Josh Stylman, Jeffrey A Tucker: The Cost of Facebook’s Now-Repudiated Censorship

History will remember this era as the moment when America’s most sacred principles collided with unprecedented institutional power – and lost. The systematic dismantling of fundamental rights didn’t happen through military force or executive decree, but through the quiet cooperation of tech platforms, media gatekeepers, and government agencies, all claiming to protect us from “misinformation.”

Jeffrey A Tucker: Merry Christmas to the Merchants!

We should all do more to celebrate our local merchants. They connect the community through hard work, great risk, tremendous creativity, and service, and yet too often, they do not get the appreciation they deserve. The hours can be grueling. The customers are variously unruly. Supply chains are frustrating. Dealing with taxes and regulations seems often impossible. They’ve dealt with awful inflation and then been scapegoated for it!

And yet they are there for all of us day in and day out, making our lives better.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: The Revolution of 2024

People are out and about, smiling at each other. It’s been true since the morning after the election, the results of which defied every prediction. Who doesn’t like to see the smug elites who have ruled the world for five awful years taken down a peg?

More than that, there are hints of a return to sanity. Mainstream advertisers are suddenly returning to X, putting their economic interest above their tribalist loyalties. The editor of pro-lockdowns Scientific American, which had long blessed totalitarian measures as true science, has resigned.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: Lockdowns Codified a World of Violence

During the misnamed and mostly preposterous debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a moderator fact-checked Trump’s claim that crime is up. In contrast to his claim, he said that the FBI reports that crime is down, a claim that likely struck every viewer as obviously wrong.

Shoplifting was not a way of life before lockdowns. Most cities were not demographic minefields of danger around every corner. There was no such thing as a drug store with nearly all products behind locked Plexiglas. We weren’t warned of spots in cities, even medium-sized ones, where carjacking was a real risk.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: Grocery Rationing within Four Years

There is a lack of public comment and debate about Kamala Harris’s call for price controls on groceries and rents, the most stunning and frightening policy proposal made in my lifetime.

Immediately, of course, people will reply that she is not for price controls as such. It is only a limit on “gouging” (which she variously calls “gauging”) on grocery prices. As for rents, it’s only for larger-scale corporations with many units.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: What Broke Libertarianism?

Nearly the whole of the professional, intellectual, and government class has betrayed the cause of universal human liberty in our times. But among those who were supposed to be less susceptible were the people called libertarians. They fell too, and tragically so. This subject is especially salient to me because I have long considered myself to be among them.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: This Is Not Capitalism

The word capitalism has no stable definition and should probably be permanently retired. That won’t happen, however, because too many people are invested in its use and abuse.

I’m long over trying to push my definition over someone else’s understanding, generally viewing disputes about vocabulary and dictionary definitions as a distraction against the real debate over concepts and ideals.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: The Post-Ideological Age

Conventional wisdom has it that the US and much of the Western world has polarized into right and left. These tribes are hard-core and share mutual loathing. That model of understanding pervades all popular media and consumes the culture, such that everyone feels the need to choose. It’s simple, harkens back to Cold War binaries, drums up media attention, and further divides the population in ways that benefit the leaders of both sides.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: Ten Points About Post-Lockdown Economics

The sudden economic lockdown of March 2020, the world over, was one of the more shocking moments in history. The very core of the economic problem from the beginning of recorded time was getting more of what people needed to them in a way that was sustainable given the inherent scarcities of the state of nature.

Regardless of the system, creating wealth was the stated goal, and humanity gradually discovered that trade, investment, marketing, and access to more via travel and creativity was the way forward.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: During the Crisis, Free Speech Worked Brilliantly

There is only one major social media platform that is relatively free of censorship. That is X, once known as Twitter, and owned by Elon Musk, who has preached free speech for years and sacrificed billions in advertising dollars in order to protect it. If we don’t have that, he says, we lose freedom itself. He also maintains that it is the best path to finding the truth.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: 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 door of the huge elevator leading to the platform. It said that only four people are allowed in because we must all practice social distancing. There was a helpful map of the interior of the elevator with stick figures telling people exactly where to stand. 

Jeffrey A. Tucker: Consumers Are Rejecting the Great Reset

A friend got a rental of a Tesla over the holidays. It’s undoubtedly the industry standard for EVs and a complete blast to drive. The problem: It’s not a practical car at all. He was driving in the cold, and the car was nearly drained after two hours. Searching for a charge was no easy task. The first one didn’t work. The second one stated that it would be charged in 10 hours, which he didn’t have. The third one charged in one hour but that was a full hour wasted.

His conclusion: This is indeed a glorified golf cart designed to keep you at home and under the thumb of the manufacturer. And this is just a test. The repairs are worse. Keep in mind that this is the best the industry has to offer. The other manufacturers of these things make products not nearly as highly rated, which is why so many of them are sitting on lots unsold and why orders for the machines are plummeting.

