A nation that makes greatness its polestar can never be free. ~Abraham Bishop National conservatism is the new hot political topic. Following a July 14–16 conference in DC that was part intellectual movement building, part political strategy session, many commenters speculated about what this meeting portends for the future of American conservatism. The program at this conference differs significantly from your grandfather’s conservatism. National conservatives are quickly distancing themselves from the older conservatism in several important ways. First, national conservatives are much more willing to question the efficacy and desirability of markets in allocating a nation’s resources. Oren Cass, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, argued that “market economies do not automatically allocate resources well across sectors” and that “policymakers have tools that can support vital sectors that might otherwise suffer from underinvestment,” namely industrial policy. This entails wide-ranging federal programs that subsidize research and development, increase infrastructure investment, and impose “local content requirements in key supply chains like communications,” among other interventions. Not all conference attendees were on board with this kind of …