I live an outrageously online life. I could say it is a requirement of my job, and it is; but the truth is that I have done so for years.

So when I started noticing pieces showing up from a think tank I had never heard of, I was genuinely surprised. I thought I was familiar with all the prominent ones out there, and wondered how I could not have known about it. It turns out that it is new, having been formed in 2021, at the height of the pandemic. It is called the Brownstone Institute, and was founded by Jeffrey Tucker. a brilliant author and social critic.

I don’t know Jeffrey, so this is not an advertisement for a friend’s project. I am just convinced that the Brownstone Institute is the best thing to come in the public policy world in a very long time.

Based in Texas–of course it is far away from the swamps of D.C.–it boasts a lineup of some of the smartest thinkers in public policy.

It’s a remarkable group of thinkers, and they are a remarkably prolific bunch.

Brownstone describes itself:

The Brownstone Institute is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization founded May 2021. Its vision is of a society that places the highest value on the voluntary interaction of individuals and groups while minimizing the use of violence and force including that which is exercised by public or private authorities. This vision is that of the Enlightenment which elevated learning, science, progress, and universal rights to the forefront of public life. It is constantly threatened by ideologies and systems that would take the world back to before the triumph of the ideal of freedom.

The motive force of Brownstone Institute was the global crisis created by policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. That trauma revealed a fundamental misunderstanding alive in all countries around the world today, a willingness on the part of the public and officials to relinquish freedom and fundamental human rights in the name of managing a public health crisis, which was not managed well in most countries. The consequences were devastating and will live in infamy.

The proximate cause of Brownstone’s formation may have been the failed response to the pandemic, but the range of topics it addresses extends far beyond the fallout from the government failures over the past few years.

Because at base those failures stem from a flawed and failing understanding of the relationship between government and the free citizen. Modern American governance–in fact every aspect of modern American elite opinion–has strayed far from the liberal vision upon which our country was founded, and hence from the proper understanding of how a society creates the conditions for people to live a good life.

The Founders understood that a free society is necessary for the full flourishing of human beings, and that a free republic must be built upon the premise that citizens have agency over their own lives. Governments exist to secure liberty, not to constrain it for the citizens’ own good or for the good of some elite.

It’s not just about this one crisis but past and future ones as well. This lesson concerns the desperate need for a new outlook that rejects the power of the legally privileged few to rule over the many under any pretext.

The name Brownstone originates from the malleable, but long-lasting building stone (also called “Freestone”) used so commonly in 19th-century American cities, preferred for its beauty, practicality, and strength. The Brownstone Institute regards the great task of our times as rebuilding the foundation of liberalism as classically understood, including core values of human rights and freedom as non-negotiables for an enlightened society.

This mission is the opposite of the Great Reset, and Brownstone calls their goal “The Great Restoration.”

I am not certain that the resonance with the Renaissance is intentional, but it is apt. The Renaissance was driven by the goal of restoring the greatness of classical societies at their height. With the widespread rediscovery of the classical texts and the society-wide embrace of the liberal arts, the process of reforming society culminated (in my view) with the development of liberalism and eventually the founding of the United States.

It was a long road, but it was worth the effort. Rebuilding the glory of Rome and overcoming Rome’s failures to secure liberty led to the creation of the freest civilization ever known and the most glorious.

That project is far from complete, yet our political and cultural elite have turned their back on it, having declared it a failure. The elite have decided that a free people are not worthy to govern themselves, so agency and freedom must be sacrificed for the good of the whole. As the elite envision the good.

This doesn’t just mean the obvious: eating bugs, living in concrete hovels in “15-minute cities,” but also giving up freedom of thought and free will. People are too stupid and too selfish to govern themselves, so they must be given the illusion of freedom and be governed by an administrative state overseen by a political, corporate, and cultural elite who alone are fit to govern. Credentialed at the best schools, transnational, and ultimately wise.

They imagine themselves Platonic philosophers fit to rule over all; they are in fact mental midgets. Worse, even if they were ultimately wise, their wise leadership would be inimicable to the flourishing of each individual. People can only be fulfilled as a human beings by governing themselves, individually and collectively.

The good life is necessarily self-directed, even if people make errors.

Brownstone Institute looks to influence a post-lockdown world by generating new ideas in public health, philosophy, scientific discourse, economics, and social theory. It hopes to enlighten and mobilize public life to defend and promote the liberty that is critical for an enlightened society from which everyone benefits. The purpose is to point the way toward a better understanding of essential freedoms – including intellectual freedom and free speech – and the proper means to preserve essential rights even in times of crisis.

The research and content of the institute are sophisticated but accessible. Operationally, Brownstone’s mode is no fluff in the budget, no bureaucrats, no cronies, only a highly competent small team working to change the world. It will have media reach and call on scientists, intellectuals, and others who are dedicated to this task.

Their mission is, in a way, to bring about a rebirth (or restoration, as they put it) of the liberals arts as understood by the ancients and modern liberals. The liberal arts, properly understood, are the skills and knowledge necessary to be a free person.

I am not certain that the Institute would describe it that way, but as a student of political philosophy that is how it appears to me.

Their goal is to shore up the foundations of a free society. That’s a task of monumental proportions.

And, I would argue, the most important of our generation and of the next.