Fall 2026
The Fire of Economic Freedom
By David Bahnsen
President Reagan discussed the idea that you could build something up over many generations, and it could be lost in one generation. I think we are living in a moment where we cannot take for granted that many people feel that way about the object of that prepositional phrase of freedom.
For us to attempt to parse out why we care about a new birth of freedom is particularly important. As important as I think the written word is, there is a need for this to take shape in what we do when we get out of bed in the morning. There must be a sort of excitement, energy, and optimism about what we are doing.
If you really believe that we are advocating for the truth as I do, we are not merely seeking a new birth of freedom; we are seeking to reignite the American dream.
What do we mean about the American dream? What do we think are the American ideas that sit at the bedrock of that experiment, this incredible birth of a nation? I think that we take for granted that we’re all talking about the same thing. And while there may be different points of emphasis that animate different people in different ways, there still needs to be a shared understanding.
If you peel back the onion of our founding, we get something that never existed in world history. Many elements of our founding did exist in the Anglo world and in some elements of the predecessors to the British Empire. But it is the synthesis of certain elements that makes it uniquely American and speaks to this concept of the American dream that allowed our founders to talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I want to suggest that a synthesis of economic liberty, economic aspiration, and religious liberty represents the core of the American dream. There is a moral foundation undergirding a harmony of economic and civic liberty that gave way to a pioneering spirit. I cannot emphasize enough that if you downplay the economic worldview that was driving the Founding Fathers and the way in which it had to fit into this experiment of the uniquely American ideal, you will miss the point. And I believe we are at risk of this taking place in our very lifetimes.
The pioneering spirit that came out of this synthesis of economic and civic liberty, undergirded by a moral foundation, gave birth to what enabled not only the economic growth of the first and second generations after 1776, but also the very capital and standard of living that we enjoy today. It was a celebration, an approval of aspiration, a want of something better that enabled us to create a better society for all, not merely kings and nobles.
Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton understood that it was vitally important that we have a financial system that encouraged the financing and risk-taking of capital to foster the entrepreneurial spirit. He advocated for the understanding that, if you had a strong degree of trust in your commercial society, you could build on those aspirations at scale.
This presupposes a moral order. You cannot have a society built on trust that is not presupposing some degree of morality. This is what I refer to as the DNA that we continue to benefit from. Even as we get further away from our moral foundation, that ideological DNA was so deep that we continue to benefit from it.
Those who say they value liberty, morality, and the American ideal but leave behind the economic dimension do not understand the internal contradiction. Leaving behind this unique economic freedom and opportunity undermines our standard of living. We say we care about the hopes and dreams of others. This common good requires them to wake up every day with a purpose, and economic liberty and an aspirational society allow that to happen. It facilitates a dynamism in the society that is the greatest thing we’ve ever seen on earth, and it’s a result of this American dream.
When we talk about advocating the cause of human flourishing, or at least optimizing the conditions for such, we want to synthesize the economic, civic, and religious freedoms to function together. What are the uniquely economic elements that are often abandoned or taken for granted that we need to reignite?
First, the essence of understanding a market economy and free enterprise is private property. I use the terms “free enterprise,” “market economy,” and “free society” because I believe those terms capture what we’re defending ideologically. Capitalism – the owning of private property – is an “ism” around one tool. What I am ultimately trying to promote is an aspirational society.
A free and virtuous society with free enterprise and a market economy is much more holistic than this truncated idea of capitalism. When you own things, you have personal skin in the game to steward, honor, and maintain them. There is private ownership of your labor. You can work for a wage you want and not work for a wage you don’t want. When you have capital to offer someone to work, you can offer what you want, and they have the liberty to say yes or no.
This all presupposes ownership. That is not the state, nor is it someone with a monopoly on violence to dictate how resources are allocated. We optimally use our most fruitful and productive resources when we own them. Anyone undermining the concept of private property is not only violating the law of God; they are also violating the very tenets on which our unique American ideals were formed.
Second, we should proudly and knowledgeably celebrate profit motive in a society with private property and free exchange because everybody is winning. The reason to be disdainful of profit motive is if you believe that your profit comes from someone else’s loss. When you go to Starbucks, you part ways with the five bucks for the coffee you want, and they part ways with the coffee they had. Who was the winner and who was the loser in that transaction? State power, confiscation, oppression, and tyranny can alter the landscape; but, in a society with private property and freedom, free transactions grow each other’s objectives. The profit motive by which people build a business with entrepreneurial endeavors feeds the hopes and dreams that promote human flourishing and give us purpose.
