Book report

Works by FreeCons help chart a better course for the Right

With some 300 signatories so far to our statement of principles, Freedom Conservatives play a wide variety of roles in America’s conservative movement — from politicians and policy wonks to professors and philanthropists.

Even if we narrow the focus to those who produce content, FreeCon output varies widely. Some write columns, articles, and newsletters. Others host programs or appear regularly on radio, TV, and podcasts. Still others work in film or live performance.

In previous updates, we’ve profiled authors within our ranks. Dozens of signatories have written books about a broad range of subjects.

Today, we’re spotlighting FreeCons who’ve had books published in 2024 or whose latest work is scheduled to come out over the next few months.

So far this year

• Scott Winship (pictured) of the American Enterprise Institute and Ryan Streeter of the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas are among the editors of Doing Right by Kids: Leveraging Social Capital and Innovation to Increase Opportunity. Just out from AEI Press, this book contains chapters on education, marriage, housing, public assistance, and public safety by some of the nation’s top experts.

“Material hardship among American children has never been lower,” the book states. “This seeming victory in the War on Poverty, however, has failed to loosen the connection between family origins and where kids end up.”

The authors’ recommendations are “grounded in the insight that greater opportunity requires shoring up the relationships of children and adolescents and the strength of the institutions to which they are connected — in short, rebuilding social capital. And they embrace a spirit of innovation.”

• Catherine Ruth Pakaluk is associate professor and director of social research at Catholic University’s Busch School of Business. Her book Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth came out in March to great fanfare.

“The stories in this book are as beautiful as they are inspirational,” says Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Pakaluk’s work offers “profound wisdom on how to live family life well, the blessings of children, the benefits of siblings, and how a renewal of family may get us out of our civilizational mess.”

• David L. Bahnsen is the managing partner and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group and a regular contributor to National Review, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox News, and Fox Business. His latest book, published earlier this year, is Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life.

“It is in work — effort, service, striving — of every kind that we discover our meaning and purpose,” Bahnsen writes, because “a significant and successful life is one rooted in full-time productivity and cultivation of God’s created world.”

“Much mischief in the economic realm will be avoided by theologians and pastors if they will study and take to heart” Bahsen’s “essentially incarnational argument,” says Father Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute.

• Steven F. Hayward is a resident scholar at UC Berkeley’s Institute of
Governmental Studies. His many books include Churchill on Leadership: Executive Success in the Face of Adversity, M. Stanton Evans: Conservative Wit, Apostle of Freedom, and his two-volume The Age of Reagan series.

His latest work is a collection of articles entitled Upon Further Review: Books and Arts, 1983-2020. “Especially notable is the subtlety and depth with which Hayward examines complex questions in American history and political philosophy,” raves Jonathan Leaf in National Review.

• Daniel J. Mitchell is president of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and one of the authors of The Greatest Ponzi Scheme on Earth: How the US Can Avoid Economic Collapse, published earlier this year.

Through real-world examples from home and abroad, Mitchell and coauthor Les Rubin take readers on “a crash course in economics, history, fiscal reality, and (most importantly) tried-and-true solutions. How do we fix Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid? What kind of tax burden can the economy bear and still thrive?”

Larry Kudlow of Fox Business says the book is “packed with evidence about the benefits of spending restraint and pro-growth tax policy.”

• Jay Richards is director of the DeVos Center and William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a senior fellow at Discovery Institute, and editor-at-large of The Stream.

Among his many books is Fight the Good Fight: How an Alliance of Faith and Reason Can Win the Culture War, coauthored by James Robinson. Published in February, it assures people of faith that if they “pray, think straight, persuade other lovers of truth to join [them], and fight together — wise as serpents and innocent as doves — then there’s still hope.”

• Raymond J. Keating is chief economist with the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council. He’s also the author of dozens of books, ranging from works on economics and business topics to mysteries and thrillers featuring his character Pastor Stephen Grant.

Earlier this year, Keating released the second novel, Subversion, in a series that features a group of Christians, including a Lutheran pastor and a Catholic priest, working against the twin evils of fascism and communism in the early 1930s. This book “grabs a hold of you quickly and then intensifies your interest,” says Booktalk host Rod Zwonitzer.

