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In the last days of East Germany, when government officials detected that their power was unraveling, they ratcheted up enforcement of the nation’s reporting laws. The reporting laws made it a felony to know of a crime and fail to report it. It was also a crime to tell the person of whose crime you … Continue reading "Killing the Constitution"

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Attorney General Todd Rokita is fighting efforts by the federal government to ride roughshod over state laws protecting human life and prohibiting abortions.

This week, Attorney General Rokita is supporting Idaho as it argues before the Supreme Court to protect its Defense of Life Act from preemption under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). In February, General Rokita led a 22-state amicus brief backing Idaho’s common-sense stance.

“Hoosiers know that when federal bureaucrats come after pro-life laws in Idaho or any other state, they will soon be coming after pro-life laws here in Indiana,” Attorney General Rokita said. “Under the Biden administration, the federal government remains determined to advance a pro-abortion culture of death — and it’s perfectly willing to usurp states’ rights in order to do so.”

Under the U.S. system of federalism, the power to regulate health, safety and medicine rests largely with the states. And in the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court returned the issue of abortion to the states as well — overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

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Federal attorneys, however, claim EMTALA allows emergency room physicians to ignore state medical regulations whenever they think it necessary to do so — including by performing abortions that are otherwise banned. In reality, however, EMTALA nowhere mentions the topic of abortion — and was never intended to be construed as the federal government now claims.

“The law is on our side,” Attorney General Rokita said. “Here in Indiana and across the nation, we can continue building a culture of life that respects the precious value not only of unborn children but also their moms and dads. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

The brief can be found here.

The post 22 Pro-Life States Defend Their Pro-Life Laws From Joe Biden’s Attack appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The Arizona state House has bowed to the pro-abortion mob by approving a measure to repeal the state’s new abortion ban before it ever reached implementation to begin saving babies.

With the ban repealed, babies would lose almost all protection in the state. A 15-week abortion ban would go into place that only allows protecting babies up to that point – meaning 90% of more abortions would become legal.

The pro-life group Center for Arizona Policy lameted the vote in comments to LifeNews.

“Today’s House vote to repeal the pre-Roe law opens the door to great loss of life for unborn children and harm to women. With the Senate already on record to vote on the repeal, the most protective pro-life law in the country is poised to fall to the appetites of pro-abortion activists,” it said.

“The law to limit abortion to cases where the woman’s life is in danger was in effect in January of 1973 when Roe v Wadewas wrongly decided and should be in effect today. It was reaffirmed by a bipartisan legislature and the governor in 1977,” it added. “I applaud those lawmakers who stood boldly for the unborn and their mothers and made the effort today to force Arizona Attorney General to defend the state’s 15-week law if the pre-Roe law was repealed.”

Democrats prevailed on the vote to repeal the law because three Republicans joined them, including Matt Gress, Tim Dunn, and Justin Wilmeth.

A leading national pro-life group was also disappointed.

“We mourn for the loss of the children who would have been protected, and the mothers who would have received life-affirming help to address their holistic needs, under Arizona’s strongest pro-life law. After months of confusion, the people of Arizona will soon have clarity on the state’s abortion laws: a 15-week protection for the unborn who can feel excruciating pain, with exceptions for life of the mother, rape, and incest,” said SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser.

“Between now and November, the far Left and pro-abortion forces will spend tens of millions of dollars to muddy the waters, fearmonger, and sow confusion to advance an extreme abortion agenda. Their goal is to repeal Arizona’s 15-week abortion law and replace it with a constitutional amendment that would allow unlimited painful late-term abortions in the fifth, sixth, seventh month of pregnancy and beyond,” she added. “Kari Lake and all GOP candidates and elected officials must bring clarity to Arizona voters by campaigning vigorously in support of Arizona’s 15-week protection with exceptions and in opposition to the extreme no-limits abortion amendment.”

Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Jake Warner said the abortion ban should stand.

“Life is a human right, and the Arizona Legislature has again reaffirmed that fundamental right. Life begins at conception. At just six weeks, unborn babies’ hearts begin to beat. At eight weeks, they have fingers and toes. And at 10 weeks, their unique fingerprints begin to form. Arizona’s pro-life law has protected unborn children for more than 100 years, and the people of Arizona, through their elected representatives, have repeatedly affirmed that law,” he said.

