Conservative Writers

02/08/2024

Today’s wisdom from Hans Sennholz: “When all the mysticism is stripped away, the people who comprise the government (the legislators, administrators, judges, and policemen), are guided by human interests, desires, beliefs, notions, and prejudices, just like other people. They have neither superhuman wisdom nor extraordinary virtue.”

02/08/2024

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Freedom Conservatism signatories Andrea Picciotti-Bayer of the Conscience Project and National Catholic Register, James Patterson of Ave Maria University, and Richard Reinsch of the American Institute for Economic Research challenged the notion that “postliberalism” is anything new.

“Many of its ideas have been circulated in the public square for decades — by progressives on the Left. This particular brand of New Rightism shares a mind-set with its supposed enemies: rejecting individual liberties such as religious freedom, seeking to grow the administrative state to impose an undefined ‘common good’ and demonizing the free-market system using populist rhetoric.”

You can read more commentary from signatories here:

No, American conservatism shouldn’t move leftward on unions

01/08/2024

Today’s wisdom from Hans Sennholz: “Few policies are more calculated to destroy the existing basis of a free society than the debauching of its currency. And few tasks, if any, are more important to the champion of freedom than creation of a sound monetary system.”

31/07/2024

Today’s wisdom from Hans Sennholz: “Political power intoxicates the best hearts. No man is wise enough, nor good enough, to be trusted with much political power.”

30/07/2024

Today’s wisdom from Hans Sennholz: “A government debt is a government claim against personal income and private property — an unpaid tax bill.”

30/07/2024

Robert VerBruggen is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, where he provides policy research, writes for City Journal, and contributes to special projects and initiatives in the president’s office. He is also a Freedom Conservatism signatory.

Having held roles as deputy managing editor of National Review, managing editor of The American Conservative, editor at RealClearPolicy, and assistant book editor at The Washington Times, VerBruggen writes on a wide array of issues including economic policy, public finance, health care, education, family policy, cancel culture, and public safety.

VerBruggen was a Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellow in 2009 and a 2005 winner of the Chicago Headline Club Peter Lisagor Award.

In a recent piece for the Washington Examiner, he discussed the big fight coming next year over the renewal of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Arguing that the expanded child tax credit ought to be retained and indexed for inflation, VerBruggen criticized proposals from Democrats and some Republicans to ease its work requirement.

“The looming expiration of a major tax law is going to force Congress to deal with it in a polarized environment,” he concluded. “Next year’s fighting won’t be pretty. But it can result in a durable compromise that supports working families.”

You can read more about VerBruggen and other signatories here: https://www.freedomconservatism.org/p/hard-labor

30/07/2024

The Battle for Biblical Christianity.

North America and EuropeMethodist Memories, Paragould, ArkansasAccording to a Pew Research Center estimation in 2020, about 2.38 billion of approximately 8.0 billion people in the world are at least nominally connected to Christianity. Christianity is the largest religion in the world and still grow...

29/07/2024

Today’s wisdom from Wilhelm von Humboldt: “All political arrangements, in that they have to bring a variety of widely-discordant interests into unity and harmony, necessarily occasion manifold collisions. From these collisions spring misproportions between men’s desires and their powers; and from these, transgressions. The more active the State is, the greater is the number of these.”

28/07/2024

Today's wisdom from Wilhelm von Humboldt: “Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a portion of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.”

27/07/2024

Today's wisdom from Wilhelm von Humboldt: “The State may not make man an instrument to subserve its arbitrary designs, and induce him to neglect for these his proper individual ends.”

26/07/2024

Today’s wisdom from Wilhelm von Humboldt: “Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity; while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, but yet real activity. The ardent desire for freedom, therefore, is at first only too frequently suggested by the deep-felt consciousness of its absence.”

26/07/2024

One of the bravest men in history was Witold Pilecki. A veteran of the successful Polish war against Communist Russia in 1919-20, Pilecki fought the Nazi invasion of western Poland as a cavalry officer in 1939, then became a resistance leader.

