One way or another, the ancient policy of “lockdown” in response to an outbreak thus came full circle. Having been thoroughly discredited as counterproductive by 20th-century epidemiological research, this medieval policy of lockdown (封锁) was kept alive in China
The Deeper History of ‘Social Distancing’ — the Western Term for Lockdown (封锁) Read More
If unelected bureaucrats can make rules/regulations that overstep their authorities, that conflict with the Constitution, that usurp the power of our elected legislators, then we become a totalitarian state. In that scenario, one person in the Executive Branch will then have a supreme power to tell agencies what to do, and those unelected agency actors will carry out the orders with obedience. “I am just following orders” is a very dangerous yet very real mantra in a “Regulation Nation.”
Let us remember that Carl Schmitt despised America and everything it stood for, especially the idea of individual liberty and limits on government. It’s one thing to study his writings in graduate school as a warning to what it means to turn against enlightenment values. It’s another thing entirely to deploy his theories as a viable path to keeping power when it appears unstable, not only in Beijing but also Washington, DC. That should truly terrify all of us.
The Return of Carl Schmitt and His Scheme for Regime Longevity Read More
Perhaps for this reason: people might start to take seriously the idea that the corona crisis was primarily a psycho-social phenomenon that marked the transition to a technocratic system, a system in which the government would attempt to claim decision-making rights over its citizens and, step by step, take control of all private space.
The Attempt to Burn Me at the Stake Read More
Everything followed from that brief moment: lockdown chaos, the closed schools and churches, the end of basic rights, the wrecking of business, and then began the spending, inflating, mad welfare checks, and the demoralization of the population that continues to this day.
The 70 Seconds that Shook the World Read More
The madness of lockdowns only intensified the problem. They pretended as if wrong is right and ill- health is health, both physically and mentally. We are so used to lies that many people have grown weary of protesting them. We are so beaten down that we can barely demand that people take responsibility for what they have done. And the perpetuators have become skilled at saving their own skin.
How to Save Your Skin, According to Bankman-Fried and Fauci Read More
The Brownstone Institute is pleased to announce the impending publication of The Great Covid Panic: What Happened, Why, and What To Do Next, by Paul Frijters, Gigi Foster, and Michael Baker. Combining rigorous scholarship with evocative and accessible prose, the book covers all the issues central to the pandemic and the disastrous policy response, a narrative as comprehensive as it is intellectually devastating. In short, this is THE book the world needs right now.
The Great Covid Panic, by Frijters, Foster, and Baker. Available Now. Read More
With help from the media, social media and police, people were frightened, shamed and coerced into submission and compliance with arbitrary and increasingly authoritarian government edicts. The intense and unrelenting propaganda unleashed on the people by governments using sophisticated tactics of psychological manipulation and enthusiastically amplified by the media was astonishingly successful in a remarkably short time.
State Power and Covid Crimes: Part 4 Read More
Covid media, like so much else in modern life, has become hopelessly fractured: the tall, left-facing trees dominate the landscape, telling the story of a deadly virus that we “did the best we could” to manage. Below the tree canopy lies the tangle of weeds that sway in the wind, whispering songs of freedom and warning against the totalitarian impulses that all too readily emerge during crises
Witnessing the Media’s Covid Coverage from the Inside Read More
In a legalistic technocracy such as ours, the power to determine what is and is not investigated and what is and is not charged is the true prerogative of princes. It determines who may act abhorrently and who must be always looking over their shoulder for fear of a tap from leviathan.
The Process is the Punishment Read More