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled recently to uphold the state’s pro-life law as written by overturning a lower court decision that misinterpreted the law.

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“We conclude that [Arizona’s law] does not create a right to, or otherwise provide independent statutory authority for, an abortion that repeals or restricts [the law], but rather is predicated entirely on the existence of a federal constitutional right to an abortion since disclaimed by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,” the court wrote in its opinion in Planned Parenthood Arizona v. Mayes. “Absent the federal constitutional abortion right, and because [the law] does not independently authorize abortion, there is no provision in federal or state law prohibiting [the law’s] operation. Accordingly, [Arizona’s law] is now enforceable.”

After the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the state’s abortion ban, one of the big attacks against it is that the 1864 law supposedly doesn’t represent the will of the people and is antiquated. Trump referred to that in his post.

But that contention is not true.

First, the judges on the Arizona Supreme Court represent the people. The seven justices on the state’s highest court are initially appointed by the governor to serve. They then stand for a retention vote for regular terms of six years and that is a ballot vote cast by Arizona voters. As a result, the justices represent the people via electing the governor and electing them directly.

Secondly, the law was affirmed twice after it was initially approved in 1864. As CatholicVote notes in an article:

The over century-and-a-half-old law is set to replace the state’s existing pro-life law which only protects most unborn children after 15 weeks gestation.

Republican then Gov. Doug Ducey signed the significantly weaker legislation into law in March 2022. Less than three months later, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v. Wade.

The Arizona Supreme Court held that the 2022 law “is predicated entirely on the existence of a federal constitutional right to an abortion since disclaimed” by the Dobbs decision.

Axios reported that “[a] provision of the 2022 law had affirmed it wasn’t repealing the 19th-century law.”

FOX News noted that the 1864 law “was codified in 1913 after Arizona became a state” and “includes an exception in cases where the mother’s life is at risk.”

Planned Parenthood was challenging the potential reinstatement of the state’s near-total abortion ban from 1864, which has exceptions for life-threatening emergencies, but had been blocked by 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The Dobbs ruling should allow it to go into effect but the nation’s biggest abortion business challenged it.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys represented Dr. Eric Hazelrigg, an obstetrician and medical director of Choices Pregnancy Center in Arizona, who filed a petition last March asking the state’s high court to review an Arizona Court of Appeals ruling.

The appellate court’s ruling misinterpreted state law, against its plain meaning, to allow abortion in circumstances where the Arizona Legislature prohibited it. It also enjoined officials from fully enforcing the state’s pro-life law to protect unborn children. The Arizona Supreme Court reversed this ruling, allowing the law to be enforced as written.

“Life is a human right, and today’s decision allows the state to respect that right and fully protect life again—just as the legislature intended,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jake Warner, who argued before the court. “Life begins at conception. At just six weeks, unborn babies’ hearts begin to beat. At eight weeks, they have fingers and toes. And at 10 weeks, their unique fingerprints begin to form. Arizona’s pro-life law has protected unborn children for over 100 years, and the people of Arizona, through their elected representatives, have repeatedly affirmed that law, including as recently as 2022. We celebrate the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision that allows the state’s pro-life law to again protect the lives of countless, innocent unborn children.”

In September 2022, the Arizona Superior Court in Pima County appointed Dr. Hazelrigg as the substitute guardian ad litem to legally represent the best interests of unborn children in Arizona, a role Arizona courts have recognized for over 50 years.

The post Arizona House Votes to Repeal Abortion Ban, Three Republicans Join Democrats to Allow Killing Babies appeared first on LifeNews.com.

“Those who preach faith, or in other words a pure mind, have always produced more popular virtue than those who preached good works, or the mere regulation of outward acts.”

Sir James Macintosh, Diary (July 17, 1808)*

Although his opinion was perhaps colored by a Scotsman’s protestant pride, the famous liberal Sir James Macintosh is almost certainly correct in saying that the doctrine of salvation by faith yields, at least in its first bloom, an exceptionally virtuous society.  Calvinism is particularly conducive to popular virtue .  It certainly puts a damper on carousing in alehouses, hooting at bawdy shows, betting on cock fights, or cavorting like Peter Pan around a maypole; but it at the same time significantly curtailed a man’s chances of being cuckolded, murdered, or robbed.

