When 'national security' becomes an excuse for big government

This essay is a part of The Right Way Forward, Restoring America’s new think tank debate series in which leading conservative institutions argue the defining questions of the post-Trump era. Read about the series here.

For most of the postwar era, the conservative position on economics was clear enough to fit on a bumper sticker: free markets, free people, free trade. The logic was not merely economic. It was strategic. American prosperity and American power are intertwined. This consensus is now under frontal attack. The so-called “populist” Right is finding common cause with the Old Left; too many conservatives have stopped fighting back.