Brownstone Supper Clubs, September 2022

Meet, greet, share

Over the summer, we started meeting in a restaurant just to share ideas. It was a wonderful success, and the monthly event kept expanding. As a new nonprofit without the assets of a Harvard or CDC, this is way we can do in-person events without breaking the bank. It is also enormously productive. 

We have two scheduled back-to-back later this month: September 21, 2022, in West Hartford, Connecticut, and September 22, 2022, in Lexington Kentucky. We are also planning some more, including an annual dinner and gala, details of which will be released in a few weeks. You can follow events here. 

Here is some content from the last several days:

The Deeper History of ‘Social Distancing’ — the Western Term for Lockdown (封锁) BY MICHAEL SENGER. One way or another, the ancient policy of “lockdown” in response to an outbreak thus came full circle. Having been thoroughly discredited as counterproductive by 20th-century epidemiological research, this medieval policy of lockdown (封锁) was kept alive in China

The Prophetic Genius of Ivan Illich BY SETH SMITH. How did the non-conformists and radicals of the 1960s and 1970s, who were also heavily skeptical of the medical-industrial complex and who helped turn alternative medicine into a billion dollar industry, become some of the most rabid supporters of lockdowns and Covid vaccine mandates?

Governor Andrew Cuomo: From Hero to Goofball in One Seasonal Virus  BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER.  Cuomo can’t imagine – truly – that he might have done anything wrong except perhaps communicated more clearly. In truth, governments could have forced everyone to paint their faces bright blue and wear frying pans for shoes and it would not have changed the pandemic outcome from what it was going to be. The virus never cared. But don’t tell that to Cuomo: the upshot of his book is that he saved New York. Nothing will convince him otherwise. 

The Queen Was Forced to be Masked and Alone at Prince Philip’s Funeral BY JAMES ALEXANDER. None of it should have happened. And the reason was not necessarily only the personal indignity to the ‘body natural’ of Elizabeth II, but the affront to everyone whose sovereign she was, whose representative she was.

The Story of Jared Kushner and His Ventilators BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER.  You know the phrase self-aware? It does not apply to Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law. He somehow weaseled his way into the center of Covid planning in the White House. He dragged along two college buds, Nat Turner and Adam Boehler, two mega-rich kids without a lick of experience in pandemics or public health. 

Stop Vaccinating Children for Covid: It’s Neither Medically Justified Nor Ethical BY RAMESH THAKUR. Ordinarily, it would be best to put the whole Covid nightmare behind us and move on. This might be one of the rare exceptions, for accountability for the pain and harms inflicted on individuals and society is the best, and likely the only effective insurance against a repeat. 

Government by the People: Is It Possible? BY GIGI FOSTER, MICHAEL BAKER, PAUL FRIJTERS. You can bet that this real transfer of power to the people will be strongly resisted by most elite individuals and institutions. They will loudly proclaim every single reason they can think of for why it is a crazy, impossible idea, and get “experts” from their networks to loudly profess the silliness of even proposing the notion. This vitriolic denigration is exactly the measure of how badly we need to loosen their grip on power and change the system they have entrenched for their own benefit.

A World on Fire BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. There is a moment in the day when the work is done and perhaps a cocktail comes out or the dishes are washed and the kids are in bed and the room falls silent. At this moment, millions and billions of people the world over know it. Disaster is all around us. We are just pretending otherwise, simply because this is what we have to do. 

Coercion on Campus Stops When Students Say No BY JULIE PONESSE. What can you do as an individual against a multi-million dollar institution full of important people with doctorates? What if you get canceled? What if you lose everything you have worked for? These are important considerations. But remember this, 21st-century universities are commercial enterprises and you are their customers. They don’t exist without you.

There are 5.8 Million Missing Workers in the US BY GENEVIEVE BRIAND.  At this rate, the August 2022 level would be 158,564 thousand. In other words, as of August 2022, there is an estimated shortfall of 5.8 million total nonfarm employees (5,820 thousand persons).

The Guilty Men Behind UK’s Lockdown BY PAULA JARDINE. While the lockdowns have been catastrophic for ordinary people, destroying livelihoods, damaging children’s education and fuelling the inflationary hurricane that is the cost of living crisis, for CEPI they were mission accomplished.

Who’s Driving the Pandemic Express? BY DAVID BELL. If the world truly wants to address the systemic weakness exposed by COVID-19, it must first understand that this pandemic gravy train is not new; the foundations for the destruction of community- and country-based global public health began long before COVID-19.

No Holy Communion for the Sick, They Said BY JOHN LINCOLN DOWNIE.  When a person is dying or in danger of death, this is the moment when their religion is most dear to them. It is not within the hospital’s jurisdiction to decide when you can or can’t confess your sins, receive Holy Communion and prepare to meet your maker. This abhorrent practice of refusing entrance to clergy must stop now.

How Lockdowns Broke Human Capital BY JOHN TAMNY. Politicians, policymakers, and experts who would never miss a paycheck or a meal suddenly decided that workers not like them were no longer essential. In making this choice for others, they robbed human beings of years of investment of self in certain industries while also bluntly telling these others that their livelihood could be taken from them near overnight.

Judge Orders Fauci to Cough It Up BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. Finally we see courts coming around to the view that government needs to be held accountable for its actions. It is happening far too little and far too late but at least it is happening. And at long last, we might gain a clearer look into the mysterious works of Fauci and its imperial reign over American public health during the worst crisis for constitutional rights in many generations.