Society

Society articles feature analysis about social policy, ethics, entertainment, and philosophy.

All society articles at Brownstone Institute are translated automatically into multiple languages.

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Art's Beauty and Outrage

Art’s Beauty and Outrage

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All the complexities, contradictions, and riddles of human nature were present and still unresolved under the iconic contrapposto shadow of a statue symbolizing liberation and strength. There we were, admiring our age’s beauty and outrage, purposefully displayed by a wealthy former clown who ran a circus and built a city. Life really is the “Greatest Show on Earth.”

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Racism, Anti-Semitism, Genocide, and Eugenics in the COVID Era

Racism, Anti-Semitism, Genocide, and Eugenics in the COVID Era

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Over the past couple of years, the presentations I have seen have become, in my opinion, too caught up in left-wing/right-wing rhetoric, with a large majority of the slings and arrows directed at the right, such that the key historical lessons, in my opinion, have been missed. Given my belief that this country is divided in ways that have not been seen since the Civil War, this type of public discourse is only making matters worse.

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Hope in the Heart of Winter

Hope in the Heart of Winter

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Hiraeth may, indeed, embody a romantic, and at times overly mythical, sense of melancholy. But it is also a longing for some sort of vision conjured from the memory or from the imagination. In short, it is a longing for something for some sort of treasured ideal—and that ideal just might help us begin to imagine, and then to construct, the kind of world we do want to inhabit.

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A Nation of Non-Compliers

A Nation of Non-Compliers

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We long ago gave up the hope that all of this is random and coincidental, any more than it so happened that nearly every government in the world decided to plaster social distancing signs everywhere at the same time. Something is going on, something malevolent. The battle of the future really is between them and us but who or what “them” is remains opaque and too many of “us” are still confused about what the alternative is to what is happening all around us. 

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The Dark Side of the Force Isn't Actually Paved in Black

The Dark Side of the Force Isn’t Actually Paved in Black

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The analogy that Star Wars fans do not get is that the Evil Empire could be equated to the real rulers of the earth today. “The Resistance” might equate to the 10 percent of world citizens who are fighting back in the face of overwhelming odds. Why don’t more people understand who the Evil Empire really is…and who are really the Good Guys fighting back?

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The Real Purge in Academia

The Real Purge in Academia

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We have certainly lived through the decline and fall of the older idea of the university. Now we may yet live to see the end of the university itself and its replacement by something else entirely. Reforms can work but the reform will not likely come from within the institutions. They must be imposed by alumni and perhaps legislatures. Or perhaps the rule of “Go woke, go broke” will eventually force a change. Regardless, the idea of learning itself will surely return. We are in the transition, and David Barnhizer is our Virgil to give us an outstanding tour of the wreckage left behind and perhaps even a path out of the darkness. 

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The Toilet Paper Canard

The Toilet Paper Canard

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Lately I’ve been hearing that we had to lock down because the nation was in a panic as evidenced by the famous toilet paper shortage of the Spring of 2020. It’s not clear how this is supposed to work. How does a toilet paper shortage indicate the presence of a killer disease that can be mitigated by shutting everything down?

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We Often Imitate What We Say We Oppose 

We Often Imitate What We Say We Oppose 

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“How to struggle for justice without becoming what we claim to despise in our opponents?” That is the question. How well or poorly we as activists and idea-makers respond to this challenge in the short term will, I believe, go a long way toward predicting our long-term chances of building the more cohesive and human-centered culture we all desire for ourselves and our children.

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Kristina Borjesson: Rest in Peace to a Brave Investigator

Kristina Borjesson: Rest in Peace to a Brave Investigator

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In 2002 I did not know the extent of media malfeasance. Kristina, however, documented it in the most careful, credible and unbelievable way—collecting many chapters by top journalists of the stories they tried to report and how they lost their careers when they attempted to tell the truth. She lost her career at CBS, trying to tell the truth about the mid-air explosion of a 747 (TWA 800) over Long island sound, which was probably the result of a US Navy exercise gone awry.

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The Hero's Voice is Within Your Reach

The Hero’s Voice is Within Your Reach

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Having incurred some rather brutal personal losses, including my career, I am unable to pretend that speaking out is easy. This is why people self-censor. It is definitely safer to stay silent in the short-term. But what are the long-term consequences of our silence? Could, for example, the horrors of Nazi Germany and the persecution of the Jews be repeated if people are silent en-mass about anti-Semitism? Of course, you know the chilling answer to that question.

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Hope Matters

Hope Matters in Our War

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Just as we find ourselves in ‘dark years’ at present, we cannot afford to believe for a moment that the technocratic cabal has succeeded in determining, once and for all, what our future will be – that of slaves in their AI-controlled, neo-fascist, feudal dystopia. We are free human beings, and by doing the ‘work of hope’ by seizing on opportunities that are latent in the world, to challenge them with courage, we shall prevail.

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