Brownstone Institute Articles ⋆ Page 72 of 210 ⋆ Brownstone Institute

Europe’s Digital Services Act Puts Free Speech at the Mercy of Eurocrats

David Thunder / June 8, 2023 / Law / 3 minute read

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The Digital Services Act is an endless maze of complicated regulations worthy of a team of lawyers. Seeing as I don’t have a budget to hire a team of lawyers, I decided to skim through the Act for myself. It does not make for pleasant bedtime reading, not only because it is a morass of complicated legalese, but also, because what hides behind this legalese is an attempt by EU politicians to get social media platforms under their thumb, through

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Fifteen Great Books for Summer Reading

Steve Templeton / June 8, 2023 / Public Health / 10 minute read

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So you’re going to the beach this summer, but have already finished the light and airy Fear of a Microbial Planet (why haven’t you left a review, by the way?), and for some strange reason you haven’t had your fill of fear and germs, so you are wondering what else to read.

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Atlantic Council Takes Up the Censorship Sword

Andrew Lowenthal / June 8, 2023 / Censorship, Law / 19 minute read

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Why would such a group all gather specifically around the question of “disinformation”? Is disinformation truly at such a level that it requires bringing together the world’s most popular author with military and intelligence leaders, the world’s biggest PR company, journalists, billionaires, Big Tech and more? Or is this work to build the case that there is a disinformation crisis, to then justify the creation of a massive infrastructure for censorship? A glimpse of the agenda offers clues.

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How the Department of Treasury Got Involved in Censorship

Aaron Kheriaty / June 7, 2023 / Censorship, Law / 4 minute read

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The Department of Treasury also coordinated with CISA to censor information that undermines “public confidence” in “financial services” and “financial systems”. Consider: if you raised questions about our banking system or the behavior of the Federal Reserve on Twitter or Facebook, the government was attempting to censor this information. This is a truly Orwellian monster operating under the flimsy excuse of protecting the “national security” and the “safety” of Americans. If you aren’t sufficiently alarmed yet, you should be.

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The Failure of Lockdowns: IEA Speaks

Brownstone Institute / June 7, 2023 / Public Health / 5 minute read

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“Numerous misleading studies, driven by subjective models and overlooking significant factors like voluntary behaviour changes, heavily influenced the initial perception of lockdowns as highly effective measures. Our meta-analysis suggests that when researchers account for additional variables, such as voluntary behaviour, the impact of lockdowns becomes negligible.”

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Nothing Like This Ever Happened Before

Yuri Biondi / June 7, 2023 / Law, Policy / 3 minute read

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A leader or an expert who claims he can fix everything, if only we do exactly as he says, can prove an irresistible force. We do not need to confront a bayonet, we need only a nudge, before we willingly abandon the nicety of requiring laws to be adopted by our legislative representatives and accept rule by decree. Along the way, we will accede to the loss of many cherished civil liberties—the right to worship freely, to debate public policy without censorship, to gather with friends and family, or simply to leave our homes.

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The Death of the Authentic Left

Toby Rogers / June 6, 2023 / History, Philosophy, Society / 8 minute read

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The left political project now is just kitsch, a toxic mimic of its former self, deployed by the ruling class to enslave the world. The question is, why are so few people on the left able to see this? Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Moore, to name a few, should have been able to spot the Covid psyop in about 5 minutes. Instead they became rabid cheerleaders for fascism.

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And Now the Problem of Exploding Hand Sanitizer

Justin Hart / June 6, 2023 / Government, Policy / 3 minute read

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Compounding the issue was the challenge of dealing with hazardous waste. Disposing of sanitizer should be treated with the same caution as other hazardous waste, but the process is expensive and tedious. This daunting task was magnified by several fires involving vast quantities of unsellable hand sanitizer across the country in the past year.

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The Silencing of the Experts

Thorsteinn Siglaugsson / June 6, 2023 / Philosophy, Society / 8 minute read

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As Kant explained in 1784, the silencing of the experts drives the loop of immaturity, preventing enlightenment. We must therefore ask ourselves, what if this spell was broken? How much closer would we be to an enlightened society? How safely would we be removed from entangling ourselves in those invisible chains, preventing us from living a full life, as truly autonomous and enlightened individuals?

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The Destruction of Language as Tool of Power

Thomas Harrington / June 5, 2023 / Philosophy, Society / 10 minute read

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It’s currently very fashionable in certain circles to talk about emotional resilience. What no one seems to talk about is cognitive or intellectual resilience, and how under the pressure of the semantic literalists it is being torn to pieces before our eyes. Language is a wonderful and amazingly complex tool that, if properly honed, allows for the perception and expression of nuanced understandings of the world, and from there, the imaginative creation of new hopes and possibilities.

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The Plan: Lock You Down for 130 Days

Jayanta Bhattacharya / June 5, 2023 / Policy, Public Health / 4 minute read

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Imagine the early days of the next pandemic, with public health and the media fomenting fear of a new pathogen. The impetus to close schools, businesses, churches, beaches, and parks will be irresistible, though the pitch will be “130 days until the vax” rather than “two weeks to flatten the curve.” When the vaccine finally arrives, the push to mass vaccinate for herd immunity will be enormous, even without evidence from the rushed trials that the vaccine provides long-lasting protection against disease transmission.

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Twenty Grim Realities Unearthed by Lockdowns

Jeffrey A. Tucker / June 5, 2023 / Economics, History, Policy, Society / 14 minute read

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If you haven’t changed your thinking over the last three years, you are a prophet, indifferent, or asleep. Much has been revealed and much has changed. To meet these challenges, we must do so with our eyes wide open. The greatest threats to human liberty today are not the ones of the past and they elude easy ideological categorization. Further, we have to admit that in many ways the plain human desire to live a fulfilling life in freedom has been subverted. If we want our freedoms back, we need to have a full understanding of the frightening challenges before us.

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