Brownstone Institute at One Year

We were so busy that we forgot to celebrate

This week, Brownstone Institute published two explosive investigations into the origins and workings of the lockdowns, one concerning Italy and the other the US. Both are exceptionally credible and intriguing. Those of us working on this have the sense that we are getting closer to the truth, and yet new questions emerge by the day. 

Fortunately, there are a few people in Washington who are also interested, and there is every indication that the Republicans will conduct some deep investigations. They will only stick with it and get all the answers we need if there is public pressure. Brownstone Institute is not waiting for November much less two more years. We’ve been on the case since day one. 

And speaking of day one, the one-year birthday of Brownston’s public existence came and went on August 1, 2022, and we didn’t celebrate. That’s because we were too busy working. It does often feel like our tiny operation has the weight of the world on it, simply due to its independence, focus, and massive range of contributors all over the world (including scientists, journalists, economists, and many others). 

We cannot say thank you enough for your generosity over these 12 months. Our content has helped many tens of millions to know that they are not crazy, that the things going on in our world today are not normal, that the liberties and rights we once took for granted should be ours again. The formidable foe we face is enormously well funded and globally networked. If you follow Twitter (not recommended) you know what ruckus Brownstone creates on a daily basis. 

We are now busy working on several new research reports and books, making plans for new conferences, and building a network of researchers and writers. We are forever grateful for the opportunity to do this work and for your support. 

Thank you! If you can help today, we are again grateful. 

Some material from this week:

Data Theft and Government Power BY JOHN MAC GHLIONN. In the United States, according to Bennett Cyphers, a technologist who focuses on consumer privacy and state legislation, data brokers have formed an unholy alliance with the country’s military, intelligence communities, and law enforcement agencies. This immense, highly secretive partnership was established for one reason and one reason only—to surveil the actions and activities of U.S. citizens.

Just How Healthy Are These Labor Markets? BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. These troubles came about with the beginnings of lockdowns based on the outrageous presumption that “the economy” could be turned off and then turned on again. In so doing, governments privileged some and harmed others, creating a caste system based on skills and technologies, and then, eventually, vaccine status. 

Humanity as Homo Ideologicus: On Hitoshi Imamura’s Theory of General Ideology BY NARUHIKO MIKADO. Anyone who is alert to our past should have noticed the ire with which the stronger have striven to silence and extinguish the weaker. It should remind us of those historical conflicts in which the party that was more powerful in number, status, and force and thus passed as righteous would later turn out to be tremendously disastrous.

Vaccines Will Not and Cannot Make this Virus Endemic BY PIERRE KORY. While Americans across the ideological spectrum wish the president recovery, we must take this moment to acknowledge that a strategy blindly focused on vaccinations is not getting the job done. 

The Tyranny of Coronaphobia BY RAMESH THAKUR. I wonder if we have set ourselves up to repeat the folly every year with annual outbreaks of flu, especially if it is a bad flu season. If not, why not? Perhaps someone will come up with the slogan ‘Flu Lives Matter’. Or governments could just pass laws making it illegal for anyone to fall sick and die.

How Did Deborah Birx Get the Job? BY DEBBIE LERMAN.The most revealing parts of the book are the claims about Birx herself that, upon close inspection, make little sense, contain strange inconsistencies, or contradict other claims made in the book and elsewhere.

The Dragnet in Lombardy: Patient Zero of Lockdowns BY MICHAEL SENGER. By way of one Health Minister Roberto Speranza, on whose order 50,000 Lombardy residents were placed under lockdown on February 21, 2020, the first lockdown in the modern western world. Within weeks, lockdown had spread to cities across Italy, until the entire nation was placed on lockdown on March 9. By April 2020, more than half the world’s population—some 3.9 billion people—had been placed under lockdown.

Here Is What Stagflation Looks Like BY DAVID STOCKMAN. It’s the reason why the real economy is faltering and stagflation has become embedded: To wit, the gains in nominal income are being more than eaten up by soaring prices, paving the way for the worst bout of high inflation and falling real growth since the 1970s.

