Doing Nothing Is Not An Option

We can make a difference

Two years ago, Brownstone Institute was not yet public but we were working like crazy in the background to prepare. The driving motivation was the “change in the matrix” from March 2020 onward. The silence about the lockdowns – a form of totalitarian control – from academia, media, and other influencers was deafening. 

That continued with masking and vaccine mandates. The dishonesty was overwhelming. As with war, the casualties and collateral damage were everywhere. 

What would Brownstone do? Publish, certainly. Run a website with great articles no one else would touch, absolutely. Hold events, of course. But gradually in those days, it became clear that our mission had to be broader and more ambitious. Too many great minds were being purged from corporations, government, academia, media, and think tanks. 

Those who might have spoken out saw what happened to others and they fell silent. The purge was on. It’s not an entirely unusual phenomenon, as brutal as it is. We saw it in interwar Europe. It happened during the religious wars. Going back in time, the fall of Rome and the ensuing chaos inspired the creation of sanctuaries for ideas around Europe. 

We perhaps never imagined such a thing would happen in 21st-century America and the world but here we were. Some of the greatest thinkers and writers of our time were being silenced and shut down, losing income, social networks, and career prospects. 

Thus did it become clear to us at the time what would consume our energies. We would become a sanctuary for ideas. We count on the goodness and generosity of donors to make it possible. We would reject the old non-profit of building our bureaucracy (we only have three actual employees) in favor of actually doing good for others, as strange as that sounds in our time. 

That most of Brownstone’s resources and energies are spent on this part of our mission is not well known. People mostly think of Brownstone as a place to get great articles on the crisis of our time. And that’s fine. But because you are on our email list, we count you as a special friend who can understand that there is far more to it than that. 

The best of thought these days come from thinkers who are unafraid to tell the truth. But that penchant also makes them outcasts in academia and mainstream media. Have you noticed how many of the true prophets of our time are emeritus professors, retired reporters, ex-officials, escaped executives, or Substackers? This is for a reason. They are excluded by official culture. But that also allows them to speak their minds. 

We simply cannot allow this to happen and we’ve worked to do our part to provide support and publishing opportunities for such thinkers. We cannot save the world but we can do our part. Of course the need for this service – we call it our Fellows program – far outstretches our existing resources. Every few days, we encounter a new case that needs help but we have to delay and make due with what is there. 

Now you know why in these emails we never fail to ask for your support. It’s because of the vast need, the moral obligation to do what we can, and the passion not to sit by and do nothing as civilization itself unravels. Quite simply, it is the job of our lives to act in every way we can. So please join us in this mighty undertaking, this work of hope. 

It’s not true that we are powerless. We’ve seen over these two years the difference that one idealistic institution can make. Thank you for your support! 

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Supper Club is on, this time featuring a book-signing party with Thomas Harrington. Join us on July 19th. 

Meanwhile, we are hiring for help with our burgeoning publishing arm. Old-line publishers are confused and academic publishers are useless, which leaves a huge niche for Brownstone. Because of the successes of our last six books, we are flooded with wonderful manuscripts. You can see the job description here. 

Have you registered yet for our Dallas conference and dinner on Nov 4? 

Here is some content since our last email:

The Depravity of the Hospital Protocol By Stella Paul. Fortunately, a group of volunteers is determined to get the word out. I think of them as the Bereaved Army. They lost a parent or spouse or sibling or child to what one eyewitness doctor called “organized homicide,” and they won’t stop fighting till they get justice.

The Intellectual Roots of Techno-Primitivism By Jeffrey A. Tucker. Saint-Simon celebrated science but became the anti-Voltaire. Instead of freeing the human mind, he and his followers imagined themselves to be governors of it. Anthony Fauci is indeed a successor among many, and the strange animal of techno-primitivism is a monster of their creation that now threatens civilization itself. Putting everyone in a N95 respirator to extinguish a disease is only the beginning. The actual goal is to become permanent “governors of the operation of the human mind.”

Never Forget How Covid Controls Corrupted Independence Day By James Bovard. In 2020, politicians in most areas effectively canceled Independence Day. Governors and mayors had quickly imposed “stay-at-home” orders restricting 300 million people after the Covid pandemic erupted. Most of the media ignored the fact that Independence Day occurred under the most dictatorial restrictions of the modern era. Crowds were banned from watching fireworks that governments often chose not to ignite.

Rebellion, Not Retreat By Aaron Kheriaty. The common feature of all totalitarian systems is the prohibition of questions: every totalitarian regime first monopolizes what counts as rationality and determines what questions you are allowed to ask.

CDC Altered Minnesota Death Certificates that List a Covid Vaccine as a Cause of Death By Aaron Hertzberg. The actions of the CDC call into question whether the CDC is altogether qualified or trustworthy enough to be the steward of the nation’s epidemiological data. The CDC manages many of the datasets that underpin whole fields of study. If the CDC is willing to fraudulently alter data (or even if the CDC is just too incompetent to avoid corrupting data), all data under the aegis of the CDC is potentially suspect, especially if it relates to a controversial political or social issue.

UK COVID Inquiry Reveals Just How Vast International Communist Conspiracy May Be By Michael Senger. Hancock’s testimony seemed to confirm sceptics’ worst fears that the COVID Inquiry is being used as a pretext to institutionalise lockdowns, and it marked an astonishing new low for the Inquiry, which so far has revealed little of value and assiduously avoided asking officials why they found the horrific decision to copy China’s lockdown policy remotely appropriate—though the officials have openly admitted lockdown wasn’t part of any Western country’s pandemic plan and have pondered whether any country would have done it had it not been for China.

How I Was Canceled by MeetUp.com By Doran Howitt. I created a Meetup group called “Covid Contrarians” in New York City. The idea was just to meet other people like me, who thought our governments were overreacting to the Covid situation. My big plan was no more than, get together and schmooze over coffee or a beer. The group lasted a few weeks before Meetup declared that it was spreading misinformation, and erased it from the website.

German Scientists Uncover Evidence that EU Pfizer-BioNTech Batches Included Placebos By Robert Kogon. German scientists have uncovered startling evidence that a substantial portion of the batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine deployed in the European Union may in fact have consisted of placebos – and hence were not even subjected to quality-control testing by the German agency which was in principle responsible for approving their release.

Affirmative Action Entrenches Division and Bigotry By Ramesh Thakur. Every affirmative action produces an equal and opposite sectarian reaction. If a government frames public policy in a group-conscious way, it cannot expect groups suffering relative deprivation to ignore group identity. For any one student admitted under a racial quota, only one alternative person would have succeeded in a merit system. But hundreds of rejected students end up feeling aggrieved and resentful for having lost out due to preferential policies.