America’s think tank

American Experiment represents American conservatism.

American conservatism is different from European conservatism in that every variety of American conservatism includes a healthy dose of libertarianism. Pretty much all American conservatives revere Milton Friedman and his like in the world of policy, and Ronald Reagan in the world of politics.

But today, there is little doubt that populism is the strongest trend in American conservatism. Some see that populist movement, with Donald Trump its most notable exponent, as a threat to the libertarian core of American conservatism. At a minimum, many see libertarianism and populism as opposite poles that, today, are in tension.

I couldn’t disagree more. Center of the American Experiment has been dubbed America’s first populist think tank, a characterization in which I take pride. I don’t believe that the conservative movement can ultimately win unless we are able to fuse these allegedly disparate elements, so that we are both libertarian and populist.

Stylistically, American Experiment strives to speak to all the people of Minnesota and North Dakota. Traditionally, policy organizations have viewed “thought leaders” as their principal audience. Thought leaders include academics, journalists, and politicians. But appealing to this narrow audience won’t change the civic culture of a state like Minnesota. To bring about real change, we have to reach the people and educate them about conservative solutions.

At American Experiment, we do this in many ways. We don’t just write papers and op-eds, we erect billboards. We are active every day on social media. We have five chapters in Greater Minnesota, and sponsor, on average, more than one live event per week. We turn our messages into radio ads and make countless guest appearances on television and local radio programs. We use our podcast and multimedia clips to reach, sometimes, hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans and North Dakotans. We reach more than 200,000 Minnesotans twice a week through our emails. We attend the State Fair and Farmfest. And, while our policy positions are always grounded in data, we try to present them in ways that are accessible to everyone, not just policy wonks.

But populism is a matter of substance, too: It is reflected in the issues we address and how we address them. Crime is a good example. Historically, conservative policy organizations have not dealt with public safety. To the extent that they have written and talked about law enforcement, it has usually been from a libertarian perspective, advocating for criminal justice reform, which in practice amounts to releasing convicted criminals from prison, and opposing civil asset forfeiture.

But no one is lying awake at night worrying about civil asset forfeiture. It is crime that is of deep concern to many millions of Americans. So, unlike most think tanks, we have a policy fellow who specializes in public safety and criminal justice who spent 33 years in the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department, rising to a senior level in that agency. We are unabashedly on the side of law enforcement and opposed to crime. Some see this as a non-libertarian, or anti-libertarian, stance, but we disagree. We care about the elderly woman who doesn’t dare walk down the street in her neighborhood. How about her liberty?

Unlike some on the libertarian right, we don’t fear the current wave of populism that is influencing the conservative movement. On the contrary: We believe that, for the conservative movement ultimately to win, a pure libertarianism is not enough. We need to harness populist energy and combine it with data-driven policy solutions rooted in the commitment to freedom that is the essence of America’s founding. That is what we at American Experiment try to do every day.