Frank Meyer

June 15, 2017|Conservatism, exit, Federalism, Frank Meyer, Libertarianism, Nelson Lund, Tradition

Why Federalism Advances Fusionism

I am strong advocate of liberty in society. Nevertheless, I don’t think of myself as a libertarian. First, many libertarians tend to engage in more reasoning from first principles and less reasoning from experience than I think wise. While in general individual freedom in a great social good, it is hard to define a priori the exact boundaries for freedom of a given society.

Moreover, while people do have rights, they also exist at a particular historical time and are to a degree constituted by social traditions. It is not, of course, that all these traditions are excellent and should be retained, but their too rapid elimination on the basis of abstract principles can disorient citizens as well as invite backlash against freedom.

As a result, I have been more attracted over time to “fusionism,” a combination of classical liberalism and traditional conservatism popularized in the modern era by Frank Meyer, which I see as giving a priority to liberty but offering respect for tradition. And tradition and liberty can be complementary as well as in dialectical tension. Under political structures conducive to liberty tradition offers some rough empirical guidance on the appropriate contours of freedom and constraints on imprudent changes during periods of political passion. And it provides a bulwark against destabilizing social change.

And nothing better expresses the essence of fusionism than sound federalism.

June 5, 2017|

Samuel Goldman Responds to His Critics

by Samuel Goldman|

In response to: What Is the Future of Conservatism?

I am grateful to David B. Frisk, John O. McGinnis, Matthew Mitchell, and Richard Samuelson for their generous and thoughtful replies to my Liberty Forum essay. Speaking broadly, we agree that the American Right is in a bad way. We also think it would be a mistake to abandon classical liberal commitments to constitutional government, the distinction between public and private spheres, and free markets. The question is how best to promote them. David Frisk focuses his attention on the unpolitical character of classical liberalism, at least in the version I presented. He suggests that squeamishness about the use of power…

Don’t Take the Benedict Option

by David B. Frisk

Creative Tension, Not Crack-Up

by John O. McGinnis

Samuel Goldman has written a bracing Liberty Forum essay suggesting that the Right side of the political spectrum is split, perhaps hopelessly and irrevocably, between classical liberalism and reaction. The roots of the divide are deep and enduring but what brings the problem into bold relief is our political moment and, above all, the rise…

Freedom Might Well Flourish Even If Conservatives Don’t

by Matthew Mitchell

Samuel Goldman has written a wide-ranging and thought-provoking Liberty Forum essay on the current sorry state of American conservatism. This sorry state is especially sorry for those of us who, like Dr. Goldman, believe that classical liberalism is the best part of American conservatism. It is an assessment, he says in conclusion, which he hopes…

Critiquing the Administrative State Is Natural

by Richard Samuelson

Samuel Goldman has made a stimulating contribution to our political discussions. “What is the Future of Conservatism?” is thoughtful and thought-provoking. In light of the feud between Never Trump conservatives and Trump-supporting conservatives, it is well worth pondering if Goldman is right that we are witnessing a conservative “crack up.” This concern is not new. He…

May 8, 2017|

Don’t Take the Benedict Option

by David B. Frisk|

In response to: What Is the Future of Conservatism?

Professor Goldman begins his Liberty Forum essay by urging a striking, but probably unworkable, reconception of the fundamental divide in conservative ranks. Rather than “the familiar distinctions between libertarianism and traditionalism, neoconservatism and paleoconservatism,” he proposes, it’s a conflict between “liberalism and reaction.” Reaction—meaning reactionary politics such as Trumpism—is, according to Goldman, not easily compatible with classical liberalism. So the people who have been known as conservatives are splitting in two, as Never Trumpers roundly reject the style, and much of the content, of our new President’s politics. They are choosing to stick with limited government, constitutionalism, and—here Goldman makes one…

The End of Conservative Ideology?

by Donald Devine|

11/18/1986-Washington, D.C.-: President Reagan talks with William F. Buckley, Jr. prior to a dinner honoring the latter.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s conquest of the Republican presidential nomination, many wise critics have concluded that the old Buckley-Reagan conservative ideology is dead. The paradoxical reply: It is not dead because the original was not an ideology.

That declaration had always annoyed me in my younger days, when William F. Buckley, Jr. would ceaselessly insist that conservatism was not ideological.

Sure it was. What did Buckley himself write in his Up from Liberalism (1959) about the essence of conservatism? Its principles were set forth therein as “freedom, individuality, the sense of community, the sanctity of the family, the supremacy of conscience, the spiritual view of life,” a strong defense—and all were meaningful “in proportion as political power is decentralized.”

May 20, 2015|Charles C. W. Cooke, Frank Meyer, Ronald Reagan, William Buckley

The Enduring Tension That Is Modern Conservatism

by Donald Devine|

(Copyright Bettmann/Corbis / AP Images)

The modern conservative movement was born in 1955 bearing a revealing quirk.

March 9, 2015|Classical Liberalism, Federalism, Frank Meyer, traditional conservatism

Fusionism and Federalism

by John O. McGinnis|

I spent the weekend at an excellent conference on the work of Frank S. Meyer, a leading post-war thinker of the right. His major effort has generally been called fusionism –an attempt to marry classical liberalism and traditional conservatism. But he himself did not claim the term “fusionism”: that was a label others affixed. He saw himself as revealing the complementary nature of liberty and tradition rather than creating a new alloy out of disparate materials. For Meyer, liberty was the end of politics, and that fact could be apprehended by reason. But because of the constraints of human knowledge, traditions were important as a guide for the appropriate realization of liberty. And traditions help men choose virtue when political freedom appropriately gives them that choice.