Every traveler I have ever read agrees with this favorable view of Calvinist society, although some have been of the opinion that Calvinism and sobriety both depend on some third cause.

“The Calvinistic people of Scotland, of Switzerland, of Holland, and of New England have been more moral than the same classes of other nations.”*

Macintosh suggests that this is because men and women governed by the doctrine of good works always end up haggling to secure salvation on the most advantageous terms.  In ends in Talmudism; it ends in casuistry.  It ends in legalistic dickering over how much credit one receives for each good work, and how much penalty one pays for each act that is not good but sin,

“The later mode of considering Ethics naturally gives rise to casuistry . . . .”*

I have read some casuistry, but always with feelings of mild disgust.  It seems an answer to the question, “how much can a get away with?”   It seems like a definition of technical virginity, or  Bill Clinton’s conception of truth.

“The tendency of casuistry is to discover ingenious pretexts for eluding that rigorous morality and burdensome superstition, which in the first ardor of religion are apt to be established, and to discover rules of conduct more practicable by ordinary men in the common state of the world.”*

It has been said that hypocrisy is the only alternative to casuistry, since men who cannot excuse thier base conduct will naturally conceal it.  Possession of a “pure mind” is no doubt superior to invention of ingenious pretexts to sail very close to the wind, but rascals have always found it  easy, and have often found it convenient, to dress up and talk like the most zealous puritans.**

Setting such pharisaical puritan impostors aside, it does seem that the doctrine of faith yields more and better fruit than the doctrine of good works.  The reason is that the doctrine of faith incites a desire to be good, whereas the doctrine of works incites a desire to be good enough.  And from good enough the doctrine of works too easily descends to as good as can be expected.

“The casuist first let down morality from enthusiasm to reason; then lower it to the level of general frailty, until it be at last sunk in loose accommodation to weakness, and even vice.”*

*) Robert James Mackintosh, ed., Memoirs of the Life of Sir James Mackintosh, second ed., two vols. (London: E. Maxon, 1836), vol. 1, p. 411.
**) H. Hensley, Henson Puritanism in England (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912), pp. 65-69.

Idaho officials fought at the Supreme Court today to protect babies from abortion, uphold its pro-life state law and to stop Joe Biden from turning Idaho emergency rooms into abortion centers.

As LifeNews.com reported previously, the Supreme Court ruled in January that Joe Biden can’t force Idaho to turn its emergency rooms into abortion centers. The nation’s highest court ruled that Joe Biden can’t exploit a federal law to try to weaken Idaho’s abortion ban by allowing emergency room doctors to do abortions.

But that decision was a temporary victory and Idaho oficials are fighting in court to win the entire case, Idaho v United States. This is the first case to be heard by the Supreme Court directly relating to the Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade.

Last year, the Justice Department filed suit Aug. 2 against the state of Idaho, hoping to undermine its new law prohibiting most abortions by claiming that the state law conflicts with EMTALA and medical treatment for pregnant women in emergency rooms. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) was enacted in 1986 and contains a duty to both a pregnant woman and her unborn child. The act never mentions abortion.

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The Justice Department filed a lawsuit that challenges Idaho’s protective law — arguing that it would prevent supposedly medically necessary abortions. Despite false reports that abortion bans would prevent doctors from treating pregnant women for miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies, pro-life doctors confirm that is not the case. Some 35 states have laws making it clear that miscarriage is not abortion and every state with an abortion ban allows treatment for both.

Today, Idaho attorneys told the high court that the federal government can’t force Idaho to allow abortions outside the scope of its law, even if Idaho accepts federal dollars for medicare.

Justice Samuel Alito agreed on that point and pointed out that EMTALA specifically mentions unborn children.

“How can you impose restrictions on what Idaho can criminalize, simply because hospitals in Idaho have chosen to participate in Medicare?” he asked U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.

During the hearing, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett asked tough questions about both sides and their votes could prove crucial in the outcome.

One pro-life group told LifeNews that the outcome of the case is important because it could mandate abortion on demand throughout all fifty states in hospital emergency rooms.

“The Biden Administration is attempting to twist the compassionate EMTALA law to push their radical agenda of unlimited abortion,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life.

She said that Biden’s attempt to force hospital emergency rooms to perform abortions under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) is contrary to that federal law which was only meant to protect emergency room patients from being dumped and does not mandate that the hospital provide medical care that is contrary to state law.

