Philosophy

Philosophy articles feature reflection and analysis about public life, values, ethics, and morals.

All philosophy articles at Brownstone Institute are translated into multiple languages.

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The Four Sins of 'Thawteffery'

The Four Sins of ‘Thawteffery’

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Thawteffery is the wicked management of thought, election-to-election, by wicked people for wicked purposes. I speak of the wicked as forming “the junta,” even though the conspiracy may be rather spontaneous. We are talking about some amalgam of a wicked faction, the Deep State, the administrative state, the swamp, the blob, and so on. It has become clear that the CIA and other intel agencies, and the Left Pole, are central in the junta.

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Renaissance Man Reborn

Renaissance Man Reborn

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Specialization is often a deception. Years of training, education, and study easily ensnare the mind into an arrogance built on the precipice of expertise. However, without continued study of other areas in which one is merely an apprentice or a novice, the mind’s sleuthing abilities become dulled. Worse, because of the status an expert tends to hold, others will project that expertise onto areas the expert has no knowledge — even when the expert will directly contradict that idea.

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A Devil's New American Lexicon

A Devil’s New American Lexicon

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In 1941, C.S. Lewis delivered The Screwtape Letters, in which Screwtape, a devil, mentored his nephew Wormwood on how to manage his patient, so as to serve their common spiritual master. Screwtape advised: “Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church.” “Do remember you are there to fuddle him.” Wormwood failed in the end and was eaten.

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The Bison Advantage

The Bison Advantage

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How will you respond next time you face a moral challenge? Will you walk headfirst into the storm like the bison or turn and drift with it? Have you used the time over the last two years to figure out what matters most to you? What costs have you prepared yourself to be able to bear? Our future depends on what you do, what each of us does, with the little moments we have right now.

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The WHO's Road to Totalitarianism

The WHO’s Road to Totalitarianism

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In a nutshell, it means that this unelected organisation would have the authority to proclaim lockdowns and ‘medical (or health) emergencies,’ as well as mandatory ‘vaccinations’ at the whim of the WHO’s Director-General, reducing the freedom to traverse space freely to ironclad spatial confinement in one fell swoop. This is what ‘total terror’ would mean. It is my fervent hope that something can still be done to avert this imminent nightmare.

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Hate the Bad, Love the Good

Hate the Bad, Love the Good

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The enemies of humanity want us to prevent us from hating the bad and loving the good by making us afraid of being accused of hatred. In a world in crisis because our leaders are bad, our food is bad, our medicine and public health are bad, our schools are bad, our broken families are bad, our entertainment and music is bad, our infrastructure is bad, inflation is bad, and even the adjudication of dangerous and violent criminals in our major cities is bad, silence and self-censorship become a most dangerous refusal to love the good, to love neighbor, and ultimately to love God.

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We Must Resist the Grey Men

We Must Resist the Grey Men

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For the sake of freedom, for the sake of vibrant and meaningful living, and for the sake of that very chaos and unpredictability that, in and of itself, provides the soil and the nutrients for beautiful variety to grow — we need to accept that there will always be holes and inefficiencies in our attempts to optimize our lives. And if someone pushes us to micromanage that precious negative space, that’s usually a sign that they are seeing us as resources, and that they do not, in fact, have our best interests at heart. 

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Consequences of the Wrong Worldview

Consequences of the Wrong Worldview

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The mechanistic view of the world and its quest for ultimate solutions have failed, for they are ultimately hostile to man as a thinking, moral being. In its place, we need a new vision of humanity, of society. What characterises that vision? I will not attempt to answer that question here and now. But I believe the experience and message of people like Mohamedou Ould Slahi may guide us. Reflecting on this experience and message is particularly fitting now when we celebrate Easter.

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Only Our Attention is Eternal

Only Our Attention is Eternal

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It is the elites’ understanding of the prodigious power of attention that has led them to engage in their current campaigns of massive distraction, symbolized by the constant bombardments of noise we suffer in our public spaces and the building of massive, history-less no-places like the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City. 

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