Philosophy ⋆ Brownstone Institute

The High Cost of Shattering Sensible Boundaries

Thomas Harrington June 3, 2023 Law, Philosophy, Society 16 minute read

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Boundary-setting, and with it the transmission of trans-generational knowledge and the ability to calculate one’s true emotional proximity to others, are essential elements of a healthy culture. For reasons having a lot to do with the Baby Boomer generation’s tendency to often flippantly dispense with time-tested cultural knowledge in the name of “progress” and or “liberation,” many children have been deprived of an opportunity to gain these valuable skills.

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What and Why is ‘Woke?’

Paul Frijters,

Gigi Foster,

Michael Baker June 2, 2023 Philosophy, Society, Vaccines 9 minute read

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Woke’s lust for destruction has emerged from the heart of a decaying Western society. Woke is an attack on the most potent and healthy elements of that society, backed by the super-rich who seek more control. At once a sterile new religion of the useless to celebrate uselessness, a fanatical doomsday cult, and a thief of what is good, healthy and self-affirming, woke represents in four letters what ails the West, and the antithesis of what is needed to heal the West.

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An Ideology and Agenda of Estrangement

Christopher S. Grenda June 2, 2023 Philosophy 12 minute read

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Marxism for children involves mental unwellness. It fractures the deepest sense of love, loyalty, and trust children experience – with parents. The experience of this fracture is a process of mental unhealth. That’s the logic of Marxist praxis these days.

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A Myth-Making Toolkit from the Volcano’s Shadow

Haley Kynefin June 2, 2023 History, Philosophy 21 minute read

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Collective consciousness, especially when it spans multiple centuries, carries immense power; but many of us have lost our communal ties and our sense of history. We may have forgotten who our ancestors were and where they came from; we may know little about what they ate, what they believed in, and the rituals they practiced.

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Misinformation Is a Word We Use to Shut You Up

Daniel Klein May 31, 2023 Media, Philosophy 32 minute read

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The “anti-misinformation” projects are obvious miscarriages of civility, decency, and the rule of law. We must rediscover the norms of openness, tolerance, and free speech that dignify humankind. Science depends on confidence, and confidence depends on those liberal norms. Those norms are the parents of good science, healthy sense-making, and civil tranquility.

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Nowhere Man

Thomas Buckley May 31, 2023 Philosophy 7 minute read

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One moment, you’re waving to a longtime neighbor. The next, the neighbor is calling the police because you are violating the lockdown. One moment, you have a decent little community business. The next, the authorities have shuttered your doors and you watch helplessly as the “big box” near the freeway gobbles up your customers and, in the end, your livelihood.

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The Biology of the Administrative State

Robert Malone May 25, 2023 Philosophy, Policy 12 minute read

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Using strategies found in nature to find analogies for complex political and cultural organizational strategies has merit. It opens up new ways of thinking about human society and social structures. So, can we use biology to predict how these organizations will react on the world stage in the future?

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It’s Not Really About the Data

Gabrielle Bauer May 22, 2023 Philosophy, Society 6 minute read

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To prevent a repeat of the Covid debacle, we need to draw on principles that transcend the contours of a particular virus, like the above-mentioned freedom of assembly, bodily autonomy, and the right to provide for one’s family. As an online acquaintance—a man of the cloth—recently put it, “Would you want to live with the knowledge that you are alive today because thousands of families have lost their means of survival?” Well, no, I would not.

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The Illusion of Republicanism

Michael Esfeld May 22, 2023 History, Philosophy, Policy 17 minute read

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The open society is also dependent on a positive narrative of freedom and self-determination. As an open society, however, it must be open in terms of how – and thus by which values – this narrative is justified. That is to say, it has to accommodate a pluralism of narratives which agree in the conclusion of implementing in society the moral obligation for every person to respect the right to self-determination of every other person.

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A Warning to Those Who Seek Power

Alan Lash May 22, 2023 Philosophy, Society 7 minute read

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Over the past three years, Power has hurt or ruined the lives of millions. It seems to have taken over many of our institutions: government, health, education, banking, and the media, all to negative effect. And the whole time all the people with authority in those institutions thought they were the ones in charge.

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Life Is Scary and the State Makes It Worse

Mark Oshinskie May 16, 2023 Government, Philosophy, Society 10 minute read

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People should have eaten well and exercised outside and understood that immune systems are highly effective. They should also have seen how many life experiences they were giving up—or making others give up—by foolishly supporting quackish “mitigation” measures. Hiding in your home or wearing a mask were never going to crush a virus.

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The Treason of the Experts: Foreword

Jeffrey A. Tucker May 11, 2023 Philosophy 3 minute read

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Prepare yourself for a real adventure, one that seems often more like fiction than reality. It is inconceivable that a book like this could have appeared only a few years ago. No one would have believed it if it had. But these are extraordinary times and they require extraordinary and brave minds to operate as tour guides, as with Dante and Virgil. The treason of experts has indeed landed us in very dark places but we can see our way out with the truths elucidated herein.

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