Besties: Twitter, Facebook, Google, CDC, NIH, WHO  BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. The relationship between Big Tech – and all aspiring reporters and enterprises – is very clearly complex, and elusive of ideological categorization. It is also corrupt, exploitative of the interests of the people, and at odds with the interest of Enlightenment values. How can freedom stand a chance when it is so viciously squeezed between the controlling interest groups, who are the powerful in society? They believe they are the lords and we are the peasants. 

A New Low in Mask Studies BY IAN MILLER. There are no innocuous pro-mask “studies;” each of them contributes to confirming biases of deluded decision-makers who refuse to accept reality.

In Defense of Uncertainty BY JULIE PONESSE. We think uncertainty will expose us, put us into a distressing freefall, but in reality it does the opposite. It expands our minds by creating spaces that don’t need to be filled by anything. It lays the groundwork for innovation and progress, and opens us up to meaningful connection with others. 

New York Times Goes to War Against Parents BY MICHAEL SENGER. Apparently, the Democrats’ strategy going into the midterms is to gaslight their base into believing concerns over their children’s education, wellbeing, and safety during Covid are nothing but an initiation into a dark underworld of cult-like anti-vaccine radicalism. We’ll see how that works out for ’em.

The Biden Administration Still Pushing Its Transportation Mask Mandate BY BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE. The plaintiffs in the case have now filed their response to the appeal. The decision is expected in weeks. It will likely uphold the previous decision, which amounts to a serious though not fatal blow to the unchecked power of the administrative state, which is arguably the single greatest threat to American liberty and constitutional government that we face. 

The Triumph and Glory of Air Conditioning BY JOHN TAMNY. The story about the mass production of air conditioners is that what were once status symbols are now common. Crucial here is that people got very rich making air conditioners common. It’s how the world works. Or at least how to grow rich in the world. The best way to become very well-to-do very quickly is to produce in abundance, and at low prices, what used to be scarce and nosebleed expensive.

The Lockdowns Kicked Off this Depression  BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. The Fed is driving the recession at a time when the ruling class has decided that the rest of us should be poor and hungry, driving Flintstone cars and foraging for food. The result, for now, is shocking stagflation. But we don’t even have a word yet for what might be coming. Depression is already used. How do you describe high inflation plus a manufactured depression?

Politifact Attempts To Rescue Dr. Birx BY SCOTT MOREFIELD. The real question here is, if Dr. Deborah Birx – a prominent member of Trump’s White House coronavirus task force – knew the vaccines didn’t stop infection then, how could the others NOT have known? And if they did, why did they lie about it for so long? Sure, we know the likely answer, but it’ll still be fun to watch them squirm on the stand as the investigations commence.

New Evidence: Fauci Imposed a Vaccine Delay that Cost Trump the Election BY TOBY ROGERS. The key piece of information comes from a new book, The Messenger, published last week by Harvard Business Review Press. The author, Peter Loftus, is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and they published his essay about the book in their Review section on Saturday. What’s astonishing is that Loftus does not even realize the enormity of the story he just stumbled upon. 

Proxy “Evidence” and the Manipulation of Human Perceptions BY THOMAS HARRINGTON. The elites’ ability to flood our consciousness with fragmentary and undigested information has increased exponentially. And they are well aware of, and quite satisfied by, the sense of disorientation this information overload causes in the majority of citizens. Why? Because they know that a disoriented or overwhelmed person is much more likely to grasp at simplistic “solutions” when they are directed this way.

The Pentagon Owns Its Recruiting Crisis BY P. MICHAEL PHILLIPS, PH.D. In short, the Pentagon’s stubborn adherence to its Covid protocol is breaking faith with its once loyal base. And the longer they dig in, the smaller that base will become.

The WHO’s Reckless Disregard for Truth BY DAVID BELL. It is time the WHO explained what it is doing. Whilst seeking greater powers to declare and manage future disease outbreaks, it is demonstrating that the organization is unfit for that purpose.