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Brownstone Journal Articles, News, Research, and Commentary on public health, science, economics, & social theory

lost knowledge
By | | | 7 minute read

The Problem of Lost Knowledge: Antibiotic Edition 

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All of this adds up to a grim picture of mass but often preventable deaths, all because the system did not work to incorporate the previously existing wisdom we learned from a century earlier. We needed merely to rely on the known information gathered from previous periods of history. The system utterly failed and for reasons having to do with regulatory capture and mass panic. Instead, they embarked on a population-wide experiment that created an unfathomable amount of suffering. And they still haven’t admitted it. 

The Problem of Lost Knowledge: Antibiotic Edition  Continue Reading

extremist
By | | , | 5 minute read

The Trouble with the Center

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The Japanese say that “The nail that sticks up will be hammered down.” The unwillingness to question the many absurd, destructive mitigation measures reflected a fear of being ostracized or labeled “an extremist.” Passive Americans were far too willing to placate the actual extremists who supported locking down a country, closing schools and testing, masking and vaxxing everyone.

The Trouble with the Center Continue Reading

nuclear
By | | | 15 minute read

My Transition from Nuclear to Covid

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The case for nuclear weapons rests on a superstitious belief of magical Realism in the utility of the bomb and the theory of deterrence.  The extreme destructiveness of nuclear weapons makes them qualitatively different in political and moral terms from other weapons, to the point of rendering them virtually unusable. Like the emperor who had no clothes, this might well be the truest explanation of why they have not been used since 1945.

My Transition from Nuclear to Covid Continue Reading

extinction
By | | | 8 minute read

The Specter of Human Extinction 

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A new genre in philosophy made its appearance not too long ago. It is called ‘extinction theory’ or the ‘philosophy of extinction,’ and as the name indicates, it is predicated on the real possibility that the human species may cause the extinction of what it means to be human and that it may actually become extinct as a species.

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gain of function
By | | | 14 minute read

What Good Comes from Gain-of-Function?

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Though almost all lab-based scientific research and advancements carry at least a tiny element of risk, nothing like the level of terminal, global, and trans-generational risk of GOF has – to the public’s knowledge – been undertaken since the Manhattan Project and the study of radiation. And even that had very specific, very probable, and very real and tangible benefits (useful for “pure” or basic science, ending World War II, power generation, nuclear medicine, etc.) that GOF cannot begin to claim. 

What Good Comes from Gain-of-Function? Continue Reading

War and Peace
By | | , | 23 minute read

Time to Read War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

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Toward the book’s end, Tolstoy wrote that “To imagine a man without freedom is impossible except as a man deprived of life.” So true. Imagine if Tolstoy had lived to see what his beloved country had been reduced to. The free thinking libertarian would have been horrified, all the while well aware of why what became the Soviet Union imploded. Do-gooder types and self-regarding politicians (a redundancy, obviously) break things with poverty and blood-soaked battlefields the result. War and Peace makes this all very clear.

Time to Read War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Continue Reading

America
By | | , , | 6 minute read

America Will Never Give Up Its Ideals 

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The cultural crisis and the pandemic of loneliness, not to mention the mass wave of substance abuse and depression, reflects the country-wide shock that all our fundamental ideals could so easily have been swept aside for a cockamamie central plan that trampled on everything we believe in and have always practiced however imperfectly. It felt like an invasion of the body snatchers, nowhere better symbolized than with vaccine mandates that most intelligent people knew we didn’t need even if they were safe and effective, which they were not. 

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Tweet? Lose your job
By | | , , | 3 minute read

Like a Tweet, Lose Your Job 

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Free speech is more than a slogan. It must be an operational reality for everyone. It can be closed down by forces other than edicts from government. It can be suppressed also by arbitrary private actions that reflect regime priorities. Ever more workers and especially intellectuals today work in an environment of fear that leads to self-censorship.

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Fauci America's doctor
By | | | 4 minute read

Fauci’s Never-Ending Victory Tour

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Anthony Fauci’s legacy is one of narcissism and power. The glorification of his massive ego trumped any scientific or medical data. His policies were giveaways to the pharmaceutical industry, which helped burnish his image and crush dissent. He saw his opportunity for the spotlight and seized it. Now, rather than admit mistakes, Fauci is intent on revising history.  Unfortunately for his legacy, we’re all living with the consequences of his hubris, and they are impossible to overlook.

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Tucker Carlson
By | | | 17 minute read

The Meaning of Tucker Carlson

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He won’t let go of the memory of an America in which children were safe at school and parents decided what happened to their children. I, many, share this baseline value and are terrified that it is under attack. And he insists on patriotism, in a time of relentless propaganda and the bribery of elites that urges us all to drop national identities, cultures, borders, and even allegiances.

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