Besides its importance in reconciling liberty with tradition analytically, fusionism had and continues to have important political implications.

March 5, 2014|America's Way Back, Conservatism, Don Devine, Frank Meyer, In Defense of Freedom, Libertarianism

America’s Way Back

by Donald Devine|

Friedrich Hayek once noted that “A successful free society will always in large measure be a tradition-bound society.” In pursuit of Hayek's wisdom, this podcast with Donald Devine, author of America's Way Back: Reclaiming Freedom, Tradition, and the Constitution focuses on his attempt to revive fusionism by harmonizing freedom and tradition in the manner once proposed by Frank Meyer. While conservatives and libertarians have long been fractured, Meyer attempted in a series of essays almost fifty years ago to find the principles that would unite them. He observed that individual freedom emerges from the religious and moral heritage of the West.…

February 13, 2014|

Piety, Benevolence, Self-Government, and Free Institutions

by William Dennis|

In response to: The Institutions of American Liberty

The Rev. Timothy Dwight (President of Yale, 1795-1817, leading Congregational and Federalist thinker, enemy of Thomas Jefferson), wrote about the three great good works: piety, benevolence, and self-government. Self-government meant the well ordering of one’s life so he could live as a free and responsible human being. If a person was well self-governed, he would be able to live a pious life and a benevolent life. But self-government was difficult to obtain without piety and the support of free institutions upon which private benevolence also depended. So the three good works were closely intertwined and were supported by the institutions…

The Revolution in Ideas and Practice That Elevated American Liberty

by C. Bradley Thompson

Ted McAllister and the Liberty Law Forum at Liberty Fund are to be thanked for resurrecting a vitally important but seemingly forgotten, or, at least, neglected topic. The subject of McAllister’s essay is the American tradition of liberty, which he contrasts with perfect or abstract liberty. He asks two important questions: What is distinctive about…

The Distinctive Spheres of American Liberty and the State

by Steven Grosby

“The Institutions of American Liberty” is a nicely written and, for the most part, compelling encomium to the tradition of American liberty and the institutions upon which it rests. The author of this piece, as so many following Tocqueville have observed, rightly notes that American history displays “a fervor of institution building by people who…

The Extinction of American Liberty? Ted McAllister responds:

by Ted McAllister

Lamentably, I find myself in general agreement with the thoughtful commentaries on my essay by the three respondents, C. Bradley Thompson, Steven Grosby, and William Dennis. This is not to say that underneath this broad consensus there aren’t serious and enjoyable differences of philosophy that warrant sustained engagement. Taken as a whole, the body of…

June 2, 2013|Conservatism, Edmund Burke, Frank Meyer, Fusionism, Progressivism, Tradition

Constitutional Conservatism

by Peter Berkowitz|

This Liberty Law Talk is with Hoover Institution fellow Peter Berkowitz on his new book Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government, and Political Moderation. The book deepens Frank Meyer's conservative fusionist project by adding an Aristotelian and Burkean challenge to both libertarians and conservatives in America. Both groups must lead with political moderation, Berkowitz counsels. One example of such moderation was Ronald Reagan, Berkowitz observes, and this explains much of his success. But this sounds odd, surely Reagan stood for something. Berkowitz's understanding of moderation, however, is not that of the mealy-mouthed variety, but is found in the application of principles to the…

July 23, 2012|Conservatism Revisited, Conservative Thinkers: From John Adams to Winston Churchill, Frank Meyer, Fusionism, Metapolitics, National Review, Peter Viereck, Russell Kirk, Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals, Terror and Decorum, The Conservative Mind, The Unadjusted Man, William Buckley

Peter Viereck: Traditionalist Libertarian?

by Claes Ryn|

The Post-World War II American intellectual conservative movement was a philosophically jerrybuilt political alliance. Its ideas were greatly influenced by William F. Buckley’s National Review, which started in 1955. The magazine’s chief ideologue was senior editor Frank S. Meyer. He propagated a rather paradoxical notion of conservatism, which he summarized as the individualism of John Stuart Mill without its moral utilitarianism. To become conservative laissez-faire liberalism only needed to be leavened with what Meyer called “an objective moral order.” This ideological stance, called “fusionism,” was typical of National Review in that it fudged, or simply ignored, issues of far-reaching philosophical importance.

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

Why Federalism Advances Fusionism

Samuel Goldman Responds to His Critics

In response to: What Is the Future of Conservatism?

More Responses

Don’t Take the Benedict Option

Creative Tension, Not Crack-Up

Freedom Might Well Flourish Even If Conservatives Don’t

Critiquing the Administrative State Is Natural

Don’t Take the Benedict Option

In response to: What Is the Future of Conservatism?

More Responses

Creative Tension, Not Crack-Up

Freedom Might Well Flourish Even If Conservatives Don’t

Critiquing the Administrative State Is Natural

Samuel Goldman Responds to His Critics

The End of Conservative Ideology?

The Enduring Tension That Is Modern Conservatism

Fusionism and Federalism

America’s Way Back

Piety, Benevolence, Self-Government, and Free Institutions

In response to: The Institutions of American Liberty

More Responses

The Revolution in Ideas and Practice That Elevated American Liberty

The Distinctive Spheres of American Liberty and the State

The Extinction of American Liberty? Ted McAllister responds:

Constitutional Conservatism

Peter Viereck: Traditionalist Libertarian?

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