Triumph of the ‘Mass-Man’
The Pope cannot afford to be a mass-man, but he is one: unable to understand that his job is not to please his flock but rather to encourage them to become conscious of the historical reality of their own existence.
The Sorrows of Empire
There is no such thing as fully objective history, and that’s for a simple reason. History is generated in narrative form, and the creation of every narrative—as Hayden White made clear four decades ago—necessarily involves the selection and discarding, as well the foregrounding and relative camouflaging, of items within the panoply of “facts” at the disposal of the historian.
The Confiscation of Reality
Welcome to the age of abstraction, when lived experience is irrelevant and theoretical constructions carry the day – when what is deemed right and true is unmoored from what is actually happening here and now.
Bird Flu, Fear, and Perverse Incentives
Outbreaks do occur and we should monitor and prepare for them. However, we have allowed the development of a system where outbreaks are almost all that matter. Perceptions of risk, and resultant funding, have become grossly disproportionate to reality. The perverse incentives driving this are obvious, as are the harms. The world will be increasingly unequal and impoverished, and sick, building on the outcomes of the Covid response. Fear promotes profit better than calmness and context. It is on us to remain calm and continually educate ourselves regarding context. No one will sell these to us.
Without Community and Boundaries, They Win
If we are to survive as a civilization, that is precisely the kind of community and support structure that we need to form, especially on the local level. For that reason alone, I warmly invite you to the 2024 Brownstone Institute Conference and Gala in my hometown of Pittsburgh, where we will seek to experience a community of collegiality and friendship in service of “The New Resistance.”
‘Teflon Tony’ Survives the Hot Seat
Although random hatchets were thrown at Fauci during the hearing, he managed to garner a fair bit of support from the subcommittee and seemed to come out relatively unscathed, earning him the title of ‘Teflon Tony.’ The subcommittee will release a final report by the end of 2024, with its findings and recommendations from its two-year investigation.
Teflon Tony Coasts through ‘Grilling’
Thus ended the official “grilling” of Dr. Anthony Fauci, an American “hero” who continues to be persecuted by a few disinformation-spreading members of Congress and tens of millions of Internet kooks like myself.
2020 Pushed Minnesota Toward the Third World
When government takes on core tenets of civilized life, such as the right to associate, and presumes the right to manage the whole of private and public life including all civic institutions, under whatever excuse, what you end up with is something other than civilized life. Minnesota is just one case in point but the same afflicts many other places in the country and world, as the fallout from the disaster cascades through our lives.
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The Questions They Should Have Asked Fauci
So if the US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability wants to oversee or demand accountability for the catastrophic Covid pandemic response — the first question that must be asked is: WHO WAS ACTUALLY IN CHARGE?
The WHO Takes Another Step Towards the Pit
Last week, amid fanfare from both advocates and opponents of centralization of future pandemic management, the world continued its unfortunate stumble back to old-fashioned public health fascism. The World Health Assembly (WHA) adopted the package of amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), apparently just hours after a final text had been agreed by its IHR working group.
Pain is the Prompt
What would happen if we all vowed to adopt an honor code to guide every moment in our lives? What if we vowed to speak the truth, to act ethically, and to hold others accountable when they violate the codes of society? What if we also vowed to pursue this ethos in a decent, respectful manner, seeking to expose dishonesty not to shame and humiliate the offenders, but to strengthen the social fabric of our communities? Wouldn’t we make clear that this conduct will be given no quarter in our communities?
How Canada Devolved into a Managerial State
Our mistake, over these centuries of reform, was that we did not go far enough. We did not take power away from institutions to rule over us. Instead, we just moved the powers around. Today, as in the days of kings, the law is based upon the authority of those who govern, not upon the consent of the governed.
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