Finally, conservatives have freed themselves from neoliberalism, or so one might say after last month's National Conservatism Conference in Washington D.C., in which conservatism's independence from libertarianism and classical liberalism was declared. Indeed, for many of the speakers, the three-day event was, in the words of Oliver Wiseman, “as much about owning the libertarians as it was ‘owning the libs'.”
I won't go through the core conclusions of the conference, which have been analyzed possibly a gazillion times since. Rather, I want to look at two separate yet similar speeches of the conference — one, titled Beyond Libertarianism, by Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance, the other by Mary Eberstadt, a former Senior Fellow of the EPPC — as they give insight to some of the core ideas of “national conservatism” and its opposition to the principles of individual liberty and free-market capitalism.
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