Number three: We enjoy a division of labor. You no longer have to work on the family farm or in the local factory. You have your own unique giftedness that is a byproduct of God making you in His image because He loves you and made you different from everybody else. Out of a celebration of a market economy, we can have a division of labor where one person might want to be a teacher, and another might want to start a business. This division of labor and the specialization of our unique gifts, talents, hopes, and dreams are unique to a market economy.
Number four: A market economy fosters innovation and progress. The Industrial Revolution occurred about a hundred years after our nation’s founding, making the great switch from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy. Less than a hundred years later, we began a move to the digital revolution. These transformations share in the creation of more innovation, greater progress, and a higher standard of living for the entire society.
When we say we are against innovation and progress, we are undermining the conditions for human flourishing. We may have sentimental reasons to like A more than B, but we cannot have philosophical reasons for allowing sentiments to get in the way of innovation and progress that drive a higher standard of living for all. This is contra the essence of Marxism – the notion that capital and labor are at odds with one another. Capital feeds opportunities for laborers, and laborers bring their work, talent, and time to the table. They are not against one another; rather, they are aligned. Can people mistreat other people because we live in a fallen world? Yes. Can there be sin, abuse, and fraud? Yes. But the way in which the system is more naturally aligned, eliminating some of the internal struggles, is one of the great beauties of the system.
Number five: The principle of laissez-faire – the basic premise of a hands-off government that need not have an opinion on what you buy or don’t buy. From very large companies to small companies and one-on-one exchanges, the general notion was that free actors are free to reap the rewards and take the risks of their economic decision-making. That freedom creates prosperity.
Number six: Incentives are fundamental to the supply side movement. From the basic beginning of classical economics, we operate off incentives because God equipped human nature with reason and rational faculties. Incentives drive productivity, and disincentives harm it.
Number seven: We have knowledge in time, place, and circumstances that makes us qualified to make decisions that a central planner sitting in D.C. cannot. It’s not just that they shouldn’t or don’t; it’s the fact that they can’t. This was the great contribution of Hayekian thought in the 20th century: the fatal conceit of believing that D.C. could ever have the knowledge necessary to tell a small businessperson in Lakewood, Colorado, what they ought to be doing.
Number eight: We have an economic objective and agenda of addition and multiplication, not subtraction and division. We do not believe in managing an economy by confiscating and redistributing. Our vision of economic growth is taking the raw materials of God’s earth and building them into something more. This is distinctly Christian, and it is a distinctly American understanding of economics.
Number nine: God made us to work. He made us to be economic actors made in His image and likeness. In Genesis 1:26-28, there is a break from the creation account and a stop at verse 25 to set the table for God to get ready to make man and woman. And He said, “Let us make mankind in our image, after our likeness.” This phrase is used four times in two verses, establishing the doctrine of imago Dei.
What does that language refer to? To our capacity to be fruitful and multiply, and to steward over the earth. To rule over it, grow it, build it, and learn how to do things with the raw, unfinished materials of God’s creation so that we can create a better life for ourselves, our families, and for generations to come.
This was what our Founding Fathers understood about economic liberty and aspirational society. This biblical understanding of work is fundamentally an economic and theological concept. We cannot undermine the celebration of free enterprise, the market economy, and human flourishing with advocacy for a big stage of regulation and populist sentiments that interfere with freedom and aspiration.
If we want to preserve freedom and reignite the American Dream, we must celebrate these tenets and understand historically that they were vital to this – the greatest nation on God’s green earth.
David L. Bahnsen is the founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group, a national private wealth management firm with over $10 billion in client assets. Prior to launching The Bahnsen Group, he spent eight years as a managing director at Morgan Stanley and six years as a vice president at UBS. He is consistently named one of the top financial advisors in America by Barron’s, Forbes, and Financial Times. He is the author of several best-selling books, including Crisis of Responsibility: Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and How You Can Cure It (2018), The Case for Dividend Growth: Investing in a Post-Crisis World (2019), There’s No Free Lunch: 250 Economic Truths (2021), and Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life (2024). David’s ultimate passions are his wife of 24 years, Joleen; their children, Mitchell, Sadie, and Graham; and the life they’ve created together on both coasts.