“Apparently, Joe Biden and his administration have determined that emergency rooms are no longer capable of providing care for both mother and child,” said Tobias. “The Biden Administration’s solution is to turn hospital emergency rooms into abortion facilities.”

Texas Alliance for Life’s Communications Director Amy O’Donnell agreed. Het state is also fighting Biden.

“EMTALA, which recognizes two patients in cases of pregnancy, the mother and the unborn child, requires hospitals to provide medically necessary care to stabilize both patients in emergency situations, which could include abortions in those rare and tragic cases when a pregnancy endangers a woman’s life. All states’ laws allow abortions in those circumstances, including the laws of Idaho and Texas,” she said.

“The pro-abortion Biden/Harris Administration’s misinterpretation of EMTALA threatens to transform hospitals into abortion facilities. The Administration asserts that any pregnancy could necessitate abortion at a single physician’s discretion, another attempt to trample on state abortion laws intended to protect unborn babies from elective abortions,” she added. “The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld Texas’ law that protects unborn babies from abortion, with exceptions for medically necessary abortions, from a similar challenge. That Court found that Texas law allows all life-saving abortions required by EMTALA. We believe the Supreme Court should uphold Idaho’s law in the same way.”

Signed by pro-life President Reagan in 1986, EMTALA requires hospitals to treat patients with emergency medical conditions regardless of their ability to pay. The Biden/Harris administration directive threatens to turn hospitals into abortion facilities by claiming that any pregnancy could require abortion if so deemed by a physician. Their so-called guidance goes beyond EMTALA by mandating abortion, where the act does not mandate medical treatments.

The Biden Administration directive also falsely suggests that Idaho and other state pro-life laws fail to protect women facing life-threatening emergencies during pregnancy. This is untrue. All state’s pro-life laws provide an abortion exception for those rare but tragic circumstances in which a pregnancy poses a threat to a mother’s life or poses a risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.

The Ninth Circuit of Appeals held that “the two laws would not conflict” and that EMTALA does not mandate abortions punishable under Idaho’s law.

According to the latest data from Texas Health & Human Services (through November 2023), reported elective abortions have dropped to zero. However, doctors have performed 75 abortions under the medical necessity exception (for the life or health of the pregnant woman), all in hospitals since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs. No doctor has faced prosecution by a district attorney or sanctions from the Texas Medical Board.

The post Idaho Fights at Supreme Court to Protect Babies From Abortions appeared first on LifeNews.com.

An Indiana high school student and her pro-life student group are appealing a court decision against them in a lawsuit they filed after school officials derecognized the group because the student sought permission to post flyers that administrators found objectionable. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing the student and the group in E.D. v. Noblesville School District entered their appearance in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit on Wednesday.

In August 2021, the freshman student met with the principal of Noblesville High School to form a chapter of Students for Life of America. After the student completed all required steps, the school officially recognized the group. However, officials later told her she could not post flyers that included pro-life messages. Shortly after that, the principal derecognized the group.

“Students don’t lose their First Amendment right to free speech when they walk into a school building,” said ADF Legal Counsel Mathew Hoffmann. “This isn’t just about a flyer; this is about a school telling a high-schooler that she can’t publicly express messages that are important to her. School officials punished the student because she sought to use flyers that expressed pro-life messages. While other student groups at the school are allowed to express messages that are important to them, this club was specifically punished because of the messages on the flyers.”

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At the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, the student met with Dr. Craig McCaffrey, the principal of Noblesville High School, to discuss forming Noblesville Students for Life, which she hoped would “educate [her] peers on the issue of abortion and empower [her] peers in a local community with pregnancy-related items.”

After the student filled out the questionnaire the principal gave her, the school approved the group. A few weeks later, the student sought permission to post flyers that used a Students for Life of America template that included photographs of students holding signs in front of the U.S. Supreme Court reading, “I Reject Abortion,” “Defund Planned Parenthood,” and “I Am the Pro-Life Generation.” School staff insisted that she post the flyers without the pictures, telling her at one point that the flyer could not be “political.” The same day the student met with those administrators, the principal derecognized the group.

“We are eager to protect the rights of students whose views may differ from some preferred viewpoint,” said Zac Kester, CEO and managing attorney of Charitable Allies.

