24 pages, 27.8 MB
Especially during election years, the trivial too often dominates, with truth hardly audible amid the noise and spin.
We at the Independent Institute, by contrast, focus on identifying those key issues that really do matter in order to shape ideas into a profound and lasting impact in our culture and communities. Seismic shifts in culture and the prospects for a better future lie not in Ivory Towers or the hallowed halls of capitols, but in the enterprise, civic virtues, and institutions of Main Street.
Our Fellows engage in discovering the underlying causes of dysfunction with such issues—stagnant growth and unemployment, inaccessible and costly healthcare, abuses of privacy rights and due process, unending wars, cronyism and corruption, smothering bureaucracies, and failing education systems, among others—and proposing innovative solutions to achieve our shared goals of individual liberty, opportunity, health, educational excellence, justice, prosperity, and peace.
As this 2014 Annual Report highlights, our non-partisan, non-politicized approach resonates widely across ideologies and populations, garnering our publications and other projects influence that spans the media spectrum, as well as among policymakers, academics and students, business and civic leaders, and the general public.
And this approach resonates especially among younger generations increasingly faced with barriers to opportunities that government follies have produced: runaway spending and debt that cripples job and business creation; galloping tuition costs and student debt; sky-rocketing healthcare premiums; abuses of personal liberties; and much more.
In this 25th Anniversary Year of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and with pro-liberty movements spreading in America and globally, it is important to remember that, above all, ideas have consequences: pundits and political prognosticators are more often than not wrong, and one should never underestimate the power of better ideas to foster positive change that can boldly advance peaceful, prosperous, and free societies.
Through our independent thinking that there is a better way, we leverage our research, education, and communications on key social and economic issues into action through a wide range of organizations and networks. By connecting leading-edge ideas with the enterprise of Main Street, we help unleash waves of change and unparalleled human flourishing around the globe and around town.
We hope you enjoy learning more about our programs and we welcome your support and involvement.
—David J. Theroux, Founder and President
