This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Saturday, August 3rd, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

National conservatism, known also as conservative nationalism,

represents a shift by some conservative intellectuals away from free markets and a diverse cultural landscape and toward industrial policy protectionism and a somewhat more homogenous national culture.

Cato's Aaron Powell and Reason magazine managing editor Stephanie Slade

discuss the implications of this new conservative nationalism.

Yeah, well I think that this sort of nationalist conservatism, it represents a rejection of, you know, if you think of the conservative movement for many decades, you know, as epitomized by Ronald Reagan as being a three-legged stool, and one of those

legs was free markets and free trade. This is a rejection of that, a complete, you know,

dismantling of that stool and burning of that leg of the stool.

They are generally endorsing and calling for more trade protectionism, more tariffs, more what they, the phrase that's often used as industrial policy, so more tax dollars going to prop up American businesses including, you know, and especially with a focus on

manufacturing and industry because they are they tend to be very troubled by the

idea of America losing its sort of edge in that in that sphere and they're willing to

redistribute wealth as needed to try to resuscitate that sector. So there's a

lot of it's a lot of big government and government sort of

intervention is federal government even intervention into the economy.

Is what's driving this then that conservatives have seen a lot of what they've been pitching for the

last few decades just not really jelling well with a good portion of Americans or is it is I hate to think that

this might be a principled stance because I don't think that it is but what's driving it?

Yeah I do think I do think that know, I don't want to minimize the real phenomenon that some of these people are reacting to.

So one of the big personalities at this conference and is sort of part of this movement is J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elgy.

And he points out that like the opioid crisis is real and there are people who are dying and there are

parts of the country geographically speaking where entire towns, you know, sort of one-shop towns,

...