“The district court’s decision discourages parents and weakens First Amendment protections by insisting that a temporary loss of rights is nothing to worry about,” added Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America.

The post High School Dumps Pro-Life Student Group for Distributing Pro-Life Fliers appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Every single state in America with an abortion ban in place allows abortions in emergency circumstances if necessary to save the life of the mother. There is no pro-life state in America that forces pregnant women to put their lives at risk.

But during an abortion debate at the Supreme Court today, Justice Sonia Sotomayor lied about this.

She falsely claimed some states prohibit abortions to save the mother’s life.

During an exchange with Idaho attorney Joshua Turner, who is defending the state’s pro-life law in court from an attack by the Biden administration – which wants to overturn the law to allow all abortions in Idaho – Sotomayor made the false statement.

“What you’re saying is that no state in the nation — and there are some right now that don’t even have that as an exception to their anti-abortion laws — what you’re saying is there is no federal law on the books that prohibits any state from saying even if a woman will die you cannot perform an abortion,” she said.

Turner had to correct the liberal justice.

“I know of no state that doesn’t include a life-saving exception,” he explained.

Turner is correct.

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According to the Charlote Lozier Institute, every pro-life state in America allows abortions in the very rare instance where it might possibly be necessary to protect a woman’s life.

Twenty-five states have one or more strong gestational limits on abortion that are either in effect or are enjoined while in litigation. Each of these states permits abortion in those rare and heartbreaking circumstances when it is necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman.

Physicians can make this determination based on their “reasonable medical judgment,” a standard very common in the medical profession and used for any case involving medical malpractice litigation.

Meanwhile, abortion advocates are spreading the dangerous lie that life-saving care is not or may not be permitted in these states, leading to provider confusion and poor outcomes for women.

The post Justice Sonia Sotomayor Falsely Claims Abortion Bans Don’t Have Life of the Mother Exceptions appeared first on LifeNews.com.

In a recent op-ed, CatholicVote Director of Accountability Tommy Valentine detailed the reasons behind the organization’s decision to send a letter to the Department of Justice calling for a fair application of the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act against pro-lifers and pro-abortion activists.

On April 22, The Hill published Valentine’s op-ed titled: “Biden’s Justice Department hounds elderly concentration camp survivor, ignores serial church arsonist.”

The op-ed comes after CatholicVote sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on April 9 calling for action in defense of Catholic churches and pro-life centers that have been vandalized and attacked in recent years.

In his op-ed Valentine opened with harrowing details about the early life of pro-life activist Eva Edl, who is a survivor of the post-World War II Gakova communist death camp.

“After years of living in hell, facing death daily, Eva’s family finally escaped to the U.S. They believed that America was free, and that their rights would be protected by a government with their best interests at heart,” Valentine wrote:

Today, the government they trusted is fighting to throw 87-year-old Eva into prison for her pro-life advocacy.

Sadly, Eva’s plight perfectly exemplifies how dangerous the weaponization of the U.S. government has become, and how far the left will go to punish anyone who interferes with their radical agenda.

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Edl was recently convicted alongside three other pro-life activists for praying and singing hymns in front of the doors of a Tennessee abortion clinic in 2021. They were convicted under the FACE Act, which, Valentine wrote, “prohibits the use of force, threat of force or physical obstruction to prevent women from obtaining or providing ‘reproductive health care services.’”

“For this, they face up to six months in prison, five years of “supervised release’ and fines up to $10,000,” Valentine continued, noting that the maximum sentence under FACE Act violations is 11 years in prison and fines of $250k.

“Meanwhile, pro-abortion rights extremists firebomb, vandalize and terrorize pro-life centers and Catholic Churches with impunity,” Valentine wrote:

The FBI and Department of Justice have prosecuted nonviolent pro-life offenders with the FACE Act, while turning a blind eye to the violent, ongoing and terrifying attacks on other institutions protected by the FACE Act: churches and pregnancy help centers.

Valentine then highlighted the actions of Elliot Bennett, who, earlier in April, set a Catholic Church on fire in New Jersey–the third act of violence against a church Bennett has committed since 2018.

