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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What the Obamas Fear: The Rest of Us

What the Obamas Fear: The Rest of Us

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Much has been made of the Netflix peri-apocalyptic yawner, Leave the World Behind, directed by Sam Esmail and produced by Michelle and Barack Obama. Most reviews focus on the supposedly contentious racial attitudes expressed in the film, the bizarre collapsing-world images, and the incomprehensible ending. But all of the focus on race, crashing planes, and errant flamingos misses the crux of Leave the World Behind: a fascinating peek into the psyches of its producers and their socio-political milieu.

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The End of the World at Fort Bragg

The End of the World at Fort Bragg

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Pharmaceutical companies occupy airwaves. Fat people dance in a town square in an ad for pills to lower blood sugar. Another ad proclaims that a cartoon guy will deliver a colon test to your doorstep in a box. Drug ads for eczema, Crohn’s disease, and all kinds of ailments fill the screen. Rich people in glittering rooms with tinsel and gold and greenery slowly eat Lindor chocolates. Pfizer advertises vaccines for pregnant women. On another network, a show called The Great Christmas Light Fight appears. 

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This Silence Is Not Golden

This Silence Is Not Golden

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The silence is not golden. It’s dangerous. It is even treacherous. The Covid response ruined everything the world identified with America: freedom, rights, decentralism, commerce, individual liberty, and bravery in the face of trial. Governments together with all the commanding heights betrayed all those values. We need to know why. We need to know how. We need to know who. The silence could mean there is more to come. Which is to say that silence equals death. 

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Lives Unleavened by the Gift of Wonder

Lives Unleavened by the Gift of Wonder

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The rational and calculating human mind’s ability to deliver something approaching personal contentment to you has been massively oversold during your lifetime. While these modes of cognition can accomplish many wonderful things, they also have a known ability, when the human mind is left exclusively in their care, to create suffocating closed circuits of thought that can lead to a sense of listlessness and despair. 

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We Must Dial Up Our Jabs Against the Tyrants

We Must Dial Up Our Jabs Against the Tyrants

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The petitioner or the letter writer might be well advised to plan a two-pronged protest when next submitting a statement on a proposed bill or exhorting their MP to vote against a given bill. Just for practice. For we’re all aware, and thoroughly sick of, the kind of stock responses from MPs who dismiss valid concerns with obfuscation, conflating issues for maximum ambiguity, and indulging in a patronising tone to boot. If we know it’s coming, after our initial left jab, what is our feint and right cross?

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What Will Become of Cities?

What Will Become of Cities?

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Once you step back from it, nothing really makes sense. One might suppose that when a whole society – and really globe – embarked on such a crazy experiment and utterly failed in every way, that there would be a major effort to come to terms with it. The opposite is happening. Even with America’s treasured cities in such grave danger, so much of it provoked by terrible policies over four years, we are still supposed to either not notice or chalk it all up to some inexorable forces of history of which no one has any control.

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ESG, DEI, and the Rise of Fake Reporting

ESG, DEI, and the Rise of Fake Reporting

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We know that the modern West has developed a jaw-dropping degree of totalitarianism, wherein the bureaucracies of the state and the corporate sector coordinate together to cripple humans outside their power networks and media channels. But what are the mechanics of this coordination? To understand one of the games they play, consider the rise of measures and standards associated with DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance).

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Human Rights Discarded at the Gates of Hell

Human Rights Discarded at the Gates of Hell

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Human rights claims are claims by citizens on governments. The advocacy, juridical, and enforcement revolutions in human rights led to a rapid expansion of governmental activism on legislation backed by monitoring and compliance machinery. Yet human rights are also abused most systematically, pervasively and widely by governments. 

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Did Cochrane's Masks Study Get it Wrong?

Did Cochrane’s Masks Study Get it Wrong?

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“Forcing people to wear masks has been a failure of public health. The reason we are still having the mask debate is because authorities relied on trash studies to justify their use, and wanted to appear as if they were doing something. In a crisis, it is always more difficult to do nothing,” Gøtzsche said.

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