Brownstone Category
A Nation of Non-Compliers
The train wasn’t scheduled for another 20 minutes, so I had a chance to contemplate the official sign on the…
The Real Purge in Academia
[This is the introduction to Conformity Colleges: The Destruction of Intellectual Creativity and Dissent in America’s Universities, by David R.…
The Toilet Paper Canard
Public culture today is replete with excuses for why lockdowns had to happen. Seems like more are being generated by…
The Year that Expertise Collapsed
Getting sick and getting well is part of the human experience at all times in all places. As with other…
Grand Inquisitor Says Oops
Francis Collins was head of the National Institutes of Health – Anthony Fauci’s parent bureaucracy – during the wreckage caused…
How the Madness of Crowds Wrecked Something Navy
Corporate bankruptcies in the US just hit the largest rate since the worst of the lockdowns. It’s a reflection of…
Why We Love the Nutcracker
Many people this holiday season will experience the joy of attending a local performance of The Nutcracker ballet by Pyotr…
This Silence Is Not Golden
At least the UK held public hearings, even if they were gamed from the start. There is a smidgeon of…
The Multifront Attack on Elon Musk
Elon Musk is the world’s richest man but also the number one target of the world’s richest governments and their…
What Will Become of Cities?
Everyone was supposed to be back at the office by now. It’s not really happening, however, and this has huge…
It’s Not Too Early to Name the Decade
The New Yorker is running a contest. What should we call our era? Some possible candidates: Terrible Twenties, the Age…
The Historian of Decline: Ludwig von Mises’s Relevance Today
[This piece was commissioned by Hillsdale College and presented on campus October 27, 2023] It’s an impossible task to explain…
Come On, Peggy Noonan, Just Say You Were Wrong
The answer to the question “Will they ever admit to being wrong?” is of course: no. I’m speaking in particular…
When Nearly All Governments in the World Met Their Match
What was the fundamental error of the Covid response? We’ve yet to come to terms with it. It traces to…
Flagellantism Is the New Political Ritual
The old FedEx envelope was clever, a work of art even, optimistic and colorful, signifying speed and progress. What a…
The Declaration That Wasn’t Supposed to Happen
It’s been a continuing mystery for three years, at least to me but many others too. In October 2020, in…
Anti-Lockdown Goes Mainstream
It’s a shift worth marking. New York Magazine is featuring an article called “COVID Lockdowns Were a Giant Experiment. It…
The Shredded Social Contract
This is not about whether there is such a thing as a literal social contract. The phrase has always been…
The Triumph of the Apocalyptics
In the course of almost four years, and really dating back a decade and a half, I’ve managed to read…
A Pandemic of Lockdown Denialism
There is an old expression: “Success has a thousand fathers but failure is always an orphan.” It’s a spin on…
Fauci and the CIA: A New Explanation Emerges
Jeremy Farrar’s book from August 2021 is relatively more candid than most accounts of the initial decision to lock down…
The Great Demoralization
On March 6, 2020, the mayor of Austin, Texas, canceled the biggest tech and arts trade show in the world,…
Megyn Kelly Asks Trump a Few Hard Questions
One reporter has proven brave enough not to take the deal. The deal is: you can interview Trump provided you…
Orwell Meets Your Stuffy Nose
“Experts have long doubted the effectiveness of phenylephrine,” which is a common ingredient in DayQuil, NyQuil, Sudafed, Mucinex, and others.…
Anthony Fauci’s Very Bad Week
It’s not been Anthony Fauci’s best week. Forever intent on managing his image and public opinion on the pandemic response,…
At the White House, March 10, 2020, Reconstructed
We still don’t know precisely what caused Donald Trump to flip in his position on the coronavirus. On March 9,…
Are We Facing Lockdowns 2.0?
National Public Radio was in a frenzy this morning but it felt like the movie Groundhog Day: they were spreading…
The Great Game of Let’s Pretend
Two nights ago was supposed to be a night of reckoning and truth. The intrepid and independent journalist Tucker Carlson…
The Questions Crying Out for Answers
The conspiracy of silence is obvious. Both political parties like it. The media likes it too because it was a…
How Have You Changed?
The last three and a half years have been times of enormous upheaval. It has affected politics, economics, culture, media,…