and it has festered into something truly ugly. This is how you undermine the faith in a system entirely. You make it lawless and capricious, blatantly unfair, rigged, and slanted.
In mid-November 2023, Australians for Science and Freedom held its inaugural conference under the banner ‘Progress through Science and Freedom’ on the campus of the University of New South Wales. ASF is a think tank launched in mid-2023 by myself and nearly a dozen like-minded professionals from different disciplines, all aghast at the travesties we witnessed during the Covid era.
Dr Barratt is correct; doctors do have a higher standing in the community. Dr Julie Sladden is ethical and moral, and, after reviewing the best available evidence and using her clinical experience, she spoke up at great personal cost, to protect the public when authorities ignored her calls for a review. The Tasmanian people can decide who they wish to lead them; they do not need the AMA bullying doctors, silencing scientific debate and interfering in democracy.
This book, which is a collection of some articles I wrote for Brownstone Institute, is designed to help us talk about this issue. Lockdowns were the turning point in our lives, our societies, our culture, and affected everything from academia to education, to science, to media, to tech, and all the way down to demographics and our relationship to our professional and personal lives. It touched everything, turning what worked into something fundamentally broken and dysfunctional.
The old distinction between civilization and barbarism has taken on a new form in the 21st century. It is from within our own “civilized” culture that emerges an inversion of the concepts of civility and savagery. It is our professionals, our academics, our political leaders, and our journalists who most ignore the standards of rational discourse, who institutionalize hatred and incite division. Today, it is the elites who are the true barbarians among us.
