How would you say, through your efforts with the John Locke Foundation and now with the John William Pope Foundation, that the needle has moved toward liberty in North Carolina over the last few decades?

Well, it has particularly evident in the last 20 years or so.

The John Locke Foundation opened its doors in 1990, so you can do the math and figure out it's been around for a while.

It took several years to really figure out what we were doing and who our audience was and what our theory of change was.

All nonprofit organizations, all causes of any kind, need a theory of change.

If I do X, I have a reasonable expectation that that will cause Y.

And if Y happens, then Z happens, and Z is our goal, right? So whether you're trying to help kids not be illiterate or whether you're trying to cure cancer or whether you're trying to elect a candidate or whatever you're trying to do, you need a theory of change.

So tell us why you feel so strongly about this, and tell us more about what you're seeing from these national conservatives and post-liberals.

Right

... not as if the, the predominant sentiment of people who are leaving Illinois to come to North Carolina is let's, let's recreate Chicago and Charlotte.

I mean, that's not really what most of them want.

Some of them might want that, but most of them don't.

But that doesn't mean that we don't have to be vigilant about this.

We have to have policies that not only make the Carolinas attractive and people can move into them, but also illustrate the value that is, uh, that citizens, citizens receive from the services that, that they get.

It isn't the case that people are just looking for a, a place that has no government or that has no services.

Right.

John, you're up.

Well, thank you very much, Henry and Josh.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today and talk a little bit about the past, present, and future of American conservatism.

I got involved in the movement in the 1980s, the tail end of the Reagan era, and spent many decades running organizations, funding organizations, building organizations, and training people.

And there has never been a moment when everyone agreed on every aspect of what it meant to be an American conservative, much less going international and trying to come up with some sort of non-country specific definition of conservatism, which I think is probably doomed to futility.

So just in the case of American conservatism, I would submit that you cannot have an American conservative movement that is not dedicated to freedom.

That doesn't mean it isn't dedicated to more than freedom, because of course it is, and freedom and virtue are essential to the success of the American project and to the success of a conservative movement.

I think that was really also heavily ingrained in our culture and in our politics.