The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship

“This day we fight, we build, we create, we speak truth. I bid you ladies and gentlemen of the West, stand.” Baroness Stroud’s inspiring closing remarks at ARC 2026. Today, we laid out a hope-filled vision for what The Age of Reconstruction will look like. Leading voices gathered this year at a crucial time, not to complain, but to create a pathway to rebuilding our civilisation. Till next year, at ARC 2027!

The EU in 2027 will spend $0.8 trillion on education and $1.26 trillion on health, while Net Zero will cost $3.3 trillion In his ARC 2026 keynote, @BjornLomborg explained the ways in which current climate policies are driving up energy prices and reducing the availability of energy, costing us huge amounts of money while having little to no impact on tackling climate change. He calls for a change in mindset, to pursue the energy abundance that leads to economic growth and technological innovation — which will ultimately help us solve the problem of climate change. Watch the full keynote:

"We're spending $16 billion a year of taxpayers' money to subsidise multinational corporations to look after our children." At ARC 2026, Australian Senator @senbmckenzie argued that the West has quietly institutionalised childhood, paying corporations to raise the next generation while penalising the mothers who would rather be home. Her proposal: give that money to families instead and let them choose, because raising a child, she said, is not a factory production line. Watch Bridget McKenzie's full conversation from ARC 2026:

“Work is our ability to create something of value and to enjoy it.” At ARC 2026, Bayer CEO Bill Anderson argued that work is meant to be an expression of human creativity, not something buried beneath layers of bureaucracy. Instead of more hierarchy, he calls for organisations built around trust, mission and empowered teams. Watch the full keynote from ARC 2026:

“If we see human beings as meaningless, we will build systems that treat them as worthless.” Sculptor @SabinHoward argues that the decline of beauty in art reflects a deeper civilisational crisis: we've forgotten what it means to be human. His answer isn't simply to criticise modern culture. It's to build something better. Watch his full keynote from ARC 2026:

"Six hundred years ago, most people knew who they were. Today, many of us no longer can answer that question." At ARC 2026, Carl Trueman traced the cultural shift that moved identity from something we inherited to something we are expected to invent—and why that change lies behind many of the deepest crises facing the West today. Watch the full talk from ARC 2026:

“Young women have become something more like products rather than people.” At ARC 2026, @freyaindiaa , @TimSamuels , @gerardgholland and @robkhenderson explored the crisis facing young men and women, arguing that as family, faith and community have weakened, many young people have been left searching for identity, purpose and belonging in all the wrong places. Watch the full panel from ARC 2026:

"Everyone wants to build the Grail. Almost nobody asks: 'Whom does the Grail serve?'" @PageauJonathan on AI, technology, ancient myths, and why becoming more human, not more machine, is the real challenge ahead. Watch his full keynote:

"How do we sustain a shared understanding of truth when the production of knowledge and persuasion is increasingly automated?" @YemiOsinbajoVP , former Vice President of Nigeria, warned at ARC 2026 that democracy rests on a shared sense of what is true, and that as AI learns to manufacture knowledge and persuasion at scale, that common ground is the first thing at risk. Watch Yemi Osinbajo's full speech from ARC 2026.

"Societies that become unsafe for Jews will eventually become unsafe for everybody else." At ARC 2026, @RickEkstein told how his eight-year-old mother was smuggled out of the ghetto in a sack of potatoes by a Christian who risked his life, and how his aunt was saved by Oskar Schindler. Eighty years on, with antisemitism rising again across the West, he argued that whether a civilisation still defends human dignity is the test of whether it has learned anything at all. Watch Rick Ekstein's full speech from ARC 2026:

"The story isn't that women are victims of the West. The story is that they are the ones being called to save it." A West Point paratrooper turned psychologist who has counselled special forces veterans and worked with survivors of Russian atrocities in Ukraine, @mobbs_mentality used her ARC 2026 address to take apart the idea that the West is uniquely cruel to women, and to argue the reverse: the freedoms women enjoy are rare, fragile, and theirs to defend. Watch Meaghan Mobbs' full speech from ARC 2026:

"What I see in this world is a coalition between capital and the state to impose an ideology that's never achieved democratic consent." @MrWinMarshall is joined by former WEF adviser @desireefixler , @WillHild and Maurice Glasman for a conversation on ESG, corporate power and free enterprise. Watch the full panel:

"Young people today have a counterfeit formula for the good life: love things, use people, worship yourself." At ARC 2026, Arthur Brooks argued that the West's deepest crisis is not political but a crisis of meaning, and that a generation raised online has inherited exactly the wrong formula for a good life. His fix reverses it completely, and it's simple enough to live by. Watch @arthurbrooks full speech from ARC 2026.

"Have more kids, and sooner than you think you're ready to. Be young and poor together." At ARC 2026, @JohnPapola argued that the West will be rebuilt or lost in the family, and urged young people to start one sooner than they feel ready, so their children grow up sharing rooms and building bonds that are hard to break. Watch John Papola's full speech from ARC 2026.

"75 people at Politico signed a letter saying I shouldn't call the mullahs aggressors. So I held an all-hands and said: you're right. I should have called them mass murderers and terrorists." Mathias Döpfner runs Axel Springer, the empire behind Politico, Business Insider, Bild and Die Welt. At ARC 2026 he was unapologetic: journalism that pretends to be neutral is lying, and a newsroom should know exactly what it stands for. Watch Mathias Döpfner's full conversation from ARC 2026.

"There's this extraordinary ideology that says it's terrible for us to use our own gas from the North Sea, but completely fine to import the very same gas from Norway." @ClaireCoutinho ran Britain's energy department, so she saw this from the inside: a country that has stopped drilling for its own gas, is losing a thousand jobs a month in places like Aberdeen, and imports dirtier energy to replace it, all in the name of the climate. Watch Claire Coutinho's full interview with Chris Uhlmann from ARC 2026.

Responsible Citizens, Rising - @Terrence_Keeley on @ARC_Conference realclearpolitics.com/articles/2026/… "Members of the ARC community don’t think in terms of right and left, or red and blue. We prize right versus wrong and common sense, especially as it relates to the common good. "

@Ayaan Hirsi Ali fled communism and Islamism. When she first arrived in the West, she discovered freedoms she'd never experienced before. In this ARC 2026 conversation with @KonstantinKisin , she explains why those freedoms should never be taken for granted.

"The values that built the West have never been forgotten in Africa." @MmusiMaimane on why Africa is not simply the future of economic growth, but may also become the strongest voice for the values that shaped Western civilisation. Watch his full ARC 2026 address.

"Energy is life. Energy is the economy. Energy is national security." - @SecretaryWright We were joined by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright at ARC 2026, who shared why he believes affordable, abundant energy is the foundation of prosperity, and why the West is making a historic mistake by shrinking its energy system. Watch his full speech:

How do free societies recover trust when disagreement turns into hostility? @SpeakerJohnson joined @JohnAndersonAC at ARC 2026 to discuss dialogue, democratic institutions, political violence, and the enduring principles behind America's constitutional tradition. Watch the full conversation: