The Chief is with us today, editor Rusty Reno, to discuss an issue raised in this month's

Public Square. Welcome, Rusty. We'll get right to it. Yes, I am the chief, the boss, the Hefe.

Yes, sir. Now, you start in the public square, this time, It is an entry entitled Free and Conservative.

You start by citing something called freedom, conservatism, which aims to be a movement.

What is it?

Well, it's a group. I think Avic Roy is one of the organizers, I think they want to push back against

the trend in the Republican Party towards more populist politics.

And so it's a, I think, a pretty straightforward restatement of, updated statement of kind

of Reagan- era principles.

Well, these people, I mean, first of all,

I would say the populist movement,

and we'll just say, you know,

Trump is the figurehead,

at least for most of the supporters of that,

it certainly has a tremendous amount of energy, drive, commitment.

Now, we can think of negative names for it, idolatry, right, zealousness.

But given the energy that the left has from its woke base, what is wrong in the freedom conservatives figures?

What is wrong with the populist conservatism orientation?

Well, as I see populism, I mean, it's a kind of amorphous word,

but in the present moment, whether it's in Europe or the United States,

it is a protest against what I call the open society consensus.

And it's a rebellion of voters against the disillusion or the

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