In this episode of The Brownstone Show, Jeffrey Tucker delivers a sweeping, big-picture analysis of our era: we’re living through the great unraveling of Progressivism, the dominant 20th-century ideology that placed blind faith in credentialed experts, centralized planning, top-down control, and the idea that elites armed with science, technology, and government power could perfect society. Tucker traces Progressivism’s roots from the early 1900s (public schooling, vaccine regulation, antitrust, the Federal Reserve, income tax, direct election of senators, Prohibition, New Deal expansions) through to its modern apotheosis. He argues its core promises, that centralized expertise would bring endless progress and solve humanity’s problems, has collapsed in our time through three massive, overlapping failures: * Climate change hysteria — the arrogant attempt to control the weather and planetary systems, now quietly admitted as overwrought even by figures like Bill Gates. * The COVID response — the unprecedented global effort to manage the microbial world via lockdowns, mandates, and experimental products that failed catastrophically, inflicting immense harm: lost education, crime waves, substance abuse, broken supply chains, inflation, censorship, and eroded public health. * Gender ideology — the denial of biological sex through pharmacology and surgery, leading to absurd cultural and legal outcomes that defy common sense. These disasters, combined with explosive transparency, massive Medicare fraud data dumps crowdsourced to the public with bounties, searchable Epstein files exposing elite corruption, DOGE efforts revealing bureaucratic chaos, have shattered trust in institutions, experts, and government. Public faith in government has plummeted from ~80% in the mid-20th century to ~17% today. Tucker sees this as the defining sign of our times: the implosion of a century-plus paradigm of top-down elitism, much like the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union. We’re shifting toward decentralization, new media (X, Substack), public scrutiny, and a restoration of freedom, federalism, and bottom-up solutions. Whether you agree or not, this monologue is a must-watch for anyone grappling with why trust in elites has evaporated and what comes next in this dramatic transition. Subscribe to Brownstone Institute for more deep dives into liberty, public health, economics, and the fight against centralized control. Brownstone.org | Follow Jeffrey Tucker on X: @jeffreyatucker Get full access to Brownstone Insights at substack.brownstone.org/subscribe
