The presidential primaries are largely over — and most Americans appear to dislike the choices the Democratic and Republican parties are offering them.
The hundreds of conservative leaders across America who drafted and signed the Freedom Conservatism Statement of Principles have strong opinions about the 2024 elections, of course. Some will play key roles in the political races to come, as activists or journalists or donors.
But the FreeCon movement was never about a single election cycle. We recognize today’s challenges can’t be blamed on any one political actor or resolved by any one political contest.
“Authoritarianism is on the rise both at home and abroad,” we observed. “More and more people on the left and right reject the distinctive creed that made America great: that individual liberty is essential to the moral and physical strength of the nation.”
How should FreeCons respond to the current political moment? Here are three fascinating takes on this important question.
Good for America
Roger Ream is the president of The Fund for American Studies, which offers transformational programs that teach the principles of limited government, free-market economics, and honorable leadership to students and young professionals in America and around the world.
Ream previously served as vice president of Citizens for a Sound Economy and as special assistant to two members of Congress. He’s also a FreeCon signatory.
A member of the Philadelphia Society and the Frank S. Meyer Society, Ream serves on the boards of the Foundation for Economic Education, the U.S. Air Force Academy Foundation, the New Hampshire Center for Politics, Economics, and Philosophy, and the International Freedom Educational Foundation.
In a recent piece for National Review Online, he observed that neither major-party nominee for president has a consistent record of promoting free enterprise and economic dynamism.
“International trade is one worrisome example,” Ream wrote. “Thanks to specialization and the principle of comparative advantage, free trade lets us produce things we excel at making and sell them to people in other countries, while also buying things others can produce more economically for us.”
But both Joe Biden and Donald Trump advocate tariff policies and other limitations on competition and consumer choice.
“This political season,” Ream concluded, “we should demand that our leaders recall anew — in word and deed — this fundamental fact: Free-market capitalism is good for America!”
Healthy faction
John Hart is co-founder and vice president of Conservatives for Climate Change Solutions. He’s also the founder of Mars Hill Strategies, a firm that has advised Silicon Valley companies, numerous non-profits and political campaigns.
A FreeCon signatory, Hart served as the late Tom Coburn’s longtime communications director and co-authored two books with U.S. Senator from Oklahoma. He also comments frequently on politics and policy for leading media outlets.
In a recent article for The Dispatch, Hart offered hope to those dissatisfied with the outcomes of the 2024 primaries. “I’m defiantly optimistic because I spent so many years in politics,” he said, “and saw firsthand the possibilities and limitations of life in the arena.”
Rather than withdrawing from politics in disgust or accepting a “binary choice” model, dissatisfied voters should form “healthy factions,” he wrote, which can “do two things well: They persuade and they project power.”
One such healthy faction is Freedom Conservatism itself, which he described as both a “permissible structure” that can empower policymakers and citizens to support politically risky reforms and an “accountability structure” that can “marginalize and thwart anti-American ideas and actors peacefully.”
Revisiting Reagan
Henry Nau is professor emeritus at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and a FreeCon signatory.
From 1981 to 1983, he served as senior staff member of the National Security Council, responsible for international economic affairs. Nau also served, between 1975 and 1977, as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs in the Department of State.
His books include Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan (2015) and Perspectives on International Relations: Power, Institutions, and Ideas (2018).
In a recent American Spectator essay, Nau argued that too many conservatives today “are not only ignoring Reagan’s legacy, they are attacking it.” They should instead study the Great Communicator’s political career for inspiration and insight.
“He united the warring branches of conservatism,” Nau wrote, “from traditionalists who believe faith holds America to a higher standard, to libertarians who champion individual rights and freedom of choice, to globalists who believe freedom is universal, and to nationalists who insist on America First.
“He understood that winning in politics requires an energized partisan base, an outreach to independents and conservative Democrats, and a political coalition on the Hill to implement conservative priorities.”
Offering an extensive discussion of Reagan’s views on economics, individualism, families, constitutional government, and national defense, Nau argued that his lasting accomplishments are underappreciated and his example too rarely followed.
“You don’t win by excluding groups,” he concluded, “or by ignoring the Reagan’s legacy.”