About Brownstone Institute

Brownstone Institute is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization founded May 2021. Its vision is of a society that places the highest value on the voluntary interaction of individuals and groups while minimizing the use of violence and force including that which is exercised by public or private authorities. This vision is that of the Enlightenment which elevated learning, science, progress, and universal rights to the forefront of public life. It is constantly threatened by ideologies and systems that would take the world back to before the triumph of the ideal of freedom.

The motive force of Brownstone Institute was the global crisis created by policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. That trauma revealed a fundamental misunderstanding alive in all countries around the world today, a willingness on the part of the public and officials to relinquish freedom and fundamental human rights in the name of managing a public health crisis, which was not managed well in most countries. The consequences were devastating and will live in infamy.

The policy response was a failed experiment in full social and economic control in most nations. And yet the lockdowns are also widely considered a template of what is possible.

It’s Not About This One Crisis

It’s not just about this one crisis but past and future ones as well. This lesson concerns the desperate need for a new outlook that rejects the power of the legally privileged few to rule over the many under any pretext.

The name Brownstone originates from the malleable, but long-lasting building stone (also called “Freestone”) used so commonly in 19th-century American cities, preferred for its beauty, practicality, and strength. Brownstone Institute regards the great task of our times as rebuilding the foundation of liberalism as classically understood, including core values of human rights and freedom as non-negotiables for an enlightened society.