https://www.freedomconservatism.org/

Freedom Conservatism, Washington D.C., DC (2026)

04/16/2026

Wilfred McClay holds the Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College. He is also a Freedom Conservatism signatory.

A prolific author, he’s written or edited books widely used in high school and college classrooms, including “A Student’s Guide to U.S. History”, the American Intellectual Culture series, and “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.”

In a recent City Journal piece, McClay argued that freedom of speech on campus isn’t meaningful if “we aren’t willing to listen.”

“Many of the methods we long took for granted — lectures, laboratories, textbooks, term papers, take-home examinations, and the close reading of long and demanding texts — now seem increasingly obsolete, or at least ill-suited to the crucial task of student assessment,” he wrote.

“This is a genuine crisis. But it is also a genuine opportunity to reconsider what we are doing, what we want our schools and universities to achieve.”

McClay credited philosopher Michael Oakeshott with the observation that the central task of education is to provide an “initiation into the skill and partnership” of conversation.

“If he is right, and if that is the goal we ought to set for ourselves, the implications would be profound.”

04/15/2026

Kenny Xu is the author of two books: “An Inconvenient Minority” and “School of Woke.” He is also a Freedom Conservatism signatory.

Host of the “Inconvenient Truths” podcast, Xu has written for The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and The Federalist, among other outlets.

In a recent piece for The Free Press, Xu reacted to the news that a federal judge has ruled public universities in 17 states don’t have to turn over their records to administration officials tasked with enforcing equal opportunity in admissions.

“Racial preferences are going to die hard,” he predicted. “Rates of admission at most schools still suggest that blacks and Hispanics are getting a leg up — and it isn’t too hard for admissions officers to guess the applicants’ race based on name, location, and other details, even if they aren’t checking a box. Applicants can continue to put their race on the surface by talking all about it in their personal essays.”

“Real fairness in college admissions would allow millions of students to dream big while ensuring they work hard to achieve those dreams. We shouldn’t allow honest strivers to be thwarted by an overengineered system built around a flawed definition of social justice.”

04/14/2026

Dan Lips is head of policy and a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, a senior fellow at FREOPP, and a Freedom Conservatism signatory.

Lips has spent decades working in public policy, including stints with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He also helped birth the concept of ESAs.

In a recent National Affairs piece coauthored with Michael Toth, Lips presented an agenda for “full-spectrum school choice” that includes expanded child-savings accounts, job training programs, lifelong-learning accounts, and other reforms.

Giving parents and students a wide range of options “creates new opportunities for teachers, school leaders, and entrepreneurs to provide high-quality instruction, learning models, and other services that have the potential to dramatically increase the return on taxpayers' investment in public schooling,” Lips and Toth wrote.

“And as vehicles for administering public benefits, education accounts have the further potential to achieve broader public-policy goals, including promoting lifelong learning, encouraging job training, and even reducing wealth inequality and promoting retirement security.

“In the future, these accounts may serve as the primary policy lever for promoting the development of human capital and intergenerational social mobility.”

Link in the comments.

04/13/2026

Jenna Ashley Robinson is president of The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Freedom Conservatism signatory.

Robinson serves on the board of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance and UNC Alumni Free Speech Alliance, and on the Board of Visitors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work has appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Roll Call, Forbes, American Thinker, Human Events, and Carolina Journal, among other publications.

In a recent Martin Center piece, Robinson urged state leaders to take the lead on higher-education reform.

Public universities, where the vast majority of American students are educated, are “creatures of state law,” she observed, “and their governing boards derive authority directly from state legislatures. By contrast, the federal government’s influence on higher education is largely indirect.”

“While federal policy matters, state legislators and university trustees have the local knowledge and authority to make an outsized difference — from the classroom to the chancellor’s office. Lasting reform in higher education is far more likely to originate in statehouses than in Washington.

“What’s more, state reform efforts are often more nimble than federal policymaking. Federal rulemaking can take months of notice-and-comment procedures and is often tied up in litigation. What might take years in Washington can be done much more quickly and effectively at the local level.”

Link in the comments.

04/11/2026

At The Free Press, Freedom Conservatism signatory Judge G***k pointed out that frustrations with airport security long predate the recent budget dispute between Democrats in Congress and the Trump administration — and reflect a big-government approach America would be prudent to abandon.

“The idea of letting the private sector manage passenger security, air traffic control, and airports may seem far-fetched, but it is the norm in much of the world,” wrote G***k, director of research and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

“The United States, supposedly home to ardent free marketeers, actually has one of the most socialized air travel sectors anywhere. Other countries have demonstrated the success of a private-sector model. America should learn from them.”

04/10/2026

At the Daily Wire, Freedom Conservatism signatory Stephen Kent took NatCon signatory Jack Posobiec to task for the latter’s recent claim that J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” is “overtly pagan.”

“Posobiec mistakes the absence of overtly Christian imagery for the lack of Christian themes,” wrote Kent, host of the show Geeky Stoics. “But just because no one takes the Eucharist in Gondor does not mean Tolkien’s world must be pagan. Quite the contrary. Middle-earth in all its strangeness speaks to the imaginative hunger of people’s hearts, calling them to see with fresh eyes the Truth they so often take for granted.”

“Tolkien and [C.S.] Lewis both favored dressing stories in ways that lower the defenses of the reader and free our God-given imaginations to know Him in different contexts. It’s a beautiful idea.”

04/09/2026

At The Wall Street Journal, Freedom Conservatism signatory John Cochrane clarified that while there are some circumstantial parallels between the “oil shocks” of the 1970s and today’s crisis in the Persian Gulf, it was bad federal policy, not conflicts in the Middle East, that produced the gas lines and chronic stagflation of 50 years ago.