Jeffrey Tucker: How to be sick with intelligence and dignity

Writing with a second bout of COVID—yes, it’s annoying but I’ll get over it—I’m thinking about all that we’ve forgotten about sickness over the last four years, and also what we’ve learned and relearned.

It’s been a very strange time, when ruling class interest groups all decided to get together and utterly panic the world’s population over a respiratory virus that is not fatal for the overwhelming majority of people. Whole economies were wrecked, and lifespans are falling, not because of the virus but because of the way governments have responded to it.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: This Vote Should Give You Hope

Did you see much about the vote in Australia in the past few days? It was an important one, and the results were extremely revealing. I’ve not seen much mainstream coverage of it at all. In fact, most coverage stopped weeks ago, once it became rather obvious which way the vote would run.

The question concerned a referendum that would have ended a key Western pillar of social and political law, the idea of equal application of the law. It proposed the addition of a new arm of Parliament supposedly to represent the interests of the indigenous people—not the actual people of course, but those claiming to represent them. The way to be admitted to the group is genetic, which is to say a biological test for political power.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: Just How Hard Were We Trolled?

What if Anthony Fauci co-authored an article on vaccines that would have gotten you and me blocked and banned at any point in the last three years? That just happened. His article in Cell—“Rethinking next-generation vaccines for coronaviruses, influenzaviruses, and other respiratory viruses”—says it as plainly as possible: the COVID vaccine did not work because it could not work.

First some review from what we knew before this whole fiasco began.

Vaccines are not suitable for coronaviruses. Such respiratory viruses spread and mutate too quickly. This is why there has never been a vaccine for the common cold and why the flu shot is predictably suboptimal. Vaccines can only be sterilizing and contribute to public health when the virus is a stable pathogen like Smallpox and Measles. For coronaviruses, there is really only one way forward: better anti-virals, therapeutics, and acquired immunity.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: Facebook Is Dead Unless You Post Something that Does Not Matter

Since Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, it’s been quite a wild ride. Thousands of doctors and scientists have been unbanned and are now speaking. Same with journalists. Accounts that posted against Covid restrictions and mandates are now unthrottled. Brownstone’s account is now at 31K and my own personal reach is up some 175 percent.

Of course, this is also infuriating. When we needed these voices the most was during the biggest attacks on liberty in our lifetime. Now that the powers that be have been forced by public opinion to dial back their oppressions, these voices can speak again. It’s good that the truth is getting out there but imagine the kind of difference it would have made for these 33 months if there had been no blocks on information from the start?

Jeffrey A. Tucker: How an Occupied Twitter Ruined Countless Lives

From the beginning of the Covid panic, it felt that something was very wrong. Never had a pandemic, much less a seasonal pathogenic wave, been treated as a quasi-military emergency requiring the upending of all freedoms and rights.

What made it more bizarre was how alone those of us who objected felt until very recently when Elon Musk finally bought the platform Twitter, fired all the embedded federal agents, and has started to release the files.

As Elon said, every conspiracy theory about Twitter was true and then some. And what applies at Twitter pertains equally to Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all platforms associated with those companies (YouTube, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp).

Jeffrey A. Tucker: How Coercion Compromised the Vaccine

The fight over the COVID vaccines has become an epic struggle. It’s not just about who should get the shot and how many shots. The fight ever more centers on issues of effectiveness and safety of the product itself.

One group is convinced they are very dangerous for many people. The other side says that the people who say this are crazy, ideologically motivated, and spreading misinformation. Truth is, they say, these vaccines saved a million lives, are perfectly safe, and everyone should accept them, by force if necessary, including a booster and a fourth dose.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: Forget About COVID, They Say

Earlier this year, a phrase was trending because Bari Weiss used it on a talk show: “I’m done with COVID.” Many people cheered simply because the subject has been the source of vast oppression for billions of people for two years.

There are two ways to be over COVID.

One way is to do what the memo from the consultants of the Democratic National Committee suggested: Declare the war won and move on. For political reasons.

Deaths attributed to COVID nationally are higher now than they were in the summer of 2020 when the whole country was locked down. They are also higher now than during the election of November the same year. But today we are just supposed to treat it for what it is: a seasonal virus with a disparate impact on the aged and frail.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: Authoritarianism in Auckland

For months we’ve heard the cry: oh how wonderfully New Zealand dealt with the Coronavirus! They did the tightest lockdown in the world! The coronavirus – no doubt astonished by the decisiveness and ferocity of prime minister Jacinda Ardern, the heroine of all media – just decided not to make this wonderful country a home. The virus was bested by political wit! 

Oh what a fantasy it was all along, as Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta pointed out from the beginning. What was actually happening in New Zealand was delaying the inevitable. In the modern world, there is no chance for a developed society to replicate the experience of a primitive tribe with naive immune systems living in isolation. 

You wouldn’t want to do that anyway because you make the whole population of your tribe fatally vulnerable to the next bug that comes along. In Gupta’s view, New Zealand’s “success” wouldn’t be that at all.