History

History articles feature analysis of historical context in relation to censorship, policy, technology, media, economics, and social life.

All Brownstone Institute articles on the topic of history are translated into multiple languages.

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Explaining the Crisis through Jacques Lacan

Explaining the Crisis through Jacques Lacan

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This account of Lacan’s discourse theory enables one to make sense of the discursive struggles currently occurring in global space. And once one has an intellectual grasp of one’s adversary’s ‘master moves’ in this space, one can better prepare to counter them through the hysteric’s and analyst’s discourses.

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Emotional Contagion and Mass Hysteria

Explaining the Nocebo Effect, Emotional Contagion, and Mass Hysteria

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Even if the disease itself is not mild, a pandemic wave through a population tends to reduce local stress and anxiety and focuses people on a singular goal. This has been called the “typhoon eye effect,” reported during outbreaks of SARS, people closer to the pandemic were less anxious and more able to accurately estimate their own risks. Conversely, those on the periphery or outside the outbreaks, who received their information from media sources rather than personal experience reported increased anxiety and distress. There’s nothing more effective than having your irrational fears debunked firsthand.

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Former CDC Scientist

A Revealing Dialogue with a Former CDC Scientist

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We met up with Norman for what was planned to be a short meeting to introduce ourselves and informally discuss common interests around covid. However, this turned into a two-hour long, wide-ranging and fascinating discussion that touched on a huge number of topics.

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Anti-Lockdown Goes Mainstream

Anti-Lockdown Goes Mainstream

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What we have with this book and article is an important step. It is just one step. Lockdowns utterly shattered the protocols of public health, settled law, and freedom itself all over the world. They wrecked myriad institutions, wrought an incredible economic and cultural crisis, demoralized the whole population, and built up a leviathan of command and control that is not only not backing down but growing ever more. Far more will be required to utterly and completely repudiate the methods and madness of our epoch. 

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Brownstone Institute at Year Three 

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This period of our lives has shattered the hopes and dreams of millions and billions of people, and practically buried the ideal of freedom as an anachronism in a new age of corporatist totalitarianism. The neo-Hegelians in our midst condescend to us and say that this is just how things are and there is nothing to be done about it. This is not true.

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covid quarantine

The Quarantine of Humans and Pets at the Height of Covid Mania 

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We were in a time of widespread panic and paranoia after the country, and the world, shut down in March 2020. TV people, politicians, and bureaucrats forbid singing, church-going, and gathering for Thanksgiving dinner. We were told to be wary of anyone near us.

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serfdom

Is Serfdom Humanity’s Default?

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The real problem is that, as our fellow Americans wind their way blithely down the road to serfdom, they are taking the rest of us with them. Because we cannot have a country in which some are allowed to live freely, according to their own lights, assuming the concomitant risks, while others are “guaranteed” a life free only from such decisions and responsibilities.

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The First Champion of Free Speech

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Thomas Moore’s refusal to violate his conscience cost him everything: imprisoned in the Tower of London, he was eventually beheaded by orders of the King. More was eventually canonized a Catholic saint (he is patron of lawyers and politicians—yes even politicians have a patron saint!). But he can also be considered a martyr for free speech. 

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