Society ⋆ Page 24 of 51 ⋆ Brownstone Institute

America Will Never Give Up Its Ideals

Jeffrey A. Tucker / May 6, 2023 / History, Philosophy, Society / 6 minute read

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The cultural crisis and the pandemic of loneliness, not to mention the mass wave of substance abuse and depression, reflects the country-wide shock that all our fundamental ideals could so easily have been swept aside for a cockamamie central plan that trampled on everything we believe in and have always practiced however imperfectly. It felt like an invasion of the body snatchers, nowhere better symbolized than with vaccine mandates that most intelligent people knew we didn’t need even if they were safe and effective, which they were not.

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Where Have the Adults Gone?

Paul Frijters,

Gigi Foster,

Michael Baker / May 1, 2023 / Policy, Society / 22 minute read

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The last three years show us what happens when specialists are in charge. If you want to know whether it is a good idea to lock down a whole city, it helps if you can quickly see the many effects lockdowns will have among many different parts of the city’s population and economy. Only with a broad view of many factors do you have hope of making a reasonable judgment.

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What Kind of Culture Are They Planning for you?

Thomas Harrington / April 29, 2023 / Philosophy, Society / 7 minute read

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Those who in this very moment are seeking to radically change our core conceptions of liberty and our relationships to our own bodies though their aggressive culture-planning have, so far, faced relatively little serious intellectual opposition to their efforts. This is mostly because the salaried inhabitants of universities and key institutions of culture, who under the implied rules of democratic liberalism are supposed to act as a critical check upon such efforts, have mostly failed to do so.

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My Visit to the Artificial Land of Lies

Mark Oshinskie / April 29, 2023 / Government, Society / 8 minute read

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Typically, government dysfunction and corruption have occurred behind the scenes. The effects of these failings have usually been sufficiently diffuse, and daily life was challenging enough, that such chicanery went unnoticed. But given American governments’ open, audacious dishonesty and crassly abusive actions during the past three years—after all of the propaganda, censorship, blatantly unconstitutional and life-wrecking lockdowns, closures, restrictions and mandates—trust is irretrievably broken for anyone who has paid attention. Any residual American reverence for their government and their capital is delusional and child-like.

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Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend

Michael Tomlinson / April 28, 2023 / Philosophy, Society / 14 minute read

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The establishment consensus on COVID-19 is built on sand and should be challenged. It arose from premature closure of the scientific debate, followed by suppression of contrarian evidence-based analysis. Dissidents include scientists, who are clearly not anti-science but are opposed to flawed science based on ‘low cognitive ability’ and confirmation bias in favour of establishment ideas. They are pushing for better science.

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Changing One Mind at a Time

Richard Kelly / April 24, 2023 / Policy, Society, Vaccines / 5 minute read

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In an idle moment, I was looking through my emails, and came across this little exchange. In August 2022, the vax push was in full swing, despite the evidence of serious concerns. Here’s a trail starting and ending with an email from a medical provider I had visited once or twice in central Melbourne.

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The Covid Crisis Was Man-Made

Mark Oshinskie / April 24, 2023 / History, Philosophy, Society / 11 minute read

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If we had not locked down for “just two weeks,” we wouldn’t have facilitated many more months of closed public spaces, including 18 months of school closures. Letting the Lockdown camel stick its nose under the tent created enduring, creeping momentum for the broader disruption that has dragged on for three years. “Flattening the curve” seemed, to many, temporary, scientific and clever.

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Scientific Consensus – A Manufactured Construct

Maryanne Demasi / April 21, 2023 / Society / 5 minute read

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The appeal to “scientific consensus” is fraught with problems, just like “the science is settled” and “trust the science” and other authoritarian tropes that have dominated the pandemic.

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The ‘Pure Fear’ Excuse for Lockdowns

Michael Senger / April 20, 2023 / Government, History, Public Health, Society / 11 minute read

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This interminable coverup of reality, being fundamental to the origins of totalitarianism, may have been what the CCP intended from the start.

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Open Letter to an Emotionally Abused World

Lori Weintz / April 20, 2023 / Society / 22 minute read

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There has been a fundamental shift in our relationship with the people and organizations who make policies and direct how the world is run. They laid the groundwork during Covid and are busy planning the next pandemic, and a whole host of initiatives, calling for drastic changes to how we live. The first step in healing from emotional abuse is to recognize the abuse. The next step is to make a change so the abuse does not continue.

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What They Meant by Essential and Nonessential

Jeffrey A. Tucker / April 17, 2023 / Economics, History, Society / 6 minute read

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Think of totalitarian societies like in The Hunger Games, with a District One and everyone else, or perhaps the old Soviet Union in which the party elites dined in luxury and everyone else stood in bread lines, or perhaps a scene from Oliver! in which the owners of the orphanage got fat while the kids in the workhouse lived on gruel until they could escape to live in the underground economy. It appears that the pandemic planners think of society the same way.

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Society at Peak Shared Misery

Steve Templeton / April 17, 2023 / Government, Public Health, Society / 5 minute read

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If a permanent government employee broke a regulation, they could not be fired. There was no real way to punish them. But what could be done was make a new regulation that was more burdensome than the last. Punishing an individual is hard. Punishing everyone for an individual’s behavior is much easier.

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