In defense of NatCon 2024
Belgian government should not attempt to shut down conference
As you may have heard, this year’s National Conservatism Conference has just kicked off in the Brussels region of Belgium — and local authorities are attempting to shut the event down.
Politico reported that the mayors of Brussels and Etterbeek squelched two prior locations for the conference. Its third home, the Claridge, is in the municipality of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode. Its mayor told Politico by email earlier today that he would “immediately take measures to ban” the event.
Later, after the conference was underway, police officers arrived “to tell organizers the event would be shut down,” The Independent reported, “giving attendees 15 minutes to leave the venue.”
After the time elapsed, officers didn’t force a shutdown and speeches continued. Later, the officers announced they wouldn’t “let anyone else into the venue and people can leave and not re-enter.”
Although Freedom Conservatives have many and profound disagreements with National Conservatives, we condemn any attempts by government to hamper or extinguish the peaceable exercise of anyone’s fundamental rights to free speech, assembly, and association. Many FreeCons are among those who’ve signed a statement to that effect, reposted below in full with a list of signatories as of noon ET on Tuesday, April 16, 2024.
Statement on the National Conservatism Conference in Brussels
We condemn in the strongest possible terms the Belgian authorities’ attempts to shut down, without due process, the National Conservatism Conference underway in Brussels. Today’s events are the culmination of several days of efforts to make it impossible for this event to take place, motivated by political opposition to national conservative ideas and undertaken in an illiberal manner antithetical to the ideas of tolerance, freedom, pluralism, and open debate that are meant to be the hallmark of liberal societies.
We say this as critics of national conservatism, not allies. Indeed, we believe that national conservatism as a political and ideological movement is profoundly mistaken, both empirically and normatively, on most fronts.
We also believe that our profound and deep differences should be the subject of public contestation and debate, not silencing and cancellation. We further believe that claims of public safety and order provide no justification to shut down a peaceful event; the heckler’s veto is the tool of authoritarians and thugs.
The use of public authority and police force to shut down peaceful conferences and public meetings is anathema to a free and open society. We are critical of national conservatism as an ideology because of its incompatibility with the principles of a society of free people. But we are opposed much more deeply to the illiberalism on display in Brussels today.
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Signatories are presented in alphabetical order. Affiliations are listed for identification purposes only and do not represent any institutional position.
Tim Andrews, Americans for Tax Reform
Adam Bartha, Director, EPICENTER
André Béliveau, Commonwealth Foundation
Donald J. Boudreaux, Department of Economics and Mercatus Center, George Mason University
Neil Chilson, Head of AI Policy, Abundance Institute
Veronique de Rugy, George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy, Mercatus Center
Daniel DiMartino, Manhattan Institute and the Dissident Project
Fred De Fossard, Director of Parliamentary Affairs, Legatum Institute
Mike Franc, Chief Research Officer, Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity
Rick Geddes, Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, Cornell University
Vance Ginn, Former White House Chief Economist
Steve Hardy, President, Buffalo Creek Art Center
John Hart, Co-Founder, C3 Solutions
Mark Hemingway, Alexandria, VA
David R. Henderson, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
John Hood, President, John William Pope Foundation
Stephen Kent, Media Director, Consumer Choice Center
Christopher Koopman, CEO, Abundance Institute
Roger Koppl, Syracuse University and Segal Center for Academic Pluralism
Kent Lassman, President and CEO, Competitive Enterprise Institute
James Lawson, Chairman, Adam Smith Institute
Frayda Levin, Mountain Lakes, NJ
Richard Lorenc, Chairman, Americas Future
Roger Meiners, University of Texas at Arlington
Alberto Mingardi, Director, Istituto Bruno Leoni
Maria Minniti, Whitman School of Management, Syracuse University
Jon Murphy, Thibodeaux, LA
Iain Murray, Vice President, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Eileen Norcross, Vice President, Mercatus Center
Daniel M. Rothschild, Executive Director, Mercatus Center
Avik Roy, President, Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity
Juliette Sellgren, Liberty Fund
Brian A. Smith, Liberty Fund
Vernon Smith, Chapman University, 2002 Nobel Laureate in Economics
Matthew Tyrmand, V24 Investigations