I guess a good place to begin might be just very basically with the phrase national conservatism.

This was a term associated with the inaugural version of the conference, which just happened.

And before we get into a deeper discussion of anything here, I think it might be worth laying out a bit exactly what that refers to. So for a moment, putting

aside the question of what the two of you think national conservatism actually is, how might

the median speaker or attendee at one of these conferences characterize it? What would the elevator

pitch be from a partisan of the new right?

I think one, if you're talking about the participants, meaning, you know, people who are pretty

engaged and probably are following the debates, and they would probably say something like

national conservatism, at least what it isn't, is the same old fusionism, Reaganite conservatism, you know,

free markets, traditional values, and even, you know, there's a critique of foreign policy,

though, a more, you know, a critique of a more neo-conish, aggressive internationalist foreign policy, too.

So they would define it in one sense, I think,

against what had been the prevailing consensus among conservative intellectuals about what

conservatism was. And it's meant to distinguish itself from that. And you can see like four

runners of that in like Sohra Bar Mari's piece against David Frenchism. That kind of against

something I think,

is an important, they're saying this thing has failed and they're trying to chart a different path.

And what it means positively, I think, is still being worked out. But, you know, it's, it's, I would say

in some ways, an intellectual version of Trumpism, which is, you know, untrade, foreign policy, immigration,

so on and so forth. They're hitting like Trumpy themes, even if they don't express themselves

the same way or whatever, but they're kind of entering, you're kind of feeling that populous

space cleared by Trump when he burst through the primaries in 2016. That's right. I would add to it that

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