“Yet the same Justice Department that is fighting to throw Eva in jail failed to prosecute (Bennett) for these multiple and obvious FACE Act violations,” Valentine wrote, noting that the Department has not federally prosecuted any of the 414 vandalisms and attacks against Catholic churches in the United States since May of 2020. The Department also has not substantially addressed the 90 attacks against crisis pregnancy centers that have occurred since May 2022 throughout the States.

The violent pro-abortion protests do not resemble Edl’s prosecuted actions, which were praying and singing in front of the doors of an abortion clinic. These pro-abortion attacks and protests, Valentine wrote, “involved fire-bombings and arson, vandalism of pregnancy clinics and churches, spray painted threats on clinic and church walls, decapitated statues, smashed glass, disrupted masses, blocking of church entrances and even physical attacks on priests and parishioners.”

The inconsistency and double standard in prosecuting under the FACE Act are the central reasons for CatholicVote’s letter to Garland.

“Our letter demanded that the department do its job and defend pro-life Americans from violence,” Valentine wrote. “We have little reason to believe our letter will elicit tangible change. Our past experiences calling on the Justice Department and FBI to fairly enforce the law have been met with stonewalling, empty answers and no meaningful action.”

He concluded, “At the very least, however, we hope that our letter serves as a warning to Americans and to Republicans in Congress who have the opportunity to take a stand against the Biden administration’s weaponized agencies.”

LifeNews Note: McKenna Snow writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

The post Catholic Group Slams Biden for Targeting Pro-Life Americans, Ignoring Pro-Abortion Crimes appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The last few years can be tracked at two levels: the physical reality around us and the realm of the intellectual, mental, and psychological. 

The first level has presented a chaotic narrative of the previously unthinkable. A killer virus that turned out to be what many people said it was in February 2020: a bad flu with a known demographic risk best treated with known therapeutics. But that template and the ensuing campaign of fear and emergency rule gave rise to astonishing changes in our lives. 

Social functioning was wholly upended as schools, businesses, churches, and travel were ended by force. The entire population of the world was told to mask up, despite vast evidence that doing so achieved nothing in terms of stopping a respiratory virus. 

That was followed by a breathtaking propaganda campaign for a shot that failed to live up to its promise. The cure for the disease itself caused tremendous damage to health including death, a subject about which everyone cared intensely before the shot and then strangely forgot about after. 

Protests against the goings-on were met with media smears, shutdowns, and even the cancellation of bank accounts. However, and simultaneously, other forms of protest were encouraged, insofar as they were motivated by a more proper political agenda against structural injustices in the old system of law and order. That was a strange confluence of events, to say the least. 

In the midst of this, which was wild enough, came new forms of surveillance, censorship, corporate consolidation, an explosion of government spending and power, rampant and global inflation, and hot wars from long-running border conflicts in two crucial regions. 

The old Declarations of rules on the Internet put free speech as a first principle. Today, the hosting website of the most famous one, signed by Amnesty International and the ACLU, is gone, almost as if it never existed. In 2022, it came to be replaced by a White House Declaration on the Future of the Internet, that extols stakeholder control as the central principle. 

All the while, once-trusted sources of information – media, academia, think tanks – have steadfastly refused to report and respond in truthful ways, leading to a further loss of public trust not just in government and politics but also in everything else, including corporate tech and all the higher order sectors of the culture. 

Also part of this has been a political crisis in many nations, including the use of sketchy election strategies justified by epidemiologic emergency: the only safe way to vote (said the CDC) is absentee via the mails. Here we find one of many overlapping parallels to a scenario hardly ever imagined: infectious disease deployed as a cover for political manipulation. 

Crucially and ominously, all of these mind-blowing developments took place in roughly similar ways the world over, and with the same language and model. Everywhere people were told “We are all in this together,” and that social distancing, masking, and vaxxing was the correct way out. Media was also censored everywhere, while anti-lockdown protestors (or even those who simply wanted to worship together in peace) were treated not as dissidents to be tolerated but irresponsible spreaders of disease. 

Can we really pretend that all of this is normal, much less justified? The exhortation we receive daily is that we can and must. 

Really? At what point did you realize that you had to start thinking for yourself? 

We all have a different starting place and journey but each of us has the following in common. We’ve realized that official sources, the ones we’ve trusted in the past, are not going to make any sense of the above for us. We have to seek out alternatives and put the story together ourselves. And this we must do because the only other choice is to accept that all of the above consists of a random series of disconnected and pointless events, which is surely not true. 

