The 2025 "Freedom & Progress" Conference
FREOPP's marquee event, taking place November 21 in Washington DC, will seek to change the way advocates of free enterprise think about advancing our cause.
FREOPP will hold our marquee event of the year, our “Freedom & Progress” Conference, on November 21 at the beautiful Conrad Hotel in Washington, DC. You can see more details about the event and register to join us here.
This year’s conference takes place amidst great uncertainty for those of us who believe in the nation’s founding principles and their ability to uplift every American. America is not just facing social and economic challenges; those challenges are driving anger, division, distrust, and even violence.
As I wrote when I first became President of FREOPP six months ago, many (though not all) of the problems that proponents of ideas like “democratic socialism” or “national conservative” economic populism lament have been properly identified. But often, their proponents blame the wrong culprits and propose solutions that would make things worse rather than better.
One of the primary goals of “Freedom & Progress” 2025 will be to answer this challenge for our movement: acknowledging where problems have been rightly identified (economic, social, or cultural), and advance the conversation toward solutions based in free enterprise and individual freedom.
The conference will open with a main-stage plenary conversation with three thought leaders uniquely positioned to address this question as it pertains to young Americans and their skepticism of free-market capitalism:
Patrick Ruffini, Founding Partner at Echelon Insights, has researched, polled, and written extensively about the forces and frustrations driving the rise of populism on the right and the resulting political realignment, including in his 2023 book, “Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP.”
Daniel DiMartino, a Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has written and spoken to countless young people about the horrors of socialism - knowledge based both on his personal experience fleeing Venezuela, as well as researching the topic as a PhD candidate in Economics at Columbia University.
And Stephen Hawkins, Global Research Director for More in Common, is conducting one-of-a-kind voter segmentation analysis to identify areas of misperception and common ground between seemingly disparate groups.
All three will have unique insights about what’s driving sentiments among young Americans, and how defenders of the free market should address them.
You can see the entire “Freedom & Progress” agenda here (note that some speakers and topics are still being added). In addition to the main-stage plenary above, you’ll see breakout panel sessions and working groups on a litany of subjects for which defenders of free enterprise must have answers, but too often go undiscussed in our circles. These include:
Strengthening Families, Communities, and the Culture through the Free Market
Restoring Equal Opportunity in a Post-DEI America
Making the Moral and Strategic Case for Free Trade
We’ll also dive deep into specific policies that significantly impact upward mobility for Americans below the median wealth or income - and which, in many cases, are major drivers of frustration with capitalism. Issues like:
A Free-Market Path to Low-Cost, High-Quality Health Care for All
Breaking Barriers to Housing Supply and Mobility
Welfare Reform and the Success Sequence: Helping Achieve the Path to Prosperity
Finally, we’ll highlight more than just policy thought leaders. We are also bringing real-world practitioners who are actually advancing private sector innovations, so policymakers can hear lessons from on the ground, outside the Beltway. These topics include:
What Lawmakers Can Learn from Civil Society’s Child Welfare Successes
Non-college Pathways to Prosperity in a Free Economy
After ESAs: The Next Wave of Education Innovation
The conversations at “Freedom & Progress” promise to be different than any that have taken place at like-minded events before. This is not only because many of the issues are different, but also because the landscape on these issues is shifting every single day, in many instances, right up until the point at which we will convene on November 21st at the Conrad Hotel.
You can register for the event here. I hope you’ll be there to join in the discussion.
In freedom,
Akash Chougule, President