After Auschwitz opened in 1940, Pilecki hatched an audacious plan for investigating it: after faking an ID card, he purposefully got himself arrested and sent to the camp. After gathering and sneaking out intelligence of its horrors, Pilecki escaped from Auschwitz in April 1943 with a cache of stolen documents. Unfortunately, the Brits and Americans still thought his reports were exaggerated. Later, Pilecki rejoined the Polish resistance, fought in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1944, and served time in a German POW camp.

Upon his “liberation” by the Russians, Pilecki soon began working against the Soviet takeover of Poland. The Communist secret police arrested and executed him in 1948.

25/07/2024

Thomas Savidge is a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research - AIER and a Freedom Conservatism signatory.

Prior to joining AIER, he was a research director at the American Legislative Exchange Council focusing on tax and fiscal policy. He was a co-author of several publications focused on public pensions, public retiree benefits, bonded obligations, tax and expenditure limits, and state taxes.

Savidge has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Orange County Register, Tax Notes, The Washington Post, US News & World Report, The New York Post, and The Daily Caller.

In an AIER article, he reacted to U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley’s recent speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington.

Hawley criticized Republicans and conservatives who champion reductions in corporate taxation. “Their fusionist faith” the senator claimed, can be summed up as “money first, people last.”

Savidge rejected Hawley’s framing of the issue as entirely disconnected from the realities of economic growth and opportunity. When companies seek to earn a profit on their owners’ investment, that produces real and tangible benefits for consumers and workers, too.

Rather than follow Hawley’s populist prescriptions, we should “scale down” American government, Savidge wrote. That means “reducing spending” to head off “high tax rates and unsustainable debt growth that plagues us as well as our children and grandchildren.

“Reining in the Federal Reserve — so that it focuses solely on controlling the money supply instead of credit allocation, social policy, or environmental policy — will help stop the rapid erosion of the dollar’s value. Shrinking the federal code of regulations (which currently regulates everything under the sun) removes barriers for Americans looking for work.

“Look at results, not intentions.”

You can read more about Savidge and other FreeCon signatories here: https://www.freedomconservatism.org/p/wrong-way

24/07/2024

Returning America to her foundations.

The America First PlanPresident Donald J. Trump, Lion-hearted defender of the American nation.Twenty Republican Points to Make America Great AgainOn July 15, the Republican Party Convention, meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, passed and published its 2024 Republican Platform. The Republican Platform o...

24/07/2024

Jessica Melugin is director of the Center for Technology & Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. She’s also a Freedom Conservatism signatory.

Melugin’s research focuses on technology issues including antitrust, online privacy, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, social media content and net neutrality regulation.

Her writings have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, USA Today, Bloomberg Law, National Review and elsewhere. She has been cited in The Washington Post, Politico, U.S. News & World Report and Variety. She is also a frequent cable news television and radio guest.

In a recent Washington Examiner piece, Melugin discussed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to send the NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice cases back to lower federal courts.

Both involved attempted by Republican-led states — Texas and Florida, respectively — to regulate editorial decisions by online platforms.

While issuing no sweeping ruling on the constitutionality of such regulations, the high court’s majority signaled major concerns about them. The “editorial judgments” of social-media companies are “protected expressive activity,” the majority wrote.

“It remains to be seen,” Melugin concluded, “if state legislators will pass new laws in attempts to accomplish their ends but not run afoul of the First Amendment protections the Supreme Court warned of.”

In another recent article, this one for National Review, she wrote that the Biden administration’s plan to investigate artificial-intelligence companies will hamper American industry in global competition.

“Antitrust regulators now believe they can scrutinize U.S. firms even in markets that are competitive and are in no danger of ceasing to be,” Melugin wrote, but they have “an especially poor record of predicting the future when it comes to the technology sector.”

You can read more about Melugin and other FreeCons here: https://www.freedomconservatism.org/p/wrong-way

17/07/2024

A Failing Grade on TruthMost of the media and political commentary, especially since the June 27 Biden-Trump debate, has focused on President Biden’s mental competence. This is indeed extremely important. Moreover, there is a vast record of previous television and video material over the last seve...

