- Values don’t pass down by themselves. They need containers.
- The Union League helped Northern businessmen coordinate during the Civil War
- The Freemasons played a similar role during the Enlightenment
- Stanford, Vanderbilt, Cornell: railroad fortunes turned into schools that outlasted their founders
- These groups build shared identity and common goals across generations
“We’ll likely need similar institutions again: ones that encourage class identification and the pursuit of common goals.”
Tocqueville saw this clearly. Americans join clubs, and that’s how they learn to trust strangers and get things done without waiting for the government.
Today’s question: where are the new Stanfords? Tech money flows to foundations that spend down, or fellowships that skip college entirely. Nothing designed to last centuries. Maybe “disruption” as a value kills the urge to build in stone—or maybe the tech elite just hasn’t figured out what it believes yet.