If we Freedom Conservatives didn’t believe our movement’s core principles were timeless, rooted in fundamental truths about the human experience, we’d call ourselves by a different name.
And if we didn’t believe one of those truths was the indispensability of individual freedom to human flourishing, we’d also call ourselves by a different name.
FreeCons don’t all share the same professional backgrounds, or life experiences, or religious convictions, or views about how best to apply America’s founding principles to America’s toughest challenges. “There were never in the world two opinions alike,” the great essayist Montaigne observed, “any more than two hairs or two grains.”
But what binds us together is far stronger than what divides us. As our Statement of Principles put it, we believe “individual liberty is essential to the moral and physical strength of the nation.” We champion fiscal responsibility, free markets, free speech, free trade, the rule of law, the devolution of power, and the extension of opportunity to all Americans.
Among our signatories are leaders, activists, and policy entrepreneurs seeking to expand our reach to new audiences. Today we feature the work of several such FreeCons.
Level benefit cliffs
Eric Cochling is chief program officer and general counsel at the Georgia Center for Opportunity and a FreeCon signatory.
Prior to joining GCO, Cochling practiced law with a focus on business formation, real estate, contract negotiations, estate planning, and civil disputes. He also served as a legislative aide to a former minority leader in the Georgia State House of Representatives.
Cochling co-chaired the Individual Rights Section of the State Bar of Georgia and is a founding board member for Atlanta’s Other Side Academy, a residential vocational alternative sentencing program for individuals desiring to get their lives on track. He also serves on the board of the Georgia Cyber Academy.
In a recent Center Square op-ed, Cochling described how public-assistance programs can disincentivize employment, observing that “working poor who receive even a modest raise can suddenly see important benefits like child care, food stamps, and Medicaid dramatically reduced or eliminated entirely.”
He and his GCO colleagues recommend integrating safety-net and workforce training into a seamless, work-support program, the ‘One-Door” model, that can meet “the immediate needs of the poor while preparing those who can work for gainful employment free of cliffs that sap initiative and drive dependency.”
Own the issue
Drew Bond is president of the Conservative Coalition for Climate Solutions and a FreeCon signatory.
Before co-founding C3 Solutions, Bond served as senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy, chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation, chief of staff to former Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Denise Bode, and legislative assistant to former U.S. Senator Don Nickles.
His private-sector experience includes serving as a vice president at Battelle and as founder and CEO of PowerField Energy Inc., which provides solar energy systems ideal for rural agriculture and emerging markets.
A serial entrepreneur, Bond has launched several other startups including a data analytics company providing software and services to electric utilities, a distributed waste-to-energy company, and an online media company dedicated to free-market ideas.
In a recent Newsweek op-ed, he argued that if the goal is to “own the libs,” conservatives should “take the lead on good climate policy and show how free-market solutions are superior to progressives' proposals.”
“A system rooted in economic freedom generates more wealth for individuals and societies, allowing them to invest more in protecting the environment,” Bond continued. “In recent years the U.S. has been backing away from its support for economic freedom, but we can change all that as part of making our country greater ‘again.’”
Commonsense justice
Tarrah Callahan is the founder and executive director of Conservatives for Criminal Justice Reform as well as a FreeCon signatory.
Callahan has served on North Carolina’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee, Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, and Governor’s Task Force for Race and Criminal Justice.
She has testified before such panels as the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the North Carolina General Statutes Committee, and the North Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee. She is also an active member in many criminal justice coalitions.
In a recent Carolina Journal column, Callahan reported the results of a poll showing public support for such policies as streamlining court administration, increasing access to court records, and ending the practice of revoking driver licenses over unpaid fines and fees.
“Removing barriers for individuals to get back to work, to start and/or provide for their families, and to continue being contributors to their local communities isn’t controversial at all,” she wrote. “It just makes sense.”
In the mix
• In The Bulwark, FreeCon signatory Brent Orrell replied to the longshoremen strike by citing the union’s demand for “absolute airtight language that there will be no automation or semiautomation.”
Such a ban “is not going to, and should not, happen,” wrote Orrell, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. What the union should be seeking instead are retraining programs to “cushion the immediate effects that AI and robotics are likely to have in a wide range of sectors, jobs, and skills.”
• In The Hill, FreeCon signatory Stephen Kent argued that if Kamala Harris really wants to be as “pragmatic” a leader as she’s pledged, she should promise to remove Lina Khan from the leadership of the Federal Trade Commission.
“The FTC under Khan has made it the position of the federal government to oppose reflexively and antagonize all mergers, treating any market consolidation with hostility,” wrote Kent, media director of the Consumer Choice center. “That posture amounts to a corporate tax on mergers and acquisitions.”
• In National Affairs, FreeCon signatory Andrew J. Taylor describes Democratic proposals to fix America’s ailing democracy as “a politically convenient patchwork of disparate ideas in search of coherence.”
The Democratic Party decries “the lack of meaningful choice voters enjoy in elections fought on gerrymandered maps, but it wages war across the country on minor parties’ efforts to secure a place on the ballot,” wrote Taylor, a political science professor at North Carolina State University. And the party’s professed devotion to individual rights is “selective,” paying scant attention to such issues as free speech on campus and safety in public spaces.