Society

Society articles feature analysis about social policy, ethics, entertainment, and philosophy.

All society articles at Brownstone Institute are translated automatically into multiple languages.

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What’s Going On In China: Interview with Michael Senger

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Michael Senger, attorney and author of Snake Oil, has led the way in drawing attention to the role of the Chinese Communist Party in 2020 influencing nearly every country in the world to lock down economies in order to control a virus. Here he reacts to the new lockdowns in China and the possible motivations behind the remarkable attack on the rights and liberties of the people of Shanghai, and possible divisions within the CCP.

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This Is Not Normal and No One Should Accept It

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Our ruling class saw in Covid an opportunity to radically revolutionize society: recall how the phrase “the new normal” emerged almost immediately in the first weeks of the pandemic. In the first month Anthony Fauci made the absurd suggestion that perhaps never again would we go back to shaking hands. Never again?

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The Urge to Shame, Purge, and Exclude Diminishes Ourselves

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In these times of summarily rejecting people we disagree with or treating those with differing opinions as dangerous or diseased, I have felt led to remember what I would have missed if I had rejected certain people with whom I disagreed on significant issues but from whom I had also received wonderful gifts.

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The Expendables: The Biopolitics of Human Sacrifice

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If you are one of those who supported the separation of the unvaccinated from society, it is worth considering how your own life was diminished during the pandemic. The range of the homo sacer, those deemed expendable, has been broadened over time from traditional groups such as the homeless, up through the working classes in recent decades, and now large swathes of middle classes during Covid.

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The German Faith in Authority

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Not only do media commentaries and politicians casually discuss discriminatory measures against unvaccinated people without being attacked for it by their peers, but ‘normal’ citizens, including highly accomplished academics, are doing so as well. The sudden switch of the political agenda from Covid-19 to the Ukraine illustrates that this is not Covid-exclusive behaviour.

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The Specter of Asymptomatic Spread

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A society grounded on “social distancing” is a contradiction—it’s a kind of anti-society. Consider what happened to us, consider the human goods we sacrificed to preserve bare life at all costs: friendships, holidays with family, work, visiting the sick and dying, worshipping God, burying the dead.

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Not Every Health Problem Needs a Social Solution

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According to public-health paternalists, almost no decisions that affect individuals’ health are truly ‘individual.’ Nearly all such decisions are either heavily determined by the actions of third parties, or themselves affect the choices of unsuspecting third parties.

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Covid Prediction: January 2020

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Government power is not necessary. It is not likely to be effective, either. And when it is not effective, the tendency is to overreact in the opposite direction, clamping down and abusing, exactly as we’ve seen with the war on terror and China’s response to this virus, which might be as serious as bad seasonal flu outbreaks. Still, people assume that government is doing its job, government fails, and then government gets more power and does awful things with it. It’s the same story again and again.

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