It’s amusing to see how the Jonah Goldbergs of the world still not only think that National Review conservatives matter, but that they’re on the right track for the future.
The purpose of FreeCon 2025 was to defend and renew the principles of 20th century movement conservatism, particularly the approach adopted by Buckley and laid out in the Sharon Statement of 1960. The movement is reactionary in the literal sense—a response to the growing intellectual influence of populism and postliberalism on the American right and the concomitant question of old conservative pieties of free markets, free trade, the separation of church and state, the status of civil rights, and the proper use of state power.
These are questions that the Freedom Conservatives are ill-equipped to answer, if FreeCon is any guide. How did fusionism fall out of favor so rapidly—reduced from a powerful guiding force in Republican party politics to an intellectual backwater out of favor even among conservatives? This was at least partly the subject of one of the panels, the discussion between Goldberg and Will. Goldberg obligingly laid out one potential argument for the precipitous decline in factional fortunes: It is the result of failures by successive Republican administrations after the end of the Cold War, as attempts to lower trade barriers with Mexico and China destroyed American jobs and the communities of the industrial heartlands while a limp, overly libertarian response to social issues left families vulnerable to decay and disintegration.
Is that where our intrepid mastodons think things went so wrong? To the contrary—in fact, nothing went wrong at all. “I don’t think conservatives made any mistakes in the postwar era,” said Will. The loss of jobs to Mexico and China were the natural results of the free market, and so must be considered a good thing. As for social issues, Goldberg argued that the fusionists did take action—by publishing articles in National Review. Having gotten the self-absolutions out of the way in record time, Will and Goldberg turned the rest of the discussion over to critiquing the excesses of various non-fusionist groups.
A central element of the conference was a basic inability to come to grips with the political reality of the United States in 2025. Not only did the speakers conclude that fusion conservatism did nothing wrong in its journey to the fringes of the American right; they concluded that most Americans are actually fusionists in ignorance. How convenient! From what they read in the polling data, Americans agree with them on the issues already. They want lower taxes, smaller government, more power to the states! They want freedom and equal opportunity! Isn’t this what conservatism has always been about? The problem, one panel discussing the issue concluded, was that Americans simply didn’t realize that fusionism is what they really want. With just a little better messaging, a more extensive campaign to get FreeCon principles in front of the American people, and (inevitably) stronger outreach to Latinos, the American people will come to their senses once again.
Easily the most bizarre moment of the conference was an interview with Kay Coles James, the former head of the Heritage Foundation. James—a black woman—looked out on the almost uniformly white audience and proclaimed joyously that “in 30 years, people of color will run America.” Cue a few awkward chuckles from the seats.
This demographic change, she said, necessitates a new, grand strategy from conservatives, Joy argued. Conservatives must recognize racism in America and promise to put an end to it by providing equal opportunity. By 2040, minorities will be a majority of the American population, so, she warned, conservatives had better inform those minorities that we care about them and dedicate American resources to prepare them for the mantle of leadership which will inevitably be theirs.
She had been terribly disappointed, she recalled, that conservatives had not seized the moment after George Floyd’s death to make their case against racism to the American people. “Regardless of what the hard statistics were,” Republicans should have taken the opportunity to tell minorities “we hear you and understand you” instead of allowing Black Lives Matter to take leadership of the movement. Likewise, James argued, conservatives should have claimed DEI, but with “equal opportunity” in place of “equity.”
“I don’t know anybody in this room who doesn’t disagree with the idea that diversity makes things better,” she said.
Due to its unprincipled and non-ideological devotion to defense, Buckleyite conservativism was always a loser’s strategy. But their embrace of neoconservatism and its globalist imperialism was the deal with the Devil that secured their eventual descent into complete irrelevance and open anti-Christianity.
When you haven’t conserved so much as the ladies room and you find yourself writing articles attempting to make the conservative case for satanic self-mutilation in the name of a psychological disorder while playing second fiddle to diversities blathering about the supreme importance of even more diversity, you should probably rethink your principled lack of principles.
DISCUSS ON SG
