Fusionism in the Twenty-First Century

Stephanie Slade’s new book, Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right, makes the case that the political philosophy that defined much of the post-War American Right should continue to guide the American conservative movement in the twenty-first century. As my recent essay on postliberalism suggests, I largely agree with Slade. Fusionism is a better path for American conservatism than postliberalism or populist nationalism.

Last week, Civitas Outlook hosted a symposium on Slade’s book. Here is the description:

Civitas Outlook presents the Fusion Symposium featuring commentaries from five noted authors and editors on Stephanie Slade’s new book, Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right. This book highlights the fundamental ethos of postwar American conservatism that Frank Meyer articulated as an editor at National Review. This ethos rooted virtue in human freedom, the fundamental condition of man, but freedom was not an end. Meyer stated that our choices must seek the end of truth and the ennobling of the human person. Meyer argued in the 1960s that

We are today historically in a situation created by thirty years of slow and insidious revolution at home and a half century of violent open revolution abroad. To conserve the true and the good under these circumstances is to restore an understanding (and a social structure reflecting that understanding) which has been all but buried; it is not to preserve the transient customs and prescriptions of the present.

But Meyer did not look to the federal government’s power to reestablish the “true and the good.” He said that “The decisive criterion of any political order is the degree to which it establishes conditions of freedom.” That freedom is meant to choose the cardinal and theological virtues. But, virtue, Meyer says, “is not a political problem, it is not the concern of the state.” Freedom is “only a condition of that end, which is virtue.” We begin to see that fusionism is much more than an old political coalition and is pivotal to American conservatism.

Contributions to the symposium are:

• Elizabeth Corey, Fusion: Power Is Not the Last Word;

• Richard Morrison, What Fusion Will We Build;

• Paul Mueller, Recovering Fusionism;

• Veronique de Rugy, Fusionism and the Moral Prerequisites of Citizenship;

• Paul Seaton, The Bifurcated Fusionist Regime.

For more on the book, and why Fusionism remains relevant today, you can also check out this interview with Slade by James Patterson on Law & Liberty.

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