The Total War on Ideas

It's an emergency all right

Did you get the FEMA alert on your phone? Most likely. Keep in mind that no one voted for that. This speaks to the core problem: we no longer know who our rulers are. This is not a system under which civilized people live. 

No question that these are emergency times, but not the one they think. It’s an emergency for the very idea of freedom. 

Never could we have imagined two years ago just how crucial Brownstone Institute would be as a publisher, editorial voice, and support network for canceled scientists, journalists, attorneys, and so many others. It all comes down to understanding the peculiar nature of the struggles of our times. They don’t fit easily into old-fashioned categories. 

The map of the “Great Reset” doesn’t follow the old script. It’s something different. Call it de-growth corporatism, techno-primitivism, bio-medical fascism, or the digital-industrial-global complex. Maybe there are better terms but this much is true: the agenda is a fundamental threat to everything traditionally regarded as freedom. 

After two years, Brownstone is embarking on three focused areas of research and publishing to deal with these existential problems, in addition to our ongoing work to provide fellowships. 

First, we are expanding editorial offerings in the coming months. This will impact not just articles but the richness and variety of sources of outreach. As part of this, we are bringing on a new team member to assist. 

Second, and in association with Leeds University UK, Brownstone has kicked off a major effort to understand, diagnose, and reveal the fullness of the pandemic-planning industry. It is arguably among the biggest threats to liberty in our times, simply because of the methods it deployed for control of ideas and people. 

Third, the working group on censorship met most of its funding goals, so it is going ahead now with document sharing, text investigations, and an attempt to document the fullness of the public/private network that is attacking the First Amendment. 

Thank you for your support for these great programs! It is due to your financial support that any of this is even possible. It is more essential than ever. 

Have you registered for our event in Dallas, November 4, 2023? The program features the great heroes of our epoch, plus all friends of Brownstone.  

The supper club of October 25 is open for sign-ups. 

Here is some content since our last email:

The Costs and Casualties of Government’s Information Total War By Emily Burns. Government censorship reduces our society to just two groups of people: the censors and the censored. While it remains in place, the ranks of the censored will be ever-expanding as the censors require ever more censorship to ensure people continue to disbelieve their lying eyes.

A Solution to the Problem of Failed Public Schools By Rob Jenkins.The public schools in many (most?) parts of this country are indeed broken, and there’s no point in trying to “work within the system” to fix them. They’re too far gone. Meanwhile, our children are suffering. All children are suffering. Our only option is to bypass the “system” altogether, take matters into our own hands, and create our own schools, focused on excellence and open to everyone.

The Many Layers of the Canada-India Diplomatic Dispute By Ramesh Thakur. It’s past time that Western commentators woke up and smelled the coffee. The era of the West being the arbiter of the moral compass for itself and for everyone else is over. The new assertiveness of several prominent countries among the rest reflects a self-confidence rooted in a position of strength.

Legal Updates on Missouri v. Biden By Aaron Kheriaty. The Supreme Court is waiting to see what the circuit court does in this regard before hearing the government’s appeal. Regardless of whether the circuit court expands the scope of the injunction or leaves the current injunction intact, the Supreme Court will then rule on the government’s appeal of the injunction.

Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes By Bobbie Anne Flower Cox. Why are they backtracking now? Easy answers: 1) they didn’t have the authority to do any of it (all of it was unconstitutional) so they can’t justify and defend it now, and 2) if they can convince you they didn’t do it before, then you won’t mind as much when they do it again.

The Covid Backpedaling Race By Tom Jefferson. All this flipping, backpedaling, hagiography, and revelations based on the retrospectoscope lead us to suspect that the main people in the events of the last three years are increasingly nervous about their role and the consequences of their actions (or lack of).

Truth-speaking and the Technocratic Cabal By Bert Olivier. Truth-telling, or in ancient Greek, parrhesia, is something different. It is what one does when you tell or speak the truth exactly as you experience or perceive it, with no punches pulled. You don’t have to call the proverbial spade a shovel (unless this is what it takes to get through to your interlocutor), but you have to speak truthfully without holding back. This is particularly relevant for speaking (or writing) in public, where you run the risk of exposing yourself to harsh criticism.

The Social Meaning of Hortatory Yard Signs By Thomas Harrington. Growing up in a nice suburb and studying at a brand-name university, one can really come to believe that life is inherently well-ordered, and that “doing well” within it is mostly about getting in with the right people and following the right rules and processes.

Why Did People Comply? By Maximilien Lacour. The threat of voluntary lockdowns should lead lockdown skeptics to cast their net beyond the institutions of the State and bring them to confront the harder-to-limn, bottom-up drivers of lockdown like parental socialism. They need to find ways of addressing our collective self-infantilisation and to reemphasize the value and importance of free agency.

The White House’s ‘Misinformation’ Pressure Campaign Was Unconstitutional By Aaron Kheriaty. Recent attempts to rebrand the work of the Censorship Industrial Complex with more anodyne euphemisms—”information integrity” or “civic participation online”—don’t change the fact that this is not disinterested academic research, but cooperation in state-sponsored suppression of constitutionally protected speech, always in favor of the government’s preferred narratives.