A Contagion of Cowardice

Why did more people not speak out?

Dr. Harvey Risch will join us at our Supper Club, March 22, 2023, for which you can register here. 

Brownstone will be at the Liberty Forum in NH this coming weekend. 

You have surely noticed that the Norfolk Group plan for commissions to investigate the Covid response is getting national attention. This is a good sign. Before we can even talk about justice, we need to find out precisely how and why all this happened. 

Just before the weekend, we got word that another prominent and brilliant Covid-policy critic lost his academic job. Our budget for fellowships is far more stretched than we expected but Brownstone acted anyway. If you can assist, it’s a great time. You can even sponsor a full fellowship.

Truly, these are urgent times. If you need more information, please write us. 

Here is some content since our last email:

The Ruling Class of the Retirement Home BY WILLIAM SPRUANCE. The geriatric elite of our country reflect an obstinate arrogance in our nation’s ruling class. Rather than enjoying the benefits of accumulated wisdom, the country suffers under the egotism and incompetence of the gerontocracy. 

A Contagion of Cowardice  BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. More than people right now are willing to admit, civil society as we knew it collapsed over these three years. A massive purge has taken place within all the commanding heights. This will affect career choices, political alliances, philosophical commitments, and the structure of society for decades to come. he rebuilding and reconstruction that must take place is going to rely – perhaps as it always has – on a small minority who see both the problem and the solution.

Five Lessons from Three Years of Authoritarianism  BY SETH SMITH.  In retrospect, America in February of 2020 seems like a libertarian, innocent age compared to our current one. We did not live under the shadow of possible nuclear holocaust. Everyday life was devoid of the nanny-state elements of our current age. Many of us had gone through life never quite knowing what the destructive power of a government run amok looked like. 

Danger, Caution Ahead: Zeb Jamrozik and Mark Changizi BY GABRIELLE BAUER. The precautionary principle uses the worst-case scenario, rather than the most probable scenario, as a basis for creating policies. And as we’ve seen with Covid, people often end up confusing the two. Such policies are blunt and brutish. They require extreme societal disruptions that, over time, may cause more harm than they prevent.

The Story of Brianne Dressen BY CHRISTOPHER S. GRENDA. Prior to her trial participation, Ms. Dressen was not a person of significant public influence. But she used her experience of injury and suffering to turn herself into one, on behalf of others. We need additional voices to do the same, as many as we can get. 

Masks Did Not Do Nothing; They Wrought Havoc BY LAURA DODSWORTH. The behavioural scientists deliberately exploited the human desire to conform and literally said out loud that the public would ‘do the heavy lifting’ and enforce masks using social pressure. This was the case: if you refused to wear a mask, people stared or even shouted. Twitter shouted #WearADamnMask. Venues denied entry. GPs refused medical appointments to the unmasked.

It’s Insane that Colleges Still Mandate Vaccines BY LUCIA SINATRA. Even with the pandemic clearly over, the FDA continues to issue emergency-use authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines and tests. We have no idea what any of this means for college mandates, but we do know that after three long years, we have had enough. Students and parents will no longer be silenced. If college bureaucrats aren’t willing to end their reckless and outdated COVID-19 policies now, parents will shift their support to colleges that do.

Mask Mandates in Healthcare Facilities are the Evilest of them All BY AARON HERTZBERG. Mask requirements for healthcare facilities continue to be sustained in the face of an unrelenting flurry of fatal knockout blows struck by study after study finding that, as a purely scientific matter, masks of any kind are wholly inutile amulets bereft of any discernible impact on the transmission or epidemiology of respiratory viruses.

Censors Use AI to Target Podcasts. BY BRET SWANSON. The collapse of support for free speech among Western pseudo-elites is the foundation of so many other problems, from medicine to war. Misinformation is the natural state of the world. Open science and vigorous debate are the tools we deploy to become less wrong over time. Individual and collective decision-making depend on them.

The Freedom Not to Wear a Mask BY JOHN TAMNY. The simple truth is that the one-size-fits-all approach didn’t protect us from the virus as much as it blinded us to its reality; one that only could have been arrived at via freedom. We didn’t need medical studies, and the reality is that still we don’t need medical studies. What we needed and need is freedom. With the latter once again comes knowledge from different people doing different things, and all of us learning from their successes and failures.

The Sanctuary in Action By Brownstone Institute. So much needs to be rebuilt after the last three years, but among the needs are serious intellectual communities. The colleges and universities have, for the most part, been taken over or smashed. The major media is captured. Our companies are forced into an obsequious stance. Our previous networks have been shattered. For lovers of freedom, we’ve experienced something of a diaspora.

U.S. Government Negotiates Deal to Give WHO Authority Over U.S. Pandemic Policies By Will Jones. Signatories also agree to support the official narrative in a pandemic. Specifically, they will “conduct regular social listening and analysis to identify the prevalence and profiles of misinformation” and “design communications and messaging strategies for the public to counteract misinformation, disinformation and false news, thereby strengthening public trust.”

The Negation of Reality in Roald Dahl’s Literary Classic By Thorsteinn Siglaugsson. The destruction of Roald Dahl’s books is yet another sign of the all-pervasive negation of reality we now face. We see this negation all around us, in literature, history, politics, economics, even in the sciences. Objective reality gives way to subjective experience, emotions, or preferences in place of what is true.

The EU Files: What Elon Musk Is Not Telling You About Twitter Censorship By Robert Kogon. So long as it wants to remain on the EU market, Twitter cannot say no to the demands of the European Commission. The enforcement mechanism that renders the Code of Practice obligatory is the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA gives the European Commission power to impose fines of up to 6% percent of global turnover on platforms that it finds to be in violation of the Code: n.b. global turnover, not just turnover on the EU market!

Remember, Man, Thou Art Dust  By Rev. John F. Naugle. Calls for general amnesty or accusations that those of us who got things right only did so through luck are lame attempts at self-absolution. To apply the logic of the confessional: there can be no reconciliation without contrition and firm purpose of amendment. It is important then to demand the attitude of mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa even among the most stubborn.

Dr. Fauci Comes Clean on Vaccines and Respiratory Viruses By David Bell. Fauci and co-authors therefore make an important contribution to the Covid narrative, underlining the deception of the past two years. Claims that this deception promoted an overall good – that there was a ‘global pandemic’ and compliance with mass vaccination would be for the population’s benefit – are refuted by Fauci et al.’s evidence. Mass vaccination, while very successful financially for a small but influential minority, was never expected to work.

Landmarks on the Road to Covid Tyranny By James Bovard. For both Bush and Covid policymakers, fear-mongering razed limits to their sway. As long as enough people can be frightened, then almost everyone can be subjugated. Americans’ rights and liberties will not be safe until politicians and their henchmen are forced to submit to the law and the Constitution.

Natural Immunity Wins Again By Ian Miller. They ignored natural immunity because it conflicted with the behavior they wanted to compel. They’ve once again been proven wrong. But if you were hoping this would lead to a permanent discrediting of these institutions and “experts,” don’t hold your breath.