A Brave New World Isn't So Brave

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in 't.

— William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I

A Brave New World is a dystopian novel written by British author Aldous Huxley in 1931. It tells of a futuristic World State in the year 632 AF (After Ford) or 2540 AD where citizens are environmentally engineered to fit into a pre-determined social hierarchy based on their level of intelligence. Embryos are grown in artificial wombs and treated with chemicals to prepare them for their preordained roles in life. For instance, the Alpha class is bred to be leaders, whereas the Epsilon class is manipulated to become menial laborers.

Through a combination of sleep-learning, childhood indoctrination programs, and the use of soma – a soothing, happiness-producing drug – the ruling class manages to control the populace and maintain order. Ironically (and rather tellingly), the citizenry appears to be satisfied with the system that is in place, the goal of which is to produce a pain-free society.

Fast-forward 95 years from the time Huxley picked up his pen – and backtrack 514 years from the date of his supposedly utopian World State – and you find yourself plunked down in the middle of an America which stands at a critical crossroads. On one side is the rugged individualism espoused by our Founding Fathers that has served us so well for the past 250 years, transforming the United States into the world’s greatest economic and military superpower. On the other side is a New Age strain of socialism that is being promulgated from without and within that threatens to destroy the American way of life by replacing capitalism and removing virtually everything that makes us special and unique as a nation.

If these modern-day Marxists have their way, you won’t be able to tell the difference between Buffalo and Bolivia, Baltimore and Botswana.

But don’t fret. All is not lost… yet.

According to a September 2025 Gallup poll, Americans remain more positive about capitalism than socialism, but the 54% that views capitalism favorably is down from 60% in 2021. Even more alarming is a May 2025 Cato Institute and YouGov survey showing that 62% of Americans aged 18–29 say they hold a “favorable view” of socialism, and 34% feel the same way about communism.

If you are a free market capitalist like me, those numbers are extremely troubling.

The Cato Institute poll did not define “socialism” and so, it is unclear whether the respondents view it in the historical way, where the state owns the means of production, or if they see socialism as a modern-day “mixed economy” with cradle-to-grave welfare, price controls, and “fairness” enforced by the state.

As Sen. Rand Paul (R KY) wrote in The Case Against Socialism (2019), young Americans who identify as socialists don’t even agree on what the term means. Some want government ownership of industries and central planning, while others want heavy regulation, wealth redistribution, and a vast welfare state. However, what unites them is a disdain for capitalism and a preference for collectivism over individualism.

That is so anti-American… or at least it used to be.

As Ayn Rand warned in 1944, “Fascism, Nazism, Communism, and Socialism are only superficial variations of the same monstrous theme – collectivism.” In her 1965 essay titled, The New Fascism: Rule By Consensus, Rand added that socialism and fascism “both negate individual rights and subordinate the individual to the collective, both deliver the livelihood and the lives of the citizens into the power of an omnipotent government—and the differences between them are only a matter of time, degree, and superficial detail ….”

“A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls” employed together in a vain attempt to fix the alleged flaws in capitalism, Rand said. But the controls create economic distortions, which then lead to more controls – such as minimum wage laws and price controls on rent and health care – and this confluence may “collapse into dictatorship” if the temporary controls are not ended.

Faced with the failure of its initial intervention, a government “is not prepared to undo its interference with the market and to return to a free economy,” but instead adds “more regulations and restrictions,” wrote Ludwig von Mises, a 20th century Austrian and American political economist and philosopher. “Proceeding step by step on this way it finally reaches a point in which all economic freedom of individuals has disappeared.”

Enter Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich… or Mao Zedong and the CCP… or Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and the USSR. Combined, these totalitarian dictatorships were responsible for more than 100 million noncombatant deaths during the 1900’s.

And yet, Americans today – especially those under the age of 30 – are ready and willing to embrace the failed ideologies these monsters espoused and then inflicted on their unsuspecting and defenseless masses.

My friends, we must teach the next generation (and the one after that) the grand and glorious story of America’s founding and guiding principles while simultaneously educating them about the inevitable horrors of collectivism. They must be warned and they must be warned now, lest they be lulled to sleep by an overdose of soma and wake up in a Not So Brave New World where they have been stripped of their individual rights and responsibilities, the pride that comes from personal ownership, and the freedom to forge their own destinies.

As for me, I don’t want a pain-free life, because growth causes pain and pain results in growth. I, for one, want to live life to its fullest, for God’s glory, while experiencing all the highs and lows along the way that build one’s character and deepen one’s faith.

In other words, you can keep your stinkin’ artificial wombs and government-enforced caste system. No soma-induced coma for me!