Covid Response at Five Years: Introduction
By Brownstone Institute February 27, 2025
With rare exception, March 2020 was a bipartisan, intergenerational capitulation to fear and hysteria. Those who dared to object to the freshly-mandated orthodoxy were subject to widespread contempt, derision, and censorship as the US Security State and a subservient media corps muzzled their protests. The most dominant forces in society used the opportunity to their advantage, pillaging the nation’s treasury and overthrowing law and tradition. Their campaign was devoid of the triumph of Yorktown, the bloodshed of Antietam, or the sacrifices of Omaha Beach. Without a single bullet, they overtook the republic, overturning the Bill of Rights in a quiet coup d’état.
Covid Response at Five Years: The First Amendment Versus the U.S. Security State
By Brownstone Institute February 28, 2025
If that sounds like a conspiracy, it’s because it was. The public health apparatus, the White House, and the Intelligence Community spearheaded a coordinated attack on free expression in the United States. They launched coercive campaigns to nationalize our news sources, and they stripped Americans of their First Amendment rights to augment their power. This informational stranglehold required technological power that sparked, as Justice Neil Gorsuch later wrote, possibly “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”
Covid Response at Five Years: Religion
By Brownstone Institute March 1, 2025
The consequences of lockdowns were not limited to freedom of movement or assembly. Once leaders had the green light to shutter large swaths of society, they wielded that power to impose their newly established ideology.
A new creed emerged in 2020 that divided society into true believers and heretics. Its adherents donned face coverings and regularly engaged in emotional self-flagellation. They put their faith in pharmaceutical products and unrelentingly sought to convert their neighbors. Those who questioned their dogma were cast aside as irredeemable. Just as the New York Times suggested the country “go medieval” on the coronavirus, society returned to a Dark Age persecution of iconoclasts.
Covid Response at Five Years: Lockdowns
By Brownstone Institute March 2, 2025
Americans lost the basic liberty to move unencumbered in their country. Government officials implemented tyranny without any mention of due process. They are worse than unremorseful; they lament their inability to enact greater despotism.
While anecdotes like golfing arrests and fines for children’s playdates may seem trivial compared to the vast array of Covid mandates, they represent the coordinated effort to punish individuals for exercising their right to travel freely. The downstream consequences of this tyranny were monumental. It overturned the right to protest, destroyed years of human life, unwound the social fabric, and permanently damaged a generation of young Americans.
