A New Common Sense

Power, Family and the Foundations We Forget

We were told freedom meant choice.

Choice of labor. Choice of desire. Choice of identity.

And in the abundance of choice, we mistook consumption for liberty and appetite for progress.

We dismantled kings, yet built corporations larger than crowns.

We rejected inherited rule, yet accepted inherited inequality—so long as it arrived wearing the mask of markets.

We taught men to compete everywhere except where they are most needed, and taught women to be visible everywhere except where power is truly exercised.

Families weakened. Communities dissolved.

And in their place rose institutions too distant to love us, too powerful to answer us, and too profitable to restrain themselves.

This is not the story of villains. It is the story of incentives.

And until we understand what we have rewarded, we will never understand what we have lost.