09/07/2024

Many EU and NATO Leaders Horrified that Putin ConsultedOn July 5, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban traveled to Moscow and spoke with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin on possible solutions to ending the Ukraine conflict. Two and a half years of war have devastated the Ukrainian econom...

05/07/2024

Free societies are never comfortably safe. Neither are planned societies, by the way, despite the promises of those who seek to plan them.

03/07/2024

Huge Ukrainian Losses Changing Outlook Ukrainian President Volodymyr ZelenskyOn June 15-16, Switzerland hosted a global Peace Summit for Ukraine. Russia was not invited and because of that many countries declined to attend. The absent list included China, India, and many other great powers. Volodymy...

30/06/2024

On this date in 1905, the editors of the prestigious German journal Annalen der Physik (Annals of Physics) received a paper entitled “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.” It postulated what became known as special relativity, which describes the relationship of space and time under the constraint that the speed of light is constant to all observers. The paper, published three months later, was the work of an assistant examiner at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern who was also completing his graduate studies at the time.

Here’s one takeaway from the story: always be open to new ideas from improbable sources. You might just stumble across the next Albert Einstein.

26/06/2024

Tom Giovanetti is president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a conservative, free-market public policy research organization based in Dallas, Texas. He’s also a Freedom Conservatism signatory.

Giovanetti speaks and writes often on such topics as taxes, self-government and the Founders' design, civil liberties, judicial supremacy, intellectual property, Social Security personal accounts, and technology policy.

In addition to being published regularly in major outlets such as the Washington Times and FoxNews.com, he has a regular column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

In a recent piece, Giovanetti took federal politicians to task for failing to get the federal budget under control.

The United States is facing a fiscal crisis, and everyone knows it,” he wrote. “Social Security will become insolvent in nine years, forcing a 23% cut in benefits if nothing else is done.

“Social Security and Medicare shortfalls are responsible for 97% of projected budget deficits over the next 30 years. Unless the nation reforms the programs, we face more than $100 trillion in budget deficits that will drive interest on the national debt to unserviceable levels.

“Our Congress and presidents refuse to make the hard choices, establish priorities and deal with the known knowns. And future generations — the next generation — will judge them for it.”

You’ll find a link to Giovanetti’s column and other FreeCon commentaries here: https://www.freedomconservatism.org/p/message-mavens

26/06/2024

After careful study of the underlying philosophical concepts and a series of complicated regression analyses, I have constructed a model for explaining the political divide: when informed of the outrages of the Big Bad Wolf against the Three Little Pigs, the Right thinks about assembling a posse — and recruiting a Bigger, Badder Wolf to lead it — while Left thinks about writing a new building code.

25/06/2024

The shameful truth about Project Ukraine

Plans for “Decolonization” of the Russian FederationNovosibirsk, Siberia - 1.6 million population, 94% Russian.The major and scandalously dishonest propaganda theme of the lawless Biden regime and its Deepstate, NATO, and Western establishment-media allies has been that the Russian invasion of U...

25/06/2024

Nathan Benefield is the Senior Vice President at the Pennsylvania-based Commonwealth Foundation and a Freedom Conservatism signatory.

He was written extensively on public policy issues including the state budget, public sector labor reform, government spending and taxes, liquor privatization, education, and economic development.

Under Benefield’s leadership, the Commonwealth Foundation’s work on public sector pension law helped drive the bipartisan pension reform of 2017, heralded by the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post as an example for other states to follow.

He’s testified numerous times before state legislative committees and is a frequent broadcast commentator. His writings have appeared in such outlets as the Philadelphia Inquirer and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

In a recent appearance on TV station WPMT, Benefield argued that a parental-choice program under consideration by the Pennsylvania legislature could address a court ruling that requires the state to redress inequities in school funding.

“That ruling was saying that every student must have a meaningful opportunity to succeed in education,” he said. “You can’t just do that by saying ‘Hey, we'll give you more money but you have to go to the same failing school that's failing over and over again.’”