“Energy prices turn into recessions only if bad policies compound their effects,” wrote Cochrane, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. “Price controls, credit controls, windfall profits taxes, export controls, the 55-mph speed limit, corn ethanol, cardigan sweaters, malaise, and a slow-to-react Federal Reserve all fed the misery of the 1970s. They need not do so again.”

“What should government do about rising energy prices? Nothing. Or, more concretely, get out of the way, ease restrictions, and let the market work its magic of sending energy to the most economically important uses while encouraging others to save, substitute or provide new energy.”

04/08/2026

Charles Hilu is a D.C. reporter for The Dispatch, a former Collegiate Network Fellow at the Washington Free Beacon, and a former intern at National Review and the Washington Examiner. He is also a Freedom Conservatism signatory.

In a recent piece for The Dispatch, Hilu described a battle between populists and free-marketeers over housing policy, with the former borrowing bad ideas from left-wing Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren and the latter focusing on government-imposed constraints on housing supply.

The Senate’s version of a federal housing bill includes some deregulatory measures as well as “entirely new pieces that have proven to be the most controversial for market-minded members” such as restrictions on large institutional investors acquiring housing stock.

“Republicans have traditionally been against such restrictions,” Hilu observed, “and the party’s hardliners who often oppose government intervention into markets are not fans of the bill’s ban.”

By contrast, populist U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley supports it. Republican voters “want policy in this town that reflects their needs and interests,” Hawley told Hilu, “not Wall Street’s, not the giant foreign nationals.’’

“While the bill’s ban contradicts Republican free-market orthodoxy,” Hilu wrote, “it also tests the viability of a new movement among Democrats. Taking its name from a 2025 book by liberal writers Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein, the ‘Abundance’ movement prioritizes housing policies that can increase supply to bring down costs. Part of that agenda includes cutting red tape to make it easier to build housing.”

04/07/2026

Tim Chapman is president of the think tank Advancing American Freedom. John Schweiker Shelton is vice president for policy at AAF. Both are Freedom Conservatism signatories.

Chapman previously served as a principal at P2 Public Affairs, the executive director of Heritage Action, chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation, and an adviser and staffer to senators Jim DeMint, Don Nickles, and Asa Hutchinson. Shelton served as a policy advisor for offices in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House.

In a recent article for First Things Chapman and Shelton observed that the National Conservatism movement, far from being an organic outgrowth of the initial election of Donald Trump as president, was “imported from the United Kingdom half a decade earlier.”

“Getting the history right is essential to navigating the fast-approaching future of post-Trump conservatism.”

“The Right was already grappling with the social consequences of economic and cultural upheaval well before 2016,” they continued, “even if Donald Trump gave voice to those concerns with unmatched force.”

“The institutions that sustain fraternity cannot be engineered by the state. They grow from citizens who understand that liberty carries obligations as well as rights. If the conservative movement remembers that truth, it will find that the path forward is not a departure from its principles but a return to them.”

04/06/2026

Rachel Lu is a senior editor at Law & Liberty, a contributing writer at America magazine and National Review, and a Freedom Conservatism signatory.

In a recent piece for Law & Liberty, Lu outlined three ways that liberty-minded Americans can promote family formation and fertility without abandoning their limited-government principles.

For example, “entitlement reform is the best pronatalist policy there is,” she wrote.

“Birth rates have fallen for many reasons, but the entitlement state is clearly one. Elderly entitlements are the worst offenders: they socialize one of the major benefits of children while privatizing the cost. Over the longer run, entitlements also seem to erode family networks, and perhaps especially intergenerational dependence and closeness, teaching people to view the state as the presumptive caretaker instead of kith and kin.”

Another insight is to conceive of parents as creators and innovators, not potential victims or wards of the state.

“When the state becomes the presumptive source of support for families (not in extremis but simply as a matter of course), that will sap parents’ natural inclination to explore organic solutions to family challenges. They’re less likely to build mutually supportive communities, demand helpful products, or look for new ways to combine work and parenting constructively.”

Finally, policymakers should remember that “fiscal and human capital tend to support one another.”

“Prosperity and opportunity may compete with family life in certain ways, but ultimately, thriving and energetic societies tend to compensate for those competing demands with less-quantifiable goods. Hope is harder to measure than a child bonus, but it may ultimately matter far more.”

Link in the comments.

04/04/2026

At the Washington Examiner, Freedom Conservatism signatory Casey Given argued that plans in California and other states to impose wealth taxes could cripple charitable giving.

“Proponents of wealth taxes argue that government redistribution is a more equitable and reliable way to fund social priorities,” wrote Given, the president of Young Voices. “But this presents a false choice. A thriving society depends on both effective public institutions and a vibrant civil society.

“Weakening one in favor of the other is not a balanced approach — it’s a risky one.”

04/02/2026

At The Dispatch, Freedom Conservatism signatory Richard Reinsch marked the anniversary of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs by chronicling their adverse effects.

“Tariffs are a very blunt form of taxation,” wrote Reinsch, editor-in-chief of Civitas Outlook. “They tax not only imported consumer goods but also intermediate capital goods. They lower workers’ real wages by making certain goods more expensive. They reduce the productivity of companies and capital by raising the prices of inputs and other goods used in business while protecting domestic industries, leading to inefficiencies and job losses in other sectors.

“We were promised liberation. Instead, we have relearned that tariffs are just taxes that slow down our strong economy and weaken America’s power.”

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