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.

Which Pandemic Response Achieves the Greater Good?

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How do individuals know what’s best for them? While the scientific knowledge, theoretical or technical expertise of one person, or one profession, may help shed light on what’s best for individuals, it can never be enough. Only individuals themselves have the unique knowledge that all others do not have, about their individual-specific ever-changing circumstances, constraints, needs and preferences. 

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Sick and All Alone

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It shouldn’t be needed, but it is. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has introduced a patient protection bill, so that ‘if you’re in a hospital or long-term care facility, you have a right to have your loved ones there present with you.’  Every other state and country will hopefully follow. Some places have even prevented the dying from dying in the company and warmth of loved ones.

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Where Were the Great Covid Speeches?

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Lacking the big-picture thinking and inner convictions to make tough calls, our ostensible leaders let themselves be pushed around by scientists whose ideas they did not understand. Nor did they have the guts to balance them with other measures of societal health. Mix in the fear of angering the Twitter mob and you get a recipe for timid, uninspired orations.

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The Freedumb Fallacy

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Freedom matters—even in a pandemic. Without freedom, elderly people may spend their remaining time on earth isolated from their loved ones, and we know that social isolation kills. Without freedom, people may lose not only their livelihoods but the momentum and opportunity to build careers as flight attendants, orchestra musicians, chefs, or scientists working on viruses. Without freedom, children may lose important and irretrievable experiences and milestones. Without freedom, life becomes a shadow of itself. 

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Brownstone Institute at Six Months

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Freedom is not an option, despite what they say. It is not something granted to us by the powerful at their discretion. It is a universal right, one protected only by a culture that loves it, institutions that guard it, and people who fight for it. We can get there. We are in a position to help prove this, to rebuild, and work for a world in which nothing like this ever happens again. 

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The Power of Protest 

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Freedom can win in the long run. And the world will be rebuilt, on a much more solid foundation than was present two years ago. We tried an experiment in tyranny. It flopped. Despite the enormous cost of what took place, we will all find ourselves in a good position to see a rebirth of liberty, human rights, and prosperity on the other side. 

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Why Academia Is Drawn to Fascism

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Central to the lure of fascism is the lie that power will not corrupt us. As illustrated poignantly in The Hobbit, the lure of fascism – even to the morally upright person – is the delusion that he can both hold absolute power and continue to be a morally good person. By succumbing to the lure of power, an otherwise good person succumbs to the lie that power corrupts everyone else, but not himself, because he is Better.

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Trudeau Is Playing with Fire

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Will Justin Trudeau back down and negotiate? Capitulate? Or will Trudeau’s classless verbal attacks morph into physical retaliation against the mostly working class truckers, their supporters on the ground in Ottawa and the millions of Canadians who also disagree with him and his sweeping mandates and are demanding their freedom?

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