That leads to the second layer of comprehension; the intellectual, mental, and psychological. Here is where we find the real drama and incalculable difficulties. 

At the dawn of lockdowns, what appeared to be a primitive public health error seemed to be taking place. It seemed like some scientists at the top, who gained an implausible amount of influence over government policy, had forgotten about natural immunity and were under the impression that it was good for health to stay home, be personally isolated, avoid exercise, and eat only takeout food. Surely such preposterous advice would be revealed soon as the nonsense it was. 

How in the world could they be so stupid? How did they gain so much influence, not just nationally but all over the world? Did the whole of humanity suddenly forget about all known science in every field from virology to economics to psychology? 

As time went on, more and more anomalies appeared that made that judgment seem naive. As it turns out, what was actually taking place had something to do with a move on the part of security and intelligence services. It was they who were given rule-making authority on March 13, 2020, and that’s why so much of what we needed to know was and is considered classified. 

There were early initial reports that the virus itself might have been leaked from a US-backed lab in Wuhan, which introduces the entire subject of the US bioweapons program. This is a very deep rabbit hole itself, thoroughly exposed in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s The Wuhan Cover-Up. There was a reason that topic was censored: it was all true. And as it turns out, the vaccine itself was able to bypass the normal approval process by slipping through under the cover of emergency. In effect, it came pre-approved by the military. 

As the evidence continues to roll in, more and more rabbit holes appear, thousands of them. Each has a name: Pharma, CCP, WHO, Big Tech, Big Media, CBDCs, WEF, Deep State, Great Reset, Censorship, FTX, CISA, EVs, Climate Change, DEI, BlackRock, and many more besides. Each of these subject areas has threads or thousands of them, each connecting to more and to each other. At this point, it is simply not possible for a single person to follow it all. 

To those of us who have been steeped in following the revelations day by day, and trying to keep up with putting them together into a coherent model of what happened to us, and what is still going on, the ominous reality is that the traditional understanding of rights, liberties, law, business, media, and science were dramatically overthrown in the course of just a few months and years. 

Nothing operates today as it did in 2019. It’s not just that functioning broke. It was broken and then replaced. And the surreptitious coup d’etat with no shots fired is still ongoing, even if that is not the headline. 

Of this fact, many of us today are certain. But how common is this knowledge? Is it a vague intuition held by many members of the public or is it known in more detail? There are no reliable polls. We are left to guess. If any of us in 2019 believed we had our finger on the pulse of the national mood or public opinion generally, we certainly do not anymore. 

Nor do we have access to the inner workings of government at the highest levels, much less the conversations going on among the winners of our age, the well-connected ruling elites who seemed to have gamed the entire system for their own benefit. 

It’s so much easier to regard the whole thing as a giant confusion or accident on grounds that only cranks and crazies believe in conspiracy theories. The trouble with that outlook is that it posits something even more implausible; that something this gigantic, far-reaching, and dramatic could have happened with no real intentionality or purpose or that it all fell together as a huge accident. 

Brownstone Institute has published more than 2,000 articles and 10 books exploring all over the above topics. Other venues and friends are out there helping us with this research and discovery, issue by issue. Even so, a great deal of responsibility falls on this one institution, the main work of which is providing support for dissident and displaced voices, which is implausible since it was only founded three years ago. We are deeply grateful for our supporters and would welcome you to join them.

As for the intellectuals we once revered for their curiosity and wisdom, most seem to have gone into hiding, either unable to adapt to the new realities or just unwilling to risk their careers by exploring hard topics. It’s understandable but still tragic. Most are happy to pretend like nothing happened or celebrate the change as nothing but progress. As for journalists, the New York Times publishes daily commentaries dismissing the Constitution as a dated anachronism that has to go and no one thinks much about it. 

There is a lot to sort out. So much has changed so quickly. No sooner than the dust seems to be settling from one upheaval, there is another and then another. Keeping up with it all causes a level of psychological brain scramble on a scale we’ve never previously experienced. 

It’s easier to wait for the historians to tell the next generation what happened. But maybe, just maybe, by stepping up and telling the story as we see it in real time, we can make a difference in stopping this madness and restoring some sane and normal freedom back to the world.

Reprinted with permission from Brownstone Institute.