FreeCons and NatCons do overlap on some things. But the differences show why FreeCons offer a better way.
FreeCons and NatCons do overlap on some things. But the differences show why FreeCons offer a better way.
I ’m grateful for Michael Brendan Dougherty’s sympathetic discussion of the Freedom Conservatism Statement of Principles, published last week. Michael accurately assesses that there is overlap between the FreeCon statement and the one published last year by national conservatives (“NatCons”) onto which he signed.
But Michael errs when he asserts that differences between the two movements “resemble the finer cracks on the surface of an imperfectly baked cheesecake.” And there is more going on here than what he belittles as “competition for think-tank patronage or jobs in a future administration.” I’m not looking for a job, nor for patronage. And speaking for myself as a FreeCon signatory, there are real differences — and real principles — at stake in the debate between FreeCons and NatCons.
Before I get into why I could never sign the national-conservatism statement, let me offer some qualified praise of NatCons. Many friends and people I admire have signed the NatCon statement, including John O’Sullivan, Daniel McCarthy, Roger Kimball, and of course Michael himself. I think it’s healthy that nationalists have pushed the conservative establishment to rethink its unreciprocated loyalty to Big Business. Big Business lobbies for big government when it suits it; recall the enormous sums spent by the pharmaceutical and hospital lobbies to enact Obamacare. It’s healthy for conservatives to hold corporations politically accountable when they care more about the Chinese government’s preferences than those of American consumers. Libertarians, in my personal view, have been far too complacent about how private monopolies abuse their power.
But I oppose these predatory business practices because they go against the principles of free-market competition. What makes national conservatives different — especially the ones who have spent the most time defining the term — is that they ridicule the free market as passé. NatCons claim that, unless you are willing to abridge individual and economic freedom to fight the woke Left, you “don’t know what time it is.” NatCons, indeed, strive to “emulate the Left” in “wielding the levers of state power” to “reward friends and punish enemies.”
NatCons have mixed feelings about constitutional constraints on their agenda. Their statement of principles praises the Constitution, which is lovely, but the document also includes positions suggesting that they aren’t especially attached to the Bill of Rights.
Contrary to the Tenth Amendment, for example, the NatCon statement of principles expresses the view that the federal government should “energetically” abridge state and local sovereignty in places where, among other things, “immorality and dissolution reign.” Who gets to decide what “immorality and dissolution” are? Anthony Fauci? Kamala Harris?
Departing from the First and 14th Amendments, the NatCon statement argues that “where a Christian majority exists . . . Christianity . . . should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private.” In places where a Muslim majority exists, like Hamtramck, Mich., should Islam be honored by the state? The NatCons don’t say.
By contrast, freedom conservatives strongly prefer the Constitution’s protections of religious and individual freedom, and its model of decentralized government.
While the NatCon statement says some nice things about the value of “conciliation and unity among diverse communities,” the document — and the NatCon movement more broadly — is hostile to ethnic diversity. The manifesto contemplates a total “moratorium on immigration” — both legal and illegal. NatCons in the real world, outside of their carefully crafted statement, routinely express revulsion to legal immigration.
Michael Anton arguably launched the national-conservative movement with his cri de coeur that “the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners” — including legal immigrants — makes the U.S. electorate “less traditionally American with every cycle.” Josh Hammer decried the “long-standing Republican dichotomy of ‘illegal bad, legal good’” as “outmoded pablum.” At the 2019 National Conservatism conference in Washington, D.C., University of Pennsylvania professor Amy Wax complained that immigration made America dirtier — literally — and argued “that our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites,” due to the “cultural concerns” associated with non-white immigrants.
Freedom conservatives, by contrast, embrace legal immigration, alluding in our statement of principles to Reagan’s observation that what makes America exceptional is that “anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”
Furthermore, while FreeCons and NatCons agree on the importance of opposing racial discrimination “either against or for any person or group of people,” as the FreeCon statement puts it, FreeCons go further, by recognizing the persistent inequality of opportunity for descendants of the victims of slavery and segregation. Notably, in the statement, FreeCons “commit to expanding opportunity for those who face challenges due to past [race-based] government restrictions on individual and economic freedom.” I’ve spoken to many FreeCon signatories for whom this particular commitment was of the greatest importance.
The national-conservative statement contains other notable omissions. It takes time to advocate for increased “large-scale public resources on scientific and technological research” and other meritorious federal programs, but makes no mention of the need to control federal spending or reduce the rising federal debt.
Indeed, the most prominent NatCons actively oppose efforts to reform entitlements, even though the Medicare trust fund will go broke in 2031, and the Social Security trust fund by 2033. In a recent speech, regular NatCon keynoter J. D. Vance claimed that fiscal conservatives were behind a conspiracy to take money away from Americans and give it to foreign leaders. “There’s no issue that these people with the Ukrainian flags in their bio are more obsessed with,” Vance said. “They call it ‘entitlement reform,’ but of course what they’re saying is that they want to cut Social Security for the people who paid into it for a generation so that we can send more money to Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine.”