You can read more about Benefield and other FreeCon signatories here: https://www.freedomconservatism.org/p/message-mavens

24/06/2024

Patrick Gleason is director of state affairs at Americans for Tax Reform, a Washington-based advocacy and policy research organization founded by Grover Norquist in 1985 at the request of President Ronald Reagan.

A Freedom Conservatism signatory, Gleason serves as a Senior Fellow on Tax Reform at the Beacon Center of Tennessee and works closely with other pro-freedom organizations across the country.

He’s a regular contributor to Reuters, Forbes, and the Orange County Register, and has also been published in The Economist, Politico, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and San Diego Union-Tribune, among others.

In a recent Asheville Citizen Times op-ed, Gleason praised the North Carolina legislature for blocking municipal bans or regulations on the private use of disposable plastic bags.

Pointing to a failed ban in New Jersey, he pointed out that “reusable shopping bags must be used 11-59 times to have a net environmental benefit, but in practice the vast majority of people only use them 2-3 times.”

Such regulations impose “new costs” that “effectively act as a regressive tax hike,” he concluded, and may well do “more environmental harm than good.”

You’ll find more information about Gleason and other FreeCons here: https://www.freedomconservatism.org/p/message-mavens

23/06/2024

Today is the 710th anniversary of the start of the battle of Bannockburn, where Robert the Bruce led Scottish forces to victory over English King Edward II.

From the immortal words of Walter Scott:

“The aspiring Noble bled for fame,
The Patriot for his country’s claim;
This Knight his youthful strength to prove,
And that to win his lady’s love;
Some fought from ruffian thirst of blood,
From habit some, or hardihood.
But ruffian stern, and soldier good,
The noble and the slave,
From various cause the same wild road,
On the same bloody morning, trode,
To that dark inn, the grave!”

21/06/2024

Today’s wisdom from Camillo di Cavour: “Leadership is not about dictating to others, but about inspiring and empowering them.”

20/06/2024

Freedom Conservatism signatories Jim Martin and Saulius Saul Anuzis serve as chairman and president, respectively, of the 60 Plus Association, which gives a voice to seniors who believe in market-based solutions, freedom of speech, and limited but effective government.

60 Plus is active on such issues as protecting Social Security and Medicare, ensuring access to quality medical care, lowering taxes, and promoting energy production.

A former TV reporter and U.S. Marine, Jim Martin worked as a chief of staff on Capitol Hill before helping to organize and direct such organizations as the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) and the Public Service Research Council.

Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, has worked in business and politics for many decades. He held positions on Capitol Hill, in presidential campaigns, and at GOP campaign committees for the U.S. House and Senate.

In a recent Jacksonville Journal Courier op-ed, Anuzis argued that the Biden administration’s flawed health-care policies were hurting American seniors.

“Medicare premiums will almost certainly get even more expensive as the administration's new policies take full effect,” he wrote. “One analysis projects a staggering increase of nearly 50% next year.”

You can read more about their fellow FreeCon signatories here: https://www.freedomconservatism.org/p/active-voice

19/06/2024

Ashley Baker is the director of public policy at the Committee for Justice. Her focus areas include the Supreme Court, technology, and regulatory policy.

A Freedom Conservatism signatory and expert on judicial confirmations, Baker worked closely on the efforts to confirm Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. She’s also an active member of the Federalist Society, where she serves as a member of the Regulatory Transparency Project’s Cyber & Privacy working group.

Baker’s writing has appeared in Fox News, USA Today, The Boston Globe, The Hill, RealClearPolitics, and elsewhere.

In a recent coalition letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Baker joined other conservatives in challenging Biden administration attempts to evade a congressional prohibition against regulating the price of broadband services.

“Despite clear legislative intent, we have observed a troubling trend where pressure is being placed on states to impose such regulations. That not only undermines the law, but also disrupts the established regulatory framework intended by Congress.”

You can read more about Baker and other FreeCons here: https://www.freedomconservatism.org/p/active-voice