Revolution Under the Cloak of Normalcy

The potential for abuse of political and financial power is tremendous.

What a week! 

The CDC threw out any pretense of science or even morality and added the Covid vaccine to the childhood schedule, which will be adopted in many public schools. Many don’t know the reality of Covid or the shots thanks to media censorship. But we also learn that Elon Musk signs the takeover deal with Twitter next week. Word is that he will fire 75% of existing staff. 

So there’s that. The blowback is gaining steam, and Brownstone covers it all with expert analysis from around the world. 

Please join us for “The Great Restoration: Conference and Gala,” Saturday, December 3, 20220, Miami, Florida, featuring so many other of your favorite writers and thinkers. 

Your support for our fellowship program has brought great hope to many! Thank you for your continued support.

Here is some content from this week. 

A Revolution Under the Cloak of Normalcy BY J.R. BRUNING. When tied to central bank digital currency, access to resources (through digital currency and/or tokens) can be time specified and for a limited purpose. Permissions can be shaped to restrict access to narrowly approved goods and services, and/or alter consumption patterns.

Hippocratic vs. Technocratic Medicine BY AARON KHERIATY. Despite the lackluster performance of the mRNA platform in its first mass rollout, enthusiasts remain undeterred. According to advocates, this was merely an early experiment for these genetic therapies.

The Economic Disaster of the Pandemic Response  BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. Economics is about people in their choices and institutions that enable them to thrive. Public health is about the same thing. Driving a wedge between the two surely ranks among the most catastrophic public-policy decisions of our lifetimes. Health and economics both require the nonnegotiable called freedom. May we never again experiment with its near abolition in the name of disease mitigation. 

But Will Elections Change Anything? BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. In the end, what’s more powerful than political changes and even election upheavals, which too often fail through subversion, are dramatic shifts in public opinion. Every institution ultimately bends to that, which is why research, education, great journalism, and competent media outlets, plus friendship networks and community organizing, might actually be more foundational than elections. All of this has begun and it is growing. Therein lies the real hope. 

In Search of Safety Signals – Let the Light Shine In BY MICHAEL TOMLINSON. Policy in public health should be only made on the basis of the evidence available. The evidence available indicates that the strategy of universal vaccination of the whole population exposed some groups to unnecessary risk, and that a differentiated risk-based strategy would have led to better outcomes. Some countries are now belatedly moving in this direction at least for boosters.

US Government Officials Dumped Stocks Prior to Lockdowns, Report Shows By MICHAEL SENGER. In an explosive new report from the Wall Street Journal, leading health officials began offloading stocks at truly unprecedented rates in January 2020—well before the COVID-19 emergency was declared—with officials at the US Department of Health and Human Services selling 60% more stocks in January 2020 than average over the previous 12 months.

Agree with Us or Hold your Tongue By RAMESH THAKUR. Every crisis, they say, is an opportunity. Governments, health bureaucrats and drug regulators all over the world have exploited the Covid-19 crisis to grab power and gain control over our lives. Predictably, rather than to most people’s surprise, many are proving singularly resistant to relinquishing their extraordinary powers, instead extending the emergency and broadening its scope to embrace other issues.

Organized Chaos in South Central, Los Angeles By DANIEL NUCCIO. Part of what makes this all so frustrating and demoralizing is the way the whole system is set up. No one is really accountable for any of the decisions made regarding exemptions, testing, appeals, or terminations. Everything is done through third parties and anonymous emails.

The Macroeconomic Consequences of Lockdowns and the Aftermath By DAVID STOCKMAN. Washington compensated one and all for the resulting harm and then some by unleashing a $6 trillion spending bacchanalia in less than 14 months, which was accomplished with barely a dissent from either party to the Washington duopoly because interest rates on government debt had plunged to an all-time low. In turn, that was enabled by the most reckless spurt of money printing and debt monetization in recorded history.

Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s New Chancellor of the Exchequer, Strongly Backed Zero Covid and Lockdowns By MICHAEL SENGER. Part of the reason Hunt’s 2022 bid imploded is that testimony and video surfaced of his praising China’s draconian “Zero Covid” and quarantine measures and advocating for the UK to emulate them. Hunt had likewise been a vocal proponent of lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

How the Israeli Ministry of Health Became an Agent for Pfizer By GUY SHINAR. Why did Ministry of Health officials enter into this agreement? Why didn’t they maintain their role as regulators, and why did they volunteer to serve as Pfizer’s marketing, distribution, research and publication branch?

Supreme Court Decided to Keep Torture A Secret By JAMES MASNOV. Why, then, was this decision not widely reported? It, of course, did not see a total media blackout, but it received far less attention than the abortion case that has now captured the attention of the press and the population. Why is this? Is the official suppression of torture via the Court not newsworthy? How much of this is due to the decision not aligning with how the Court is typically characterized: that of an institutional battle between the ideological left versus the ideological right?

Doctors Who Live in Fear and Promote it in Others By THOMAS HARRINGTON. Everyone in these once-trusted professions, in short, must eschew the pressure to go along with the prevailing pressure, so that he or she won’t become, like so many of their colleagues, an absurd, kiss-up kick-down, fear-promoting cypher who brings daily discredit to one of the world’s oldest and most noble vocations.

How College Mandates Shattered My Dreams By PHOEBE LIOU. When I was canceled from UConn, I was in the middle of writing a neurosurgery research journal article and my participation was abruptly stopped. I was planning to study abroad in my junior year, which would have been this year. I looked forward to entering dental school and eventually opening a dental practice. I made a choice for my body – and my college life was interrupted indefinitely.

How Deadly Is Covid? A Major Study Defies Conventional Wisdom By WILL JONES. In the new study, which is currently undergoing peer-review, Prof. Ioannidis and colleagues found that across 31 national seroprevalence studies in the pre-vaccination era, the average (median) infection fatality rate of COVID-19 was estimated to be just 0.035% for people aged 0-59 years people and 0.095% for those aged 0-69 years.

How Can Severe Mental Illness be the Deadliest Covid Comorbidity? By AARON HERTZBERG. It is not remotely plausible that “learning disabilities” have a physiological connection or influence on the pathological course of covid infection or disease, certainly not en masse that would show up as a stronger safety signal than both age and obesity. The proposition that an otherwise perfectly healthy individual with a learning disability is at a higher risk from covid than your 83-year-old grandma is so absurd that it should call the entire study into doubt.