Vance is smart enough to know this is not merely untrue but ridiculous. What Congress is actually doing is stealing from our children and grandchildren to advance the electoral prospects of ambitious politicians and their friends. Few things are less conservative. FreeCons recognize this, calling the skyrocketing federal debt an “existential threat to the future prosperity, liberty, and happiness of Americans.”
But the greatest difference between freedom conservatives and national conservatives is not about policy details. It’s about their differing assessments of the character of America. FreeCons believe, as Reagan did, that “citizens like ourselves have . . . always with courage and common sense . . . met the crises of their time and lived to see a stronger, better, and more prosperous country.”
NatCons take a decidedly more pessimistic view. In 2021, Glenn Ellmers of the Claremont Institute, a key NatCon think tank, wrote in the American Mind that “most people living in the United States today . . . are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term” and that “practically speaking, there is almost nothing left to conserve . . . America is more or less gone.” He also urged readers to “give up on the idea that ‘conservatives’ have anything useful to say.”
Claremont senior fellow Michael Anton, after a speech before the Philadelphia Society in 2022, said that it was now his “goal in life” to “convince a thousand conservative intellectuals to think seriously about the conditions under which they would engage in armed revolution against the government.” (He insisted that he himself was not advocating for such a revolution at this time.)
Contemplating armed revolution, or shutting down legal immigration, or wishing that fewer South Asians ran tech companies are interesting positions to hold, but to respond to Ellmers: How useful are they as a political and policy strategy? Can they persuade a majority of Americans to adopt a better way? If you think so, what are you smoking?
Not all NatCon positions are so out there. NatCons and FreeCons are both gravely concerned about critical race theory and radical gender ideology in elementary schools. NatCons have pushed — successfully in some places — for states to pass laws micromanaging the discussion of topics that make students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.” Such policies may have their utility, but FreeCons have advanced a more durable approach: enacting universal education-savings accounts, so that every parent gains the freedom to educate their children the right way.
Though NatCons were among the earliest to join the Trump bandwagon, it’s notable that all of President Trump’s most significant policy victories — from judicial nominations and regulatory reform to tax reform — were the ones where he hewed to FreeCon, rather than NatCon, principles. Indeed, prior to the pandemic, Trump’s FreeCon economic agenda had led to the lowest unemployment rate in recorded history. More conservative policy victories are forthcoming, if we choose to build a broad electoral majority that gives us the ability to confirm more judges and enact more reforms.
It was the Reagan-Buckley FreeCon movement — the one NatCons seek to overthrow — that trained and supplied the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and abolished race-based college admissions. The Students for Fair Admissions opinion on affirmative action is a huge deal, in particular, because future litigation can build on that case to eliminate DEI excesses among private employers, in K–12 schools, and at government agencies.
And this brings us to an important difference between FreeCons and NatCons. Freedom conservatives seek to build a coalition that can attract a majority of the country. National conservatives know that they will never represent anything more than a cantankerous minority faction, hence their apocalyptic rhetoric about how most Americans aren’t really Americans, and their contemplation of the timing and circumstances of armed revolution.
The coalition that Bill Buckley, Ronald Reagan, and others built in the 20th century — the one that helped Reagan win 49 states and 59 percent of the popular vote in the presidential election of 1984 — was constructed as a big tent. “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally, not a 20 percent traitor,” Reagan was fond of saying. The Reagan coalition included pro-lifers and pro-choicers; blue-collar factory workers and white-collar businessmen; and people from every region in the country. Reagan’s policy achievements showed Americans of every race, color, and creed how freedom conservatism could make their lives better.
The Freedom Conservatism Statement of Principles is designed to build a 21st-century version of Reagan’s coalition. Michael noted on Twitter that he, a signer of the NatCon statement, “could have signed [the FreeCon statement] honestly.” Another NatCon-friendly scholar, Jay Richards, published an excellent thread on Twitter explaining why he signed the FreeCon statement as a Christian conservative.
But the FreeCon statement also appeals enough to libertarians that Ilya Somin in Reason called it “a much-needed breath of fresh air,” despite the statement’s various departures from 200-proof libertarian doctrine. Both Trump-administration alumni and Never Trumpers have signed the FreeCon statement.
A faction of cranks whose loudest voices regard their fellow citizens as un-American will never attract broad or lasting support. FreeCons can do far better by assembling a patriotic coalition of libertarians, social conservatives, blue-collar voters, and old-fashioned Republicans. Only through such a majority can we advance American values and expand Americans’ opportunities.
When FreeCons win this debate, and NatCons ask us what time it is, we’ll have a simple answer: Once again, it’s morning in America.