Coming soon

• Ilya Shapiro (pictured) is senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. He is the author of, among other books, Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America's Highest Court, which Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett labeled “an indispensable resource for understanding our constitutional history.”

Shapiro’s new book, Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites, is due out in early 2025. “Shapiro reveals how the warping of higher ed — and especially the illiberal takeover of legal education — is transforming our country. We’re handing the reins of power to lawless radicals who will be America’s future judges, prosecutors, politicians, and presidents. Unless we stop it now, the consequences will be with us for decades.”

• David Harsanyi is a Washington Examiner senior writer and pens a column for Creators Syndicate. His latest book, The Rise of BlueAnon: How the Democrats Became a Party of Conspiracy Theorists, is due out in November.

“A recent poll found nearly twice as many Democrats as Republicans believed the Holocaust is a myth,” Harsanyi reports. “Meanwhile, 69% of the Americans who believe that alien spacecraft are observing our planet right now are Democrats. And historically, Democrats are more likely to be 9/11 Truthers.”

The book argues that the Left has been consumed by a uniquely dangerous and delusional brand of conspiracy theories. “Unlike those on the Right, the Left’s conspiracy theories are rarely kept in check by mainstream institutions.”

• George Hawley is an associate professor of political science at the University of Alabama. He’s the author of eight books, including Conservatism in a Divided America: The Right and Identity Politics (2022), which a Law & Liberty reviewer called an “engaging intellectual and social scientific tour de force.”

Hawley’s latest work, The Moderate Majority: Real GOP Voters and the Myth of Mass Republican Radicalization, will be released in November. It “challenges the conventional narrative that today’s Republicans are all radicalized, reactionary ideologues” and “illuminates the substantial gap between the elites and diverse, mostly moderate rank-and-file GOP voters.”

• Francisco Gonzalez, executive director of the Economic Club of Miami, is the author of The American Dream Is A Terrible Thing To Waste: 100 Agents Of Innovation Share Their Fearless Journeys In Today's Economy.

The book introduces readers to “innovators who are succeeding in today’s economy despite the increasing challenges to achieving the American Dream.” Critics have called it a “magnificent contribution” and “a treasure map to success” A second volume in the series is due out in November.

• John Hood, president of the Pope Foundation, is the author of the Folklore Cycle, a series of novels and novelettes employing history, fantasy, and folklore to tell the story of America. “Not since John Jakes’ The American Bicentennial Series has the story of our nation’s founding been so engaging and approachable,” wrote one newspaper editor about Mountain Folk. Another reviewer called the sequel Forest Folk “history at its best: frolicking and fun, challenging and rewarding.”

The third novel in the series, Water Folk, is due out this November. Among other events, it depicts the Texas Revolution and the Mexican-American War.

In the mix

• In The Wall Street Journal, FreeCon signatory Amber Gunn argued that the rent control policies advocated by Kamala Harris and other Democratic politicians would wreak havoc on the housing market.

“Rent ceilings don’t relieve housing shortages — they exacerbate them,” wrote Gunn, a senior policy analyst for the Mountain States Policy Center. “Units fall into disrepair as landlords neglect basic maintenance or upgrades, because they can’t recoup investments through rent increases. Price-controlled units that can’t be converted into owner-occupied units are eventually abandoned, leading to blighted and dilapidated neighborhoods.”

• FreeCon signatory André Béliveau is senior manager of energy policy at the Commonwealth Foundation. Writing for National Review, he cited instances of both Democrats and Republicans using “all of the above” to describe their preferred energy policy.

Béliveau is no a fan of the phrase. “Energy regulation should establish source-neutral grid reliability and least-cost procurement standards, enact basic safety measures to protect consumers, and allow private industry to innovate,” he wrote.

“We cannot placate the side that is committed to jeopardizing American energy security. If we do, we will all-of-the-above our way to a grid-reliability crisis.”

• The populist-nationalist Right is “bowing out on true conservative values in favor of big government restrictions” — a choice likely to alienate many American Hispanics, wrote Young Voices contributor Hunter Thomas in the DC Journal.

“Hispanics want to see a more affordable cost of living,” Thomas wrote. While “the New Right believes in expanding the size of government and ignoring our national debt Freedom Conservatives think lowering the deficit is an important priority.”