Though the Foundations Be Shaken, This We'll Defend

Introducing the American Epistemology Institute

The author has recorded an audio version for those who prefer.

We live in a time when foundational words have been emptied. “Truth,” “reason,” and “liberty” are still spoken, but their meanings no longer hold steady. Their definitions shift with ease. What once described our founding principles now signals loyalty to systems with no fixed center.

The American Epistemology Institute (AEI) was founded in response to this condition. AEI is an educational nonprofit devoted to recovering the metaphysical and epistemic foundations that once gave America its structure and integrity. We proceed from a single claim: the American project depended on reality, and reality cannot be molded without consequence.

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A Personal Reckoning

The spark that led to AEI came from a thread written by Christine Jones (A Palmer Worm on Substack). In it, she referenced Scottish Common Sense Realism; a school of thought that was entirely new to me, yet instantly familiar. It named what I had felt for years. It opened a door to the metaphysical world beneath America’s founding. From there, I began tracing the other elements embedded in the structure of the country’s early mind. Between her and the clarifications of James Lindsay who dove deep into the leftist philosophies inherent in modern life today, everything I've been reading for the first twenty years of my life came into focus. The esoteric, philosophical, and psychological connections formed quickly. I had spent twenty years drawn to these topics as I had wanted to understand the world, though my study had been scattered and unfocused. Suddenly, the pieces aligned. They pointed toward a common truth. America had once known it.

This deepened when I became a father. Before my child was born, I knew I had to get into gear. The fog of personal indecision cleared, as I couldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and the AEI became the natural response. As a father, my duty is to protect. As a citizen, the same applies.

Even as a teenager, I sensed that war was in my future. Not war in the conventional sense (though I am a US Army veteran), but a spiritual and philosophical war. It was in the air. I could feel it before I could explain it. Over time, I came to see that this war was being waged on the level of perception and reality. Through mass manipulation, psychological conditioning, and epistemic corrosion, a new regime was being prepared.

In my early twenties, I began to study the ideological threats to our country. I studied Communism, technocracy, and the tactics of soft totalitarianism. I saw how government overreach had grown with each passing decade, diving deep into FOIA files from the Agency over holiday breaks when others were with their families. But even then, I knew so little. I sensed the problem, but lacked the language. That has changed.

I founded AEI to educate others and myself. But not for the sake of education. Knowledge without reality leads to disintegration. People cannot act effectively when their metaphysics is untethered. They will spin their wheels, burn their energy, and fight shadows. I need them to see clearly. And then I need them to stand with me.

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America Was Founded on Reality

The Declaration of Independence presents a sequence of affirmations. It does not merely list complaints. It begins with the truth that human beings are created and endowed with rights. These rights are not granted by the state. They come from a higher source. The sentence implies a moral order that was not invented by men. It recognizes a human nature that does not change with the winds of history.

The AEI teaches that these affirmations came from a shared (broadly, not uniformly) metaphysical understanding. The authors of the American founding approached public life with reverence for what is real. They did not believe that man was plastic. They did not design a government to shape souls, but a government that recognized the inherent qualities endowed to man by our Creator.

Unfortunately, this vision has been obscured, and the AEI exists to recover it and teach it in a way that is accessible. History is complicated, especially when you later philosophy on top of it. The goal is to make visible the structure of reality that gives rise to coherent civic life and the methods of degradation that led to where we stand today. When people see that structure, they begin to see the nature of the war being waged against them. The AEI exists to give them the clarity and formation they need to assert the values of their country. We're not a melting pot, we're not the place where the world's populace can come to "have a better life." We're the country that has an epistemic spine based on eternal law. We've not only forgotten this, we've been made to forget, but it is time to remember.

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Knowing What Is

The culture of the present treats certainty as dangerous and clarity as impolite. Many institutions encourage the idea that nothing can be truly known. In such a climate, belief becomes branding. Truth becomes a tool (as in pragmatism, for example). Language loses contact with reality and becomes an instrument of power (as we've seen dictionaries change definitions immediately in response to political expediency).

We here at the AEI affirm that truth exists, that the mind is capable of knowing it, and that language can convey it accurately. These convictions are the basis for law, education, covenant, worship, and speech. When they are denied, confusion becomes policy and disorder becomes a managed reality that can't be opposed effectively due to said confusion.

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The Mission of AEI

Our goal is to educate. The mission is to teach, clarify, and preserve the metaphysical inheritance that once animated American life. What earlier generations assumed must now be named, defended, and lived.

We draw from thinkers who understood the importance of grounding knowledge in the real. Thomas Reid, James Wilson, John Witherspoon, and John Adams did not build castles in the mind. They recognized that truth exists outside of the self. They taught that reason is real, that man is not self-created, and that the world is intelligible.

The AEI conducts this work digitally, but that is only the beginning. We are building local presence because the city matters. Over the next three years, we intend to continue making connections and making local impact. Local leaders must recover the weight of their responsibilities. A culture built on heritage cannot survive when its institutions are led by people who have forgotten that heritage. Once we succeed there, I would like to spread to other cities as well, as America is a bottom-up country and we need to be reminded of such.

Through white papers, seminars, curricula, and public formation, AEI equips students, parents, educators, and leaders with the tools needed to recover lawful order, speak truthfully, and withstand the acceleration that surrounds them.

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The Religious Ground

AEI is a Christian institution. We hold to the truth that God is the Creator, that Christ is the Logos, and that man is made in His image. We are non-denominational in form and seek no proselytization, but Thomist-informed in substance. Our position is consistent with the nation’s founding character. America was built by Christians. The AEI was not established in the vein of the current-day Christianity, but a philosophically robust history of the practice. The popular citation of the Treaty of Tripoli does not erase the historical reality. A Christian metaphysic shaped the American mind, and the AEI stands within that continuity.

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A Call to Clarity

There's a collapse that is on the horizon. Many feel the collapse but do not know how to describe it. They see the signs. Language loses meaning. Institutions conceal. Words are used to instill confusion and ambiguity rather than to reveal clarity. The crisis is deeper than most understand, and I struggle with that reality sometimes. The war is metaphysical. The damage is epistemic.

This condition touches law, worship, family, speech, and education. A people who can no longer describe the world cannot govern it. They cannot preserve it. They cannot pass it on.

The AEI speaks to those who still believe that truth matters. We are here to speak to those who sense the loss and refuse to look away. We speak to those willing to remember what their fathers knew. We need to do this to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of leftism and rightism that seek to tear us asunder.

Truth does not disappear. It waits for those willing to speak it again.

This is where we begin.

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Brutus is the founder and treasurer of the American Epistemology Institute (AEI) Inc., an educational nonprofit dedicated to restoring the metaphysical and epistemic foundations of American life. With twenty years of philosophical study, a deep interest in realism, and a professional background in systems design and civic architecture, he brings a strategic approach to epistemic restoration in an age of collapse. He is the lead author of AEI’s white papers, which address ideological threats and realist recovery.