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The Lighthouse®

The Lighthouse® is the weekly email newsletter of the Independent Institute.
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Volume 23, Issue 21: June 10, 2021

By Victor Davis Hanson (American Greatness)
During America’s first-ever national lockdown, thousands of unelected bureaucrats, as well as federal and state governments, assumed enormous powers not usually accorded them. Social distancing, sheltering in place, mask-wearing, trillions of dollars for “health care” and a new, grotesque definition of “infrastructure”—these things are the contemporary evil fruits of an old tactic of the left: “never let an ‘emergency’ go to waste.” And, as with power-grabs of old, the revolutionaries are getting personally very rich. READ MORE »



By K. Lloyd Billingsley (The Epoch Times)
Dr. Fauci is in the news again—actually, when, over the past 18 months, hasn’t he been? But this time there’s a difference. Thousands of his emails have come to light, thanks to the Washington Post’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, and, even with redactions, they are devastating and need to trigger a full investigation of the NIAID boss, the highest paid bureaucrat in the federal government. And possibly the most duplicitous. READ MORE »



By Richard K. Vedder (Forbes)
A permanent truth about higher education but one not often acknowledged? Universities are utterly dependent on the beneficence of the people. And here’s another: as public support of universities wanes, appropriations and private donations fall—followed quickly by enrollments. We don’t have to look far for today’s reason why. The Academy has become too complacent, too arrogant, too contemptuous of ideals and traditions that have successfully defined the American experience over the past two centuries. Consequently, the “public be damned” attitude of much of higher education must end—for its own good. READ MORE »



By David R. Legates (The Washington Times)
Bill Gates has been in the news recently—but for all the wrong reasons. His new book on climate change is far more significant to the body politic. The book reads (of course) like a dystopian novel, replete with all the standard climate-change nonsense the thinking world encountered, then summarily dismissed, in Earth in the Balance, by Al Gore. Maybe Mr. Gates will also receive a Nobel Prize for his book? If he does, that award will be even more meretricious than it already is. READ MORE »



By Christopher J. Coyne (The Independent Review)
In early 2020, COVID-19 was unleashed on the world from China. By March, a pandemic had been declared, and, in predictable, Pavlovian fashion, governments ginned up their regulatory machinery. Detainment of citizens, surveillance, lockdowns, the shuttering of schools and “nonessential” businesses, travel restrictions, and the banning of events followed—as did spikes in the national debt, mental illness, substance abuse, suicide, and domestic violence. To say we now have a host of issues troubling those concerned with a free society, and how to keep it free, would be an understatement. What now are our options? READ MORE »





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