Society

Society articles offer in-depth analysis and opinion on social policy, ethics, entertainment, philosophy, and broader cultural dynamics — exploring their impacts on individual liberty, community, family, faith, human dignity, open dialogue, and everyday social life.

We critically examine pressing issues like the erosion of intellectual courage and dissidence, betrayal by institutions (including churches), declining quality in entertainment and movies, harms from lockdown policies exceeding pandemic effects, rising totalitarianism as an assault on the soul, dangers of universal basic income as modern control, autism societal understanding, fear-based societal nightmares, and pathways to reclaim human nature through community support, personal freedoms, and nobler alternatives to past ideologies. Brownstone provides alternative perspectives on restoring truth, dignity, and healthy society amid institutional failures and technocratic threats.

All society articles from Brownstone Institute are translated into multiple languages to reach a global audience, encourage international discussion, and inspire readers worldwide to defend cultural values, ethical principles, and human connections.

Brownstone Institute - Schumpeter on How Higher Education Wrecks Freedom

Schumpeter on How Higher Education Wrecks Freedom

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The push to force everyone into higher education has proven to be a massive diversion of financial and human energy, and, just like Schumpeter predicted, it did the cause of freedom no favors. It has only ended up breeding debt, resentment, and an imbalance of human resources such that the people with real power are the same people least likely to possess the necessary skills to make life better. Indeed they are making it worse. 

Schumpeter on How Higher Education Wrecks Freedom Continue Reading

Brownstone Institute - The Great Reset Didn’t Work: The Case of EVs 

The Great Reset Didn’t Work: The Case of EVs 

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It turns out that the entire bit, including the fake prosperity of the lockdown economy, made possible by money printing and grotesque levels of government spending, was unsustainable. Even sophisticated car companies bought into the nonsense. Now they are paying a very heavy price. The new market depended on a panic of buying that turned out to be temporary. 

The Great Reset Didn’t Work: The Case of EVs  Continue Reading

Brownstone Institute - Our Last Innocent Moment

Foxes and Hedgehogs

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The philosopher Isaiah Berlin starts his 1953 essay, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” with this perplexing proverb attributed to the Greek poet Archilochus. Berlin goes on to explain that there are two types of thinkers: hedgehogs, who see the world through the lens of a “single central vision,” and foxes, who pursue many different ideas, seizing upon a variety of experiences and explanations simultaneously. 

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Brownstone Institute - Intellectuals for Sale

Intellectuals for Sale

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We’ve lived through this and seen too much to have the same level of trust we once had. What can we do? We can rebuild the ideal as it existed in the old world. The kind of genius we know was on display in a place like Salamanca, or in interwar Vienna, or even in the coffee houses of London in the 18th century, can return, even if on a small level. They have to, simply because the shape of the world around us depends fundamentally on the ideas we hold about ourselves and the world around us. Those should not be for sale to the highest bidder.

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Brownstone Institute - The Hostile Takeover of the Air Force Academy

The Hostile Takeover of the Air Force Academy

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The transformation of the Air Force Academy (AFA) from a military institution to a progressive, liberal arts school has been incremental, relentless, and calculated. The goal to politicize the training and perspectives of cadets, who constitute about 20% of annual Air Force officer commissions, guarantees a source of influential officers who will apply and promote these ideas throughout their military and civilian careers. 

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Brownstone Institute - Destructive Solutions to Imaginary Problems

Destructive Solutions to Imaginary Problems

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At its recent Davos annual meeting, the WEF focused much of its attention on how to respond to the fictional “Disease X.” This alarmist concern about an imaginary threat follows hard on the heels of the still-unfolding worldwide devastation wrought by extreme “solutions” to a grossly exaggerated disease threat.

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Brownstone Institute - The Complexity Science of Medicine Requires Freedom

The Complexity Science of Medicine Requires Freedom

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As I write this, medicine is still “In the Wilderness,” but I can see a brightening horizon. We still need to formulate a counter to the nihilism of Postmodernism and Critical Theory. We still need to re-establish free speech and intellectual freedom in healthcare delivery and education. We still need to raise truth above ideology. But I now think that is a possibility.

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Brownstone Institute - An Open Letter to the Davos crowd 

An Open Letter to the Davos Crowd 

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If the past four years have taught us anything, it is that you “elites” are awful people. Your ideas are awful. Your vision for the future is awful. The society you wish to create, with yourselves in charge, would be unspeakably awful. We reject it, and we reject you. So go away and leave us alone—or else suffer the consequences. 

An Open Letter to the Davos Crowd  Continue Reading

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