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.

Filter posts by category

Elites Meet to Plan Your Health: The Role of the Council on Foreign Relations

By / / / 11 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Launching CFR’s global health program provided Gates with the opportunity to market his brand of disease prevention to an audience of America’s most powerful people in business, media, law, and government—to convince these people that his vision of global health should be a national priority. And we have seen the results firsthand.

Elites Meet to Plan Your Health: The Role of the Council on Foreign Relations Read Journal Article

The Covid Stories Project

By / / / 4 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Even if the act was open to preserving the experiences of all Americans, we cannot and should not trust the government to accurately document the fallout of policies created by politicians and bureaucrats, many of whom remain in power. The same government that perpetrated these restrictions cannot impartially determine how we remember them.

The Covid Stories Project Read Journal Article

The Memo that Closed the Nation’s Schools

By / / , / 2 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

“Just watch kids with runny noses and coughing and sneezing and touching one another (especially the younger ones),” the memo says. “You couldn’t design a better system to spread disease. Schools and daycare centers are clearly amplifiers of disease transmission…. We don’t need to exhaust ourselves searching for perfect solutions to address all these challenges associated with the 2nd and 3rd order consequences of school closure.”

The Memo that Closed the Nation’s Schools Read Journal Article

The Red Dawn Email Dump: February-March 2020

By / / / 3 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

The gigantic mess called lockdown began with an email thread called Red Dawn in early 2020, based on the old movie about a Russian invasion of the US. You can read many, but not all, of the emails below. They were enormously influential in generating the necessary panic to kick their sadistic social experiment into high gear. The participants are listed at the top in this file assembled by the New York Times, and includes top officials at all levels plus intellectuals.  

The Red Dawn Email Dump: February-March 2020 Read Journal Article

Why the Silence on Lockdowns?

By / / , , / 7 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

They managed to destroy countless businesses, upend human rights, kill millions, cast hundreds of millions deeper into poverty, strain the mental health of billions, and transfer trillions of dollars in wealth from the world’s poorest to the very richest—all while failing to slow the spread of a virus that was subsequently confirmed to have an infection fatality rate under 0.2%.

Why the Silence on Lockdowns? Read Journal Article

failure

Why Won’t They Admit Failure?

By / / , , / 9 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Looking back, there is nothing terribly surprising about any of this. It’s a consequence of safety culture, arrogant elites, and a belief that powerful, rich, and intelligent people can manage the world better than the rest of us. We’ve been here many times in history, and it has always foreshadowed a long period of suffering. 

Why Won’t They Admit Failure? Read Journal Article

italy communist lockdown

How Lockdowns Came to Italy

By / / / 8 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

On February 21, 2020, 15 cases of Covid were detected, and a Chinese-style lockdown of ten towns in Lombardy was immediately announced for 15 days to slow the spread. This lockdown order was officially signed into law by Health Minister Speranza two days later on February 23, 2020—the first lockdown order ever signed in a modern western country.

How Lockdowns Came to Italy Read Journal Article

Back to the Sedition Act of 1798

By / / / 6 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

No authority can substitute for the activity, creativity, and adaptability of the human mind. We need systems that celebrate that, and not attempt surreptitious methods for imposing Orwellian-style thought control. Ideas are more powerful than armies, and the urge to censor is an implicit recognition of that. Still, it didn’t work in 1798 and it surely cannot work in 2020.

Back to the Sedition Act of 1798 Read Journal Article

The Next Ten Battles

By / / , , , , / 14 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Finally we come to the biggest problem of all. What kind of society do we want to live in and build? Is it based on the presumption that freedom belongs to all and is the best path for progress and good lives? Or do we want the rights of the people always to defer to the mandarins in the walled-off bureaucracies who give orders and expect only compliance and no challenge to their rule? 

The Next Ten Battles Read Journal Article